Genocide is not a “single issue”. It’s every issue. No, I will not “come on” and accept it as part of the party platform. If Dems can’t stop themselves supporting an active genocide they’re politically and morally useless.

Not a great sign, if she’s going to go out of her way cozy up to him it’s back to Uncommitted for me. Certainly don’t want to, but I guess we’ll see if Dems snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with this.

It might partly be that a lot of what is designed for a screen is made deliberately to be maximally appealing to begin with.

For example a film or tv show is shot with various lenses that create pleasing depth of field, color and light is carefully controlled. Same with high fidelity video games. Even the UI of your applications is made to be appealing and clean.

Sports are sort of shot like films too, and often the cameras can resolve much higher detail than our eyes alone can. The way a sports event is shot in high def can be like gaining the visual abilites of a hawk or something. The lens can zoom in close while our eyes can only squint.

This is exactly what people were warned about with “games as a service” nonsense. No one wanted to listen.

They wouldn’t be doing it if there wasn’t a plan to get consumers to be paying more in the end.

Totalitarianism is always when the other guy does it

No…totalitarianism is an actual distinct system of governance when the state controls every aspect of daily life, communication and economic activity. It’s an actual word with meaning.

It’s got an anti-war infestation that’s regularly accused of being tankies for failing to clap for the correct set of tanks.

Ok, I’m not sure if we’re talking through a translator app or something, but I didn’t get banned from lemmy.ml for being “pro-war” I got banned for mentioning a historical fact about the Great Leap Forward and acknowledging other atrocities like the genocide occurring in Xinjiang.

If someone is anti-war they would be against those types of things as well. Tankies instead deny that those events occurred/are occurring, that’s why they’re so easy to spot and how people know they’re on Lemmy – they literally can’t condemn the CCP for any of the things they purport to be against when it comes to other countries, since it’s counter-productive to their true goals to criticize the CCP.

By contrast an honestly anti-war progressive type of person would be just as clear-eyed about their own government as they are the CCP. That’s being anti-war, you can’t be selective or try to ignore degrees of difference just because it’s politically uncomfortable, that’s just being a mouth-piece for a specific flavor of authoritarianism.

Calmly explaining this to my US Postal Service and my Tennessee Valley Authority

Again, running public services is not the same as the state owning and controlling all businness and industry. If the Post Office was used to control speech, that would be totalitarian use of a public service.

I think you’re just being obtuse at this point. You might be down for totalitarianism and the abolishment of individual freedoms, most people are not. Since, you know, having no rights kind of suck ass.

I know some Irish Republicans, Spanish Catalonians, German anti-Zionist political prisoners, and … waves hand at Poland, Hungary, and Russia

Quite a few native Europeans who would tell you differently.

Europe has some authoritarian governments, not totalitarian dictatorships that approach anywhere near the all-encompassing control of the CCP. Hungary maybe I guess, which isn’t a country I’d recommend taking tech from either.

Ireland is not comparable to China though, that’s an extreme reach. We’re not talking about right-wing groups seeking power within democracies, we’re talking about uni-party state control.

I don’t think the folks on Lemmy are at any risk of that.

Lemmy definitely has a tankie infestation already. I got banned from lemmy.ml for discussing Tiananmen and Hong Kong. Pointing out that the Great Leap Forward resulted in millions of deaths was labeled “cia misinformation” by the mods. It’s a throughly compromised instance.

Lemmy users are not immune to tankie and Rusdian trolls, and thinking that they are is actually a weakness that gets exploited by those bad actors.

Imagine thinking government should dictate the terms of business and not the other way around.

Normal regulatory duties of a government are a far cry from the state having total ownership and control of business and using that control as part of a coercive campaign to suppress human rights, dissent and individual freedoms.

Whatever authoritarianism is festering in other countries, China is still on an entirely different level, it’s not really a question.

European countries aren’t totalitarian states. This isn’t a question of culture, it’s an issue regarding the one and only state power that’s making decisions.

This is the danger of being lulled into thinking China is a normal country. Yes, there are long histories in China and are (vanishing) diverse cultures in China but that’s irrelevant when talking about the actions of the state, which is all encompassing and overrules culture and diversity every time.

It’s the state that owns and controls these companies, it’s the state that dictates their policy and usage, and since the state is fascist and actively seeking to undermine democracy across the global, it is wise to treat the products of that state as a threat.

If that’s the take away from a Biden loss then totalitarianism really is inevitable in this country because it would indicate that the only party in a position to resist fascism, has refused to ever do so.

I suppose we’ll see, though you’d never catch me betting against neoliberal stupidity.

Imagine if the DNC and liberal media apparatus had supported his presidential campaign instead of doing everything they could to kneecap it.

Really was a massive mistake to push Clinton and the pied piper strategy.

No one is denying the holocaust happened. What the actual fuck? God damn that is insidious.

All you’re doing is trying to soft-sell the justification that Zionists use for their on-going genocide, you’re basically claiming they had no choice but to take land from someone else, which is complete bullshit.

When you compare the rhetoric and methods of the Israeli colonial project to every other crime against humanity committed by Europeans during and preceding that period it’s the same game plan because it’s the same racist, far-right playbook. The Israeli settlers were Europeans and had zero claim to the region they took over, Ben-Gurion himself even acknowledges that.

They are there now, Israel is not going anywhere, but the fact that they are an actively expanding colonial state has not changed, it does not justify their continued occupation of Palestinian land nor the wholesale slaughter of the people in Gaza. That is what the discussion needs to be centered on.

Some quotes from David Ben-Gurion, one of the early zionist founders of Israel:

“A partial Jewish State is not the end, but only the beginning. … I am certain that we well not be prevented from settling in the other parts of the country, either by mutual agreements with our Arab neighbors or by some other means. . . [If the Arabs refuse] we shall have to speak to them in another language. But we shall only have another language if we have a state.”

“I don’t understand your optimism,’ Ben-Gurion declared. 'Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: THEY THINK we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it’s true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?”

"Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country. … Behind the terrorism [by the Arabs] is a movement, which though primitive is not devoid of idealism and self sacrifice.”

Or one of my favorites from his diary:

"We must do everything to insure they (the Palestinians) never do return.”

It’s with that context in mind that the recent genocidal rhetoric from Israeli officials makes more sense:

“In order to preserve the security achievements that our soldiers lost their lives for, we must resettle Gaza with security forces and settlers that will embrace the land with love,” Karhi said. He said that “this is the only real way to make the Hamas Nazis pay a price and to defend our nation and country.”

Ben-Gvir also spoke at the march, saying that what the protesters are calling for was the “true solution.” [source]

Or when Netanyahu compared the Gazans to “Amalek” an ancient tribe from a story in the Torah that the tribe of Israel genocided. Or when they describe Palestinians as “human animals” etc.

Israel has always been a European colonial project from the very beginning and violence has always one of the primary means of ensuring settlement is possible. One thing many people don’t realize is that the Zionist colonial project was in motion long before WWII, as far back as the late 1800s. They saw WWII and the holocaust as an opportunity thus quotes like:

“The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war.” -David Ben-Gurion, 1937

Or after the holocaust:

“If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.”

What we cannot do now is let Zionists argue that “Every nation had genocide in its founding, it’s inevitable” because this is happening right now, we are witnessing it. We can’t discuss it as if it’s some regretable historical fact. The reason we say “never again” is to prepare people for times like what are happening right now. We’re all under a moral mandate to stop this from happening.