I think we should try to be more careful, not to automatically assume that everyone who is asking questions here about China/Ukraine etc. is always arguing in bad faith. I’ve seen multiple people who were genuinely trying to ask something here and the only response they got was mockery.
I do understand that a lot of times people who come here are trying to troll or just be annoying, but we still should try to engage in them in good faith as long as there is no reason not to do so. Not everyone who isn’t from Lemmygrad is someone hostile to our ideology, and we should try to be kinder to them.
This was something the GenZhou sub was great for before it was taken down, even some troll lib/cons had conceded that they had quality discussions when they’d posted questions.
One thing I’ve started doing, if I reach an impasse/potentially confrontational argument, etc, is writing out an informative post on !genzhou@lemmygrad.ml and linking it in a short, polite reply to whomever I’m engaging with. Like this:
Or, similarly, posting a link to a discussion that we have had on Lemmygrad. Like this:
Then we can avoid the petty exchange of insults. (Which, again, I fully understand the temptation for – I’m not trying to hold myself out as a saint.)
I have tried linking to write-ups on lemmygrad (perhaps even one by you the other day), and instead I’m met with:
Plenty of people just refuse to read a source. It’s just a continuation of the “this news source is biased therefore it’s wrong therefore nothing it says can be trusted therefore you’re a propagandist” game that they play. You can make valid points that can be independently verified and are themselves sourced, but if it’s posted on lemmygrad, or some non-Western media outlet, it automatically gets dismissed.
The number of people who honestly want to engage is seemingly very small. Most people want to shout the things they hear from their chosen news source at any unwilling victim. It’s hegemony of ideas, and they’ll happily use any underhanded tactic to enforce it instead of engaging honestly.
That’s disappointing. And it is frequent, I know. I suppose my take on this is to let people be wrong. Don’t try to ‘correct’ them. Post what you think is the truth, which could include a link to here, then leave them be. If they come back with wrecker/trolling comments, etc, it’s okay to explain what they’re doing so that others can see it. . The one’s who are curious will follow through. In my pre-Marxist days if I had read an interesting back-and-forth only to have it disrupted by someone saying, ‘Stop bullshitting…’, I’d have made up my own mind about who was doing the bullshitting. We’ve just got to trust that we’ll reach the honest ones (not the best example).
This is the strangest thing. I have never encountered it before. Since the reddit exodus, I’m seeing it constantly on other instances. WTF?
I don’t disagree with you, btw. I’m just trying to think through how Marxists can make the best of a poor intellectual terrain.
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Good analysis. This is exactly what it feels like. I’ve noticed a similar thing in other realms, too.