zlacker

Is it just me or is there a deep irony here? I find it interesting that one of the oft maligned attributes of religious communities, especially those in authority in said communities, is this same behavior. Do good things and be open, but also very much protect the brand. As a naive westerner I've hear/learned/assumed that Chinese communism/society was areligious.

When described as you (OP) put it, it seems that abstractly, the Chinese Communist party is just the state religion.

I'm not trying to play a game of whataboutism. I'm curious why these structures seem to rise, regardless of what we intend or call the them. What is it about the human experience that so often results in this.

I apologize if this is overtly stereotypical, naive, assuming, or disrespectful. It wasn't meant to offend or annoy. Just cautiously curious.

>>travis+(OP)
You could say the same thing about many companies.

Would you say “Microsoft is just a corporate religion”?

I think a religion is about more than just an entity that tries to avoid negative PR.

>>travis+(OP)
> Do good things and be open, but also very much protect the brand

is that not the default mode for families? elementary/middle/highschool/universities? work? any communities you spend a lot of time in?

>>travis+(OP)
Grew up in USSR. The basic premise of communism is that it's the best possible way to organize society. If you are not happy then it's not the problem with the communism(how could it be? it's the best!) but it's the problem with you. From that premise all sorts of bad things happen like you are not allowed to complain about communism or question it etc. Not unlike any authoritarian government or cult.

>>travis+(OP)
The experience of changing from someone who believes all aspects of the “orthodoxy”, to someone who accepts that there are flaws in it, can be strikingly similar.

A Chinese friend once described to me the week he discovered YouTube after going to study in America, when for the first time he saw videos of Chinese leaders (2000-era) behaving very rudely toward reporters. He found that shocking, and over the next few weeks and more research, accepted that much of what he’d been taught about his history was fabrication. The experience was pretty traumatizing for him. He’s back living in China now, but with a very different perspective.

I was what you might call a fundamentalist Christian for most of my life, until I was exposed to enough of the counter-arguments that some of them finally stuck. The deprogramming process took a year and a half and was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.

In both cases, the in-group is well-protected from “improper information” (as the CCP calls it). In China they have the great firewall and the domestic censorship apparatus; in religion believers are inoculated against trusting information from “worldly” sources (though the motives of those involved in the actual suppression may differ). Neither system could survive in its current form if this information weren’t suppressed — that’s obvious by looking at what happens when individuals are exposed to alternate points of view and take them seriously.

>>physic+M5
And in free speech countries they have "QAnon conspiracy theory", "falsifiable", etc.

>>travis+(OP)
There is a reason why totalitarian societies try to substitute religion with stare propaganda and the personality cult. There's a reason why the CCP banned Falun Gong - it had more followers than the CCP.

>>physic+M5
The great firewall is deterrent to spreading fake news, disinformation, and lies among the masses(1.4B) who make take it for truth resulting in social divisiveness and potential violence of which is happening in the US w/only 1/4 of the population.

That said, the firewall is easily bypassed with VPN by many with the means to do so. Chinese govt does not view this as contradiction with their policy as it is deemed those able to read Englis/foreign news are educated enough to discern the truth.

>>e9+Q4
This is true of capitalist economic systems and democratic political systems. The USSR was not unusual in eliminating heterodox views, not that it was ever communist in more than name.

>>pinipe+ir
Capitalist systems produce pretty much constant criticism of capitalist systems.

The line tends to be more that this sucks but we tried voting in the other lot and that sucked too.

>>travis+(OP)
" I'm curious why these structures seem to rise" - ask yourself about your state religion, the neoliberalism. You might be less clueless about that.

>>tim333+Ux
Criticizing such details are not the same as criticizing the system itself. Preferring one implementation of capitalism over another isn't a criticism of capitalism. Similarly, espousing one political party over another isn't criticism of democracy.

If you suggest eliminating private property to mitigate certain ills engendered by capitalism, or express another view that is truly antithetical to capitalism then you will find yourself marginalized to the point you cannot influence the system.

>>pinipe+zB
Well googling "capitalism broken" gives plenty of results. I admit eliminating private property doesn't get much respect but that's a different thing.

>>tim333+IC
Are those articles suggesting how to fix capitalism or are they actually suggesting eliminating private ownership of the means of production? There are numerous example of the latter being crushed by, e.g. the CIA among others, for around a century. As for how they are marginalized, I'd challenge you to name a single instance of a capitalist state becoming anything else. There have been a few, e.g. China, USSR, PRK, Cuba, etc. which became state capitalism, but that's still a form of capitalism. The anarcho-syndaclists in Spain tried, but they were crushed by the state.

Private property is inextricably linked with capitalism. If there is no private property there can be no private ownership of the means of production, hence no capitalism. Conversely, within capitalism there is private ownership of the means of production hence there can be no private property, only personal property.

>>qubit0+gn
How can someone come on hackerNews (of all places) and claim the great firewall is a useful way to prevent disinformation? It just ensures that the only kind of information is the kind friendly to the ruling that party.

>>whythr+J42
It insures that people aren't emotionally triggered by disinformation which often results in social divisiveness if not violence as is happening in the US.