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I agree there's a long way between the USA and China for the reasons you mention. Still, something nags at me. The USA has all those things in some less govern

I agree there's a long way between the USA and China for the reasons you mention. Still, something nags at me. The USA has all those things in some less government-oriented sense, not organised by a totalitarian party but by a vaguely defined group of powerful people who all live in the same few cities, who all share the same worldview, who all work extraordinarily hard to keep people they disagree with away from the levers of power and who share this same basic mindset: 1. The press is incredibly uniform in America; all papers take explicit political positions despite their role supposedly being to neutrally inform their readers, and they all supported Clinton in the last election. As a foreigner I frequently encounter astonishing falsehoods about my country in supposedly respectable and internationalist papers like the New York Times. 2. Facebook doesn't need government agents to team up with the press in support of an agenda - activists in its employee and management base will ensure it does that anyway. 3. There's no formal department of cultural well-being, but there is nonetheless an exceptionally strong set of beliefs amongst a tiny group of people (the elites/the establishment/the swamp/whatever you want to call them) which do relentlessly impose on news, art, media, etc. Witness how every superhero movie now contains explicitly woke and feminist storylines. 4. "Distributing harmful rumours" and "disrupting the cultural wellbeing" exists in the west too, we just call it hate speech / trolling. Different terms for the same thing and our social networks have WeChat like policies towards them. Whilst the driving force for this doesn't come from government, and there's no formal party per se, the end results are surprisingly similar on a less extreme scale. And if Clinton had won the policy alignment between the government, Hollywood, Big Tech and newspaper owners would be nearly total: you don't need a totalitarian state when those who have power over information or culture all agree with each other on what must be done anyway.

komali2 7y ago
> As a foreigner I frequently encounter astonishing falsehoods about my country in supposedly respectable and internationalist papers like the New York Times. This is news to me - do you have examples? I'd be very interested in learning more. >activists in its employee and management Those are citizens, not government officials. And right now I'd be inclined to say that the average bay area Facebook employee's desires align very little with that of the federal executive branch of the USA, so this point doesn't work for me. > Witness how every superhero movie now contains explicitly woke and feminist storylines. And witness not only how you haven't been sent to xinjiang and reeducated for disagreeing with their values, but they weren't sent to xinjiang for producing media that's explicitly against the ruling executive and Senate party in America's value system. The promotion of equality for men and women, besides, is a far shout to what is happening to activists in China.
- repolfx 7y ago
  The last article I read on Brexit in the NYT started by claiming the British economy was shrinking, and went downhill from there. As far as I can tell Americans are receiving a completely garbled view of anything EU or Brexit related. Also although I'm not Russian, see practically anything related to Russia, Russian Twitter bots, etc. right now I'd be inclined to say that the average bay area Facebook employee's desires align very little with that of the federal executive branch of the USA, so this point doesn't work for me I think you missed my point, because I did say in my post "if Clinton had won, the alignment between government and the Hollywood/big tech/etc nexus would be complete". But she didn't win, so you're right, to some small extent they're different. That said, the executive is so huge in America that even a guy like Trump is very limited in how much he can steer it. I was also very careful to say that the things I'm comparing are not on the same scale, so, your last paragraphs are merely making points I already concede. I am not claiming the USA and China are the same, I clearly stated they aren't, but it's important to reflect on the similarities. After all the Chinese regime is not primarily enforced by the actual executive branch, but rather by regime loyalists in positions of power in so-called private industry as well. It's not people who directly report to Xi Jinping censoring WeChat. It's WeChat employees themselves who try to guess what might be ideologically compatible, or what might be "best for Chinese harmony". A far-reaching ideology that has the explicit support of the power structures creating communication services, art, culture, news and sometimes government, and which considers censorship ("deplatforming" in western NewSpeak) to be an important and legitimate tool for preventing the spread of rumours ("hate") is definitely something to sit up and take notice of. Finally, I'd remark that modern feminism has nothing to do with promoting equality for men and women. Quite the opposite.

komali2 7y ago

> As a foreigner I frequently encounter astonishing falsehoods about my country in supposedly respectable and internationalist papers like the New York Times. This is news to me - do you have examples? I'd be very interested in learning more. >activists in its employee and management Those are citizens, not government officials. And right now I'd be inclined to say that the average bay area Facebook employee's desires align very little with that of the federal executive branch of the USA, so this point doesn't work for me. > Witness how every superhero movie now contains explicitly woke and feminist storylines. And witness not only how you haven't been sent to xinjiang and reeducated for disagreeing with their values, but they weren't sent to xinjiang for producing media that's explicitly against the ruling executive and Senate party in America's value system. The promotion of equality for men and women, besides, is a far shout to what is happening to activists in China.

repolfx 7y ago
The last article I read on Brexit in the NYT started by claiming the British economy was shrinking, and went downhill from there. As far as I can tell Americans are receiving a completely garbled view of anything EU or Brexit related. Also although I'm not Russian, see practically anything related to Russia, Russian Twitter bots, etc. right now I'd be inclined to say that the average bay area Facebook employee's desires align very little with that of the federal executive branch of the USA, so this point doesn't work for me I think you missed my point, because I did say in my post "if Clinton had won, the alignment between government and the Hollywood/big tech/etc nexus would be complete". But she didn't win, so you're right, to some small extent they're different. That said, the executive is so huge in America that even a guy like Trump is very limited in how much he can steer it. I was also very careful to say that the things I'm comparing are not on the same scale, so, your last paragraphs are merely making points I already concede. I am not claiming the USA and China are the same, I clearly stated they aren't, but it's important to reflect on the similarities. After all the Chinese regime is not primarily enforced by the actual executive branch, but rather by regime loyalists in positions of power in so-called private industry as well. It's not people who directly report to Xi Jinping censoring WeChat. It's WeChat employees themselves who try to guess what might be ideologically compatible, or what might be "best for Chinese harmony". A far-reaching ideology that has the explicit support of the power structures creating communication services, art, culture, news and sometimes government, and which considers censorship ("deplatforming" in western NewSpeak) to be an important and legitimate tool for preventing the spread of rumours ("hate") is definitely something to sit up and take notice of. Finally, I'd remark that modern feminism has nothing to do with promoting equality for men and women. Quite the opposite.