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> Police in Henan province have urged citizens to quiz neighbors they mistrust on pop culture to ascertain their patriotism, while Shandong province state media

by tromp 3y ago

> Police in Henan province have urged citizens to quiz neighbors they mistrust on pop culture to ascertain their patriotism, while Shandong province state media published posters with the tagline “spies might be all around you.” All this campaign will do is generate a ton of false positives. They'll end up duplicating Russia's practice of reporting people you don't like as unpatriotic. The US also has some experience with the practice [1], but fortunately those days are way behind us. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

jagraff 3y ago
I think the idea with campaigns like these is not to actually root out spies - it's to get people to self censor because they're afraid that their neighbor is going to report them to the government. If everyone is afraid of saying any forbidden ideas, nothing "subversive" can spread because everyone lives in too much fear to spread it. Knowledge of this campaign is more important than the function of the campaign itself
- prewett 3y ago
  It's kind of impressive to watch Xi continually double-down on disastrous policy. The memory of the Cultural Revolution is still there, and nobody wants to revisit those times. But after the disastrous Shanghai lockdowns, a lot of ordinary people realized that the government can just arbitrarily lock you up and destroy your ability to earn money / run your business. Young people who sacrificed their childhood to relentless studying only to find no jobs get tone-deaf messaging about "eating bitterness". People can only take so much. The Covid lockdowns turned out to be too much. But I think that many people, especially youth, are still pretty near too much. You can only pile on so much pressure before things explode, and Xi doesn't have Mao's charisma.
  - klibertp 3y ago
    Same here, the first thing I thought after reading the title was "wait, again?!" - knowing what inciting people to hunt witches usually turns into, I thought that guy is utterly fearless, at the very least. Though, maybe he counts on this push not to work. He might see it as a temporary measure that will fizzle out quickly, giving him some time and not many headaches down the road. He'd be an incurable optimist then... If this incitement works, it'll leave a mark on society for many decades into the future. In the best case, people will enjoy the ride for a few years and then tacitly agree not to speak of it. In the worst, there will be widespread lynches, pogroms, bloodshed on the level of Stalinist purges, then either a revolution or Great Terror for years to decades, and it'll take a century to fully (if that's even possible) heal. What does Xi want to get out of it, really? Surely he's not stupid enough to think he'll catch any of the actual spies that are bound to be there anyway? Is whatever he wants to gain really worth playing with this particular fire? It would be safer to start an actual war, like his buddy did...
  - gottorf 3y ago
    > It's kind of impressive to watch Xi continually double-down on disastrous policy. "Well, did it work for those people?" "No, it never does. I mean, these people somehow delude themselves into thinking it might... but it might work for us." Autocrats' egos are bigger than history lessons, I suppose.
  - gmerc 3y ago
    I think it’s a global phenomenon. We are seeing a rise of fascism across the globe, the policy and leadership choices made by key parties in the largest western countries is not seem like they learned from the 1920s at all Most nuclear armed nations are now ruled by old men with quasi autocratic power concentrated like at no time in the last 80 years. Even the US had a brush with an authoritarian coup attempt and languishes on whether to roll the dice on that again.
  - tsss 3y ago
    Apparently, at least all of the "little red book" social media users do want to revisit those times.
- morbicer 3y ago
  Astute observation. Soviet Union did the same thing, even turning children against parents so the "forbidden thoughts" are not mentioned even in the privacy of home. Thought police. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlik_Morozov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlik_Morozov
l3mure 3y ago
> The US also has some experience with the practice [1], but fortunately those days are way behind us. You must have been in a coma for several years after 9/11. There's also the recent anti-China initiatives by the Justice Department / FBI indicting dozens of professors and researchers, the majority of which have failed to secure any convictions for spying or espionage.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Moldoteck 3y ago
Idk, NK does this for a pretty long time and at allowed Kim to stay in power
csense 3y ago
> All this campaign will do is generate a ton of false positives The way a totalitarian government thinks, false positives are a feature, not a bug. Better a hundred innocent people are kidnapped by the secret police and tortured to death than a single person who disagrees with the CCP is allowed to live. -- Xi Jinping, probably
Canada 3y ago
Like this? Don't worry you still have a few days to "Take the pledge to protect"... for #SeeSayDay 2023 https://www.dhs.gov/see-something-say-something https://www.dhs.gov/see-something-say-something
red-iron-pine 3y ago
Sounds like Cultural Revolution 2.0 -- this time with bots!

by tromp 3y ago

jagraff 3y ago

I think the idea with campaigns like these is not to actually root out spies - it's to get people to self censor because they're afraid that their neighbor is going to report them to the government. If everyone is afraid of saying any forbidden ideas, nothing "subversive" can spread because everyone lives in too much fear to spread it. Knowledge of this campaign is more important than the function of the campaign itself

prewett 3y ago
It's kind of impressive to watch Xi continually double-down on disastrous policy. The memory of the Cultural Revolution is still there, and nobody wants to revisit those times. But after the disastrous Shanghai lockdowns, a lot of ordinary people realized that the government can just arbitrarily lock you up and destroy your ability to earn money / run your business. Young people who sacrificed their childhood to relentless studying only to find no jobs get tone-deaf messaging about "eating bitterness". People can only take so much. The Covid lockdowns turned out to be too much. But I think that many people, especially youth, are still pretty near too much. You can only pile on so much pressure before things explode, and Xi doesn't have Mao's charisma.
- klibertp 3y ago
  Same here, the first thing I thought after reading the title was "wait, again?!" - knowing what inciting people to hunt witches usually turns into, I thought that guy is utterly fearless, at the very least. Though, maybe he counts on this push not to work. He might see it as a temporary measure that will fizzle out quickly, giving him some time and not many headaches down the road. He'd be an incurable optimist then... If this incitement works, it'll leave a mark on society for many decades into the future. In the best case, people will enjoy the ride for a few years and then tacitly agree not to speak of it. In the worst, there will be widespread lynches, pogroms, bloodshed on the level of Stalinist purges, then either a revolution or Great Terror for years to decades, and it'll take a century to fully (if that's even possible) heal. What does Xi want to get out of it, really? Surely he's not stupid enough to think he'll catch any of the actual spies that are bound to be there anyway? Is whatever he wants to gain really worth playing with this particular fire? It would be safer to start an actual war, like his buddy did...
- gottorf 3y ago
  > It's kind of impressive to watch Xi continually double-down on disastrous policy. "Well, did it work for those people?" "No, it never does. I mean, these people somehow delude themselves into thinking it might... but it might work for us." Autocrats' egos are bigger than history lessons, I suppose.
- gmerc 3y ago
  I think it’s a global phenomenon. We are seeing a rise of fascism across the globe, the policy and leadership choices made by key parties in the largest western countries is not seem like they learned from the 1920s at all Most nuclear armed nations are now ruled by old men with quasi autocratic power concentrated like at no time in the last 80 years. Even the US had a brush with an authoritarian coup attempt and languishes on whether to roll the dice on that again.
- tsss 3y ago
  Apparently, at least all of the "little red book" social media users do want to revisit those times.
morbicer 3y ago
Astute observation. Soviet Union did the same thing, even turning children against parents so the "forbidden thoughts" are not mentioned even in the privacy of home. Thought police. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlik_Morozov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlik_Morozov

l3mure 3y ago

> The US also has some experience with the practice [1], but fortunately those days are way behind us. You must have been in a coma for several years after 9/11. There's also the recent anti-China initiatives by the Justice Department / FBI indicting dozens of professors and researchers, the majority of which have failed to secure any convictions for spying or espionage.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Moldoteck 3y ago

Idk, NK does this for a pretty long time and at allowed Kim to stay in power

csense 3y ago

> All this campaign will do is generate a ton of false positives The way a totalitarian government thinks, false positives are a feature, not a bug. Better a hundred innocent people are kidnapped by the secret police and tortured to death than a single person who disagrees with the CCP is allowed to live. -- Xi Jinping, probably

Canada 3y ago

Like this? Don't worry you still have a few days to "Take the pledge to protect"... for #SeeSayDay 2023 https://www.dhs.gov/see-something-say-something https://www.dhs.gov/see-something-say-something

red-iron-pine 3y ago

Sounds like Cultural Revolution 2.0 -- this time with bots!