For what my views are worth – which is very little, especially in China – I am always for freedom of speech.
That said, it’s worth clarifying that the late Liu Xiaobo was much more a Western nationalist than a genuine humans right activist.
“[It would take] 300 years of colonialism. In 100 years of colonialism, Hong Kong has changed to what we see today. With China being so big, of course it would require 300 years as a colony for it to be able to transform into how Hong Kong is today. I have my doubts as to whether 300 years would be enough.”
“Modernization means whole-sale westernization, choosing a human life is choosing Western way of life. Difference between Western and Chinese governing system is humane vs in-humane, there’s no middle ground… Westernization is not a choice of a nation, but a choice for the human race”
In his 1996 article entitled “Lessons from the Cold War”, Liu argues that “The free world led by the US fought almost all regimes that trampled on human rights … The major wars that the US became involved in are all ethically defensible.” He has defended U.S. policies in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, which he thinks is the fault of the “provocateur” Palestinians.
Liu also published a 2004 article in support of Bush’s war on Iraq, titled “Victory to the Anglo-American Freedom Alliance”, in which he praised the U.S.-led post-Cold War conflicts as “best examples of how war should be conducted in a modern civilization.” He wrote “regardless of the savagery of the terrorists, and regardless of the instability of Iraq’s situation, and, what’s more, regardless of how patriotic youth might despise proponents of the United States such as myself, my support for the invasion of Iraq will not waver. Just as, from the beginning, I believed that the military intervention of Britain and the United States would be victorious, I am still full of belief in the final victory of the Freedom Alliance and the democratic future of Iraq, and even if the armed forces of Britan and the United States should encounter some obstacles such as those that they are curently facing, this belief of mine will not change.” He predicted “a free, democratic and peaceful Iraq will emerge.”
His closest equivalent in Russia would probably be someone like Valeria Novodvorskaya, authoritarian neocon “liberals” who in net terms set back the cause of liberalism and human rights rather than advance them because of the negative reactions their Western cargo cultism and photo ops with John McCain provokes amongst the patriotic toiling masses.
Moreover, just like Novodvorskaya, he was a creation of not so much China itself as the sovok/Maoist system that he pretended to despise:
“I realized my entired youth and early writings had all been nurtured in hatred, violence and arrogance, or lies, cynicism and sarcasm. I knew at the time that Mao-style thinking and Cultural Revolution-style language had become ingrained in me, and my gaol had been transform myself […]. It may talk me a lifetime to get rid of the poison.”
Unfortunately, a lifetime was not enough.
He was also a strong critic of Chinese nationalism, believing that the “abnormal nationalism” existed in China over the last century had turned from a defensive style of the “mixed feelings of inferiority, envy, complaint, and blame to an aggressive “patriotism” of “blind self-confidence, empty boasts, and pent-up hatred”. The “ultra-nationalism”, being deployed by the Chinese Communist Party since the Tiananmen protests, has also become “a euphemism for worship of violence in service of autocratic goals.”
Contra Alt Right rhetoric, China is one of the least nationalist entities on the planet. What other country legally restricted the birth rates of its indigenous majority while letting minorities have second and third children to their hearts’ content? Even Sweden has yet to “cuck” itself that hard.
Netizens on the Chinese Internet constantly lambast the PRC for its limp-wristedness in responding to foreign provocations.
However, not even all this was enough for Liu Xiaobo. So far as he was concerned, only unequal treaties, only hardcore.
I think you mean indigenous majority?
AK: thx
I wonder why the Chinese authorities imprisoned him, he can’t have been that popular even among dissidents with those unpatriotic views.
According to this article he was monolingual:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/15/nobel-winner-liu-xiaobo-chinese-dissident
“Liu considered it most unfortunate that his monolingualism bound him in a dialogue with something “very benighted [yumei] and philistine [yongsu],” the Chinese cultural sphere. ”
If true, his uncritical admiration for the West is even weirder.
If I’m not mistaken, China’s ethnic minorities are about 8% of the total an a number are similar to Han Chinese. The Uighurs and Tibetans differ. Areas where Uighurs or Tibentan outnumber Han Chinese encompass a great deal of land but < 1% of the population.
See your friend John Derbyshire on Chinese nationalism. For a place that has not since the medieval period been a dependency of any other place, they have a resentment of the occident which is weirdly intense.
His judgments are peculiar. Taiwan, South Korea, and Mongolia have for nearly a generation operated a fairly benevolent political order absent any history as a western dependency. Japan has done so for more than two generations. Japan and Korea were occupied by the United States, but for less than a decade each. Morocco is another quiet-life country. French rule was established between 1911 and 1928 and ended in 1956.
As I mentioned previously, Master Anatoly, modern western liberalism is thoroughly illiberal. It’s William Jefferson Clinton, not William Ewart Gladstone.
Reasonably sure that Novorvorskaya, probably Borovoy, were/are monolingual as well. (They are probably the most liberast of the liberast in Russia).
Logically, the degree of cargo cultism would tend to be inverse to the degree of familiarity with the object of worship.
I’m familiar with it, I had his article partially in mind, but I am skeptical of that thesis.
https://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/other-peoples-nationalism-china/#comment-1662839
I like Derbyshire, but he’s not the most reliable on China. He’s the designated China expert at outlets like VDare by default, and he understandably presents things in a way that doesn’t make him look like an apologist or something. So he ends up giving skewed presentations.
I have never heard of Valeria Novodvorskaya but I have heard of Solzhenitsyn. This article essentially said the same thing Anatoly Karlin said.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/15/nobel-winner-liu-xiaobo-chinese-dissident
When u have about 1 billion worth of Han Chinese, i guess you can let the minorities have a little fun. Maybe China calculates less is more. They certainly have no compunction about cracking down when these subordinate groups get out of line. The ‘danger’ this sort of policy poses in a democracy vs an illiberal state like China is dramatically less, because there are other methods available for control.
One of the reasons the West became ascendant is that we generally matched our population with our productive capacity to sustain them.
Anatoly Karlin pioneers a new literary form, the attack obituary.
Ah yes, nobody expressed any criticism of Fidel Castro immediately after his death. I remember it so well.
Maybe because the Chinese leadership does not want the spread of radical anti-Western views?
Not new. Christoper Hitchens did these for people like Mother Theresa and Pat Robertson.
Most liberast of the liberast in Russia – Boris Stomakhin ” it is necessary to burn Russians in oven and to drown in the sea”, “Russian Federation and Russians must be exterminated” and so on
Can one be a neocon if they advocate explicitly violating western/humanist/liberal values to recreate the world in the image that they want?
What I mean is, let’s say you really wanted to make Africa developed and independent: the way to do that would be for the US and allies to conquer the continent and implement a combined education and eugenics program that would last for hundreds of years and result in hundreds of millions of deaths. But 300 years from now, Africa would be free and independent and a united sub saharan African commonwealth would be the most powerful country on earth.
If somebody advocated doing that, would they still classify as a neocon because they want to use western power to forcibly spread western civ?
I’ve never heard of this Chinese guy, but it seems like he is exactly the kind of person who would advocate the above solution for Africa.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/hong-kong-was-supposed-to-liberalize-china-how-did-the-opposite-happen/2017/06/23/ef356eba-5762-11e7-a204-ad706461fa4f_story.html
Go on to Youtube and make any comment critical of China in the slightest way, you will receive hundreds of incoherent and rage-filled replies telling you to mind your own business.
Someone once told me that the minority exemption for having more kids only applies in the minority provinces or areas, and there it applies to everyone. He further stated that it was a major incentive for Han Chinese to move there. I tend to doubt it, is there a better source? If true, it would be a major way of swamping the minority areas with ethnic Han Chinese, wouldn’t it?
In any event, even if it’s untrue (probably), I think Swedes are way more cucked. Regardless of the details, they started and are enforcing a policy of near total ethnic replacement of themselves within a century, whereas with present demographic trends, in China ethnic minorities might grow a couple percentage points in the same timeframe. Or not even that, because regardless of policy, birthrates are similar.
The only relevant cuckedness metric is replacement rate as a result of a deliberate policy, and in China it must be negligible.
even though this is POZzed and, certainly in the case of Novodvorskaya and the like, in bad faith (her’s was just a primeval, chthonic hatred of all things Russian) there’s something about it I can’t quite put in words.
People like that always seem to come from great nations, never the “small and proud” ones.
“I am always for freedom of speech.”
You should’ve stopped right there.
“Liu Xiaobo was much more a Western nationalist than a genuine humans right activist.”
So who is, or was, a “genuine humans right activist,” in your opinion?
China certainly is nationalistic, just not in the exact way westerners think. Many Chinese associate any criticism of anything Chinese as an attack on us as a whole. There is nothing remotely close to SJWism, and anyone who tries gets shut down (by the people). It can be blind and angry, but it’s not the danger to civilization the way self-hating liberal degeneracy is. Nationalism, despite its excesses, is a net positive for the nation.
Liu Xiaobo was a fool who thought democracy is puppies and rainbows and solves all of a country’s problems. He has never lived in a western democracy for any significant amount of time. As far as I can tell, liberal democratic values, taken to their logical extremes, is what causes most of the west’s social problems.
The western commentators weeping over his death didn’t even know who he was until they gave him the Nobel prize. Neither did most Chinese. He is very much the naive idealist who says nice sounding things for silly foreign women to feel “inspired” and “passionate” about. His outline of democracy does not even take into account China’s circumstances. It really is just Voting! Love! Freedom! No thanks. For the vast majority of Chinese, China is already a very free place.
I think the most accurate label is to call him a banana, this a term that some Chinese use to describe those that are yellow on the outside but white on the inside. I am a white nationalist myself, but I can sympathize nationalists of other races, if someone like Liu Xiaobo is getting praise from neocons/neoliberals then its fairly safe to say that he is scum, hopefully most Chinese denounced him.
It really does not matter how crude, low brow, hostile or unintelligent it sounds, if somebody tells you to mind your own business they are probably right and you are probably wrong.
Pat Robertson is still alive. I’m not sure he’s fully retired.
I have read Hungarian bloggers who wished that NATO troops would liberate us from Orbán’s dictatorship. This kind of poz is everywhere.
Well, she once said that she would be happy to see 90% of Russians killed off.
That’s the sort of Russian liberal that is lionised in the west. They would be dangerous if they weren’t idiots.
I’m reminded of the environmentalist in Three Body Solution who believes that humanity needs to invite alien overlords to destroy most of humanity in order to save the planet. An appropriate parody of such attitudes, when admiration turns into a full blown inferiority crisis. Hilariously perfect collaborator.
I dream that there shall be others who follow in his wake, so that we will never lack for entertainment.
Pathetic amateurs. Real pros watch alien invasion and cheer for the aliens.
Try it, there is nothing more relaxing than to see superior aliens giving human scum what they deserve.
Its safe to say that China is more tolerant of nationalists in their midst, perhaps similar to Russia. However, government policy does not reflect their views and does execute “cucked” actions such as avoiding references to pork at one point during the Year of the Pig in order to appease a Muslim minority.
A major distinction though is that such actions toward tolerance are usually portrayed as a privilege extended out of generosity or kindness rather than an expected “right.” This annoys some people, of course.
I have to agree about Sweden. China is pretty much more about Republican-style civic nationalism rather than ethnonationalist attitudes – compromises are often done to promote that. This is pretty consistent historically, tonghua(assimilate) isn’t just two syllable word, it has been the Sinic policy for a few thousand years.
I often think that people conflate Japanese attitudes, which are exceptionally isolationist with Chinese attitudes. Its not. China has been in the empire business for a long time, and for better or worse, has to deal with its consequences.
However, there certainly isn’t that intense sense of self-hate that elements of Sweden seem to embrace. That’s really quite puzzling. The rot’s much more endemic than immigration, though that’s most obvious, there were some Norwegian programs showing how their gender studies programs created men who actively hated themselves and hated anyone who would tell them different, including celebrations of how “men stole everything from women” and “men are inferior.”
Its pretty amazing, really.
Hungary is a great nation, no contradiction there:) I meant more like the various minorities in whom the “small and proud” mindset is endemic and tolerance for self-criticism (germane and liber(astic)ally misguided alike) is very low.
Treaties, like borders, are decided by the balance of forces on either side.
The Three Body Problem? Sounds worth checking out.
Conspiracy Theory:
Liu Xiaobo was a “false flag” dissident. Created (or promoted) by the CCP to discredit liberal leaning Chinese dissidents in general.
Minorities in China can’t have children to their hearts content. They only have one extra child allowance. Every province has its own version of the law, but I’ve never seen one which didn’t say exactly that.
Of course enforcement tends to be rather patchy in minority areas; but enforcement can be bad in plenty of Han places as well. If anything the only place where it was effectively enforced was among Communist Party members: an extra child completely killed your chances of advancement.
“Human rights activist”. Even more terrifying than “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”.
Like watching all these super-brave people who, like me, go tippy-tappy on the keyboard and criticize someone (after his death) who actually went to jail for his beliefs.
And if he was a nobody why did the Chinese government bother to put him in prison for a long time?
I am sure you would never dream of criticising anyone who went to jail for questioning your “holocaust”.
“… the Chinese leadership does not want the spread of radical anti-Western views”
This is in general true. But it has nothing to do with Liu
What alt-right rhetoric?
China, indeed, is one of the least nationalistic entities on the planet.
I guess the same reason why in another political system nobodies like David Irving or Ernst Zündel could find themselves behind the bars.
China, or more accurately the elite running China, adapts means to ends in the same way Germany does. When it comes to problem minorities China and Germany are relatively well off and can afford increases in those populations. Germany and China are nuetralising their potential enemies and increasing in relative power. In the recent trade deal, Trump granted China the right to have its investments in the US treated as if they were from a friendly country, and he got virtually nothing in return.
The Chinese are accepting interpenetration (politically correct issues such as climate change and minorities) because it gives them entree to the West, which results in a inextricable entanglement: Chinamerica. When it becomes clear that China’s trajectory of growth will take it to world supremacy, America will not be able to slow its Siamese twin’s economy down without killing the US’s as well.
By my way of thinking the white heat tech Chinamerica is a doomsday machine.
He had been receiving funds from NED for years. Probably not a good idea to advocate overthrowing your own government while being funded by a foreign government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democracy
Sounds like you already had a position you were trying to make, and then looked through the internet for proof that backed your point.
I could just as easily look through the internet and find an article that supported the opposite position.
And no, no nation on earth is more cucky than Sweeden. SJWism is almost exclusively a white thiing.
This article reeks of Schadenfreude
While outside observers may never know for sure, the speculation is that his arrest was due to accepting foreign funding to campaign for overthrow of the government. The NED funded Xiaobo extensively to the tune of 1-2M USD, a princely sum for someone in 1990s China. The records have since been erased from the NED website, though internet archived snapshots document the contributions.
A scholar:
“The NED funded Xiaobo extensively to the tune of 1-2 USD”:
Your USA taxpayer dollars at work!
https://www.reddit.com/r/Sino/comments/6n1o41/chinese_nobel_peace_prize_laureate_liu_xiaobo_dies/dk6jxgl/
I’d love to see/hear a Derbyshire/Karlin tête-à-tête.
Now that would be interesting.
Article in the Economist on performance of different language groups in Britain at high school leaving age. https://www.economist.com/news/britain/21725019-their-status-new-arrivals-only-part-explanation-why-central-and-eastern-european
Main thread is the poor performance of Eastern European pupils.
a. Average Brit has a 57% chance of getting 5 A-C GCSE passes (equivalent to a high school diploma)
b. As expected Asians perform very well 78% of Malayam speakers (Kerala), 72% of Gujarati and 68% of Mandarin speakers get the high school diploma. 54% of Urdu and Bengali speakers (mainly Muslims) pass the diploma, oddly only 30% of Thais pass
c. In terms of Africans and middle easterners, 72 % of Yoruba speakers, 61 % of Farsi speakers, 59 % of Arabic Speakers pass the diploma. however only 49 % of Somali speakers and 33% of Lingala speakers ( DR Congo) pass
d. In terms of Other Europeans (not eastern Europe) 60 % of Greek Speakers pass the exam but only 39% of Portuguese speakers. Russians also fall into this category and 59 % of them pass the exam
e. The Eastern Europeans range from 56% pass rates Albanian and Bulgarian speakers to 44% Poles, 36 % Lithuanians, 31% Latvians and 15% Slovak and 10 % Czech (anecdotally most of the Czechs and Slovaks are of Roma heritage)
Assimilating a million eastern Europeans with limited intellectual capabilities has been a bit of a struggle and explains why we Brits voted for Brexit
Thanks, this is quite interesting.
Somalis doing better than Poles!
Going OT a bit here, but nevertheless: It’s hardly comparing like for like. Many of those Eastern Europeans will be recent arrivals with poor English, especially in somewhere like Lambeth. Not to mention that a lot will be there to do menial work. A lot of the commonwealth countries have English language school systems and follow the (harder, un-dumbed-down) pre-GCSE English curriculum.
I bet the negroes are judged very indulgently. They may well be supplied with the answers in advance.
That’s not possible; exams in the UK are pretty watertight. Coursework, were cheating was practically unanimous, has been abolished. We’re taking about 5 A*-C grades including English and maths here. To get five C grades after 11 years of schooling really isn’t that hard.
I was confusing Robertson with Jerry Falwell.
Sounds like Liu got his CIA talking points right.
There’s more than one view of what “unpatriotic” means. When China was at the top of its game, it was the richest and most technologically-advanced empire in the world. Culturally, its neighbors were like planets orbiting a star. Today, it’s a distant also-ran, economically, technologically and culturally far behind former vassal states like Korea, Japan, as well as ethnic Chinese-majority territories like Taiwan, Singapore, Macau and Hong Kong. It got there under the Communist Party of China.
Now, you may think the Communist Party has worked wonders because they were starting out with inferior human potential. After all, these were Chinese untermenschen rather than the German volk. The thing is – the relative positioning of the races is irrelevant. Whether under foreign or ethnic Chinese rule, Chinese everywhere else seem to outperform the Chinese in China. And these were the dregs who couldn’t hack it in China.
And that is what Liu was alluding to, indirectly, and why the Communists had to slap him down – to be rich, the Chinese people have to be free. Free of the dead hand of thousands of years of aristocratic tyrants that continue to rule it to this day under different labels.
Your attitude is reminiscent of an Ossi who thinks that someone is unpatriotic for criticizing Honecker’s Germany. The reality is that there was nothing to praise, except perhaps that from a technical perspective, the Berlin Wall was fairly effective at keeping Ossis in the GDR.