So I’ve had this as audiobook in my library for a while and thought I’d finally give it a go on a long train ride, because I’m out of other stuff to listen to.

But my god…there’s some useful stuff here, but I’m barely a chapter in and she’s already insinuated the Tinyman massacre (on students wanting neoliberal reforms) happened so China could implement neoliberal reforms/shock doctrine, repeatedly compared China’s economic model to Russia and the US and coined the term “corporatism”, because neoliberalisms natural conlusion “isn’t capitalism or neoliberalism or neoconservatism”.

Is it even worth going through the rest of it or could other works provide the same info without this anti-communist libshit?

Edit:

From Chile to China to Iraq torture has been a silent partner in the free-market crusade

I’m going insane. Also why in the world would anyone describe torture as a SILENT partner ffs

  • SovereignState
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    102 years ago

    I got A Socialist Guide to Palestine from Haymarket a while back and didn’t read past the first ten pages because they called the PFLP “Stalinist” and pseudo-Islamists. It’s incredible how opaquely vile left-of-liberal shit can be whenever stuff written by self-avowed centrists or rightists can be more fair at times.

    • @redtea
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      42 years ago

      I know what you mean.

      The right tends to be much more honest about who it’s enemies are and why they’re enemies.

      Between them and Marxists, though, is a lot of intellectual dishonesty (unacknowledged) and concern trolling (if that term fits here).

      • SovereignState
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        2 years ago

        Like, Iris Chang never expressed support for the CPC in “The Rape of Nanking” (which I think is essential reading for anyone who thinks they understand modern China). She never makes statements lending herself to what we perceive as leftism or rightism, and even fairly outlines incredibly complicated and controversial people in China who saved thousands of Chinese people, including one Nazi diplomat. While reading it, I never felt like I was reading state department propaganda or she was propping up Nazis or the KMT or anything. Yet reading Chomsky or Klein or Haymarket books or Verso or Jacobin, it feels like I’m reading shit straight out of J Edgar Hoover’s mouth sometimes. It’s almost baffling.

        edit: Maurice Meisner’s “Mao’s China and After” is an utterly brilliant historiography of the founding of the PRC, the Cultural Revolution and reforms that occurred thereafter – yet he just has to throw in unsourced / badly sourced jabs at fuckin’ Stalin of all people lest he be seen as too apologetic for communism. It’s tiresome as hell.

  • Muad'DibberA
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    102 years ago

    I also tried reading a few years ago, and couldn’t finish it. Sometimes socdems seem to be educated, but when they parrot all the same anti-communist lines everyone else does, it kinda throws their credibility into question.

    I’m pretty much done reading works by anticommunists after reading the jakarta method, and sperbers biography of Marx. When there’s just as much misinformation as information, you don’t know what info from them you can trust.

      • Muad'DibberA
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        52 years ago

        I got through it but there was some wild anticommunism in it for being a book primarily about the anti-communist mass-killings in Indonesia and Brazil. Bevins even weirdly claims Stalin tried to sabotage / kill Kim Il sung at one point iirc. And of course he parrots the “totalitarian communist excesses in eastern europe” line too.

  • lemmygrabber
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    62 years ago

    I haven’t read the book but if you are interested in the topic, I think you shouldn’t be bothered by stuff like this. It’s a useful skill to be able to wrestle with thoughts from different ideologies critically. I struggle with this myself too but every day is learning day.

    • @KommandoGZDOP
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      2 years ago

      Fair. I’d still like to avoid people quoting the Black Book of Communism and using CIA torture manuals to make a point about China being an evil torture-state when there are comparable works that do not need to make these vile anti-communist propaganda points when criticizing capitalism.

      I also just didn’t expect this degree of bs in a book generally recommended even by many socialists.

  • @aeluon@programming.dev
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    19 months ago

    i have a soft spot for this book because it’s what set me on the path to communism when i was a teenager but reading this perhaps i should re-read…