Archive for the ‘Taiwan’ Category
Western left campist fantasy of egalitarian China Jacobin Glorifies Leftist Yellowface, Ignores Chinese Perspectives in Article on “Chinamaxxing”
Western left campist fantasy of egalitarian China Jacobin Glorifies Leftist Yellowface, Ignores Chinese Perspectives in Article on “Chinamaxxing”
Jacobin Glorifies Leftist Yellowface, Ignores Chinese Perspectives in Article on “Chinamaxxing”
Source :
Western Left Campist Fantasy of egalitarian China
Brian Hioe reports :
A RECENT ARTICLE in Jacobin by Seth Ackerman on “Chinamaxxing” again reveals the usual blind spots of Western leftists. Ackerman discusses the online phenomenon of “Chinamaxxing”–the recent turn of Gen Z teens on social media claiming that they are in a “very Chinese period of their life.” Gen Z teens have taken to mimicking Chinese cultural habits, such as taking off shoes indoors or drinking hot water. For Ackerman, this highlights the “kill line” in the US–that living conditions are desperate and marked by scarcity–that Gen Z Americans have turned toward imitating such cultural habits.
Brian Hioe
For one, Ackerman conveniently never discusses the racial projection at work, nor does it ever seem to occur to him that this is a form of culturalist Orientalism. It is, after all, hardly just a Chinese habit to take off shoes indoors. And one is hard pressed to find the connection between drinking hot water and remedies to stark socioeconomic inequality.
Read the rest of this entry »Dishonesty of Many Campists About China – “Progressive International’s Adulation of “Whole-Process Democracy” Celebrates Capitalist Party-States”
Dishonesty of Many Campists About China – Progressive International’s Adulation of “Whole-Process Democracy” Celebrates Capitalist Party-States
Ashley Smith Comments :
The dishonesty and delusion of today’s campists about China is truly astonishing. In one publication, a couple of authors deny the mass repression and internment of Uyghurs. In another, two more embarrass themselves by celebrating the capitalist police state as a socialist democracy. How can this pass as Marxist analysis? How can anyone on the left take this seriously?
Ashley Smith facebook page
Brian Hioe writes :
Progressive International’s Adulation of “Whole-Process Democracy” Celebrates Capitalist Party-States
Say Nothing About Human Rights
A RECENT ARTICLE by Paweł Wargan and Jason Hickel, published by the Progressive International, is adulatory about what it claims to be “whole-process democracy” in China. Nevertheless, interrogating the claims of the article finds that these claims to be in themselves contradictory.
“Whole-process democracy” is a term that apologists of the Chinese Communist Party have increasingly embraced in past years, as a term to describe what they claim to be the superiority of the Chinese party-state. Supposedly, rather than serving as a means of social control, the party-state serves to concentrate the democratic will as part of what is termed “whole-process democracy” or the “mass line.”
Of course, this claim is fanciful. Almost every single state under the sun claims that its political system is one that most perfectly embodies the democratic will of the people–and yet many of these states are, of course, authoritarian.
Wargan and Hickel gesture in grandiose fashion toward the usual claims about the wonders of Chinese modernization, while suggesting that it is because of the people’s participation in “whole-process democracy” that this resulted in a development process in which the people’s will was respected. But there is little, if anything, to suggest that this is true in China.
Read the rest of this entry »The U.S. & Israeli War with Iran: What Should Be the Approach of a Principled Socialist Left? – Frieda Afary
Below is the revised text of a presentation by Frieda Afary to the South African organization, Zabalaza for Socialism on March 15, 2026.
Link :
These are key passages :
Globally, the Russian government has gained from this war because the price of oil has increased, and the Trump administration has lifted sanctions on Russia’s sale of oil. Russia has also gained because the anti-missile systems that Ukraine and Europe were buying from the U.S. to help defend Ukraine against Russia’s brutal imperialist invasion of that country are now going to the Middle East. Russia is also helping the Iranian government by sharing secret information about U.S. targets.
Frieda Afary, ESSF, March 15 2026
The Chinese government has also gained from this war, because the U.S. government will pay less attention to the Pacific Region and might even allow China to proceed with its plans to take over Taiwan.
IV. What Can International Progressives Do Now?
Frieda Afary, ESSF, March 15 2026
First: Do anything you can to stop this war. Educate, speak out, protest, put pressure on your government representatives and independent intellectuals. In the case of the United States, public opinion is currently 60% against this war. Most people don’t want to send their children to fight in the Middle East. Half the adult population is opposed to the Trump administration’s attacks on and detention/deportation of innocent immigrants. There is also a great deal of anger about the ways in which mostly wealthy men including Trump, other politicians and even academics have collaborated with and benefited from the late Jeffrey Epstein’s network for trafficking of women and girls for rape and sexual abuse. All of these questions need to be addressed in articulating an anti-war message.
Second: Reach out to progressives in the Middle East or Middle Eastern progressives abroad. Do not limit yourself to talking only about one struggle or one country in the Middle East.
Third: Oppose campism, take a clear stand against all global and regional capitalist-imperialist powers and defend the rights and humanity of the peoples that these powers are oppressing.
Fourth: Address key issues that are holding back our struggles: racial and ethnic discrimination, patriarchy, capitalist exploitation, and capitalist alienation.
Tomás Ó Flatharta 