• @bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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    14 months ago

    I made a post about whether Chinese people can talk about tiannamen. You said youre interested in whether the government hides information. We’re having two different conversations.

    If you want to have that conversation my only recommendation is to make an ml alt and go ask on hexbear or grad. There’s a lot of well read and well traveled people who can better assist you.

    Like I said in what might have been my first reply to you, I don’t care about the questions you’re asking or understand their connection or relevance.

    • WhatTrees
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      14 months ago

      My dude, it’s been the same conversation this whole time. “People can’t talk about TS” because the government hides information about it and bans memorial services. You’ve been pedantic about this for a while now but this is another level.

      I like that the end of this road is just an attempt to shuffle me off to someone else who you hope could defend your position since you apparently can’t. You can stop responding if you like, I have no idea why you keep responding but not providing any evidence for your claims. I’ll keep asking you for evidence as long as it takes for you to either provide it, admit that you don’t have a good reason to believe it, or walk away as you’ve always been free to do.

      I know you don’t care, that’s been obvious this whole time even though you keep responding, but I don’t for a moment believe you’re too dumb to understand the connection or relevance. You’ve only been answering the questions you want to answer because that’s easy but have pretty much always refused to answer the hard questions. You’ve been avoiding the questions that would highlight exactly how preposterous your claim was using identical logic to talk about other countries. You’ve refused to supply evidence unless I agree to accept it first. You’ve shifted the goalposts from is sinophobic and an anti China buzzword to has more than 0 racist underpinnings, a standard you know damn well you don’t apply to other countries.

      I just don’t understand why you have such a strong need to protect an authoritarian government from criticism. China isn’t smol bean and they don’t need you to white-knight for them. They are a big-boy country who can handle criticisms of their actions. I don’t care if their people faced oppression, the government doesn’t get a pass for oppressing their citizens. Even if you think the criticism isn’t true, I hope you can see how wrong and determental it is to call it sinophobic. It’s a transparent attempt to co-opt liberal idpol to cover for the actions of a government you’ve decided you like. And you’ll have to forgive me for not believing your “trust me bro someone else can totally prove this to you.”

      • @bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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        14 months ago

        It’s not the end of this road, it’s the beginning too.

        I began by saying that I don’t have any interest in engaging with your questions. If you want someone to talk with you about them then talk to someone else.

        I am again going to ignore most of what you wrote and pick what I want to respond to:

        Do you think your unwillingness to accept Chinese people talking in their own words about tiannamen and your denial that it’s sinophobic to say they can’t are related?

        • WhatTrees
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          14 months ago

          How could I accept something I haven’t seen? Why would I accept something unrelated to the claim at hand?

          • @bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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            14 months ago

            Chinese people talking about tiannamen is literally a direct refutation of the claim that they can’t do so.

            It is as related to that claim as any thing could possibly be.

            • WhatTrees
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              14 months ago

              We already covered this multiple times. The claim is they can’t because of government actions that you refuse to prove don’t happen. Are you now backing off the other part altogether and saying the only thing you’ll defend is that some Chinese people have said things about TS?

              • @bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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                14 months ago

                I never said that. You did. I don’t care about disproving the claims you make. I especially don’t care to attempt to disprove a negative statement since it’s pretty fraught.

                That idea, that government action prevents Chinese people from speaking about tiannamen rests on Chinese people not speaking about tiannamen. That second part, the one your claim rests on, is what I dispute and what I made a post about before even your first reply.

                I asked you if you’d accept Chinese people speaking about tiannamen as evidence of my claim and you said (and I’m paraphrasing here, because enumerating all the ways you said the Chinese people would have to be in line with the western story in order for you to accept that evidence amounts to the same outcome) no.

                It seems like all you care about is government restriction of speech. When is it acceptable for a government to restrict speech?

                • WhatTrees
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                  14 months ago

                  So then, no evidence that they don’t attempt to hide the information or ban people from holding memorial services? You could provide evidence that the government allows memorial services, or you could prove that the specific claims made in the evidence I gave you are incorrect. For example, you could show that access to the relevant wiki pages and Google searches are not blocked in China. None of this is proving a negative or an impossibly high bar to meet.

                  • @bloodfart@lemmy.ml
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                    14 months ago

                    So I, as I said before multiple times, don’t care what you think or about the questions you’re asking.

                    You seem to care a lot though, so I’ll pose my last question again: when is it acceptable for a government to restrict speech?