I hope you’re right it’s just hard to have any optimism of them being anything more than what they are after decades of continuous disappointment in their inability to be anything more than socdem treatlerites

Map of the Massive Protests Angry Parades* That Took Place and Are Ongoing in the US Over the Killing of American Activist Renee Nicole Goode

While informative I feel it lacks what I was looking for which is fun/drama history such as recurring villains beef between instances and other sort of stuff like that.

Yes, obviously, in the same way they were the first time, though liberals and social democrats bear greater responsibility.

Large sections of the Western left (especially demsocs and anarchists), alongside liberals, treat “neutrality,” “free speech absolutism,” and abstract anti-authoritarianism as virtues detached from material conditions and class power. In practice, this is not neutral at all. When one side is the hegemonic ideology (capitalism, backed by the state, capital, and media) being “against both sides” objectively favors that hegemony.

Liberals and social democrats are more directly responsible because, historically and consistently, they side with reaction against communism when forced to choose. This is not hypothetical: the Freikorps were unleashed by social democrats to crush the German communists; liberal states normalized anti-communism through the Red Scare; and today we see the same logic in the criminalization of communists, the rehabilitation of fascists as “free speech dissidents,” and the alignment of liberals with the far right against AES states and revolutionary movements.

This pattern is structural, not moral. Liberalism and reformist social democracy refuse to confront capital as a system. They manage capitalism, they do not abolish it. When imperialism faces crisis (falling rates of profit, declining global dominance, internal decay) capital does not become more democratic. It turns to repression. Fascism is not an aberration; it is capitalism’s fangs turning inward.

By equating communists with fascists (“extremism on both sides”), by platforming reactionaries in the name of free speech, and by rejecting revolutionary authority while preserving bourgeois authority, liberals and much of the Western left ideologically disarm the working class. Anti-authoritarianism in the abstract becomes a cover for submission to the most entrenched authority of all: capital.

The real question is not “authoritarian vs anti-authoritarian,” but authority of which class, in service of which system. Without answering that, you don’t oppose fascism, you enable it.

History has already settled this. Fascism is defeated not by neutrality, liberal norms, or reformism, but by organized, class-conscious opposition to capitalism and imperialism. Fascists only understand the stick not the carrot and we must never forget that.

I’m clearly not against replying for the benefit of a possible interested good faith third party at the same time however I see no need to try soften the edges of op or pretend they are anything other than what they present themselves to be, a bad faith actor.

You may be right but the post undeniably reeks of bad faith, liberal arrogance and debatebro posturing

Thank you I try my best.

My response is mainly for interested third parties I hold no illusion of being able to meaningfully connect with a liberal debate bro coming in bad faith just to argue.

Although the optimist in me still hopes they may actually try engage in good faith if the facts are laid bare in front of them.

First: the meta-issue (important)

This post comes off as bad faith and distinctly Western-liberal in outlook. Not because it asks questions, but because it assumes Western liberal norms as the neutral baseline and then judges everything else against them while pretending to be “just asking.”

Repeated patterns:

Treats Western media narratives as default unless proven otherwise, while demanding non-Western states meet impossible purity tests.

Claims to have “researched” but clearly relies on headline-level liberal sources, NGO talking points, and election-observer discourse produced by imperial states.

Frames socialist states as needing to justify themselves morally, while capitalist states are treated as flawed but legitimate.

Uses “authoritarian” as an aesthetic judgment, not a material analysis.

This is not neutral skepticism. It is liberal ideology pretending to be critical thinking.

Now, point by point.

“Things I have been told”

1. “Chinese sources about Chinese elections being democratic are like American sources saying America is good”

False equivalence.

US elections are dominated by private money, lobbying, media monopolies, and elite candidate filtration.

China does not define democracy as periodic multi-party spectacle. It defines it as mass participation, cadre accountability, and material outcomes.

Chinese elections operate through people’s congresses, where local representatives are elected and then elevated based on performance, supervision, and recall mechanisms.

You are judging Chinese democracy by liberal electoral aesthetics, not by whether the masses can influence governance.

2. “Venezuela’s election wasn’t legit”

Assertion without evidence.

Venezuela has more elections, more parties, and more audits than most Western states.

Their electoral system includes paper trails, audits, international observers, and machine verification.

Western claims of fraud emerge only when US-aligned candidates lose.

If your evidence is “Western media said so,” that is not analysis.

3. “I’m too propagandized by the West”

Likely true.

Westerners are immersed in:

Corporate media

NGO narratives aligned with foreign policy

“Human rights” discourse weaponized selectively

Read Parenti’s Inventing Reality. Western propaganda works precisely because it claims not to exist.

4. “Any protests are CIA-made”

Strawman.

No serious Marxist claims all protests are CIA. The claim is:

The CIA funds, steers, amplifies, and weaponizes protests where it serves imperial interests.

This is documented fact (Iran 1953, Chile 1973, Hong Kong, Ukraine, Venezuela, etc.).

Rejecting this is historical illiteracy.

5. “Democracy is a bourgeois invention”

Incorrect framing.

Liberal democracy is a bourgeois invention.

Proletarian democracy means democratic control over production, the state, and society.

Voting every few years for capitalist managers is not democracy.

6. “Ukraine is full of Nazis / Russia threatened by NATO”

Factually true, whether you like it or not.

Ukraine has institutionalized fascist formations (Azov, Aidar, Right Sector).

Bandera collaborators are state-celebrated.

NATO expanded eastward explicitly against Russian security assurances.

This does not make Russia socialist or morally pure. It makes Western narratives dishonest.

7. “EU is bourgeois and should be dissolved”

Correct.

The EU is:

A neoliberal treaty structure

Enforces austerity, privatization, and capital mobility

Suppresses popular sovereignty (see Greece, Italy)

That Elon Musk says something similar is irrelevant. Class analysis does not depend on who accidentally agrees.

8. “All states are authoritarian”

Yes, materially.

The question is authoritarian for whom.

Capitalist states repress workers and protect capital.

Socialist states repress bourgeois power and imperial subversion.

Pretending Spain or France are “less authoritarian” ignores:

Police violence

Anti-strike laws

Surveillance

Repression of migrants

9. “Authoritarianism is just an insult against socialist states”

Often true.

Liberals use it as a moral label, not an analytic category. No material analysis follows.

10. “Freedom of the press is bourgeois”

Yes.

Press freedom exists only for owners.

Journalists do not decide narratives; advertisers, owners, and state interests do.

Whistleblowers (Assange, Manning) show the limits clearly.

11. “LGBT and racism are irrelevant”

This is reactionary nonsense (often nazbol garbage).

Correct Marxist position:

Oppression is material and real

It must be analyzed through class, not liberal identity fetishism

Ignoring it alienates the masses

12. “Collective good over individual rights”

This is where liberalism fully collapses.

Under capitalism:

“Individual rights” protect property and capital.

Under socialism:

Rights are material guarantees (housing, healthcare, education).

Unlimited “personal freedom” for exploiters is incompatible with emancipation.

No society prioritizes all individual desires. Liberalism just hides whose desires matter.

“Things I have observed”

1. Chinese elections resemble fascist Italy

This is historically ignorant.

Fascism:

Preserved private capital

Crushed unions

Served monopoly interests

China:

Executes corrupt capitalists

Controls capital flows

Plans development

Eliminated extreme poverty

Superficial form ≠ class content.

2. North Korean elections are fake

You admit:

You rely on Western sources

NK is hyper-isolated

So you know nothing reliable.

Western media has lied consistently about:

Haircuts

Executions

Daily life

Serious Marxists suspend judgment where evidence is contaminated or non existent.

3. Venezuela rigged elections

Again: assertion without sources.

Western NGOs ≠ neutral observers.

4. Oppression justified in socialist states but criticized in capitalist ones

Correct, and this is not hypocrisy.

Class oppression is not morally neutral. Oppressing exploiters ≠ oppressing exploited.

5. State owns production but people don’t own state

This ignores:

Class character of the state

Mass line

Party–mass integration

Read Lenin. Read Mao. The state is not a metaphysical entity.

6. There are billionaires in China

Yes. And this is not a secret.

They exist because:

Market reforms were necessary to survive imperialist encirclement

Capital is subordinate to the state

Billionaires are routinely jailed, exiled, or executed

Capital exists on a leash, unlike in the West, where it rules.

7. Sweatshops in China

Industrialization under global capitalism is not optional.

China:

Used export manufacturing to build productive forces

Lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty

Is now reshoring, automating, and repressing capital

You are judging a process as if it were an end state.

Final diagnosis

This post reflects:

Liberal moralism

Western arrogance

Shallow “research”

Fear of committing to class analysis

It is easier to say:

“Everyone is lying, therefore I remain skeptical”

than to accept that:

Imperial propaganda is systematic

Socialist states operate under siege

Democracy is class-based, not aesthetic

If you genuinely want answers:

Read Lenin (State and Revolution)

Read Mao (On Practice, On the Correct Handling of Contradictions)

Read Parenti

Drop the assumption that Western liberalism is neutral

Right now, the posture is not critical. It is comfortable disbelief dressed up as skepticism. You come off as an arrogant, well-off Western liberal content with social-democratic stability while the periphery is super-exploited by the largest immiseration machine in human history so you can keep your treats. A treatlerite.

I agree with you on the IRA, and more than that, I see it as a clear example of an anti-imperialist, anti-colonial movement that extracted real material gains from a vastly more powerful state. Whatever one thinks of its limitations or internal contradictions, the IRA and the broader republican movement forced the British state to negotiate, reshaped the political terrain in Ireland, and secured concrete concessions that would have been impossible through moral appeal or symbolic protest alone. It didn’t achieve everything it set out to, but it demonstrated decisively how mass community support, disciplined organization, clear objectives, and a credible capacity for escalation can make an occupying power unable to simply ignore resistance. If I had to point to a broader analytical frame before listing examples, as I did elsewhere in this thread, I’d flag two texts that get at the underlying problem. Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle is useful for understanding how, in advanced capitalist societies, representation, spectacle, and performance replace real action and interaction. Politics becomes something to be seen rather than something that exerts force. Jones Manoel’s essay Western Marxism, the Fetish for Defeat, and Christian Culture is important for explaining why even the Western left internalizes this logic, mistaking visibility, suffering, and moral witness for power, and repeatedly reproducing forms of action that feel meaningful but are materially ineffectual. Historically, politically meaningful protest, even in the West, has looked very different. It has depended on mass organization, clear material demands, and a credible threat of escalation. During the U.S. civil rights movement, disciplined organizations like the NAACP, SCLC, and CORE coordinated sustained campaigns, while armed self-defense formations such as the Deacons for Defense made repression costly and instability plausible. Later, the Black Panther Party took this further by combining political education, mass programs, and armed deterrence, precisely why it was met with assassination, infiltration, and destruction. A third example is the early labor movement. Strikes worked not because workers marched politely, but because organized labor could shut down production, disrupt profits, and escalate to militancy if ignored. The difference between these cases and modern Western “parades” (a term I’ll continue to use because it best captures the structure) is decisive. Effective movements were not oriented toward spectacle, moral signaling, or catharsis. They were oriented toward leverage. They built durable organizations, articulated concrete demands, and created conditions in which ignoring them carried real costs. Contemporary Western “protests”, whether riots that burn out quickly or sanctioned marches that dissipate harmlessly, lack those fundamentals. That’s why they are absorbable. And that’s why, analytically, they function less as protests in the classical sense and more as managed expressions of dissent within a system that no longer fears them, angry parades rather than challenges to power.

CPC: Communist Party of China.

CCP: Chinese Communist Party

CPC is technically correct and follows the same style as every other communist party i.e. CPSU, CPI etc.

For some reason western libs decided to start calling it the CCP instead, my leading theory is that it was a redscare propaganda tactic to draw it closer to the CCCP in peoples minds during the propoganda torrent.

The end result in the end is that libs, ultras, fascists etc. tend to say CCP while ML’s MLM’s etc. say CPC.

Sounds like a great time.

In the end the synthesis of theory and practice to sharpen and refine each other should be the main aim as highlighted by every successful revolutionary from Stalin to Ho to Chairman Mao. All I can realistically currently do for the Western left is wish them luck and provide critique and observation from a hopefully at least somewhat novel perspective.

Thank you for your reply I would like to go much more in depth at some point as I find it to be a very interesting topic but for now I think I’ll simply point to a book and an essay that I feel each encapsulate part of the issue.

First is Guy Debord The Society of the Spectacle, this I feel brings to light the issue in advanced capitalist countries for spectacle to replace real action and interaction.

Second is Jones Manoel Western Marxism, the Fetish for Defeat, and Christian Culture, which I feel succinctly explains in some way why even the western left falls prey to the spectacular yet materially ineffectual parades and riots as opposed to real organized protest with mass organisation, concrete demands and an escalation plan.

As for “what is to be done,” as much as I’d love to simply say form a maoist guerilla force and overthrow your overlords, I don’t think the real answer is that interesting or that novel a concept even in the west. Politically meaningful protest (even in the West) has historically depended on mass organization, clear material demands, and a credible threat of escalation. During the civil rights movement, disciplined organizations like the NAACP and CORE coordinated sustained action, while local militant currents, such as the Deacons for Defense, made repression costly and instability plausible. Later organizations, including the Black Panther Party, built on these lessons, demonstrating how escalation coupled with strong organization could influence political outcomes. Without comparable structures, leverage, and escalation potential, protest tends to collapse into either brief outbursts or sanctioned displays, both of which the state can safely absorb.

If I’m talking about China with someone and they call the CPC the CCP I know I’m in for a long winded rambling of liberal/fascist slop 9 times out of 10. Although it is kind of nice to have as an almost shibboleth that lets me know straight away where the bar is.

“protests” angry parades*

I think where we’re talking past each other, I’m not claiming Western protest takes only one empirical form. There are broadly two recurring styles in my view. One is the riot: spontaneous, emotionally charged, sometimes violent, often met with sharp repression, but lacking durable organization, coherent leadership, concrete demands, or any capacity to sustain itself beyond the moment. The other is the parade: non-violent, usually permitted or tolerated, more organized on the surface, but structurally hollow, no leverage, no escalation strategy, no consequences for being ignored. I focus on the “parade” not because riots don’t happen, but because parades are culturally and politically dominant in the West. They are normalized, celebrated, taught as the legitimate form of dissent, and elevated in the cultural zeitgeist as the model of “good protest.” That makes them far more analytically significant. They shape how people understand politics, what kinds of action are deemed acceptable, and crucially what kinds are ruled out in advance. Neither form, however, really qualifies as protest in a meaningful political sense. Both lack what actually matters: mass organization, enforceable demands, and a credible threat of escalation if ignored or repressed. One burns hot and collapses; the other marches safely and dissipates. The state can absorb both without fear. That’s the core issue. The problem isn’t tone or terminology, it’s that Western protest culture is seemingly structurally incapable of converting mass discontent into anything other than showmanship.

Read that a few years back hard to disagree with seeing what has happened to now.

On the “much of the world” phrasing: I’m not claiming a universal global consensus. I’m speaking from experience as someone from the periphery who has had the privilege to be able to travel across the periphery, where this is a recurring sentiment I’ve encountered again and again. “Much of the world” may be an exaggeration, but the underlying perspective is far from rare, especially among people whose political reference points are mass struggle, repression, and real confrontations with state power rather than liberal civil society rituals.

On calling them “parades”: I’m not implying joy or celebration. I use the term because these events are seemingly typically state-sanctioned or permitted, confined to approved routes, heavily policed yet managed, and highly choreographed from start to finish. The presence of tear gas or batons doesn’t negate that. Violence can occur entirely within a controlled script, and when the outcome is predictable dispersal rather than escalation or leverage, “parade” is an accurate structural description, not a moral slight.

And to be clear, this isn’t about denying complexity or flattening liberation struggle, it’s about refusing to romanticize impotence. Western protest culture elevates these managed spectacles into moral absolutes while systematically marginalizing forms of struggle that actually threaten power. That’s not neutral; it actively disarms movements by teaching people that symbolic display and sanctioned outrage are the peak of political action. Naming that isn’t disrespectful to those who suffer within these protests, it’s a necessary critique of a model that reproduces defeat while insisting it represents resistance.

If you’re not in a great mood, I get that. But the disagreement here isn’t about empathy; it’s about analysis. And analytically, a system that can absorb mass outrage, brutalize it, and still face no material threat is not being seriously challenged, regardless of how real the pain involved is. And as sad as it sounds a protest that doesn’t challenge power in any meaningful way is best described as a parade.

You’re arguing against a position I’m not taking. I’m not dismissing people’s suffering, courage, or risk; I’m rejecting the idea that suffering itself constitutes a challenge to power, or even a protest in any meaningful sense. Repression is not the same thing as leverage. Western protests don’t “fail” in some tragic way, they’re never structured to succeed in the first place: no durable mass organization, no discipline, no concrete enforceable demands, no escalation strategy, and crucially no mechanism that makes the state fear consequences if it ignores them. Being beaten by cops inside a ritualized protest cycle the state fully understands and contains doesn’t change that. And yes, from the perspective of the periphery, it’s hard to summon much sympathy when citizens of the core (whose governments operate the largest immiseration apparatus in human history, grinding the periphery nonstop, 24/7 365, with the ultimate orphan-crushing machine) can’t even mount protests that make the slightest material difference. That’s not arrogance or moral contempt; it’s a material critique of a protest culture designed as a pressure-release valve for the empire, not a threat to it, elevated in the West to near-biblical canon where peaceful, state-sanctioned parades are treated as the only legitimate form of politics outside of the ballot box.

Tokugawa shogunate did it first bro can’t even come up with one original idea. But honestly I’m all for a hyperisolationist Amerikkka hope they have the balls to follow through.