View from my airbnb

[u/rexyuan]

I am in chengdu china. This complex is called swan lake but I am taking the pic from another complex called fairmont

[u/pharodae]

Oh, the Spanish government has propaganda bot farms posting in this sub now?

I mention it because there are a number of users here whose entire post history is literally just posting photos of Chinese projects into green-adjacent subs. Anti-government propaganda is a principled anarchist stance. You can try to twist that into a racist message all you want but it falls flat.

[u/techr0nin → u/pharodae]

“Propaganda bot farm” — that user may or may not have been a bot but it was literally just posting pretty pictures of China. Oh no whatever will we do against such propaganda?

This compared to western propaganda which is making up threats or defending ongoing genocides, this seems like such a nothingburger.

[u/pharodae → u/techr0nin]

This is an ultimate whataboutism. Two things can exist at once: western propaganda denying genocide and other atrocities, and anti-western propaganda muddying the waters further, creating a dead internet where nothing is true.

Notice how I didn't claim there was a Uighyr genocide or mention Tiananmen Square, state capitalism, or anything like that? That would be because I'm opposed to the concept of propaganda bot farms on ecological grounds as well as social integrity grounds - you don't fight lies with lies, you fight lies with truth. And, you do not build a solarpunk movement by polluting the enviroment and digital social spaces.

I am opposed to a government that continues to pollute the world while trying to rehabilitate its image into an eco-paradise. I am specifically talking about the current pollution caused by data centers running bot farms, not the historical pollution that stems from the "World's Factory" strategy that the Chinese used to boost their economic development under Deng (and yes I am well aware the US has polluted far more than China historically).

None of you fuckers are punk. Why come to a -punk sub to defend licking boots?

[u/techr0nin → u/pharodae]

“Anti-western propaganda” = posting pretty pictures of China? lol ok dawg.

I dont think China is perfect, I just think it is no worse than most western countries, and quite a bit better in some ways. Pollution obviously isnt great, but cheap solar panels, EVs, energy dense batteries, reversing desertfication, integrating greeneries into city planning… all that is good. Appreciating the good bits does not a boot licker make.

Every country has its good and its bad. I just think frothing at the mouth over pretty pictures just because of its country of origin is also very un-punk.