– “some people on here like to claim Australia, Taiwan, China, Japan bloody good fellows for crushing the peasantry and beating them half to death for daring to earn a living.”
I shouldn’t have to say this, but Australia, Taiwan, China and Japan are not “fellows”; they’re countries. But you’re not even referring to geographical countries, are you? You mean governments, or nation states – power structures.
Yes, power structures routinely do evil things, and when one does, another part of the guilty power structure, its mass media, produces propaganda – to justify it, minimise it, distract from it – all to diffuse and redirect the anger of the people, lest they change the power structure.
Such media has another trick too. It magnifies injustices in other countries while conflating the people with the power structures on both “sides”, giving the impression that “their” power structure is far more immoral than “our” power structure. This increases nationalism and xenophobia, and is used to promote militarism.
People indoctrinated by such propaganda tend to become intolerant of compatriots who criticise their country’s national power structure. They tend to say things like “why don’t you go and live in China”. meanwhile, similar people in China are saying “if you object, why don’t you go and live in the UK?”. And if they do, the same type of misled people in the UK say “bloody Chinese immigrants, taking advantage of our democracy; why don’t they go home?”
Thus all the people are set against each other, and all the power structures are protected from the people’s rightful anger.
Michael, do you think that women in the UK should lose the right to vote? Do you think that blacks in the US should be segregated from the white areas? Do you think that these equalities were just given, from the goodness of the hearts of the powerful? They were not, and neither were they bequeathed through military attack by some other, more benevolent government. They were won, by the oppressed parties themselves, through struggle – the type of struggle that you complain about.
Michael, join the struggle.