Whether or not you consider it “disinfo,” doesn’t it smell rather like astroturf? Note that [email protected] is one of the targeted communities.
Abridged from the original post.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/39655060
What they seem to have in common is:
- Way more posts than comments.
- Almost exclusively posting news articles.
- The vast majority of the articles are critical of Russia or China.
- Virtually always posting to the same few communities. Often there’s overlap in the communities the accounts target.
- Consistent weekly output.
Username Start End [email protected] May 2022 Dec. 2024 [email protected] Apr. 2023 Jun. 2024 [email protected] Apr. 2024 Jan. 2025 [email protected] Jun. 2024 Dec. 2024 [email protected] Jan. 2025 Apr. 2025 @[email protected] Jan. 2025 – @[email protected] Jan. 2025 – @[email protected] Aug. 2025 – @[email protected] Nov. 2025 –
And right away someone is talking about how “the Uighur genocide is ongoing”. Fucking Ghost of Kiev alternate reality that even the Biden legal team rejected back when repression was clearly higher than it is now.
To these people, being guilty of genocide is just the same thing as the US not liking you.
It is really mind boggling that it only comes up on Lemmy nowadays. The State Department moved on, they aren’t really saying much about China other than the fentanyl scare and some stuff about tiktok. Yet Lemmy libs are still serving their sinophobia the old fashioned way. The last allies of the Uighur people.
Maybe the Uighur genocide will get its own scholars on Lemmy who will build a body of work of circular citations on each other? They could be writing statements of solidarity with fictional ethnic groups in China, too, and ask a chat bot to pretend it’s a child laborer in a Chinese province that’s so oppressed it doesn’t even show up on the map.
Wiki already did, the article there have 401 citations tied like gordian knot with very prominent Adrian Zenz face on it.
Well I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily true. But I do think it comes up in groups that are alienated, which have only increasingly been detached and therefore you wouldn’t notice it as much, anymore. Particularly the liberal groups, who have built their identity around caring for human rights.
The unfortunate thing is, these liberals have been part of the very problem for why there’s pushback against “Western Human Rights”, because the West never care for human rights, they were just doing imperialism. But these liberals fully bought into the idea that they are the good ones. They see things like homosexuality being targeted and it makes them think they have to be the “saviors” after all. Yes it is very bad there’s an increase in homophobia etc. but why is there increase and what can we do about it is the crucial questions.
They don’t want to ask those questions. If you are someone who asks them you also get ostracized from those groups. My life would probably be a lot easier if I stopped thinking and said what I am supposed to say. There are incredibly few communities that are both socially liberating and stand up for things like trans rights, and are anti-imperialist. At least where I live.
Sorry I might have carried on for too long.
that makes me think that it isn’t a proper coordinated astroturf and is instead a disparate group of self-reinforcing lib cranks who have glommed on to a pet cause despite all evidence that what they believe is bunk
I think I’ve seen some of those “hypothetical post-Balkanization” maps of China libs sometimes whip up that have kingdoms/states on them that haven’t existed for centuries and correspond to no modern political, cultural, or ethnic identity so, not far off.