Factory farms where everyone is being fattened up in cages on a slurry of hate and memes.

The reason the slave trade isn’t a thing anymore is because the US/UK-led global empire decided to collectively abolish it in the first place.

That’s really what you think, huh? They just abolished slavery because they decided to? For what? Because they’re so nice? lol

It can only be an anomaly, because not only did the US/UK/Europe win the geographical lottery (making it an anomaly that can’t be repeated) but also the Atlantic slave trade and the rapid expansion into the so-called New World was another anomaly. Then, like I said, the World Wars created another anomaly that saw literally every other empire fall and the US gobble them all up with only the USSR around to challenge them. Then the USSR fell and the US became the sole global hegemon, another anomaly that, combined with intercontinental flight and communication, created the first global empire in history!

China doesn’t have the same geographical advantages. China doesn’t have the opportunity to steal trillions in wealth from native lands and native peoples. China can’t make a new slave trade. China will be forced to compete with other powers, like the declining US and EU as well as regional rivals like India and Russia. China can’t recreate US global hegemony, and neither can any other country because all the low-hanging fruit has already been eaten. US hegemony is collapsing because it’s an unsustainable form of geopolitics. There’s no bonanza of resources to exploit anymore, it’s all gone, and now we’ll be entering a post-neoliberal world with permanent multipolarity.

Let us not forget that global warming is going to continue to destabilize the entire world with billions forced to migrate. Country after country will collapse into uninhabitable dead zones. China isn’t going to build an empire in the ashes left by this particular epoch, no one will and no one can.

This is a new situation and I obviously could be wrong, but unless China figures out cold fusion or asteroid mining or something I don’t see them becoming the new global empire. We’re at the end of an era and something new is happening.

I don’t believe Chinese hegemony is possible. US hegemony is a historical anomaly created by the very specific circumstances of colonialism, slavery, and then the post-WW2 period that saw all the old empires destroyed.

Once this empire is dead, there won’t ever be another. The material conditions won’t allow for it.

Your country extracted super profits from the exploitation of the third world and then redistributed a small portion of that stolen wealth to pacify the workers. Mine did that too and that’s nothing to be proud of!

tankies now still demand unconditional loyalty for their anti-US crusade, with little regard for anything else.

Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, which means the contradictions of US hegemony are the highest contradictions and take precedence!

It doesn’t matter if I personally disagree with how China is responding to Muslim extremism or how it responds to protesters or how it is supposedly “developing the means of production” with state capitalism, because China is still an ally in the fight against empire.

When the empire is dead we can deal with the lesser contradictions.

As the saying goes, you can’t be neutral on a moving train.

By refusing to condemn China, I must therefore support it. That’s how it works. You can’t just be a third positionist about this and say “I oppose everybody with my own special snowflake socialism!”

“support”

You keep using this word, but do you really think any of the people you call tankies have actually done anything to support these countries? Or, more likely, are you using “support” to mean “refuse to condemn/disavow”?

Well, count me in to that group.

I will not join the imperialist dogpile against China. My opinions about their government is irrelevant at best, and at worst by joining in the echo chamber of “China Bad!” then I am helping America pave the way for a war it so obviously wants.

If you want to call that support, then I have to ask why supposed “socialists” are joining America in attacking China!

Tankie was recouperated from dissident socialists, the way it’s used today has very little to do with its origin. Just because something starts out as a politically radical idea doesn’t mean it can’t get twisted in bourgeois society. It’s mostly just used as a smear to mean “communist I don’t like”

It’s like woke - what started as a term used by BLM to criticize oppression of minorities was recouperated and now it’s been turned into a right-wing smear and lost all meaning.