Liu Xiaobo
Liu Xiaobo is dead. Who the hell is Liu Xiaobo?
A pyschopathic status maximizer from Northeast China. Or may I say a high-IQ status-greedy sociopath. Or a shameless self-promoter taking money from USG to undermine his own nation?
Or in one word: an activist. Liu Xiaobo was a student activist from the 1980s. The 1980s were a very delicate time in China. Mao was dead. Deng Xiaoping had opened up the country. The old order was shattered; and when a country is in disorder, the status-hunters smell weakness. They saw blood. And so they started agitating. Writing articles on how backward China was. How utterly rotten and corrupt and just smelly it was, compared to the utopia in the West. Western governments obviously encouraged the agitation. They gave money and resources. This agitation culminated in the 1989 Tiananmen protests. Liu Xiaobo was there, showing his teeth, ready to destroy the government and take their place. To gain the supreme status he knew he deserved. Everybody thought that the government would fall, and a new state would have to be built on Western standards. A new state led by themselves, of course.
But no, that didn't happen. The little old man had a pair, and he sent the tanks. Most of the psychopathic status maximizers fled. But Liu Xiaobo didn't. The guy isn't just some run of the mill leftist activist. He's a stubborn son of a bitch. He stayed, doubled down on his writing about how China is bad and corrupt and evil and nasty and everything Western is honey and spice and everything nice. He was sent to jail, again and again. And while he went abroad every now and then to pick up some Western money, he always returned to China. He just couldn't believe that China wouldn't bow down to his majesty and just hand him the status he deserves. Surely these evil pigs won't send me to jail again?! Not when I have USG behind me?
To jail he went. He was given a damn Noble Peace prize. To jail he went. China doesn't care. Well, China cares more than it should. China has signed all those bogus Human Rights Treatises. But they just wouldn't release Liu Xiaobo. This guy is evil. This guy wasn't just some prog activist; he was a traitor of comical proportions. The guy was just surreal. Even some Western leftists, at the Guardian no less, just couldn't believe how big a traitor this guy was. See some things he said:
In a 1988 interview with Hong Kong's Liberation Monthly (now known as Open Magazine), Liu was asked what it would take for China to realize a true historical transformation. He replied:
This comment by itself just lost him all the local support he could have enjoyed just by being propped up by Western propaganda. How could you call for the colonization of your own country? 300 years! This guy is insane. Just how much of a Western stooge was he?
Known for his pro-West stance, Liu once stated in an interview: "Modernization means whole-sale westernization, choosing a human life is choosing Western way of life. Difference between Western and Chinese governing system is humane vs in-humane, there's no middle ground... Westernization is not a choice of a nation, but a choice for the human race" [24]
You'd have to go to Stormfront to find this kind of hyperbole even this side of the world. A Western life is a human life. Everything else is not barbaric; it's not even human. Ok dude, you're gonna make a lot of friends that way.
He also faulted a television documentary, He Shang, or River Elegy, for not thoroughly criticising Chinese culture and not advocating westernisation enthusiastically enough: “If I were to make this I would show just how wimpy, spineless and fucked-up [weisuo, ruanruo, caodan] the Chinese really are”. Liu considered it most unfortunate that his monolingualism bound him in a dialogue with something “very benighted [yumei] and philistine [yongsu],” the Chinese cultural sphere. Harvard researcher Lin Tongqi noted that an early 1990s book by Liu contains “pungent attacks on the Chinese national character”.
So China is wimpy and fucked-up, the West is this awesome utopia; but the guy was monolingual? What the hell? Oh wait. This isn't about logical consistency. This isn't about careful thought on the issues. This is a guy who just saw that the Communist Party had loosen his grip on Chinese society and wanted to crack a wedge into the system so he could come up with more status than he had. And he chose to worship the West because that was the zeitgeist: Communism was collapsing everywhere, and the West was way stronger. So odds are the West would sponsor him some time or another. And voila, USG gave him millions. For which the guy was grateful. 2,000 years of Confucianism don't go away so easily. Chinese intellectuals know to be loyal.
in his article Lessons from the Cold War, Liu argues that "The free world led by the US fought almost all regimes that trampled on human rights … The major wars that the US became involved in are all ethically defensible." During the 2004 US presidential election, Liu warmly praised George Bush for his war effort against Iraq and condemned Democratic party candidate John Kerry for not sufficiently supporting the US's wars:Liu also published a 2004 article in support of Bush's war on Iraq, titled "Victory to the Anglo-American Freedom Alliance", in which he praised the U.S.-led post-Cold Warconflicts as "best examples of how war should be conducted in a modern civilization." He wrote "regardless of the savagery of the terrorists, and regardless of the instability of Iraq's situation, and, what's more, regardless of how patriotic youth might despise proponents of the United States such as myself, my support for the invasion of Iraq will not waver. Just as, from the beginning, I believed that the military intervention of Britain and the United States would be victorious, I am still full of belief in the final victory of the Freedom Alliance and the democratic future of Iraq, and even if the armed forces of Britan and the United States should encounter some obstacles such as those that they are curently facing, this belief of mine will not change." He predicted "a free, democratic and peaceful Iraq will emerge."[29]
Unwavering support for the War on Iraq. He the Noble Peace Prize winner. Why? Convictions? Or because Bush was paying his salary?
At any rate, the guy is dead. Inside China. All the Bluegov empire ("the international community") pressure didn't work. Now I don't know who coordinates this kind of operations, but guys, if you want to have influence in China. You're doing it wrong. Finding a complete asshole like this guy just won't get you any popularity in China. Or anywhere else, really. I mean just look at the guy and his... wife. Or something.
The US has the most advanced marketing PR apparatus in the whole world. They know how to promote stuff. Why are they so inept when it comes to political influence abroad? A hot teenage girl or a smooth homo could actually accomplish a lot of progressive agitation in China today. But nah, Bluegov keeps picking up these ugly sociopath nerds who offer themselves to them. Well, you reap what you saw.
56 comments
[…] Liu Xiaobo […]
This is the obituary Liu Xiaobo deserves.
NY Times: "Mr. Liu was punished not for a crime, but for giving voice to the most basic human yearnings. A courageous man of conscience."
"Modernization means whole-sale westernization" Where is this not true? The most non-Western places are the most anti-modern.
So what? Japan does things it's own way.
Tiananmen seems so long ago, yet one remembers it like it was yesterday. Tiananmen. Berlin. 1989. What a time! That that time and this time should be encompassed in a mere thirty years is surreal. Thirty years on, one almost envies the Chinese their regime. Suppose that Americans like me now go to New York's Times Square to demand the termination of democracy. Will the regime send the tanks?
[…] Source: Bloody Shovel […]
Projection maybe? Treasonous sentiment towards the homeland signals high status in the US. Maybe Bluegov thinks that's some kind of universal?
John Derbyshire has lived in China and speaks and reads modern and classical Mandarin. I am quite certain he would describe your account as tendentious. Not all autocrats are good. In fact, most are bad. The Chi Coms are both bad and incompetent. NRx looks ridiculous when it can't tell the difference between regimes.
Now that you mention it, Derbyshire does speak and read Mandarin, doesn't he? And he does regard the Chi Coms as both bad and incompetent. Derb is probably right. Yet the Chi Coms aren't replacing their own people.
China is no more troubled than Germany and less so the Poland (based on TFR) No developed society is. replacing its people This is not however something to be feared if borders are closed to outsiders Every one of those societies is overpopulated for its social and to a lesser degree physical carrying capacity , every single one. Take Germany for example, it is about half again the size of Oregon, a smallish US state and has more than 80 million people jammed in it. Its far too many and it been overcrowded since the 20th century Lebensraum is a discredited term these days buts its structurally valid If Germany is to be healthy its need to be smaller, think 20-40 million at most And yes people always bring up the vast tract of land in the Gobi , Siberia or Wyoming or Texas somewhere like that. There are excellent reasons people don't live there and plaintive cries of "Go and Breed in these horrible places so we elite have chattel to exploit " ought to fall on deaf ears I'm not a Malthusian green but less people is not a bad thing unless you are an idiot who can't build a social model that encourages healthy families and doesn't require constant growth
Where did I say the Chinese government is awesome? That said, Derbyshire's Chinese isn't very good. I'll eat my pants if he actually reads Classical Chinese.
Derbyshire's a good writer, and his two novels about China are truly excellent. That said, I'm pretty sure that the only Chinese book he has read from cover to cover *in Chinese* is the 唐诗三百首
Derbyshire is just another Arthur Waldron when it comes comes China. A neocon weirdo married to a Chinese woman who fancies himself an expert because of this. I haven't taken Derbyshire seriously since he complained about Chinese men having the temerity to have national and racial pride and denounced them as "fascists".
Impertinence. Nonsense. Are you sure that you are not half-confusing the great John Derbyshire with someone else? Look again. If your complaint is that Derb has been wrong about something, why, Derb has been wrong about many things. He has never pretended otherwise. That's what happens when one experiments with lots of cool ideas ahead of their time. You are not required to take Derb seriously, of course. Derb doesn't. However, I don't remember Derb ever "fancy[ing] himself an expert" on anything. Do you?
It isn't much to ask to abstain from writing about what one knows little about. And Derbyshire just doesn't know a lot about China. At any rate in this blog we cut China some slack because we don't want world government under a unanimous progressive establishment. And right now China is the only thing stopping that from happening. Derbyshire would be wise to follow this idea, as much as he might dislike the place, which is of course his prerogative.
Your advice is sound, as usual: It isn’t much to ask to abstain from writing about what one knows little about. One who repeatedly insists on writing about what he knows little about is, approximately by definition, asinine. I would not remotely call Derb that, though. One accepts that you have another view of China, of course. For all I know, your view may be right. Lacking a basis to form a view of my own, I just read you both.
China isn't the only thing stopping a world government under a unanimous progressive Establishment from happening. There is also Russia.
Russia does not have intellectual sovereignty. The Moscow elite are progressive liberals to the last man. China is way ahead on that game.
Russia is a huge area populated by about six people. They get to wear big-boy pants because a bunch of Germans fled there in the 1800s(?) and their kids gave Russia nuclear weapons.
The Moscow elite have zero ideology besides $$$. Maybe that's what you call progressive liberalism.
I don't mean Putin and his cronies. I mean your average Moscow office drone.
No, Spandrell is right about the Musovites. Anatoly Karlin posted voting survey maps of Moscow a while back. Basically the wealthiest and academic neighborhoods are full of pomo euro-left Yaboloko voters. Fortunately everyone outside of that zone isn't and I suspect most of Russia isn't outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg. I don't share Spandrell's optimism about the Chinese though. Thankfully the Mainland and even Hong Kong elites aren't leftist globalist scum, yet, but there is no guarantee that they won't become that. We Chinese don't have any sort of racial immunity to it, as Taiwan and Singapore elites have demonstrated by going full globalist leftist retarded.
Defending China like that? I mean, the Norwegian Committee, you don't know? You went full Thomas Friedman, man. Never go full Thomas Friedman.
What?
A certain overpaid hack journalist of diminished intellectual capacity has been criticized in neo-con circles on account of admiring China for its authoritarian ways because it has a really neat high-speed train. He would like a nice high-speed train in America, only it cannot be done here because democracy and bureaucracy and everyone in America gets to express their opinion about it. China has a high-speed train because their authoritarian government gets to do things this writer admires because its political system has none of these limitations. Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr. are actors in a movie where they are portraying "Method" actors in a war movie where they are tramping through a steaming jungle with heavy props depicting their infantry weapons. The are talking to each other as actors rather than as the characters they are portraying because they are tramping through the steaming jungle with heavy props to put them "in character" prior to any actual filming. Ben Stiller's character is bragging about his portrayal of a man with limited intellectual capacity in a previous movie; Downey is in blackface portraying a cynically street-smart actor who first agrees with Stiller but then works his way around to criticizing his companion for talking so highly of himself. Part of the discussion is about how the (Motion Picture) Academy that awards the Oscar will regard their acting work. Downey is telling Stiller that the prior actors who had portrayed characters with intellectual disability -- Hoffman in "Rain Man", Hanks in "Forrest Gump" all played characters that were not completely limited but rather had some hidden talent: Raymond Babbitt who could count cards, Forrest Gump who could best the Chinese at ping pong. Downey criticizes Stiller for portraying someone who was completely disabled without having such a redeeming trait to interest the Academy.
What?
"You went 'full retard', man. Never go full retard." This is from "Tropic Thunder", a satire framed as a movie-within-a-movie where a movie-actor character thinks highly of himself for portraying an intellectually disabled person. "Never go full retard" has become a popular culture reference on the Right Blogosphere, especially with respect to Progressives taking themselves too seriously. The polemical reference is to columnist and political talking head Thomas Friedman, who famously argued that China's authoritarian system was something we should aspire to in the West because China is able to construct a high-speed train without being slowed down by Environmental Impact Statements and property-owning naysayers as is happening in California. Thomas Friedman is also regarded in the Right Blogosphere as being an intellectual lightweight for his paint-by-numbers newspaper column -- see the satirical Web site http://thomasfriedmanopedgenerator.com/about.php. In defending China's suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests on the occasion of the passing of protest leader Mr. Liu, a blog post that evoked surprise from some of your web site followers, I joked that "You went full Thomas Friedman. Never go full Thomas Friedman." See the clip from "Tropic Thunder" for my other references: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wVagQ\_LVd4
Defending the crackdown of leftist agitators in Tiananmen is going full retard? Well I guess I'm guilty as charged. As was Lee Kuan Yew, who never stopped praising the crackdown as the best thing to happen in China in 100 years.
No, it's going full Thomas Friedman. At least that is a distinction if not a difference! Or maybe you are going the full Henry Kissinger? (see http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/10/books/on-china-by-henry-kissinger-review.html)
Even if by accident Thomas Friedman has to occasionally make a correct statement.
Fine repartee. Good wit. Nice style. Well done. I'm still not completely sure what the Inquiring Mind was talking about, but it was most interesting to read, anyway. Spandrell, you're a good sport. There are well-known Right-wing blogs where they would merely have suppressed the Inquiring Mind's comment, thus missing the joke; and there are others were the proprietor would have gone ballistic (Vox Popoli comes to mind); but not here. The Bloody Shovel is better to read.
You are in danger of treating Moldbug's Gentle Introduction as a sacred text. I understand China, Iran and Venezuela resists the USG, but I have nothing good to say about them, and I certainly will not be defending their right to imprison and murder their dissidents. NRx has lost its way.
I'm not saying I agree completely with how the Chinese government dealt with this guy. I'm just talking about what kind of guy he was.
While I never met him, you can understand why he might have thought the difference between China murdering millions of its own citizens and America not doing that might have had something to do with how they were governed. Whatever criticisms one has of the USG, one has to admit that America sure looks like one powerful and free country. In fact, I suspect if you grew up in America in the 1950s, for example, you wouldn't see the need for something called NRx.
Oh shut up. I don't represent NRx. But if I had grown up in 1950s America I think I would really see the need for something to explain me why the hell my culture had killed itself. Something that explained me why cuckservatism kept missing the point. Incidentally, by the time Liu Xiaobo started writing his uninformed drivel China was slowly evolving into a pretty nice place. There's plenty of criticisms to do to Communist China's past and present, but Liu Xiaobo's wasn't reasonable and informed criticism. It was active apology for foreign invasion and the dissolution of his country, written in inflammatory and ignorant language. The guy is a literature professor, for Christ's sake. Like he know shit about anything besides how to sound cool. If he liked America so much, he had any chance to go live there, and maybe do some actual research on what makes America so nice to him. Thousands upon thousands of Chinese people have done that. But Liu Xiaobo didn't do that. He never even learned proper English. Because his mind wasn't in understanding, his mind was in being lionized.
Meh, he was still less crazy than Kang Youwei
I'll give you that. Kang Youwei was also way smarter than this guy.
Interesting. It seems that Liu's status maximising didn't work so well after 1989. Trying to be holier than everyone else works only among people who share your Religion. His Religion was Western progressivism, which apparently is not a religion widely shared in China. So he couldn't get much status in China, but quite a lot amongst his Western co-religionists. Sure, in 1989 things could have turned out differently. There was (maybe still is-don't know anything about China) a chance for establishing progressivsim as the dominant Religion in China. Your comment about the US having the most advanced PR apparatus is only partly correct. This apparatus is very adept at promoting stuff to members of mainstream US culture. It still works, but not quite that well in Europe or Australia. It works even less well in China. If you want to produce effective propaganda, you have to understand the culture of the people you want to influence. Understaning other cultures isn't a strong point of the Cathedral
Proposing democracy for China, some kind of multi-party regime, is not exactly inviting foreign colonization. Competing parties and free press could limit China's systemic corruption.
He explicitly invites foreign colonization. For centuries. Systemic corruption is a funny thing. I'd rather have that and not the modern western press.
You are quoting out of context. And yes, corruption is funny if you are taking. Western press too is funny, Renmin Ribao is not. Or is it?
No, I am not quoting out of context. And this guy is nothing but consistent in his wanting his people to lose their sovereignty. The Western press is evil. The Renmin Ribao is just lame. The Global Times is often funny.
As if the West isn't systemically corrupt. Reminder that at least 2/3 of the education budget is for political sinecures and funding activism through the teacher's union. That's corruption, Anglo style. The legal department signs off on everything.
But the West is not systemically corrupt. The West is decadent. There is a difference.
The best thing about the state in the U.S., by far, is its relative lack of systemic corruption at the middle and petty levels. A lack of corruption is very helpful. There aren't many things I'd trade for that.
There's no such thing as systemic corruption. Corruption does not stem from the system, it stems from the people. Most languages the world over even lack the word "corruption". (Meaning, they have the word, but it's a loan word, doesn't mean "rotten".) As the people in the US get more and more "diverse", you're going to get more and more corruption, and not because the system has changed.
Howard J. Harrison--both first-rate: "West is decadent but not systemically corrupt", and esp. " U.S....relative lack of systemic corruption at the middle and petty levels. A lack of corruption is very helpful. There aren’t many things I’d trade for that." I think those are things most of us sense, but I haven't ever seen them articulated like that. Esp. hard to remember when some of the upper levels (including the idiot Family of Trollops I helped gain embarassing, illiterate power) blind us to being able to remember these 'less sexy' things we definitely should be grateful for. Damn good writing.
I think also this 'relative lack of systemic corruption at the middle and petty levels' may be why some of us still have very close extended families (maybe mostly Southerners, not sure--you still see a lot of that kind of honesty in the Midwest too), usually associated with Italy, Greece, etc.
I'm not for a second suggesting that this man is anything but as you describe him (psychotic status maximizer), but can one, even in theory, be an activist without such motivation? Can there be legitimate questioning of authority and/or corruption in the name of mere justice without regard to status, even if that authority is on the 'right'? This blog and others question authority (being reactionary it could be said to be their very purpose): why is it mere 'status seeking' when leftists do it but there is some greater purpose when we do it? I remember being quite influenced by Thoreau's 'Civil Disobedience' and the principle of disobeying authority in so far as they are found to be unjust. Again, given the nature of reaction I think we all can sympathize with this under our current Progressive governments. But then where does loyalty come in? You often talk about the horror of disloyalty, but if you were German right now would you be loyal to Merkel? This right/left dichotomy confuses me to no end. I think the traditional good and evil were more useful.
If some German were calling for 300 years of Russian colonization, you'd know he's gone beyond mere criticism of Merkel. There's plenty of internal criticism in China, and the vast majority don't get jailed. Those that call for the complete change of the government while bring funded by USG though are likely to get jailed. Being critic of what you understand is one thing. Being a 24/7 professional activist is another. But again, the Chinese government, as bad as it may be, isn't bringing millions of Africans into the country and ignoring their violent crime. Activism against Merkel is justified.
Dan, it's defintely possible to be an activist without being a psychotic status maximizer. Hell, there are activists in Germany who are scared to be found out of their (admittedly low scale activism). In German you can be fined for putting a leaflet "Close the borders now" into a mailbox. In Germany, you can go to jail for writing about crimes (like manslaugther and rape) of recent Immigrants from Africa. Maybe it's not activism if you put stickers on a lamp post, or leaflets into a mailbox or comment in public, but there is a reason why some people don't dare much. Everybody has to start somewhere. OK, more serious activsim can't be done anonymously. You have to show your face to take part in activism like that done by groups like "Identitäre Bewegung". You risk beaten up by ANTIFA, if you join a party like the AfD or go to a political rally. I personally know a person who lost a child to Immigrant crime. I truly don't think status maximizing is motivating the parents. And no, you don't have to protest in the name of "justice". Much baser reasons suffice for wanting to close the borders. Some (unfortunately not many so far) are quite willing to be unjust to save their children.
Everything about this guy from calling for colonialization to hating his culture yet not bothering to learn English sounds familiar to me from Eastern Europe, around 1996. I remember trolling those guys, like they screeched every time our governments did a vaguely friendly gesture towards Christianity, because all they thought to know about the topic was that religion is low status, secularism is high status, then I showed them stuff like how Scandinavian countries still have established state churches and they got seriously shocked. I think this is not a calculated thing, but mostly subconsciously. A man with a gigantic hole in his self-esteem, trying to maximize it, which in practice ends up as status maximization. He hates his own wimpiness, so he projects it to the culture around him. Not learning English is a self-defense mechanism of the delusion, protecting the illusion from shattering. Or maybe in case of leaders like him conscious and calculated, in case of followers not, it is typically social losers who mean it entirely honestly, because they hate themselves and want to do something that makes them feel less worthless. At any rate the root of the problem, from the psychological angle, is different than in Western Progs. In non-Western soceties the root issue is having lower collective status than the West. People who have healthy self-esteem don't really care, but people who due to low self-esteem are vulnerable to this problem go two directions. One is the direction of the traitor who wants to feel better than his country by talking shit about his country and worshipping the West. The second is the emotional nationalist who is loyal, but often unrealistic: he tends to invest a lot in the idea of the glorious past of his country so that the good feels from memory of past greatness somehow counter-balance the pain of currently low collective status.
In Western Progs it works different. Someone with seriously low self-esteem is at least not hurt by the collective low status of his culture, so it is less painful, but still they benefit from trying to lower the status of their culture so that their own is comparatively better. I think this results in low-key activism which is precisely what we are seeing, activists who are not 24/7 dedicated party soldiers but it is just one of their pastimes, but you often find them relaxing and partying and all that. In 1968, many found the discipline of Stalinist movements too much work, anarchists could get away with far more time spent on sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
"The US has the most advanced marketing PR apparatus in the whole world. They know how to promote stuff. Why are they so inept when it comes to political influence abroad? A hot teenage girl or a smooth homo could actually accomplish a lot of progressive agitation in China today. But nah, Bluegov keeps picking up these ugly sociopath nerds who offer themselves to them. Well, you reap what you saw." Your premise is flawed. Obviously he wasn't a client of bluegov, he was a client of redgov. Praising colonialism is totally what an edgy redgovist would say and, as you point out, he was an Iraq war cheerleader. So Xiabo illustrates a basic fact about the world: Redgov sucks.
I somewhat doubt that. I think he wasn't receiving instructions and was just clueless, thinking USG was a single thing. You may be right though.