#especially with accusations of being a genocide denier or a foreign spy or whatever

[big-bird-nerd]

I know people have grown immune to the notions of “both sides-ism,” which is the proper move when you’re dealing with politics and history that you have direct experience with, are directly affected by, and know the history of. I think what people don’t realize is that the bourgeoisie will and does weaponize this to promote belief in racist myths, using it as a method to make people resistant to or outright immune to actually studying the conditions and history of the place they are trying to make you hate. I really think people would do well to understand why and how the Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion functioned well as propaganda despite being complete and total bullshit, and yes it’s because people wouldn’t listen to Jewish people who told you it was bullshit because it played on very real hatred of Jewish people and of fears born of violence and oppression people faced in their everyday lives (which was not from Jewish people, but the bullshit protocols tell you otherwise).

Like, if someone is making a massive claim about something occurring in another place, particularly if it’s weirdly familiar to things happening where you’re living, and there is a large amount of people *from within the groups being talked about* who deny the claims, you should probably at least be ambivalent, if not use that as a sign for further research.

“But information from the other side is biased!” It is good to be aware of biased information. Understand that there is no unbiased information; the information you know is also biased info. It requires research of multiple perspectives to determine the truth from biased sources. The best way to determine degrees of truth within biased sources is to study the histories of the locations and relations between the cultures in question.

“Information from the other side is propaganda!” It is good that you’ve grown aware to the basic functioning of propaganda and are staying aware of how information manipulated you. Keep in mind; people said the same thing about Jews denying the Elders Of The Protocols Of Zion, a document that any sensible modern person knows was bullshit. If you’re afraid of being manipulated through misinformation, then read critically, but do not deny something just because it’s inconvenient to your current understanding of social oppression, one that is itself still biased. Also understand that since all information is biased, any political information is necessarily propaganda, which includes the sources of whatever has given you your current information; you should be reading that critcally too to avoid being manipulated. In fact, you’re vastly more susceptible to propaganda from home since the propaganda is actively targeting you, as propaganda tends to focus largely if not entirely within the confines of the country the government operates; nobody gives a shit how Americans feel about their country insofar as Americans aren’t actively calling to blow them up.

“Oppression isn’t unique to America/the west, and we must stand with all people who are oppressed!” This is correct information; oppression has a history across the entirety of the world. However, what it’s missing is an understanding of the meaning behind the fact that oppression is systemic and how this relates to being part of a colonial, imperial country. While your energy is not wrong on an individual level, the fact that it doesn’t account for your own racist colonial government makes it misguided in a way that supports the racist colonial system where you live. Racist misinformation and myths are used to manufacture consent for colonial and imperial violence upon another nation. That means uncritically spreading and believing such information promotes the colonial and imperial characteristics of your government.

To stop dancing around the biggest example of this; while you may have only the best of intentions for people in North Korea, the fact is that misinformation that makes people afraid and hateful of the DPRK, yes even its government, exists to justify the imperial history and ongoing actions that your governments take part in. They aren’t interested in saving the people of Korea any more than they were when they were “spreading Christianity to the natives to save their souls.” Their interest is in stealing the trillions of dollars worth of minerals in the DPRK, which necessarily means massacring the people who currently live and work there and devastating the landscape in potentially irreparable ways. This is already well proven from how the Korean War went, with some villages completely and totally destroyed by US bombing, as well as the use of biological warfare, which has had long term consequences on Korea as a whole and beyond; the US doesn’t care because protecting the people isn’t on their agenda, they just want the minerals.

Discussing the nature of misinformation is not overlooking or erasing the existence of oppression and bigotry in other countries any more than acknowledging The Elders Of The Protocols Of Zion is complete and total misinformation is denying the existence of Jewish bourgeoisie (a minority but still technically existing) or denying the imperial colonial violence enacted by the Israeli government on Palestine. People did not spread the Protocols because they predicted the current state of Israel and wanted to stop it, they wanted an excuse for perfoming and enacting pogroms on Jewish people, up to and including Shoah.

To use a more historic example, there was a lot of oppression and systemic violence in the Aztec Empire. According to surviving reports, it was an expansionist slave empire, not exactly the best of places to live. However, you see I said ‘surviving.’ The remaining accounts are largely Spanish colonial accounts, as the Spanish completely destroyed the empire, massacred the peoples across South America, assimilating and genociding peoples wherever they went. Even if all accounts of the horrors of the Aztecs were completely and totally true (which is rather doubtful but I’m not an expert), it does not mean the information was learned and spread because the Spanish wanted to save the Aztecs. It is an excuse for the genocide was enacted upon people. People back in Spain probably had good intentions when they talked about improving the life conditions of people in Spain. Improvement to life conditions did not occur; life was destroyed and people were enslaved to a genocidal power, and to this day are still fighting back strongly against the systems of oppression that continue trying to kill everyone off. Even if the entirety of the Spanish colonizers said they only hated the Aztec government, it doesn’t mean the violence they perpetrated did not primarily target the civilians and even the oppressed groups and slaves.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a lie, I’m not going to be acting on it and I don’t support the state anyway.” People do not make up lies about a hated national group with good intentions in their heart, and the existence of such lies should immediately alert you to violent intent, and spreading those lies must be understood as supporting those violent intentions and actions. This is what it means for racism to be systemic; your individuals beliefs and intentions don’t matter if your actions allow for the systemic oppression and violence towards these groups.

Western governments, and particularly the US, represent the most powerful global imperial force. They do and will continue to use misinformation to manipulate people into submitting to its systems of violence that seeks to oppress not just people in its own borders, but those in other borders too. You don’t have to like the governments of other countries, feel free to dislike the governments of China, Russia, DPRK, Cuba, Venezuela, Vietnam, or whatever. If you are truly anti-racist though, you must not spread racist misinformation, even if to you it only would be harmful to the governments of those cultural groups; the government doesn’t lie to criticize the governments of other nations, but to push towards war to crush, rob, rape, and murder the people who live in their borders. Being anti-racist must necessarily mean not spreading these lies and even better, not allowing those you know to believe and spread such lies, for the good of the oppressed people in your own country as much as around the world. After all, misinformation spreads and creates hatred, and the people living within your own borders will enact that hatred on the people in your country, even if you won’t.