It doesn’t break rule 1. That’s just how .ml moderation is, you’re not allowed to criticize China and you’re especially not allowed to defend the US, no matter how tangentially. If I had to get into their rationalization, I’d guess they probably justify it to themselves as a form of xenophobia, which is included in rule 1. Any criticism of China is presumed to be caused by some sort of cultural/historical/factual misunderstanding, at least when the critic has not already demonstrated fealty to the overarching presumption of their worldview. They are slightly more tolerant of criticism of China when it’s coming from one of their own, because they know that the critical argument will not overflow and threaten the foundations of their model of reality.

They don’t list it as an official rule because it would cause cognitive dissonance. They want to keep believing that they are open to honest debate and intellectual exchange, because otherwise they would be uncomfortably close to the realization that they have created an echo chamber full of thought-terminating cliches that prevents them from reckoning with the actual complexity of the world today. So it’s necessary for them to remove comments that expose the reductionism and naivety inherent to their worldview, without explicitly acknowledging that it is a policy.

That was quality content though, thank you for your contributions. Just understand that .ml is a cultish environment where freedom of speech and freedom of thought are not particularly valued. Most other instances wouldn’t have any problem with such content, so just don’t waste your time trying to post it on .ml, because they don’t want to hear it.

It’s like talking to super religious people about the fact that God might not exist. You’re highly unlikely to make any headway, because they’ve been chugging the Kool aid so long that their identity has become tied to this overly simplistic understanding of civilization and geopolitics where capitalism and Western culture is the root of all evil, and communism is the only possible solution. When you challenge that premise, they take it as a personal attack, and their rational brain shuts down as a result of their strong emotional reaction to what they perceive as a personal insult. The idea that the US is pure evil and that humanity could be “saved” by “defeating” it (and by extension capitalism) isn’t just an abstract theory to them, it’s a core piece of their identity and they rely on it for emotional stability.

I’d say it’s the baseless projection of the crimes of western empire onto any possible alternative. This attitude has roots in chauvanism, the whole “if it wasn’t the Americans doing it, it would be the Chinese!” completely butchers any sense of materialist analysis surrounding why the massacres happened under the US Empire, and foregoes any reasoning why China would do the same in favor of the idea that “big country bad.”

It’s a .ml instance community. You’re lucky any criticism of China wasn’t summarily removed.

I’m not a mod. Idk what their reasoning was.

Your comment was incredibly stupid and historically inaccurate. It condensed down myriad well studied events and factors into some abstract and mercurial human nature. It was also factually inaccurate. Rather than point to examples of other nations militaries forcing civilians to walk through minefields backed up by photographic evidence like the topic of the discussion, you chose to say “they’d do the same if they were in power”. There’s no evidence for that, and that line of argumentation justifies the atrocities committed over and over again by the us empire.

Now how could a mod have interpreted your comment as xenophobic, a component of the cited rule 1?

Very easily. By claiming without any evidence whatsoever that some other people would be just as bloodthirsty and demonic as the American military you condense and dispose of any material or cultural difference. It’s like the mirror inverse of claiming that some group are savages unworthy of life. You claim that this type of atrocity is just what happens, unavoidable, the cost of doing business, that the people who are in a position of power are transformed into inhuman avatars of destruction and chaos and no one could be any different (despite historical examples to the contrary).

Okay so if you can’t say that the Chinese are savages and you can’t say that the Americans are savages (but because of special human nature that kicks in when you’re in a position of authority, not for any race related reasons, we’re not doing phrenology here, haha) how can you say that people are just scum and savages without breaking the rules?

You can’t. That’s xenophobic.