this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2026
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Literally every government with the capability to control information is doing that, and frankly the rise of bleach-injecting covid denialist flat earth tradwife inflluencers has proven China right to do so.
From Merriam-Webster
" of authoritarian
1 relating to, or favoring blind submission to [authority].
2 relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people
So like, objectively not China? Because their ruling party consists of 90 million members and they're constantly debating shit, and enjoy an incredibly high satisfaction rate among non-party members?
It's been over 100 million since 2024
104 milliion last I checked.
Would a non-aurhoritarian government be able to institute a one-child policy like China?
Yes, of course they could. Individual people make the decision to practice birth control every day, and a vast democratic assembly of millions voted in by their peers can make that decision as well. Meanwhile in the US, reproductive policy is dictated by nine unelected ministers: an objectively far less democratic process, yet our media never describes the US government as "authoritarian." Because it's not a term meant to usefully delineate important differences in form and function, it's a vibes based epithet meant to be wielded against geopolitical enemies of capitalism. It's a thought-terminating cliche, deployed highly selectively against anti-imperialist societies to artificially cast proletarian authority as uniquely evil while tacticly normalizing the authority of billionaires and corporations.
In practice, authoritarianism is when you are objectively more democratic in function and policy than western countries, but commit the cardinal sin of using that authority to safeguard your sovereignty, people and resources from the inhumanity of global capitalism.
Yes, but those are entirely voluntary. The point is that a government should have no say in reproduction whatsoever. That is why campaigns to change the cratering birthrate have failed.
That's cool that you can have that opinion from your position of being one doordash order away from having food to eat, but if you were an elected representative of a society that had to build itself up under seige after a century of colonial pillaging and a world war that devastated your economic and food infrastructure and killed millions of people, you might actually have to engage with the brutal reality of famine and underdevelopment, with the unavoidable questions of survival. If the Palestinian Resistance manages to secure it's territory to administer, they will have to engage with these questions too. If and when that happens, will you simply write them off as "authoritarian", and dismiss those who support their struggle as "simping for authoritarians"?
Lol such a tired argument. If you get to fucking assume shit about others (aka build a strawman) then the rest of us get to do it to you.
You’re not even worth giving the time to read that whole thing. The moment you clapped off about fucking doordash you made yourself irrelevant.
If you think you're being super dismissive with the 'not worth my time to read' bit, you should it's now well into being an overused Internet trope that makes one look childish and lazy.
You have no response to the fact that the work of building society requires engagement with reality, so would rather attack the person pointing it out on the grounds of some imaginary debate rules. Your desire to avpid thinking about the actual conditions of reality is transparent and cripples your ability to understand the world and why things happen in it.
Given the vagueness of your definition, yes absolutely.
I don't see how "blind submission to authority" could be any more clear cut than it is.
Explain to me what that actually means, what "blind submission" actually entails. You're just going off of vibes
Not being able to disagree with how your government conducts business without legal punishment.
Non authoritarian states don't have dissidents in exile or political prisoners.
Nowhere is it illegal to simply "disagree" with a government. I've realized over time that when liberals say this, they're doing their own version of the conservative "I was banned simply for disagreeing! You never state what the actual disagreement is because as soon as you bring the conversation out of the realm of stories and vague shadowy political urban legends and into the realm of evidence, it quickly falls apart every time. That's why you always retreat to your faith-based non falsifiable orthodoxy where anything that paints rival states in a bad light must be true and anything that paints them in a good light must be insidious lies.
Name literally any state and I will show you dissidents in exile and political prisoners
Yes! Finally an actual definition. Although, I don't think any state in existence fits these criteria.
i love that it has the caveat in the second definition abt a constitution. like, no guys, totslly not us, look at this definition we created to show how we arent authoritarian