If Tiktok were around when I was 19, 20, 21, I'd have performatively hated it. I was so concerned with being taken seriously and proving myself to hegemonic forces such as wealthy, institutional gate-keeping boomers. I have since learned that trying to impress powerful people, who refuse to take you seriously, is a fool's errand. Therefore, I like Tiktok, I don't post on it but I like the content, usually.
Now I'm not a tankie who capes for China and First World Maoists, who claim that contemporary China is Maoist and anti-imperialist, are foolish. But I would say that the increasingly belligerent stance the US is taking towards China, in recent years, is the result of the fact that US owned and US aligned capital stocks are being moved from China into South East Asia and towards other low-wage region.
In the 1990's, 2000's and through the early 2010's, the oligarchs, who run the US, told politicians that they may use China as a rhetorical foil and as an outlet for the anger caused by the neoliberal hollowing out of the US Middle Class. The factory used to be in Michigan and now it is in Shenzhen, that is why you will have a lower standard of living compared to your parents, you see. However, China was not to be seriously antagonized, in any meaningful economic or geostrategic sense, from about 1990 to about 2015, because the oligarchs were so deeply enmeshed with China economically.
I do not mean to be alarmist. The shift of US owned or US aligned capital out of China is happening at the margin. We are many, many steps from a shooting war. This shutdown of a video sharing app is a small development but it is an indication of the fact that capitalism is coming full circle, its latest stage is like its earliest stages, hyper nationalistic. The last time capital was hyper nationalist (as opposed to international in character), we had the breakout of two World Wars.
If capitalism is not eliminated or is, at least, severally checked by international and democratic forces, we will have a devastating world war where oligarchs of the major powers will sacrifice a generation of its working class to force open new markets and access to resources. If capitalism continues unimpeded our children or grandchildren will perish in a world war, that is if climate change does kill them first.
With a future so gloomy, is it any wonder why today's youth don't give a f--k and express their hopes, fears and rapid left wing radicalize in short videos set to catchy tracks.
he shook
