YSK: lemmy.ml is managed by tankies, and lead lemmy developer is a tankie

Lead Lemmy Developer, Dessalines, denying the Tiananmen Square Massacre and praising the Uyghur Genocide

https://sh.itjust.works/post/8419342

Dessalines AKA "parentis_shotgun" on Reddit, is the main Lemmy dev, also the admin of lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml.

Their post and discussions on Reddit (archive as the original post must have been removed):

https://web.archive.org/web/20230626055233/https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/cqgztr/fuck_the_white_supremacist_reddit_admins_want_me/

Please join the discussions for Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem:

https://lemmy.world/post/16211417

And the discussions for finding/creating alternative communities on other instances:

https://lemmy.world/post/16235541

What is a tankie?

Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support acts of repression by such regimes or their allies. More specifically, the term has been applied to those who express support for one-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republics, whether contemporary or historical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

gofsckyourself ,

I had never heard so much about "tankies" before I joined Lemmy.

Before, I had heard it so sparingly that I couldn't remember what it meant.

Perhaps there may be something more to this correlation. Why are people with this worldview so common here? If it's not more common here than anywhere else, why is it brought up so much more frequently?

HobbitFoot ,

Lemmy was developed, in part, to be a tankie community and they are around if you go outside of lemmy.world.

PastryPaul ,

Tankie á la .world = anything left of center.

HobbitFoot ,

No, it is the Soviet Union did nothing wrong in 1956 definition.

beardown ,

The United States exterminated Native Americans and currently is a systemically racist country that murders its dissidents - see Kent State and Ferguson. It also has the largest prison population in the world.

HobbitFoot ,

Are you trying to argue that the two are moral equals?

beardown ,

How is the United States better given the entirety of its history and current oppression of the working class and minorities? We have a larger prison population than China despite having a far smaller population, and our quality of life has plummeted over the past 2 generations, whereas theirs has drastically improved over the same period

More importantly, why does any of that offend you to hear? You're so patriotically brainwashed that you can't tolerate criticisms of the US? Why would that be in a country that is supposedly free? If you're being oppressed by American oligarchs, then you should want others to point out this oppression so that we can eventually reform our system

HobbitFoot ,

How is the United States better given the entirety of its history and current oppression of the working class and minorities?

I was talking about the definition of tankie and how it is different than leftist. I was not discussing the United States nor was I making an argument that the American system was superior.

beardown ,

You asked me if the United States and China were moral equals.

If you intended to ask something else, then you should improve your ability to write clearly

HobbitFoot ,

The original comment you responded to was about the definition of tankie:

[I]t is the Soviet Union did nothing wrong in 1956 definition.

And then you started talking about the United States.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Lemmy was made by Marxists, along Communist principles, both the format and the devs attract Marxists and Anarchists.

There is a lot of conflict between leftists and liberals on Lemmy because there are close to no conservatives.

It's kind of like a Disco Elysium situation, even though non-Marxists can enjoy it and use it, there are going to be more Marxists enjoying it and using it as a proportion, and fewer conservatives.

fuckingkangaroos ,

Why are people with this worldview so common here?

Plenty of them aren't "people," they're simply anonymous accounts used to spread and promote propaganda. Some content generated by people, some from LLMs.

They're common here because they can run their disinformation campaigns without a corporation interfering. Tik Tok isn't the CCP's only attempt to influence people through social media.

Gigasser ,

If you're claiming they are bots, I don't think that's the case. Judging from the little threads I've been reading throughout this post, it seems as if Lemmy was created by some diaspora of Marxists from reddit after reddit banned their stuff. If this is true, you're not interacting with bots, you would be interacting with actual Marxists. People.

fuckingkangaroos ,

Some are regular people, some are paid shills, some are bots.

Gigasser ,

That's the thing, I think they're all just regular people with more radical views on politics. I feel as if this recent fad of "dead internet theory" which posits the majority of the net is filled with bots, is really an attempts by certain groups to dismiss certain online communities/dismiss the idea that these communities are indicative of some sort of wider trend within society, which is really what I think is an attempts to gain control of what is seen as consensus reality online, dehumanize the other side, and justify the suppression/repression of certain ideas, opinions, and groups.

zecg ,
@zecg@lemmy.world avatar

YSK

Why should I give a fuck

TankovayaDiviziya ,

Because fuck you if you are tankie apologist.

zecg ,
@zecg@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, but the dude who makes my sandwiches might be one as well...

TankovayaDiviziya ,

Then fuck him as well.

dependencyinjection ,

Surely the correct thing to do is move along if you don’t care.

We don’t care that you don’t care.

Tattorack ,
@Tattorack@lemmy.world avatar

Good thing that Lemmy is an open source federation, then. It's not like Spaz on Reddit, where one dude can ruin the whole damn thing for everyone with a few bad choices.

LustyArgonianMana ,
@LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world avatar

You mean u/Spez, the former moderator of r/jailbait, who reduced mod transparency on all subreddits including porn reddits? Wonder why he needed to hide who the mods were after that scandal.

Also, fyi, to post adult content on most adult subreddits, you have to verify. The way reddit does this process is creepy to say the least, (OnlyFans at least requires an ID to verify your age) along with how they delete smaller porn subreddits that do not have those rules, including porn subreddits that are explicitly moderated by the content creators themselves. It's like porn pimping on reddit. It's genuinely very creepy especially if you believe the conspiracy that Ghilisaine Maxwell was an active subreddit poster on r/news. And if Spez or his alts are moderators on most of the big porn subs, then likely he is seeing hundreds if not thousands of images (some may be of minors bc of the way they do verification) daily through the verification process. That's- creepy. Like really creepy. Lemmy is better.

octopus_ink ,

And? I'm not a tankie and not a marxist. Hell, I'm not even a socialist. Hell, I identify as a leftist, but I bet lots of folks would tell me I'm nothing of the sort. But I'd rather be on an instance with folks to the left of me than to the right (to the very, very minimal degree that I care about who else is on my instance). I don't remember why I didn't sign up for .world, but at the end of the day does it really matter?

The only impact I've seen are smear posts like this one, and folks who dismiss opinions if they see a user is from .ml. shrug If that's as far as folks can look, I'm not interested in talking with them anyway.

I have hexbear blocked in my own settings; if folks want to block .ml that's no skin off my nose. Ain't respecting user freedoms great?

Dessalines AKA “parentis_shotgun” on Reddit, is the main Lemmy dev,

So I see you are on a Lemmy instance. If we're going to smear instances based on the politics of their devs, I'd think you wouldn't want to use ANY Lemmy instance.

NOT_RICK ,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

Nothing wrong with holding a political stance, but they routinely ban people for specious reasons. With some of the biggest communities on .ml this is a problem for the growth of Lemmy.

octopus_ink ,

Nothing wrong with holding a political stance, but they routinely ban people for specious reasons.

OP should have left the politics and personal smears out of it then and opened a discussion about moderation practices. And as OP points out, the person he's primarily smearing is the main Lemmy dev. What's the endgame there? Trying to get the main dev thrown off his own project?

Chozo ,
@Chozo@fedia.io avatar

OP should have left the politics and personal smears out of it then and opened a discussion about moderation practices

That's... exactly what OP did, though. Did you even read the post?

octopus_ink , (edited )

What does it lead with? A comment about moderation or a comment about the devs politics and opinions?

(Edit: and the subject line says nothing about moderation)

Serinus ,

To brand the lemmy.ml as the censorship hell that it is.

octopus_ink , (edited )

Subject line: Nothing about moderation or censorship, it's about smearing the target's views.

First two sentences: Nothing about moderation or censorship, it's about smearing the target's views.

Third sentence: Links to archive.org link that fails to load. (I think they are still under DoS attack) May or may not be about moderation, but nothing OP wrote in the leadup to the link leads me to believe it's about more than smearing the target's views.

Then a couple links that sound like they are about discussing moderation.

Then another para smearing the target's opinions and politics some more.

Yep, OP was really about moderation and censorship, not about a personal attack. /s

NuXCOM_90Percent , (edited )

Please don't conflate tankies with leftist thought. They are not leftists. They are fascists with strong ties toward fascist regimes that are "known" to actively usurp elections around the globe.

A good metric is: a very hardline Communist might have an argument for why effectively slavery is ethical because social and economic planning requires people to engage in jobs they actively do not want to do. I personally consider that the reason that Communism can never work at scale but that is a discussion that needs to be had.

A tankie will just justify anything that China or Russia do. Usually with an attempt to deflect by pointing out something the US or, increasingly, certain EU countries did.

But, regardless: There is another issue with your "just let everyone taolk it out" nonsense. Because the ml moderation team(s) and admin staff have increasingly been using mass bans and false claims of xenophiobia to shut down anything that is not tankie bullshit. So there is no discussion. Just one sided propaganda in some of the largest communities on lemmy.

To expand on the moderation strategy a bit. A LOT of people who aren't increasingly of one nationality and ethnicity have a lot of problems with ResetEra's moderation strategy. The mods and admins are known for using a heavy hand and outright mockery against anyone who they disagree with and the remaining community stumble over each other to be part of the "cool crowd".

But you can also very easily see why the vast majority of leftists and PC gamers and... Asian people left. Because they have a policy to only edit user posts when they contain actively dangerous/illegal statements. So you can see when someone catches a permaban because they dsiagreed with an admin or joked about the corporate interests behind brexit. And you can see the discussion of the remaining users on why that was so fucked... up until the thread gets permanently locked.

With the model ml (and certain other more "world"ly instances...) use... you don't. You just see comment branches disappear the moment anyone pushes back on some propaganda. And if a user pisses off the admins, they get banned straight up. Often with some comment about how they are racist or xenophobic in the modlog with all of their comments removed but NOT in the modlog. And that is a problem because, unless you were actively following along with that discussion, you never see anything other than MAYBE "wow, a lot of really racist people disagree with this very smart discussion on why Chinese Taipei was always a part of China and is totally not a sovereign-ish nation called Taiwan"

PopOfAfrica ,

I'm more of a libertarian communist, communist economic theory I think is excellent. That doesn't mean that communist regimes of the past make any sense, because of their authoritarian bend.

Turns out political opinions arent black and white.

TopRamenBinLaden ,

It sounds like you are a Democratic Socialist from this tidbit.

I kind of feel the same way. I think the economic theory behind communism/socialism sounds much more beneficial towards our progress as a species and towards a more sustainable existence. I just don't agree with the authoritarian methods of implementation. I think that if socialism is going to succeed, it will need to come about in a gradual democratic way.

PopOfAfrica ,

No, I'm a communist. I don't believe in monitary commerce. But I'm absolutely with you, with communism also only being able to succeed if it's democratic.

octopus_ink , (edited )

Hey thank you for this, I will read it again in more detail, but appreciate the perspective, both broadly and with regard to this specific post.

This is the only reply I received which has caused me to second guess my stance in the slightest. 🙂

Edit: If I'm going to care about such things at all, is there a left leaning instance you'd recommend? I considered blahaj, but not sure if they welcome allies there or only the queer community.

ZombiFrancis ,

This often comes up in these threads, but the point of using the term tankie is for its association with leftism.

The traditional term people otherwise use when referring to such abuse by mods and admin is 'fascist' or 'nazi', hyperbolic or not as you demonstrated. The conflation is the point.

masquenox ,

And a good thing it is, too - if you liberals were managing it lemmy would have been sold off to Meta or Google a long time ago.

Iceblade02 ,

Liberty means freedom, not only from government,s,but from authority in general. Corporations, religious organizations, criminal organizations, political organizations and other people.

masquenox ,

Liberty means freedom

And has liberalism delivered any of this?

fuckingkangaroos ,

People are streaming into relatively liberal countries by the millions because of opportunities and freedom.

masquenox ,

opportunities

Really? It has nothing to do with the hundreds of years of colonialist looting and pillaging liberals presided over that is still ongoing today?

freedom.

Really? This has nothing to do with with the targeted maldevelopment of the 3rd world presided over by liberals that is, again, ongoing to this very day?

Way to go outing yourself like that, white supremacist.

fuckingkangaroos ,

Liberals didn't preside over colonialism, that's ridiculous.

masquenox ,

Who did you think presided over colonialism, genius? Martians?

By the time of the Great Irish Famine (one of the British Empire's earliest achievements) the transformation of England from a feudal society to a liberal one was complete.

The US was literally founded as the model for the liberal nation state - it's entire history of genocide, slavery and yes, colonialism was drenched in the tenets of liberalism from the moment the constitution was signed right to this very day.

Go redo your history - and, this time, don't get it from PragerU.

Dayroom7485 ,

I think they mean economic liberalism, not political liberalism, which is what you explain.

Dayroom7485 ,

Heh, I think you have a point. Funny this gets downvoted though.

RagnarokOnline ,

What are you implying here? People don’t use Lemmy because of this guy’s politics? Do we know the politics of other developers?

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

To be honest the issue is more about the power tripping than politics. Banning someone from the Arch Linux community because they disagree with you seems strange

WhatAmLemmy ,

And people believed they'd escape the days of power-tripping mods by exiting Reddit.

At least with the festive there are no alternatives.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

festive

Like that new neame

NOT_RICK ,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

I appreciate the mod log here because at least you can see the receipts

illi ,

That's the beauty of lemmy though - there is probably another community for the same thing on a different instance.

WanderingVentra ,

Yup. There were power tripping mods on Reddit, too. Except there, you'd be out of luck. On here, you can go to other instances, like communities on programming.dev or something.

illi ,

To be fair you could've made a different subreddit but somehow this feels different

cloudless OP ,
@cloudless@lemmy.cafe avatar

Encourage users to create content on Lemmy communities hosted on non-tankie instances.

PopOfAfrica ,

My problem with this ideology is while there are plenty of tankies on Lemmy, the term gets overapplied.

Some people think anyone to the left of Bill Kristol is a tankie.

TopRamenBinLaden ,

Thanks for pointing this out. To some people, advocates for things like socialized healthcare are 'tankies'. Its hard to tell what people mean anymore by it, and one persons tankie might be another's centrist at this point.

prototype_g2 ,

Yeah... The label of "tankie" seems to be used to describe "anyone to the left of me".

It's so widely applied to the point of reaching meaninglessness.

originalfrozenbanana ,

Mods and admins have enormous power to shape what can be discussed using comment moderation tools, bans, and promoted content. At the very least you should be aware of what potential biases an admin has that may inform how they moderate.

RagnarokOnline ,

Oh nice, thank you. I didn’t realize they were an admin and mod too. I thought just a developer.

PrettyFlyForAFatGuy ,

Only of their own instance, they cant do this shit on other instances

Buelldozer , (edited )
@Buelldozer@lemmy.today avatar

Only of their own instance, they cant do this shit on other instance

They can when they bake it directly into the lemmy code.

Here's the two primary devs arguing to do exactly that during a discussion on github regarding the slur filter.

The ended up allowing instance admins to enable / disable that filter as well as customize it but the discussion shows how much power they wield across all instances and their mindset about using that power. The comment about something not being in line with their view of the the project (lemmy) is particularly telling.

To be clear I'm not disagreeing with the filter nor am I necessarily bagging on the developers, what I'm trying to demonstrate is the breadth and depth of their reach. They are most definitely not confined to a single a instance nor is everything they do, or can do, visible to most users.

PrettyFlyForAFatGuy ,

i dont think you can take an instance of the devs considering maybe possibly baking in a poorly thought out slur filter and then being told what a stupid idea it is by the commuity as evidence that they can't be trusted not to bake in features allowing them to take admin actions on other instances

Such a change would likely trivially easy to remove by jusr forking lemmy, as they suggested people do a few times in that thread

redcalcium ,

Lemmy has a lot more contributors and eyes digging into its codebase now compared to 2021 so I think this is very unlikely to happen.

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

And the creators of lemmy (same dudes lemmy.ml) have done things like this. Specifically the insertion of automatic word filters IIRC:

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/622

Here you can see all the glory of these devs.

Don’t forget, there’s lots of other federated media options besides lemmy.

Frankly my time around lemmy.ml has been pretty off putting to the service as a whole. I don’t see how endless user growth is sustainable for any volunteer moderation team either.

Don’t forget, you all can go look through the lemmy.ml mod log at any time and view the bullshit that goes on over there.

Here’s a link: https://lemmy.ml/modlog

vger ,
@vger@lemmy.ml avatar

Oh, my, god, they added an optional, configurable regular expression filter. The monsters!

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

Talk about over simplification of a problem lmao

PopOfAfrica , (edited )

Right, but Lemmy is open source. It can be forked.

Their political ideologies that are anti-capitalism are actually Lemmys greatest strength.

originalfrozenbanana ,

I don’t know that I’d agree that the political beliefs of the lemmy.ml admins are lemmys greatest strengths. Certainly federation amd open source contributions are core to lemmy but support of a specific nation’s policies and actions certainly is not.

PopOfAfrica , (edited )

We already have a capitalist, Lemmy. It's called Reddit.

Lemmy exists explicitly because of anti-capitalist sentiment, not despite it. Remember that politics is two separate spectrums, possibly more. Economic theory and governmetal theory are completely different things. My point is that it is their economic communism that birthed lemmy, and thier governmental theory is really not releveant to the software in the same way.

originalfrozenbanana ,

What’s that got to do with censoring some discussions about some countries?

PopOfAfrica ,

I literally just described the difference between their governmental philisophies and their economic ones.

originalfrozenbanana ,

Ok but they are administering and moderating their instance according to their political beliefs about a specific nation. They’re not defending China’s economic policies at Tiananmen Square or their notions on tariffs with Uyghurs. I don’t think you answered the question in the way you think you did.

PopOfAfrica ,

Literally, the only statement I made was that if they weren't communists, they probably would not have made lemmy. A capitalist would have made Reddit. That doesn't diminish their faults. It's just pointing out that none of us would be here if they weren't communist.

originalfrozenbanana ,

Ok, I didn’t ask that, though. That is a completely different discussion that no one is having.

Catsrules ,

As long as the developers don't force their political views on people using the software I really don't see an issue.

You could argue they aren't doing it today but what about tomorrow?

Well I would say everything is open source. If something does change that you don't agree with you can just take the code and build your own. (Obviously with blackjack and hookers)

AFC1886VCC ,

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

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    irreticent ,
    @irreticent@lemmy.world avatar

    I think it's fair to complain about censorship on a platform that was founded on anti-censorship.

    DragonTypeWyvern ,

    Who told you that?

    irreticent ,
    @irreticent@lemmy.world avatar

    The post linked in the OP where the lemmy Dev says that's why he made lemmy.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20230626055233/https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/cqgztr/fuck_the_white_supremacist_reddit_admins_want_me/

    spez_ ,

    No it wasn't

    irreticent ,
    @irreticent@lemmy.world avatar

    I was just going by what the lemmy Dev said in his Reddit post. He said he made it to circumvent Reddit censorship.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20230626055233/https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/cqgztr/fuck_the_white_supremacist_reddit_admins_want_me/

    bloodfart ,

    Goose wielding butter knife: Reddit censorship of whomst?

    carl_marks_1312 ,
    @carl_marks_1312@lemmy.ml avatar

    I think it's not fair to complain about "censorship" when the decentral nature of the platform is made to avoid it. Especially not when you haven't contributed to the codebase. You can open your own nstance at any time.

    fuckingkangaroos ,

    And people can (and should) defederate the propaganda machine lemmy.ml at any time.

    Faresh ,

    You are only censored on lemmy.ml, not on the rest of the network. You can write whatever you want, but lemmy.ml has no duty to tolerate racists in their house.

    ahal ,

    As soon as you decide to decentralize your platform it ceases to belong to any particular group.

    Allero ,

    It was not developed for the communists, it was developed as a general-purpose decentralized Reddit alternative.

    Also, not all communists are tankies. There's plenty of left-wingers of all sorts on Lemmy, communists included, who are not tankies.

    Cowbee ,
    @Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

    Which Communists get a pass, and which don't? As a part of attacking fringes, I have found even suggesting people to read Marx gets me called a tankie. If Marx is enough to be a tankie, what Communists can there be that aren't tankies?

    Allero ,

    Good question!

    Essentially, if you readily forgive communist regimes any atrocities and defend red imperialism, you are a tankie.

    You are not a tankie for suggestion to read Marx - and I believe you were misinterpreted as people coming from .ml and talking about Marx are most commonly tankies, sadly. But we should never assume that.

    I certainly recommend reading the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and it shouldn't mean I am a tankie indeed.

    Cowbee ,
    @Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

    Even if we assume these people exist and are not the fringe, what makes you think it was a misinterpretation? All Marxists are being called tankies, and words are being put in Marxists mouths. Even Anarchists are being called tankies now over on .world if they criticize Biden in any way.

    Don't you think this is just a consequence of an instance taking a deliberately anti-Marxist stance?

    Allero ,

    I think it's a consequence of poor representation by many actual tankies, multiplied by a concentrated effort to silence any critique of Biden to boost his ratings as someone just a bit less evil than Trump.

    This is a big clusterfuck, and I hope to have a better dialogue between authoritarian socialists, liberal socialists and people who consider themselves "left" because they vote Democrat (Murica did a great job at straying people away from actual socialism).

    Hostility won't help either side, but tankies are stubborn and Biden-prophets are relentless, dividing the community of people who all want a more equal and happy world.

    ssj2marx ,

    Lead Lemmy Developer, Dessalines, denying the Tiananmen Square Massacre and praising the Uyghur Genocide

    Lying about what the other side says does your case no favors. Tankies don't deny that violence happened on June 4th 1989, what we deny is the Reddit version of the narrative where 10,000 people were literally crushed under the treads of tanks, a narrative which has no evidence whatsoever. The CPC's version of events, that the square was emptied after a truck carrying PLA soldiers was firebombed and that clashes between violent protestors and police resulted in hundreds of deaths, is on the other hand fully supported by the available evidence.

    We do deny the Uyghur genocide, because that never happened. It is 100% a fantasy constructed by a certain evangelical nut. The most realistic critique of the Chinese government you can make on this issue is that some innocent people were swept up by a large-scale police action, which yeah that always happens when there's a large scale police action, but in this case the results speak for themselves as Xinjiang today is a wealthier, healthier, and totally terrorism-free province compared to how it was ten years ago, despite the fact that it is adjacent to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and that extremist orgs operating in the region have received outside funding.

    phoenixz ,

    So you deny that the massacre happend, and you deny that the Uyghur genocide is happening. Both are quite extensively documented by now and denying them is historical revisioning. Denying that there is any evidence whatsoever is not much different from the "intelligent design" movement denying evolution because of lack of evidence. If you keep your fingers in your ears, screaming "LALALLA I CANNOT HEAR YOU", then yeah, it's hard to see any evidence.

    The "some innocent people were swept up" shows painfully well how much you brush off the work and reeducation camps as an innocent side effect.

    Left or right extremist, it doesn't matter. You're all a sad bunch funded by governments who want to destabilize the rest of the world. Tell Winnie Pooh I said Hi.

    ssj2marx ,

    The "Boston Massacre" killed like five people, significantly more died in the June Fourth Incident. If you want to call it a "massacre" that's your prerogative just as it's mine to call it an "incident", which I choose to do because there is significant evidence that the Chinese police and military were peaceful and that it was violent protestors who started the violence.

    As for Uyghur genocide, no. There is no evidence. Every time I've been presented with "evidence" of this so-called event its been a picture of a barbed wire fence around a building, or a satellite image of some buildings in a desert, or it's that video of the prisoners being moved that was in a totally different province. No genocide has ever occurred without creating thousands or millions of refugees, mass graves, a mass dehumanizing media campaign, etc - we see all of those things in Gaza, and none of them in Xinjiang.

    God I wish I was funded by the Chinese government.

    timmy_dean_sausage , (edited )

    Both of y'all are talking a lot about evidence without posting any sources. I don't have a side in this debate, but I would like to see some of this evidence you guys keep referencing, just to further my own understanding of these historical events.

    Edit: grammar.

    cqst ,

    Maybe political repression and the mass killing of protestors and the internment of ethnic minorities has very little to do with a countries mode of production. Maybe you guys can advocate for an alternative mode of production without defending genocide and using the military to crack down on protests? And maybe liberals can do the same when Western Capitalist Countries do it?

    please... :(

    Aux ,

    Socialism is inherently authoritarian and Marx praised genocide in china in 19th century. You cannot support any variant of socialism without being a genocidal fuck.

    Bernie_Sandals ,
    @Bernie_Sandals@lemmy.world avatar

    Idk man democratic socialists seem to have been succeeding in doing it almost globally for a century now.

    Look at the left of any social democratic party and you're bound to find some.

    Aux ,

    I don't know what you're talking about.

    Bernie_Sandals , (edited )
    @Bernie_Sandals@lemmy.world avatar

    There's this thing called social democracy,
    and almost every nation in the world has a social democratic party. The left wing of these social democratic parties tend to be full on democratic socialists.

    There's a good chance that the welfare system in whatever country you live in was built by these social democratic parties and influenced by its left wing of democratic socialists.

    Even in the U.S. FDR's Liberalism has been called "bootleg social democracy" by some historians, and his policies were influenced (though often more as concessions than willing adoption) of the more socialist leaning unions of his time.
    Even today, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party could be described as social democratic, with its leftmost members (Bernie Sanders and AOC) being democratic socialists.

    GoodEye8 ,

    Citation required

    UnderpantsWeevil ,
    @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

    Maybe political repression and the mass killing of protestors and the internment of ethnic minorities has very little to do with a countries mode of production.

    Or maybe not. You can't deny the intrinsic need to oppress the serfs in a feudalist system. Every economic downturn leads to a new wave of revolts and another cycle of state violence.

    The '89 Tianamen protesters came out of state privatization reforms. And the state response (whether you believe that to be mass detainment and expulsion from Beijing or wholesale blood drenched slaughter of innocents) was necessary to continue the process unimpeded.

    Maybe you guys can advocate for an alternative mode of production without defending genocide and using the military to crack down on protests? And maybe liberals can do the same when Western Capitalist Countries do it?

    The focal point of the conflict is irrevocably tied to the propaganda.

    Western Capitalists believe liberal democracy is working to deliver popular policy through nonviolent means. And that China was stripped and gutted of individual freedom under the Maoist revolution. An ongoing brutal genocide is necessary to keep state communist officials in place.

    Eastern oriented Maoists believe China is upholding a popular Mass Line, and it is the Western Capitalists who hold their population in a police choke hold, squeezing the life out of a popular socialist revolt with every new generation.

    What's the truth? Is popular governance happening in either country? Is it possible at all, or just a pretext for state violence?

    Hard to say. But it's clear somebody is lying.

    haui_lemmy ,
    @haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com avatar

    I‘m glad that the fediverse resists excessive moderation and silencing of unwanted political opinions. I‘m not a fan of some of the things said or done on .ml but we wont do anything which is awesome. You can make your own instance and defederate, ban, block whoever you like.

    To make my point clear, I made a large donation to the lemmy devs as I think they are doing awesome work. @dessalines especially is a tremendous help for the open source community.

    But of course you‘re entitled to your opinion. Have a good day.

    Blaze ,
    @Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

    Nice comment, have a good day too

    fuckingkangaroos ,

    Yes let's all just pretend their propaganda is actual opinions held by real people.

    haui_lemmy ,
    @haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com avatar
    1. how will you prove they’re not „real people“?
    2. you‘re using a platform made by them
    3. the post itself is also propaganda since it pushes for a „solution“ against „tankies“.
    fuckingkangaroos ,

    1. Hold my hand and we'll go visit their house and ask them

    2. Creating something doesn't give them the right to spread lies, and they probably funded it specifically in order to spread propaganda

    3. This post isn't a systemic campaign of disinformation... a single person saying we should do something isn't propaganda. I'm talking about government-driven efforts to change thought and opinions. In this case, from a government with a long history of murdering and oppressing people.

    haui_lemmy ,
    @haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com avatar

    I‘m not saying you cant be right. I still dont agree with your assumptions. Have a good day.

    beardown ,

    This entire thread glows and is extremely consistent with CIA goals.

    You're beyond naive if you think the Marxists are brainwashed, yet you and the "people" in this thread aren't.

    fuckingkangaroos ,

    I don't think Marxists are brainwashed at all. Can't you contribute without putting words in my mouth?

    filister ,

    You will be surprised how much of the open source software out there is written and maintained by lefties and tankies.

    Sadly conservatives seem to have either lower education and are not notorious for their sharing and selflessness.

    ashok36 ,

    Denying historical events and refusing to come to terms with their causes and repercussions is not a left or right problem.

    You can be as communist as you want but pretending that events with photographic evidence didn't actually happen put you in the same category as moon landing deniers in my book.

    filister ,

    And yet so many people believe in religion without a single scientific proof. But yes, I got your point.

    For the record there are a lot of shameful events in your history too, but I am sure your own government has done its utmost to hide those facts.

    Just that in the US there is a massive anti China and anti Russia propaganda. Do not get me wrong, I don't disagree with a lot of their policies, but the US isn't also spotless and a role model in a lot of ways.

    ashok36 ,

    The US has so much red on its ledger it will never be balanced. And there are plenty of apologists for atrocities in our history. They're just as bad as the Chinese or Russian (or pick whatever country you want because they're all guilty to some extent) when they do it.

    manicdave ,

    Right wing free software users love from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs until you point out what it is.

    Then you get whatever this lemmy-wide tantrum is.

    I disagree with Dessalines about some stuff but the guy is a don.

    filister ,

    I am exactly in the same boat. I might disagree with someone but the amount of work he put into it is admirable

    DragonTypeWyvern ,

    I'm sure it's just a coincidence that topics like this made the rounds in several subs at the same time.

    Block the instance if you've got a problem.

    SoleInvictus ,

    I'd think it was outside actors trying to troll if this wasn't so common and predictable.

    Here's a great article about this kind of overreactive purity drama in leftist spaces.

    Exiting the Vampire Castle

    yamanii ,
    @yamanii@lemmy.world avatar

    The communists here in my country have a saying: "First we get to power, then we bicker"

    DragonTypeWyvern ,

    The anarchists in mine have a different order of operations, unfortunately, but that's the problem entirely.

    vga ,

    Somebody noticed a disturbing fact and wants to distribute the knowledge on multiple channels? I think I'll allow this.

    Other than that, yes, let's lift&shift the good communities away from lemmy.ml and block it.

    fuckingkangaroos ,

    People on multiple subs are sick of their authoritarian propaganda, what a shock I'm so surprised oh wow

    SomeAmateur , (edited )

    This community is called YouShouldKnow not YouShouldDoSomethingAboutThis

    You have the info and you can care as much or as little as you like

    nahuse ,

    Not a coincidence, since it’s the same group of users and they all link to one-another?

    The only problem with blocking is that it doesn’t actually solve anything, just removes you from participating in conversations that are happening around you.

    It’s also bad for new users who become afraid to participate.

    blackn1ght ,

    I don't know why the lemmy.ml admins don't just defederate from everyone but lemmygrad and hexbear. It's clear that only their extreme views are allowed and they must spend a lot of time banning "libs".

    It would do everyone a favour really. We'd have less instance politics and hopefully more content, and make it the fediverse more attractive to the average person.

    snek_boi ,

    We'd have less instance politics

    How is "defederat[ing] from everyone but lemmygrad and hexbear" not instance politics? Politics, at its core, is the way we distribute political goods, such as physical goods, access to information (including instance posts), and legitimacy, to name a few of the options. What is your definition of politics?

    blackn1ght ,

    Maybe politics was the wrong word, what I mean is drama.

    bloodfart ,

    “We’d have less drama if the people I don’t like would just go away.

    Why yes, I could go away instead, but they should be the ones who have to take action to please me…”

    It’s astounding watching people come in and expect communists leave or fundamentally change the space they built to escape liberals because liberals don’t like being subject to communist communities.

    Cowbee ,
    @Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

    Then defederate from Lemmy.ml. Lemmy.ml is a FOSS and Privacy instance run by Marxists, the admins aren't interested in gatekeeping that from the rest of Lemmy, but if other instances don't like that then they can defederate.

    blackn1ght ,

    I've added it to my blocked instances and I'd recommend others who have an issue with the way the communities on that instance are moderated and the way it's managed to do the same.

    Fortunately there are alternative instances and communities that are less authoritarian with their moderation.

    Cowbee ,
    @Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

    Sure, that's the beauty of federation and defederation.

    fuckingkangaroos ,

    Then defederate from Lemmy.ml.

    Agreed, this is the best option.

    Xylight , (edited )
    @Xylight@lemdro.id avatar

    No problem, fuckingkangaroos.

    Edit: the first time I tried Sync it replied to the top level post instead of what I actually replied to.

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