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

barsquid ,

"Look at the prisoners per capita," lol China has mobile execution vans, my guy.

US for-profit prisons and slavery are still fucked up, don't get me wrong.

AINeMyot ,

China has mobile execution vans

Not heard about this, got a source?

cloudless OP ,
@cloudless@lemmy.cafe avatar

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_van

blackn1ght ,

There's a lot of [Citation needed] tags on a lot of those claims. I'm not denying they exist but it's also a bit of a flimsy source.

i_ben_fine ,

The main source for this is Amnesty International page 76. The relevant text:

In an effort to improve cost-efficiency, Chinese provincial authorities are introducing
mobile execution vans in which convicts are given a lethal injection, replacing the traditional
execution method of firing squads.
Eighteen mobile executions vans, converted 24-seater buses, were distributed to all
intermediate courts and one high court in Yunnan province in 2003. In December of the same
year, the Supreme People’s Court in Beijing urged all provinces to acquire execution vans
“that can put to death convicted criminals immediately after sentencing”. The windowless
execution chamber at the back contains a metal bed on which the prisoner is strapped down.
Once the needle is attached by a technician, a police officer presses a button and an automatic
syringe injects the lethal drug into the prisoner’s vein. The execution can be watched on a
video monitor next to the driver’s seat and can be recorded if required.

And I think barsquid's point is that China is keeping their imprisoned-per-capita low through executions. Even if that's incorrect, China does use execution more liberally than the U.S. And execution is evil.

dannoffs ,
@dannoffs@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

In the US we call government vehicles that come kill you "police cars"

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Dude, this is common fucking knowledge, and nobody cares.

It's one of those things where the very tankies you're talking about made it trivial for anyone not wanting to interact with them, their instance, or anyone in specific can just block whatever. And then there's the instances that defederate from .ml and/or grad, which is a decent amount of them.

They may be assholes (though they tend not to be in interpersonal ways, only in their political views), but they're assholes nobody has to interact with for very long.

You're beating a dead horse with this one

rickyrigatoni ,
@rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee avatar

That horse fucking deserves it though. He knows what he did.

figaro ,

Yeah honestly let's make an example out of that horse

MacNCheezus ,
@MacNCheezus@lemmy.today avatar

I mean, we should probably care at least enough to make sure they're not smuggling in any backdoors that would allow them take over the entire Lemmyverse.

I know it's open source so that's somewhat difficult to accomplish but not impossible (see the recent stealth attack on SSH/OpenSSL). At the very least, it requires people from outside their echo chamber to regularly review commits being made made before admins begin rolling out new updates.

i_ben_fine ,

Jesus christ.

MacNCheezus ,
@MacNCheezus@lemmy.today avatar

I'm not sure if He knows Rust well enough to do that, and having some sort of background in infosec would likely also be helpful.

otp ,

Oh come on downvoters, that was funny! Haha

MacNCheezus ,
@MacNCheezus@lemmy.today avatar

Thank you, I tried.

Tough crowd, eh?

otp ,

Well, things have turned around! Haha

MacNCheezus ,
@MacNCheezus@lemmy.today avatar

Guess it was just a slow burner then

fuckingkangaroos ,

You probably got hit by a bunch of lemmy.ml brigade downvotes then real users showed up and upvoted you.

MacNCheezus ,
@MacNCheezus@lemmy.today avatar

I was only one or two in the red and it's three downvotes total. I wouldn't exactly call that a brigade.

fuckingkangaroos ,

Fair enough. Just saw a similar but more extreme thing happen to another comment so I made an assumption.

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

That's a valid point, imo.

But there supposedly are people doing just that. Been too long since I ran across it here, but when the last big version change happened, some of the instance running folks looked over the code, and found nothing hinky. I know my asshole cousin has his own instance, and he said he scanned through it a little out of curiosity and "it ain't the prettiest" was the worst he had to say about it. Which, second hand info like that is like toilet paper, but it serves okay for a casual conversation like this.

MacNCheezus ,
@MacNCheezus@lemmy.today avatar

I would hope so, since it's THEIR hardware it's running on (or in case it's rented, responsible for).

But as long as they don't put anything iffy into the code and leave their political opinions separate from that, they can certainly run their own instance however they please. That's the whole point of Lemmy after all.

randint , (edited )
@randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz avatar

Dude, this is common fucking knowledge, and nobody cares

The 730 people who upvoted this post do care.

The problem is that lemmy.ml hosts too many popular communities. There are people who want them gone from their feeds but also don't want their Lemmy experience to become empty and boring.

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Votes mean as much as the shit I just took.

nickwitha_k ,

No. The shit that you took is more meaningful than fake Internet points.

randint , (edited )
@randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz avatar

Usually I'd agree with this, but on this post, the upvote count is a direct representation of how many people care about this issue (out of the number of users who saw this post). That is meaningful.

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

I don't have access to traffic data to make a good argument on this specific post. Without the ability to compare total interactions vs votes, as well as the ratio of up vs down, it's a matter of general principle in my opinion.

It is also my opinion, having moderated off and on since the nineties on various types of forums that pretty much any post is ignored by a majority of users that come across it. Voting really only shows which people are willing to use the effort to hit a button. If a majority of users don't engage, I think that it is indeed a direct representation of how many people care. Again, I can't see those numbers, so it's kind of a moot point to make at all, but I suspect this post is like most posts anywhere.

But I still maintain that votes are meaningless across the board because they're a horrible metric for anything at all, especially when they're the only metric available.

Edit: again, fwiw, in the time it took me to type that up, the number of positive votes went down by 3. And, iirc, at the point where this tangent about the value of votes started, or was over 400, which is still meaningless, but taken in isolation would point to a general trend where there's significant disagreement with whatever it is about the post drawing votes.

randint ,
@randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz avatar

I kind of see your point. The information we have is not sufficient, and we cannot really know how much of the Lemmy userbase cares about this issue.

nickwitha_k ,

In my view, upvotes are too easy to manipulate to take them seriously or expect authenticity. And I'm ok with that. I think Reddit and the like showed that karma and the like are not great measures of authentic engagement.

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

True, it was a very healthy bm ;)

Jayjader ,

The problem is that lemmy.ml hosts too many popular communities. There are people who want them gone from their feeds but also don’t want their Lemmy experience to become empty and boring.

The solution is to build up more attractive alternatives of those communities elsewhere, not endlessly campaign the existing users to just drop them. I understand that awareness of why people want alternatives is important for those alternatives to have a chance at attracting users, and being discovered in the first place. I just have yet to actually see these alternatives receive the care they (imo) require to justify switching to them.

The current fedidb stats, to me, state that 488 people is, colloquially speaking, nobody.
a screenshot of the first page of stats for lemmy on fedidb.org. The collective stats across all servers is 391,326 total users and 45,189 monthly users. The individual servers shown are (in order): lemmy.world, lemm.ee, sh.itjust.works, hexbear.net, lemmy.dbzer0.com, feddit.de, lemmygrad.ml, programming.dev, lemmyblahaj.zone, and lemmy.ca. The user and "status" counts approximately follow a pareto distribution. lemmy.world has almost half of the total user count and monthly active user count on its own. The notable outlier is hexbear.net, which has 10% more statuses than lemmy.world made by 10% as many montly active users.

Maybe it's too soon to make such a judgement call, we'll see over the next few days as people get the chance to see this post.

randint , (edited )
@randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz avatar

The solution is to build up more attractive alternatives of those communities elsewhere, not endlessly campaign the existing users to just drop them.

Agreed. Maybe I should try creating and managing a community some day. (hopefully this didn't come off as sarcastic)

The current fedidb stats, to me, state that 488 people is, colloquially speaking, nobody.

This is a wildly misleading and unfair comparison. Let's take the Trump verdict as an example. The most upvoted post about this had ~2700 upvotes. But that's only 6% of the MAU! Is that "nobody"? Obviously not. 2k upvotes is a huge deal on a rather small community like Lemmy. How often do you see posts with more than 3k upvotes?

~500 upvotes is already a moderately large number of upvotes. You need to compare this number with how many upvotes a post typically gets.

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Fwiw (our disagreement aside), moderating a community anywhere online can be a very rewarding, and very thankless job. And it really can be a thing that feels like a job if the community is active enough.

But I would still recommend at least trying it for a few months to see if whatever subject matter you make it around draws users. That's when you get a real feel for moderation, and have the best chance at helping the overall fediverse work well.

I also think that moderating a big community would change your mind at least partially regarding vote numbers as a measure of anything significant. There's behind the curtain stuff that usually gives a better indication of how a given post/subject is being received by the individual community. It depends on the tools available, and lemmy is a wee bit scant on tools to help moderators gain understanding of the population of their C/; but it's still eye opening.

The biggest thing I think you'd notice in comparing people interacting with a given post is that most votes happen because of a title. People scroll past, see a title, and vote based on that. And that's the ones that bother to vote. A lot of people don't. They'll click a link, maybe open that post and read comments, but just not care enough to do anything else at all. Back on reddit, that was a majority of posts, and I know it was the case on other forums back in the day.

So, yeah, disagreement about the numbers in this case aside, if you're this interested in how a vote using forum works, moderating your own would be a very cool experience on top of diversifying the instance/community balance.

randint ,
@randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz avatar

[...] is that most votes happen because of a title. People scroll past, see a title, and vote based on that.

Wow, now that I think of it, that is indeed how I vote most of the time.

Thanks, I will seriously consider opening a community.

Jayjader ,

I didn't necessarily think you were being sarcastic, but I appreciate the clarification.

You're correct, that was a rather shallow comparison for me to make.

I don't think raw upvotes give the full story either. I'd be interested in seeing, for example, from which instances the voters are distributed.

randint ,
@randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz avatar

I'd be interested in seeing, for example, from which instances the voters are distributed.

That would be interesting indeed! I heard that if one hosts their own Lemmy instance, they can see who voted on every post. Don't have that for now though.

fuckingkangaroos ,

I have Lemmy.ml blocked and I still see them in other communities all the time. Defederation is the best solution for dealing with an instance that's designed to spread propaganda.

And no this isn't a dead horse, there's are other discussions ongoing about defederating Lemmy.ml

kilgore_trout ,
@kilgore_trout@feddit.it avatar

And no this isn't a dead horse, there's are other discussions ongoing about defederating Lemmy.ml

It's a non-problem. No one forces anyone to interact with lemmy.ml

fuckingkangaroos ,

Malicious propaganda isn't a non-problem. I'd like a social media platform that doesn't have any governments openly pumping their lies into the conversation.

kilgore_trout ,
@kilgore_trout@feddit.it avatar

There is always a bias.

fuckingkangaroos ,

There's always murder, but we still try to stop it.

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Your last sentence is contradictory with the meaning of "beating a dead horse" with the usage of the phrase I'm aware of.

To beat a dead horse isn to waste effort at an impossible or pointless goal.

When I used the phrase, it was with the second meaning in mind, but the first partially applies if op wanted anyone to do anything about the situation because the dev team isn't exactly open to some kind of takeover. The most that could realistically happen is that everyone leave lemmy entirely. Except for the tankies, obviously, why would they leave?

Since anyone that has spent enough time on lemmy to be called a regular user has run across the whole issue at least once, that means that if OP was wanting to raise awareness, the post was also pointless in that regard because it's kinda impossible to raise awareness past common knowledge and achieve anything useful.

Now, maybe our usage of the phrase "beating a dead horse" isn't the same. Language is funny like that. Maybe you just disagree that the post has no point, or that the point it does have might achieve something useful. That's cool, no worries, disagreements like that are healthy and fun.

I will say that in the first part of your comment, you actually echoed the point that I made; it is trivial to minimize/block instances in one way or another, including defederation. Defederation is an instance decision, not a personal one. But it is also a personal decision which instance/s we use to interact with the fediverse. There are instances that do not federate with lemmy.ml, and there's a ton that don't with lemmygrad.

So, based on that, I would even argue that, since we have the freedom to choose our instance (with the consent of the host of the instance of course), trying to get an instance that doesn't already defederate from lemmy.ml to do so approaches pointless since all of the major instances have been around for a while now, and have already taken part in that debate. Maybe you could change someone's mind with yet another rehash of the same debate, it does happen. But, again, all the major instances have had this debate multiple times, and the hosts don't seem open to changing just because someone brings it up again.

New instances? Absolutely have to decide if they want to federate with any of the "iffy" instances. And every user has to decide if they'd rather stick with a given instance that doesn't match their preferences regarding federation. But, uh, the instance this was posted on isn't new. The user that posted it isn't exactly new either. So the fact that they haven't already made a choice, but instead decided to beat a dead horse (again, using the "pointless" rather than "impossible" usage of the phrase) seems a bit meh.

Kalcifer , (edited )
@Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works avatar

I have Lemmy.ml blocked and I still see them in other communities all the time.

If that's the case, then that may be a bug. I advise you to report that.

fuckingkangaroos ,

It's standard, unfortunately, I'm not the only one

Kalcifer ,
@Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works avatar

What do you mean by "it's standard"? As in that is the intended functionality? It shouldn't be — the whole point of blocking instances is for the user to be able to, well, block an instance, ie content originating from it no longer shows up.

fuckingkangaroos ,

Yeah, the software is set up so that even if you block an instance you still see comments from their accounts on other instances.

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.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Are there people that don't know that Lemmy is developed by Marxists, and their instance is run by Marxists? Thought that was common knowledge, that's why Lemmy exists in the first place, it was developed along Communist principles.

Thcdenton ,

Great. now we have fediverse Stalin :D

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Are you referring to me? Or Dessalines?

Thcdenton ,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/9b1d06f4-0c7a-45d0-a61d-7f31beec5dc4.gif

blackn1ght ,

The way comments and users are purged from ml would make Stalin proud!

blackn1ght ,

If you're new to Lemmy then it won't be common knowledge at all.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Could be, but again, Lemmy was made along Communist principles, it's safe to assume people interested in Communist principles are going to be here.

blackn1ght ,

But they may not know the history of it or why it was made before joining. I certainly didn't, it was more about a decentralised alternative to Reddit, I just joined and explored.

vga ,

Perhaps the point is that those principles predate Communism by quite some time, and Communism added a lot of its own baggage on them.

SeattleRain ,

Bruh, Lemmy is a federated clone of Reddit. And tankies did not come up with the Fediverse or Reddit.
If anything Lemmy is closer to a classic capitalist structure with the communities being owned by the admin (boss).
Users have no control of any community no matter how much they contribute. I guess since tankies are state capitalists anyway they feel right at home.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

No, Marxists did not create the fediverse, but Marxists did create Lemmy.

Explain how Free and Open Source, federation-based communities are more Capitalist than Marxist. Having managers does not make something Capitalist, lol.

SeattleRain ,

It does EL-0-L when the managers do not answer to users who create the actual value. And surprise surprise you have widespread complaints about heavy handed censorship on tankie run instances on anything that hurts their feelings.

Cowbee , (edited )
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

When the users can create their own instances or even fork the entire project for free, the dynamic is different. Plus, calling discussion "value" is kinda goofy.

Lemmy.world has censorship too, just see return2ozma's recent ban for criticizing Biden and not posting pro-Biden content as well, literally admitted by the admin in an official post.

SeattleRain ,

This is such a typical liberal answer. The value isn't just created by the users' post but by the collective network effect of all the users being in one place. That is not replicated when a new instance is created. Tankies know this which is why they're acting like old Reddit mods with retaliatory style moderation.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

You're referring to discussion and posting as though it's a commodity. Please read Marx, lol

SeattleRain ,

I have read Marx, unlike you who's just learned about Lenin through memes.

The network effect is a commodity. That's why X and Facebook fight for users and put them in walled gardens.

Their valuations are based engagement. The most powerful and successful capitalist enterprises in history are all social media companies but okay discussion isn't a commodity. How myopic can you be.

Cowbee , (edited )
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

The network effect is not a commodity. Lemmy is not produced for profit, it has no Value. Reread Capital, Volume 1, Chapter 1. It has a Use-Value, but no Exchange-Value and is not produced for profit. Capitalism necessitates profit and an M-C-M' circuit by which Capitalists accumulate, which is absent from Lemmy entirely.

You're deeply unserious.

SeattleRain ,

Another pedantic tankie argument. Just because something is not being exchanged doesn't mean it can't.

Regardless originally I said the network effect had value, not that it was a commodity. And the VALUE cannot be replicated by building another instance. Therefore the users do not own THE VALUE that they produce.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Lemmy is a decommodified Reddit. There's no profit motive. The network does not have Value, as it is not being exchanged. It has a Use-Value, in that it is useful, but nothing is being taken from workers as nothing is exchanged.

Please read Capital, Chapter 1 of Volume 1 makes this extremely cut and dry.

SeattleRain ,

So you think Communism = Non Profit. Please read Capital Vol 1-3 by Karl Marx and not screeds by Lenin.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

No, I don't, but I certainly don't think non-profit = Capitalism like you've asserted.

Mr_Improving ,

Man, mad respect for engaging and calmly responding to a guy like that.

SeattleRain ,

Let me ask you something. Is there anything preventing Lemmy devs from selling the code and going private like a gazillion FOSS projects have?

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

They could, but the code could also be forked and remain free. Does the fact that Capitalism could exist in the future mean it presently does?

SeattleRain ,

And Stallman was the person that invented FOSS, and he's stated over and over he was not following any type of Communist principles.
In fact FOSS programmers explicitly retain private property rights of software. It's how they enforce the share alike clauses.
If FOSS was built on some type of Communist principles it wouldn't allow the bourgeois to build billion dollar enterprises on software they pay the writers nothing for.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Marxists did not create FOSS, but they did create Lemmy.

SeattleRain ,

Lemmy is not based Communist principles is what I'm arguing please read. It's not based on Communist principals because Reddit nor FOSS were which is the architecture Lemmy copied.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Lemmy is based on Communist principles, the devs have stated as much. The fact that others use similar underlying principles does not change why Lemmy was developed in the manner it has been.

Gigasser ,

I will add though that FOSS principles do tend to align more closely with the principles of non-commodification, collaboration, voluntary contribution, community-ownership, and free access to knowledge, which "can be" associated with socialist or Marxist ideals.

xigoi ,
@xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Explain how Free and Open Source, federation-based communities are more Capitalist than Marxist.

The ability to choose what platform to use seems closer to the principle of voluntary exchange than to authoritatianism.

Kalcifer ,
@Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works avatar

If anything Lemmy is closer to a classic capitalist structure with the communities being owned by the admin (boss).

Personally, I like to think of instances as countries, where federation and defederation is akin to trade policies across the borders, and communities are like regional/state governments.

AlexisFR ,
@AlexisFR@jlai.lu avatar

That's not quite correct, they are Marxists Leninists, who are the more Authoritarian and reactionary counterparts.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

All Marxist-Leninists are Marxists, not all Marxists are Marxist-Leninists.

It's accurate to describe them as Marxists still.

SeattleRain ,

Kind of but not really. They're state capitalists.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

How so? Where along Lenin's analysis of Marxism does there become a jump away?

SeattleRain ,

Uh the fact that the workers didn't own the means of production but the state did. Spare me all the philosophical pretzels about how the state WAS the people haha.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Since when does Marx say that a Worker-State isn't Socialist? You may wish to revisit Critique of the Gotha Programme. No need to read Lenin there! Marx was no anarchist.

SeattleRain ,

I'm not an anarchist. But pretty sure "Capitalism but the booj is the government". Isn't Communism

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

That was Nazi Germany, not the USSR.

Swedneck ,
@Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

technically accurate sure, but it implies that all marxists are tankies, which is absolutely not true.

what precisely would be the problem with referring to them by the specific term for what they are?

Cowbee , (edited )
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

What separates Marxists from Tankies? I've seen dozens of definitions of tankie.

It's important to recognize that Marxist-Leninists far, far outweigh the number of anti-Lenin Marxists. You don't have to agree with Lenin to acknowledge that at this point he is almost as relevant to Marxism in a geopolitical context as Marx himself.

Swedneck ,
@Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

oh i see now you're on lemmy.ml lol, good thing i avoided that endless bad faith argument

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

What part of that was bad-faith?

ZombiFrancis ,

Some folk identify the .ml (or the pronouns of hexbear users) and work backwards from there.

Simply: the bad faith was having .ml there in the name. I'll take him for his word and bet that's what was meant.

*edit
And it isn't like I haven't seen wingnuts go ".world eh? More like .nazi!" as well. It is just that whole general vibe with the people who all up and comment about blocking shit.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Unfortunate, but probably correct.

fuckingkangaroos ,

I've had enough bad faith interactions with lemmy.ml accounts that it's become helpful to expect it from them.

Sure there are some actual people over there who are willing to engage in a fair way, but its not worth rolling the dice.

beardown ,

its not worth rolling the dice.

You poor helpless baby

VictoriaAScharleau ,

your accusation of bad faith is, itself, bad faith.

nyctre ,

I'm sorry but wasn't Marxism-Leninism developed by Stalin? You're agreeing with Stalin, not Lenin, aren't you? Partly with Lenin as well, sure, but you're forgetting Stalin here. Or is that a marketing thing?

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Stalin used Lenin's ideas, because he was pretty much carrying them over. Stalin was merely the one to coin the term, not really the ideas behind it.

Lenin was a Marxist, he didn't consider himself a "Leninist." It's like how Jesus was Jewish, not Christian, though please don't take that metaphor any further, comparing Lenin to Jesus is not the intent.

nyctre ,

I thought Lenin used his interpretation of the communist manifesto to develop Leninism (even if he didn't call it that). Then Stalin "improved" on that and developed Marxism-Leninism and then Mao "improved" it further and made Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. They're all Marxism, but like... Super Saiyan 1,2,3 etc versions of them.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Kinda? Lenin's ideas aren't a morphing or changing of Marxism, and it certainly wasn't just the Manifesto, but Marx's actually important works. Lenin looked at Marxism, studied it, and applied Marxist analysis to his conditions in Tsarist Russia. Notably adding his analysis of Imperialism and Revolution.

Mao did the same thing, applied Marxism (and took inspiration from Lenin) with respect to China's conditions.

The reason why Marxism-Leninism is by far the most common is because we are still clearly in the age of Imperialism as described by Lenin, and his analysis is still valid. Rejecting Lenin is very unusual for Marxists, because Lenin basically applied Marxism to the contemporary era where Revolution has been delayed due to super-exploitation of the third world in exchange for super-profits.

archomrade ,

though please don't take that metaphor any further, comparing Lenin to Jesus is not the intent

Lmao

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

I can be funny from time to time, haha

boredtortoise ,

Exactly. They're the left sect of fascism, and have "purged" communists in the past

fuckingkangaroos ,

Plenty of people try Lemmy then promptly leave when they realize it's run by "Marxists" (i.e. people pretending to Marxists as a facade for spreading CCP propaganda).

Kalcifer ,
@Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works avatar

it's run by "Marxists"

Lemmy isn't run by any one entity. Lemmy is essentially just the protocol that the Lemmyverse is built off of, which itself is an extension of ActivityPub.

fuckingkangaroos ,

You're right, I knew better but still conflated the Lemmyverse and Lemmy.ml.

xigoi ,
@xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Because Lemmy is usually marketed as the Fediverse alternative to Reddit, not as a communist platform.

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

bdonvr ,

Yeah this is the origin of Lemmy. Reddit banned some far left subreddits years ago and so some Communists went and made Lemmy.

Just block the instance if it bothers you. Jeez.

BarbecueCowboy ,

lemmy.ml was one of the targets in one of the larger reddit migration waves before we found out how heavy handed the censorship was there at the time and there's a few large communities that cling to it. And, it's fair, the communities there don't typically generate anything where they would reasonably expect to be affected, but still if you block the whole instance, you basically just have to go without as there frequently aren't similar communities to fill the void.

ksynwa ,
@ksynwa@lemmy.ml avatar

lemmy.ml shut down registration during the migration of sweaty reddit nerds.

eldavi ,

this post makes me wish lemmy.world did the same thing

ksynwa ,
@ksynwa@lemmy.ml avatar

As far as I can tell, .world is great for the reddit emigres. There have been disagreements amd drama (as is tradition with online communities especially federated ones) but the instance is doing fine it seems.

BarbecueCowboy ,

If you're talking about the API blackout, there is evidence that it was broken briefly, but there's nothing indicating it was purposefully disabled for any reasonable amount of time.

There are even posts from the lemmy.ml admins about how difficult it was dealing with the users who had migrated and how difficult it was to deal with the new users. Maybe you're talking about a different migration, but I have no idea where you got this idea from.

ksynwa ,
@ksynwa@lemmy.ml avatar

I don't know about this API blackout. I am talking about something else entirely. When Reddit migration was at its peak, registrations on this instance (lemmy.ml). The reason given was that the devs did not want to overwhelm themselves with the abruptly increased administrative and moderation responsibilities. At that time, Lemmy (the software) was facing significant performance issues as well, owing to the fact that that many users had not used Lemmy concurrently before that.

On the other hand, I tried to find the announcement post for this. (I remember one existing.) But I couldn't. Have I hallicinated an elaborate scenario? I am not sure. Will try to look again.

BarbecueCowboy ,

On the reddit end, the API blackout was probably responsible for the largest reddit migration, around June of last year. It's the high point for active monthly users for Lemmy on fediverse observer still and we had a lot less lemmy instances then. All those other items would be true beyond turning off signups, there were many conversations about performance issues along with a lot of concerns about moderation.

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.

GenderNeutralBro ,

Regarding lemmy.ml: yes, you should avoid it. It does not make sense to create politically-neutral communities on a politically-oriented instance.

Regarding Dessalines: The great thing about Lemmy is that I don't need to give a shit about the lead developer's politics, because he's not in control of how Lemmy is used, and if he ever tried some kind of heinous cross-instance power grab, it would get shut down before it got started.

Regarding the cognitive dissonance required to A) value decentralization of power, and also B) support the CCP: 🤦

kersplomp ,

Regarding the cognitive dissonance required to A) value decentralization of power, and also B) support the CCP: 🤦

It's simple: People who gain from misinformation create platforms that empower bots and sockpuppets.

fuckingkangaroos ,

Bingo

sushibowl ,

Regarding the cognitive dissonance required to A) value decentralization of power, and also B) support the CCP: 🤦

One of the tenets of Marxism-Leninism is that a dictatorship is required to guide the proletariat to communist society (which would be completely stateless). So the dissonance is inherent in Leninist dogma 🤷

Cowbee , (edited )
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Dictatorship of the Proletariat. This is used in contrast with Capitalist Liberal Democracy, which Marx called the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie. It doesn't refer to a literal Dictatorship as we commonly understand it, but instead to whichever class controls the state, Capitalists or Workers.

Lenin didn't invent the concept of the DotP, that was Marx, and was his way of advocating for violent revolution, which in Engels words is "the most authoritarian action one could take" in his essay On Authourity.

As for Communism being Stateless, yes, technically, but as a long result of elimination of contradictions. Marx didn't see the state as an "evil" so much as a tool that would eventually just be unnecessary, same as Money, not a temporary sacrifice for something eventually greater. This is outlined in Critique of the Gotha Programme.

sushibowl ,

All well and good, but the term dictatorship here still refers to a situation where the state apparatus has complete control over the means of production, in other words a total centralisation of power. Indeed in Marxism-Leninism the dictatorship takes the form of a vanguard party forming a single party state. Whichever way you look at it, practical power resides with a very small group of individuals.

The contrast with the eventual stateless communist society, in which power would be completely decentralised, is quite striking. It's not quite clear to me how Marxist-Leninist theory envisioned the transition from one to the other, although it seems to me there was a general feeling that central economic planning and industrialization would fairly quickly lead to the end of scarcity altogether, which in hindsight seems... very optimistic.

If you ask me, the ideals of communism mostly died around the same time as Lenin. Pretty much all communist states that have existed (and currently exist) are mainly interested in maintaining their own power structures rather than actually working their way towards the idealised communist society. Which pretty much just makes them dictatorships in the classical sense.

Cowbee , (edited )
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Yes, Marx and later Lenin argued for complete centralization of power in the hands of the proletariat, and in Lenin's case, an additional group of well-read proletarians dedicated to leading the revolution.

A common misconception is that a non-ML revolution wouldn't have a vanguard, Lenin is literally just referring to whoever is the most advanced and leading the revolution. A vanguard may be a group of Anarchists trying to lead the revolution, even if they don't use Democratic Centralism like Lenin did and advocates for in State and Revolution.

Marx also didn't believe there would one day be a state and the next it would collapse, same with Lenin. They believed that over time the Material Conditions would lessen the need for a state until it "whithered away" over time. It wouldn't be a relinquishing of power, but a shrinking.

Complete statelessness would have the same centralized power as Socialism, just without a state. This centralization becomes a decentralization, in that the Proletariat can democratically operate the Means of Production, which they cannot under Capitalism. If this sounds confusing, Marx makes this clear in Critique of the Gotha Programme. You refer to the state as an "other," distinct from the workers, when it is an extension of them and made up of them in Socialism, according to Marx. There would still be a government, just no means by which one class oppresses another.

Marx was not an Anarchist, who instead believe in free association and networks of mutual aid.

I don't believe Communism has died. It may seem that way if you see systems as static, and not as ever-changing and evolving along with humanity and technology.

Cybermonk_Taiji ,

Isn't it interesting how wrong they all were? Interesting.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Capitalists? Yep.

OwlYaYeet ,

What about Marxist-Lemmyism?

SpaceCadet ,
@SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

It's basically the underpants gnomes meme

  1. Dictatorship
  2. ???
  3. Utopia!
Cursed ,

Judging from other threads on the matter, a lot of people don't even know what "tankie" means.

So here's a pro tip: replace "tankie" with "dipshit" and the meaning remains the same.

YSK: lemmy.ml is managed by dipshits, and lead lemmy developer is a dipshit

Potatos_are_not_friends ,

That's not a really good example. You can replace "dipshit" with "potato" and it will mean the same too.

otp ,

I can't help but read the first word of your username as rhyming with "Protoss"

mryessir ,

My lemmy client is able to locally block anything I do not want to see.
And I do not want to live in a bubble, so I didn't block .ml.
There are many quality post and comments so I would advise against a premature defederation.

But what do I know

p5yk0t1km1r4ge ,
@p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.world avatar

Then kick his ass out?

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.

otp ,

I'm glad that this is the controversy on Lemmy, and not things like Reddit had with r/JailBait.

I'm perfectly fine with just avoiding interactions with lemmy.ml communities. They can exist, even if I disagree with them. And if I wanted to participate, I'd probably be welcome so long as I follow the rules. Unlike r/Conservative, which required proving yourself to the mods to get a pass to enter or something...lol

But yes, it's definitely good to know what the .ml stands for, and to keep that in mind whenever one sees Lemmy.ml.

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

I subbed to r/conservative myself I tend to like to browse most political subreddits left and right. I didn't see any "proving yourself to get a pass to enter" I just remember making a comment on a post about Tiananmen square on the anniversary clicking the join icon then getting 2 automod messages one telling me that I'm banned from justiceserved and another alerting me that I've subbed to r/conservative.as simple as that. I think you might be refering to r/blackpeopletwitter which uh I think this screenshot should speak for itself

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/a3d8f609-be0d-481b-b798-474e9405616f.webp

Wrench ,

R/conservative had the habit of locking most comment threads to members only. It may have been an exclude instead of include list.

otp ,

It was an include list, from what I recall, that required signing up for having a mod go through your message/post history, lol

trafficnab ,

In order to participate in the vast majority of active r/conservative threads (any tagged "Flaired Users Only", which 9 of the top 10 posts right now are), you need to first pass a mod purity test to prove you're "conservative enough", it's not a serious place and is mostly just dumb Facebook-tier memes and poor quality screenshots of news headlines or random tweets

otp ,

No, I don't think I mixed up r/Conservative with r/BlackPeopleTwitter...lmao

oce ,
@oce@jlai.lu avatar

And if I wanted to participate, I’d probably be welcome so long as I follow the rules.

Not only the rules, you also have to avoid critizing the dominant ideology, otherwise you will get at best dog pilled, at worse harassed and censored by moderation.

carl_marks_1312 ,
@carl_marks_1312@lemmy.ml avatar

avoid critizing the dominant ideology

You're free to criticize liberalism on .ml all you want.

Modern_medicine_isnt ,

Honestly, is that different here? Dogpiling is the rage everywhere. It's better than reddit, but you still have a hard time if you even question something that follows the dominant ideology here. And God forbid you actually read any of the articles people post and point out that commenter's are just making shit up to fit that ideology.

otp ,

you will get at best dog pilled

What's a dog pill? Lol

Blackmist ,

I suspect there's way worse on the fediverse than Jailbait. There was a list posted a few months back of all the most defederated instance, and tankies didn't even get a look in. I didn't dare click them. Some of the domain names alone made me feel like I was going on a watchlist for even knowing about them.

otp ,

I don't doubt it. There's definitely a difference when something is in the Fediverse though rather than all hosted on the same servers. It's a lot easier to say "We don't condone this" when a server is defederated from the gross ones.

Rai ,

Eh I went to a bunch of them and nothing horrible, the most morally objectionable was loli but it was all drawn

Schadrach ,

I'm glad that this is the controversy on Lemmy, and not things like Reddit had with r/JailBait.

Lemmy already had a round of that, specifically over loli. It's why a lot of instances block burghit.moe - they don't ban loli and have a few loli specific subs.

The only other Lemmy server I know of that allows loli subs is the rad queer one and it's tiny and also blocked by many other instances, though I don't know if that's for the loli or the general rad queer thing. Really, likely both.

otp ,

Yeah, though I think there's a difference between Reddit having it vs. Lemmy having it. Especially with popular/general instances defederating from the scummy ones

Schadrach ,

The main difference is that you can choose to use an instance that doesn't.

But to a user of an instance that defederated burggit it's more or less a direct parallel to r/jailbait, just with the extra step of asking the instance to confirm and losing the rest of the instance and not just the one community.

SpaceCadet ,
@SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

I'm perfectly fine with just avoiding interactions with lemmy.ml communities

I would be fine with that too. If the instance was just tankie people talking tankie bullshit, like lemmygrad or hexbear, it would be easy to ignore. Unfortunately it's not that simple.

The problem is that lemmy.ml has a more privileged status in the fediverse: being the first Lemmy instance in existence it still holds quite a number of popular communities that are still frequented by people from the whole fediverse, and the tankies wield their power there as well. Like literally: make a disliked comment on /c/memes and you get banned from /c/Technology, /c/linux, /c/Progammer Humor, /c/Mechanical Keyboards,... and all your other favorite communities on lemmy.ml as well. This actually happened to me.

A second issue is that the mods make efforts to hide the censorship that they are doing, because they know it's not a good look. If you examine the modlog over there you'll see that the first half of the page is like a day's worth of moderation activities, and the second half covers 4 years. So where's the rest? The many controversial comment removals and bans that happened a few days ago on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre, and who knows what else, have all been disappeared.

So yes, I think it is very important that people are being made aware of this and I also think a concerted effort should be made to move bona fide communities away from an instance ruled by bad faith actors.

otp ,

So yes, I think it is very important that people are being made aware of this and I also think a concerted effort should be made to move bona fide communities away from an instance ruled by bad faith actors.

Yeah, this sounds perfectly reasonable.

It's not like it was some grand conspiracy to make all those communities communist. It's just how Lemmy originated. As Lemmy grows, it's bound to get more communities on other instances, and if enough people hate the moderation on ML, then the other communities' growth will start to outpace the originals. It's not like Reddit where there are default subs (afaik).

electric_nan ,

YSK: you will never see more pathetic whining than people on Lemmy constantly complaining about "tankies". Full disclosure: I have been called a tankie one time in two years on Lemmy. I commented on a post that was basically jerking off to the idea that Japan would repeat its atrocities against China in the event that there was a war over Taiwan. I expressed doubt that it would go very smoothly, for which I was banned and labeled a tankie.

Linkerbaan ,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

Lemmy.world is like a Trump echo chamber. They keep screaming about their imaginary tankies on .ml but when you go on .ml there's less tankies than Zionists on .world

StupidBrotherInLaw ,

I've actually seen real tankie rhetoric on occasion, but tankie is becoming Lemmy.world's woke. It increasingly means something that certain people don't like.

The hysteria is mostly promulgated and perpetuated by a small number of people. It's just easy karma farming for some (PugJesus/Yeetpics) while others seem to actually have an issue with tankies and/or the bonkers censorship on lemmy.ml. If you block the former group and their alts, the amount of whining lessens significantly, mostly leaving people with honest issues with actual tankies.

K1nsey6 ,
@K1nsey6@lemmy.world avatar

Lemmy was built by those tankies you disagree with. Numerous accounts have discredited the official US bullshit about Tiananmen Square and the fake Uyghur Genocide.

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

Lol loser

StupidBrotherInLaw , (edited )

Damn son, you sure showed him! With a one-two punch of clever wording and masterful insight, you showed us all the level of wit and intellect anyone will have to deal with if they dare to... pull the ripcord@lemmy.world.

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

Yes

hightrix ,

Mind linking to a post discrediting the “official is bullshit about Tiananmen square”? I’m genuinely curious about the counter arguments.

alcoholicorn , (edited )

I have to link it on hexbear as the .ml admins deleted the post for being orientalist af.

But more simply: Here's the full video of Tank Man.

Note that in the beginning, you can see the square, there are not hundreds of thousands of machine-gunned protesters being crushed into paste by tanks, burned, and sprayed down the drain, as the official US narrative goes.

There's also this context: https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/112/563/782/759/076/800/original/d60c38f786621419.mp4

We know the western narrative is entirely fictional, we can't verify that the chinese narrative is 100% accurate, but none of the evidence disproves it, so it's probably closer to the Chinese narrative that 250-300 people died in battles in the streets surrounding the square.

aubeynarf ,

Can you link or provide reference to the official US narrative?

K1nsey6 ,
@K1nsey6@lemmy.world avatar

Wikileak cables

More Wikileaks diplomatic cables

culprit ,
@culprit@lemmy.ml avatar

https://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananmen.php

Columbia Law Review

The Myth of Tiananmen
And the price of a passive press

June 4, 2010

A few people may have been killed by random shooting on streets near the square, but all verified eyewitness accounts say that the students who remained in the square when troops arrived were allowed to leave peacefully. Hundreds of people, most of them workers and passersby, did die that night, but in a different place and under different circumstances.

The Chinese government estimates more than 300 fatalities. Western estimates are somewhat higher. Many victims were shot by soldiers on stretches of Changan Jie, the Avenue of Eternal Peace, about a mile west of the square, and in scattered confrontations in other parts of the city, where, it should be added, a few soldiers were beaten or burned to death by angry workers.

FireTower ,
@FireTower@lemmy.world avatar

https://youtu.be/kMKvxJ-Js3A

umbrella ,
@umbrella@lemmy.ml avatar

oh no!

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