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):
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.
This whole lemmy tankie dev thing has been discussed ad nauseam here for the past year or so. Not sure what solutions you suggest, but if I were to filter my software by who’s an asshole dev and who’s not, that list will end up really short.
As far as the ml instance goes, I don’t agree that we should start defederating left and right with any and all undesirables, but to each their own. At least people now will be in the know, and it might take some weight off lemmy.world
I’ve only been on Lemmy a month, and this shit is already exhausting. Isn’t a main point of this whole fediverse thing that you can just block entire instances as well as users? Why is this even an ongoing topic that spans multiple communities?
Isn’t a main point of this whole fediverse thing that you can just block entire instances as well as users?
You can do exactly that. OP wants everyone to do it.
I’m new here, so pardon my lack of understanding. But if this lemmy_.ml place is engaging in such disagreed upon behavior by so many people, why hasn’t it been banned so I’m not even seeing it in the first place? I’ve recently learned there are whole lemmy servers ignored or banned by most other civil lemmy servers due to their bad behavior, why not ml?
If this really has been going on for over a year, and so many communities are against it, why is it not banned?
Who would “ban” Lemmy.ml? There isn’t a “master instance” over all, each instance is an island.
Lemmy.world is currently discussing whether or not to sever ties with Lemmy.ml, just like Literature.cafe alreay did.
Lemmy.world has already defederated from Lemmygrad and Hexbear, the 2 largest Marxist instances, so Lemmy.ml is the last major Marxist-friendly instance that Lemmy.world interacts with.
For clarity, Lemmy.ml is seen very positively by some servers, and negatively by others. You are getting viewpoints largely from Lemmy.world, whereas other communities like db0, Hexbear, Lemmygrad, Blahaj.zone, or otherwise may have different or opposite stances.
That’s the beauty and messiness of federation.
Please bear in mind that I’m a lemmy.ml user (though not a tankie, nor marxist, nor even socialist.)
Look at OP. How many lines are about smearing someone for their politics and beliefs (Even the subject line covers ONLY that), and how many are about the need to improve moderation practices at .ml (precious few, not even the subject line).
IMO that’s one reason. The discussion rarely ends up being about moderation practices even when that’s the stated goal. It ends up being about not liking someone’s views.
The other reasons - you can personally block that instance if you choose, but for it to be hidden from EVERYONE on an instance, the admins of the instances need to make that decision. (To defederate.) There are lots of potential reasons not to do so, and I think many of them boil down to not throwing out the baby with the bathwater since there are plenty of users on ml like me who are not tankies and are just having the same discussions we’d have anywhere.
I got a 3 day ban from one single community at .ml within my first couple days here for using the term “whataboutism” - I suspect it was an automod action. I wasn’t really happy about it, but eh? shrug
I have the same answer for folks now that I did when social media was somehow full of US conservatives claiming they could no longer speak their minds on social media. No one is obligated to give me or you or anyone a platform. If Lemmy.ml is that much of a shithole, it will eventually get defederated broadly, and everyone who isn’t a tankie will stop using it.
The occasional thread like this, or someone complaining that my opinion is invalid because I’m an ml user (has happened maybe three times) are the only times I ever think about it really.
This would make a ton of sense if your choice of Lemmy instance were not just that; a choice. It’s not a characteristic innate to your being that you’re born with or something.
You can choose to associate with whatever instance you want and swap it up with another account somewhere else if you want at any time (you can prob keep the same username if you want too).
(you can prob keep the same username if you want too).
Unless it is already taken on the new instance, you absolutely can. Usernames are namespaced similar to email addresses. So,
example@lemmy.worldandexample@lemmy.mlare considered two different users. This means that there is no technical reason preventing it.This would make a ton of sense if your choice of Lemmy instance were not just that; a choice. It’s not a characteristic innate to your being that you’re born with or something.
Either I don’t understand your objection, or you don’t understand my point. Legitimately it could be either of those. I don’t see what this has to do with most of what I said above.
You can choose to associate with whatever instance you want and swap it up with another account somewhere else if you want at any time (you can prob keep the same username if you want too).
OK, yes… Are you saying I should move my account elsewhere because OP (or some other people) don’t like that my account says .ml at the end? Or because I’m only supposed to have an account on instances where I agree with the political leanings of those who run it?
There’s an awful lot of political views around that aren’t tankie.
And it’s less about the users and more about the kind of lopsided, censorship moderation that happens on .ml
Tankie is a pejorative. We should stop using that - I am not sure what the best replacement is, authoritarian? Fascist?
OP seems to believe that the unfair admin/mod practices stem from their political beliefs. e.g., going against their very own Code of Conduct, the amins in question used subversive database manipulation practices to eliminate the mod-log explanations for their actions, and also preemptively banned various people from communities that they had never (even so much as once) commented in, in the past. The latter is EXTREME, and the former is disingenuous.
Oh, but the admin is an authority-loving fascist, hence it suddenly all makes sense: “service to stated principles that serve the community good” give way to “whoever has the power to accomplish things does whatever they want”, in that world-view. So they are not entirely as disconnected as you might wish in a purely mathematical & theoretical world. This is the real world, where it gets messy, and EVERYTHING gets political. But okay, what if OP made a poorly-written post - b/c their heart jumped out ahead of their brain - what then? It doesn’t mean that it’s not true, or a good thing to do, even then, and moreover what to do about it now? Re-word it if you like and write and post a new one? But this is the one that we have. Yeah, again, irl gets messy sometimes.
You missed some stuff yourself btw. As individual people block you - by which I do not just mean personally but your entire instance of choice - increasingly you will find yourself speaking to an echo chamber consisting of fascists + those who are more neutral towards authoritarianism. You will reply to people, and wonder why so few ever reply back to you - but it won’t be b/c they don’t like you (well maybe some, I dunno:-P), and rather they won’t even see your replies unless they happen to visit that section of the comments for some other reason. They can do so, but they will not be notified so they will not be made aware of your desire to communicate.
This event is happening, like it or not, and one way or another. This OP at least gives us the chance to talk about it, before things go too far and even this much communication becomes impossible. i.e., the Western world is offering you this lifeboat, to let you know what is coming. Truth Social surely does far worse, and when Elon took over Twitter and renamed it to X, he didn’t warn people, and instead just started removing and banning at will/whim. But the rest of the Fediverse isn’t going to remain associated with fascism just b/c some innocent people have an account on Lemmy.ml.
Btw, in your Settings under “Import/Export Settings” there is a large button Export that can make a JSON file, and in a new account you can Import it, for easy transfer of your settings. You’d lose all your past comments/replies/up-/downvotes, but if you also transfer your iconic avatar and keep the same name, many people may not even notice.
I am sorry that this is upsetting to you.
First, thanks for the thoughtful and thorough reply.
I am sorry that this is upsetting to you.
It’s not upsetting to me, it’s just annoying. I strongly support the block early/block often culture that seems to pervade the fediverse, even when that is folks blocking me. I also support the ability to defederate, and strongly support (for example) pre-emptively defederating from threads.
Indeed, such decisions at the user or instance level are potentially messy, but the whole thing just seems self-healing over time to me. There’s an equilibrium that needs to be reached, I think, and I doubt we’re anywhere near it yet. Some instances are going to end up isolated, either by themselves or by others, and some won’t. New instances will spring up, instances will shut down, etc etc. People will move around to find a new instance when needed. It’s all really sloppy and the outcome for any one user or instance isn’t necessarily going to match the outcome for another. That’s freedom to me. And not in some maga “free speech means I get to be a jerk but no one can call me out” way, but in a “we’re all empowered to influence our own experience here” way. People can block, instances can defederate, people can deploy their own instance and make it as open or closed or personal or public as they want to. Hot damn.
And all that is going to create friction and people are going to disagree with each other about how to do it and what the right way is, just like we’re doing here.
But, despite your very reasonable rationalizations for OP, and regardless of their intent, this very subconversation and others are evidence that this isn’t what a discussion about moderation practices looks like. It’s what a discussion about publicly calling someone out with a pejorative term for their beliefs looks like. Expressing that opinion, and defending it when required, is the extent of my involvement or concern. I don’t share the beliefs of OP nor their target. Whether folks want to change how they are discussing the issue or not is up to them. That’s also freedom, in my opinion.
I might migrate instances at some point, I might not, we’ll see how things go, but it’s not going to be because of this post from OP. Folks can run their instances as they see fit. They don’t owe me a platform, nor OP.
It’s what a discussion about publicly calling someone out with a pejorative term for their beliefs looks like
Tbf, that’s b/c that’s what you turned it into… I think? You brought it up, hence we are now discussing that. Tbf that is what you saw within the OP to begin with, so I am not saying that the discussion was not worth having. And I did mention that OP might have done a lot better in their wording choices.
However, I am suggesting to look past the format of the OP, to more clearly see its content, even if OP could have made that process a lot easier from the start by having chosen a different name than ‘tankie’. Which starts not here but from reading the linked posts too - I know it’s A LOT of comments (~800 iirc at last count), but at the very least start with just the top-ranked ones. It’s not good. OP presumed that people already knew that, and just in case, gave those exact links so that people could catch up to that, before getting into depth into this post.
They don’t owe me a platform, nor OP.
Oh absolutely 100% agree. The Fediverse is what we make of it, as you said, and we are doing that right now.
So if we are past the poor wording choice, the real issue (imho at least, perhaps OP themselves disagrees) is that those linked posts describe a situation where the admins are using database manipulation to edit the mod logs. Think about what that means. Slightly less but still extremely offensive, those admins are also mass- and preemptively banning people from communities that they have never so much as commented in even once, for a comment made in some other community that said something negative about China. This is not okay. People are not going to put up with this. The former is actually a deceptive practice, and the latter isn’t nearly as bad but is still abusive, on the level of Reddit.
These posts calling for defederation of the rest of the Fediverse from Lemmy.ml aren’t going to simply disappear, unless those admins step down. Instead, some instances will defederate from them, others will proudly remain federated with everyone, and overall a new equilibrium will be formed, but in the meantime there will be much turmoil.
Read the linked posts - most especially https://lemmy.world/post/16211417. This is not just about OP disagreeing with them politically. They may have worded it to look like that, but that is not all that is going on - it’s not even the half of it. THAT post at least is about how modding should be done. And this one seems to have been meant as the next step. Though if you want to make a new post to replace OP’s wording choices with your own, it may help? As you say, OP made the mistake of wrapping the real issue inside of an easily-dismissable minor one as if they were one and the same.
Edit: Oh but I should have said: and if you choose not to make such a post, that’s fine. At least we are enjoying this conversation about it all:-).
Because the Lemmy user base is still relatively small, so the drama in one corner takes up a nontrivial amount of the total area. If it were the size of reddit or tiktok, you wouldn’t pay threads like these any mind.
It’s all over because it’s a pervasive problem, and it’s obviously off putting to a lot of people.
And it’s especially a problem when there are random communities peppered in your feed that you simply can’t participate in randomly, even though they may be the largest of their kind.
Ive been banned from communities I have yet to participate in, for no reason, and without any responses from mods when I ask what happened.
It’s making it so the entire platform becomes toxic unless you actively persevere through their unfair practices.
It’s important to me because I really liked Reddit back in the day, and before that the disperate forums that existed all over. I’m sure there are plenty of people who are interested in those same things, but are put off when they inevitably say something “liberal” in a meme space and are attacked for it. It’s toxic and it is counter to growth.
Not to mention how blatant an echo chamber it creates, and how naive users can be indoctrinated to misinformation without even a hint of counter discussion being allowed.
Edit: desperate to disperate
I can’t even see what instance you’re from, but your account is only a couple months old. Why not create one on a different instance?
I’ve been banned from several .ml subs, some of which are so popular they appear on All, and I didn’t know I was banned until I tried to upvote, but I’ve never participated otherwise in them, it was punitive for other comments and discussions I’ve had where I have debated politics and, propaganda, and media with mods.
I may actually be banned from the instance, but i don’t know how to investigate such things. But .ml came up an awful lot when I was looking into how to join Lemmy, obviously, and I had no idea how bad the mod practices and ideological bend would be on what amounts to one of the “main” instances.
I’m on shitjustworks, which I really like. But before I knew how different instances worked, I just assumed Lemmy was Reddit power tripping mods 2.0 across all of Lemmy. I’m glad I persevered a little bit to get to more communities.
You are, for the next 7 days. This is your modlog actions on Lemmy.ml:
https://lemmy.ml/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&userId=9504078
Some of that stuff would get you banned from shitjustworks though too - e.g. civility.
I had a conversation with the mod who deleted my comments for being uncivil. A troll reported me being an asshole to him, as he trolled. If you look at the deleted thread, you can see their deleted comments.
it’s not my proudest moment, but I firmly believe that assholes should he confronted by assholes, and I took it upon myself in that moment.
Aside from that single interaction, I have abided by the rules of the forum and been polite, within reason. But I have, without remorse, questioned bullshit and disinformation.
Well I hope it helps that now you know how to check your modlog actions:-). You put your name in the box, but the hard part is figuring out which modlog even has the record of the event - though usually the instance where the community is located at.
Yeah I wonder how much assholery those admins bring upon themselves by being that way to others first, it’s like they almost do it on purpose and then use it as an excuse - e.g. Russia will say “poor me, the Ukraine is attacking me, it’s so not fair boo-hoo” :-P.
It’s because they’re on the same instance as you (and me)
Ooh, good to know. I’m still a noob here, lol
OP wants to feel like a saviour of us all from tankies.
OP has been here two months, and they were shocked to find out an instance literally named after Karl Marx and John Lennin would pretend to be on the left but support authoritarian governments…
And they assume since they just “discovered” it, no one else knows.
… John Lennin?
“Imagine no private ownership of the means of production, I wonder if you can”
It’s crazy to think about, but even after all these years, people insist he was bigger than Jesus
Imagine all the Pol Pot…
I’m the walrus
John Lennin. Rofl Mao
It’s as if people are joining and learning things.
Been here an almost year and literally just learned that from the above post.
It’s not named after Lemmy from Motörhead?
They probably mean the
.mlpart.
Not sure what solutions you suggest
That’s why I included this section in my post:
And the discussions for finding/creating alternative communities on other instances: https://lemmy.world/post/16235541
They were wondering about the dev thing. Having a lead dev be an asshole isn’t that big of a deal. It’s open source, so any code that would somehow benefit them would also benefit you.
Yeah, like linus is a known cunt to work with, i’ll still update my kernel regularly though
Not defending his behavior but I would note that he has been actively seeking to remedy his cunty-ness after becoming aware of how problematic it was and the problematic people that it attracted.
i’ve been on the receiving end of his cunty-ness in person as a lowley tech support minion that he was forced to work with, as well as several other well known pioneers; i can tell through this thread that dessalines is an angel by comparison and i’ve never met them.
I’d certainly say so. I’ve yet to see him even coming off as dismissive without trying to clarify why in a polite manner.
I had to block a handful of bad actors, maybe around 15, and don’t have much issue now. As usual it’s a very small, very vocal minority that’s doing most of the shitting in the pool. Unfortunately many are also mods of communities like [email protected], so generally not subscribing to stuff there is a good policy too.
It’s the Vampire Castle phenomenon of online leftist spaces. One dev and instance admin of Lemmy has problematic personal beliefs, so now we aren’t allowed to be on Lemmy anymore because it’s failed an ideological purity test that OP decided for the rest of us. In other news, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, is a hardcore Ayn Rand style freemarket libertarian, so I guess we should all ditch wikipedia and each buy a 400 pound Encyclopedia Britannica set. Because that’ll show him to believe things I think are terrible.
I got a 14 day instance ban for calling a tankie a tankie on ML. Their authoritarian ideology is dangerous and it needs to be quarantined.
You are more than welcome to block any and all content from that instance. You can do this by going under your user settings and clicking on the “Blocks” tab and searching for lemmy.ml in the Block Instance section. That’s the thing about Federated content. You have the power to selectively engage with the content of your choosing. You don’t get to quarantine others because there is no centralized authority that gets to say “your instance gets stuck in an internet ghetto where it isn’t allowed to interact with other users.” You have to quarantine yourself by excluding content. If that doesn’t work for you, then maybe it’s less that you dislike their authoritarian ideology and more that it isn’t the same flavor as your own.
I blocked ML months ago. I’m still going to keep calling for large instances to defederate, because sticking my fingers in my ears doesn’t make the problem go away.
Yes, that will happen when the “problem” lives solely between your ears.
It’s all so melodramatic. I’ll take a jaunt into the comments sections of these posts once in awhile to see what the libs are clutching their pearls over now. Today we have:
Oh nooooo, a dev is a ban happy shithead! How unusual and extreme! Better raise the banner and gather the troops, the tankies are coming for us all! We must defederate and/or fork a parallel Lemmy because only tankies have weird ban happy power trips! This will solve all the issues!
On the bright side, block op and the surprisingly small number of the other more vocal tankie drama lords and it gets a lot quieter.
On the bright side, block op and the surprisingly small number of the other more vocal tankie drama lords and it gets a lot quieter.
Getting worked up over a Lemmy instance upholding principles misaligned to yours, while Lemmy constitutes 3% of the Fediverse and the Fetiverse is still unknown to the vast majority, is a pointless waste of energy.
Yeah, I honestly give very few shits about the political opinions of the lemmy devs as long as it doesn’t taint the project itself -and if it did at some point in the future, forking an open-source project is stupidly easy.
I even donate a smidge of money to the development effort via librepay - man does need it to live after all.
Dessalines & Nutomic put a lot of effort into building and maintaining the lemmy codebase. I respect that.
Dessalines & Nutomic put a lot of effort into building and maintaining the lemmy codebase. I respect that.
I’ll add that they’re also generally quite pleasant when I see them on Lemmy. And I haven’t seen either of them involved in being ban-happy. Some will argue otherwise based upon misconstruing the relationship between FLOSS devs and FLOSS consumers as a business/customer relationship (expecting customer service and product manager input on software that’s donated free of charge). But, I think that those folks are just not yet familiar with how FLOSS development works.
I had my first ever comment, in decades of forums/reddit usage, get mod deleted because I was critical of China and the USSR. It was a fairly mild criticism. That action turned me off the whole instance.
Sad that you chose an .ml community to come back to. You can’t talk about Russia or China at all without getting deleted there, unless it’s saying that Tienamen Square never happened or something like that.
They learn from who they are worshipping. Exactly how the CCP control the narratives.
They learn from who
they are worshippingpays them and might disappear them if they say the wrong thing.
Same here, but they tried to claim I called a Steam Deck a “Rice Burner” as a racist insult when I randomly chose “rice” as the title for this meme to fill the mandatory title block.
Like, bro? Even if that was my intent, which it wasn’t even a term I had ever seen applied to a computer, it doesn’t make sense.
I looked at your downvotes because I see you at -2… Wear this like a badge of honor!
Most of the downvotes I see are lemmy.ml users. Which I find funny. Rice exists in so many countries outside of china, but because it reminds them of China it’s instantly bad since you’re using is negatively. It’s absurd.
LMAO!! Thank you! I’ve got them blocked but the fact they’re even voting me down is silly. It wasn’t even an insult because if I was even mentioning “ricing” it was the better of two options.
wow, you can see who up/downvoted a post? how do I do that?
Host your own lemmy instance. Or use Kbin(shows up as likes).
For some reason they decided that even though other activitypub services can see it just fine, lemmy will not show these things to normal users.
I thought it only showed Reduces from Kbin users? But then Kbin.social stopped showing any Reduces at all, and now Kbin.social is defunct for several days.
I tried Kbin.earth and Fedia.io but both show the Reduces as greyed out, at least for https://lemmy.world/comment/10490177 that I used as a test. I will try creating a login and see if that unlocks it.
Apparently its to do with a sport car scene where the Chinese couldn’t afford such luxuries but still want to participate and westerners or Americans would call these vehicle mods ricing
Now with linux theming we call ricing and that carries a racist connotation. How racist it actually is I am unsure but either way thats the reason people get upset.
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: 🤦
As a fellow communist, I was always bewildered by this urge of many tankies to prove by all means, against any evidence, that China is socialist and ultimately good.
It’s neither. China turned to markets, privatized many industries, and really did commit atrocities on Tiannamen square and in Xinjiang.
Doesn’t mean socialism as a system is dysfunctional. United States are directly responsible for insane atrocities all over the world, and we don’t need to deny that either.
We need to learn from the experience and strive for it not to happen again. Not close our eyes, scream “blah-blah-blah” and pretend it never happened.
China and the Soviet Union were responsible for acts of genocide, mass murdering/starving people, etc.
Doesn’t mean this didn’t happen in a capitalist world, and doesn’t mean we should close our eyes on that to defend the good look of the system. If anything, this does the opposite. Problems need to be solved, not ignored.
Currently we are witnessing a capitalist genocide in Gaza were children are starving to death and the working class are powerless to stop this. But yea denial on both sides certainty is problematic, the issue is though “tankie” communists will argue propaganda as well as the libs and conservatives. We have been bombarded with fictitious narrative that its a real struggle to find comprehensive and honest reporting of previous events.
Last month I read a “tankies” recap on Tiannamen Square protests, it went as far as to say there was no massacre and quoted creditable journalist that had reported a peaceful evening on the night of the massacre, but I equally saw photos of piled up buddies, bloodied police officers and alike. There’s also a conspiracy that the CIA staged the massacre or played some rule within it.
Ive also dealt with american denying the genocide in Vietnam, or Americas rule in creating North Korean.
Solidarity comrade
Tables are, like fascists, searching for dogmatic “easy” in a complex world. You know, like ignorant assholes.
All while it actually is kinda easy.
Some people found their niche and created good for the world, for which they were financially rewarded (this stage is every capitalist proponent’s dream).
Then those who earned money this way let their heirs inherit wealth. Some of those heirs multiplied it, and became so wealthy they could influence either politicians or the market itself.
From that moment onwards, generation after generation accumulate power and skew the world to fit their needs, with little regard to anyone else.
Without wealth redistribution, everyone else loses real economic and political power, and this is an inevitable endgame for capitalism because without this incentive such people wouldn’t do good stuff for the world to begin with. We just finally reap the fruits of the system that were always there, and without a great shake, a “communist threat”, this isn’t going anywhere.
The thing that influenced the world and turned the tides in the early XX century was the success of Soviet Union which radicalized people around the globe and forced bourgeoisie to make concessions.
Unfortunately, workers of most countries stopped there, the proposed worldwide revolution never came, and most of the capital remained by capitalists, which has put socialist block at a huge capital disadvantage, with which they still managed to sustain for most of XX century, building huge economies almost from scratch.
Along this way, many regimes have either faced grave mistakes or considered all means worthy, which has led to a lot of suffering. This was exacerbated by the fact that socialist block was primarily dominated by authoritarian regimes, which gave carte blanche for many leaders to act as they please, with little regard to collateral damage. Aside from that, the Cold War, while it can and should be blamed on both sides of the conflict, has led to plenty of proxy wars costing hundreds of thousands of lives.
That’s really it.
You also don’t affect lasting, meaningful change with dreams of an “uprising” or other fanciful ideas spawned by stories of Cuba in the 50’s. There will be no romantic struggle here, no plucky rebels, no heartwarming finale where everyone is happy.
If you want to make the world better, work on it from within the system and learn why the system is the way it is and what power you have as an individual and as a group, THIS is how people have changed the world before.
I would delight in socialism becoming more widespread and accepted as a system to maintain population growth and happiness, I argue for it all the time, we need a number of very important safety nets before we start feeling like our tax money is going into something less abstract than “America: fuck yeah!” But I also know it takes more than cosplay theatrics and defending tyrants.
edit: the tankies are mad.
On that, I’d sadly have to disagree to a degree.
Most radical shifts, especially as large as revamping an entire economic system, were violent or at least highly outside the existing framework, not some “change from the inside”.
Behind any government is a desire for self-preservation - and capitalist democracies rig elections by underrepresenting the disadvantaged and also, as other systems, through the bureaucratic inertia that is there for a reason.
Taking America as the most studied case, the two-party system absolutely does not allow for the building of socialism, as both parties are highly capitalist in nature, and the rest exist there as a pure formality, deprived of resources for actual political campaigning. All while plenty of anti-freedom acts are taken specifically to silence who people in power don’t want to see.
At the same time, the two leading parties create an illusion that this is the only choice and that Democrats are “the left” and act in the interest of the people. Even the most unprecedented case - the campaign of Bernie Sanders - came with what essentially can be seen as centrism - and even that was seen as “too much” with him failing miserably.
Similar story in many countries.
They flood the media, they control the opposition, and they approve anti-democratic laws - all to cement their place and make sure exactly that no change is ever gonna come from the inside.
Which is why, sadly, through all my desire for peace, I have to say that small and steady change is not enough. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t vote whoever’s the biggest and leftest in your area, that you shouldn’t do what is within the law and the current system to improve the situation where possible - but thinking it would be enough is a bit of a fairy dream.
The fairy dream here is thinking that America is ever going to suffer a violent uprising from a socialist/left direction.
I know if you consume all the propaganda it will feel like this is really the viable solution to so many of our problems, but every meme that proudly shows people in jumpsuits marching under a red flag, they tend to ignore the reality which is if every tankie and socialist were to topple the US government tomorrow, we would still have to live with the hundreds of millions of people who do NOT want a socialist utopia. There is no long-term planning, there is a really delusional belief with some people that actually says “Once the population sees how good it will be, they will fall in line” and I want to scream and physically shake you idiots out there who think this shit.
You can push our society towards more social policies that help more people, but this is nowhere close to a realistic time to talk about actual takeovers and coups. It’s insane and stupid and it fucking HURTS the cause advocating for better policies and social services.
No one expects America to turn communist today, not in 10, 20, 50 years. The red scare and capitalist propaganda is so bad it would be idiotic to assume America as a socialist frontier.
But:
- We have to work against red scare and change the people, not the government;
- We should develop revolutionary movements in other parts of the world. The successes of USSR in the 30s have seriously affected people everywhere, including America.
I get involved in my local elections and city/county boards to endorse and support every policy or candidate that either leans distantly socialist, or puts any measure of power or control back in the hands of the people and workers. That alone will do far, far more realistic good for each of us than “developing revolutionary movements.” That’s still roleplaying and I don’t think the USSR’s “successes” were as meaningful as the tankies propaganda makes it out to be. But that’s not an invite for a biased history lesson.
I think USSR really did influence the world in a big way. No debates, just stating my stance.
It is great that you participate in what you do, and I advise any socialist to act the same, but it doesn’t mean you can’t do both.
Fight the system in existing framework, but don’t forget it’s not the only way. Think revolutionary, but do not settle for that alone and fight the system by legal means too. One shouldn’t exclude the other.
That’s not what revolutionary Leftists think would happen, lol. That would be adventurism, not a mass worker movement. Please read any book by a revolutionary, nobody is advocating for coups and then hoping everyone falls in line, lol.
It sounds stupid because it is stupid, which is why the adventurists you speak of are seen as ridiculous among revolitionary leftists.
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prove by all means, against any evidence, that China is socialist and ultimately good
Taps life expectancy, infant mortality, and education statics
That’s it. That’s the nefarious methodology of the villainous Wumao.
By that I primarily meant “Chinese government is not guilty in atrocities it ordered to commit”
But in general, of course China is a miracle in many ways.
You could write textbooks about bad Chinese policies - foreign and domestic.
But a country on it’s fifteenth five year plan is most definitely socialist. And if any nation can qualify as “good”, the miracle of Chinese central planning would seem to qualify.
That’s why leftists are prone to like it. That, and the derth of foreign military conflicts. At least from the perspective of an American, the Chinese government is practically saint-like, simply because it isn’t trying to regime change every country it doesn’t like.
Pre-Iraq, I think you could make a much stronger “China bad” argument. But the bar is so much lower now.
The economy of China is not characterized by the common/social ownership of the means of production, which means it is not socialist. No amount of five-year plans can change that.
China does spark international conflicts and does bully its neighbors, but it is true that the country doesn’t cosplay world police and doesn’t participate much in military operations outside the country, which is a big plus.
As per the bar, it shouldn’t fall lower just because some country got even more evil. We can compare the evils, but the evil will be there.
With all that said, I do not say “China bad”. But claiming “China good” would also not be correct.
I don’t think people are saying that the PRC is economically Socialist, just that it has a Dictatorship of the Proletariat of some sort and appears to be more keen on keeping its bourgeoisie in check.
Coupled with their intent to challenge Western Imperialism (Lenin’s definition), I believe this explains critical support among Marxists for the PRC, despite the many flaws.
Kinda like supporting Biden over Trump, not like supporting Bernie over Trump. You work with what’s actually there, even if it isn’t what you wished, and hope things change for the better.
That makes sense.
The economy of China is not characterized by the common/social ownership of the means of production
30% of their industry is SOEs. They have a 90% home ownership rate and one of the most generous pension systems left standing - affording Chinese workers the opportunity to retire inside their 50s. The local property laws force foreign companies to share equity with regional firms, keeping both profits and IP domestic.
And while the high point of the old-school Commune System is long passed, the household responsibility system still guarantees public ownership of arable land. If you work the land, you own the fruit of your labor. That’s textbook Communism.
China does spark international conflicts and does bully its neighbors
the country doesn’t cosplay world police and doesn’t participate much in military operations outside the country, which is a big plus.
It goes beyond the negative. They’ve been a positive force for international relations, helping to buffer North and South Korea to prevent a new war, exporting $100B/year in agriculture products to curb global hunger, and pioneering industrial scale solar, wind, and nuclear technologies to mitigate climate change.
As a global diplomat, they’ve got cache that the Western states have squandered, making them a popular back channel in Middle Eastern politics.
And to quote Dr. Lubinda Haabazoka, Director at the University of Zambia’s Graduate School of Business
Every time Britain visits we get a lecture, every time China visits we get a hospital.
I would say that alone illustrates why Chinese foreign policy deserves praise.
Textbook communism is an economy that is 100% worker-owned, with everyone’s needs directly met without the intervention of money. The rest is not that, by literal definition. Let’s not play into the hands of people who want to call that communism and ultra-left to exploit in their own needs.
China does have some strong policies, but it doesn’t make it communist by any definition. Also, high home ownership rate is mostly a cultural phenomenon, with housing still seen as “best investment” despite the fact there are entire ghost towns full of houses that never ever filled.
I’m well aware that US pressures China militarily, and that China has a much more peaceful approach. However, Chinese ships regularly bully other countries in the South China Sea against international maritime laws.
The infrastructure China builds is not just a gift - but an investment on which China expects a return. I’m not convinced China is actively pursuing debt trap diplomacy, but it certainly uses economic power to pressure other countries into various concessions.
Textbook communism is an economy that is 100% worker-owned, with everyone’s needs directly met without the intervention of money
Utopian Communism is a stateless, moniless society that was hypothized by 19th century European theorists as a possible result of generations of revolutionary struggle.
But if you sit down and read the textbook, you’ll discover even the most idealistic thinkers don’t hold that it would happen overnight. Marx, himself, asserts a number of transitional states - industrial capitalism being one of them - necessary to reach surplus volumes capable of sustaining a post-money society.
China does have some strong policies, but it doesn’t make it communist by any definition.
The policies are the direct result of experimental application of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist socio-economic theory. They are explicitly and deliberately Communist, in the same way that American socio-economic policy is Capitalist.
The end goal of Chinese state policy is to advance to a state of publicly controlled superabundance. This is markedly different from the American policies intended to fashion fully privatized ownership of an artificially scare pool of goods and services.
The infrastructure China builds is not just a gift - but an investment on which China expects a return.
A return in the form of improved economic and political relations. It is for the same reason you would bring a gift to a birthday party.
That’s why leftists are prone to like it.
This has not been my experience speaking to leftists at all.
Two things:
- We can be critical of the mistakes of past socialist systems without falling into the trap of believing every red scare era lie about them.
- Not defending past socialist systems’ accomplishments makes current socialists look like absolute cucks.
Winning the rhetorical war cannot be done if you stop to qualify every single thing you advocate for by disavowing every society that has ever advocated for that thing. The USSR was the most equal society that has existed on this earth since the industrial revolution, and served every one of its member countries better than they are served by their capitalist successor governments today. Meanwhile, basically every person who has been lifted out of poverty in the past thirty years has been Chinese, proving that socialism fucking works in a way that capitalism doesn’t, even when both systems contain markets, wage labor, and an investment class.
We can be critical of the mistakes of past socialist systems without falling into the trap of believing every red scare era lie about them.
Absolutely! But we should also own up to the mistakes that really happened. China did turn to markets, because capitalist world once again got a critical share, and the benefits of international trade could hardly be overlooked. Tiannamen square massacre really happened, as documented in many instances. The conversion happening in Xinjiang is barely peaceful. USSR really did send insane amounts of people to GULAG, despite the scale of this atrocity often being overblown by liberals (but even still it’s massive), and really did forcefully move entire nationalities.
Don’t get me wrong, by any means, I do not denounce USSR or China and the roles they took in building a better future for everyone. In fact, the achievements they’ve made forced governments around the world to improve working and living conditions of the people - people that saw what the world could actually be. And inside countries, socialism has caused immense economic improvements - though, it must be said, the turn in both USSR and China was cruel and radical, which caused a lot of massive supply problems, famines, and more. But at the end of the day, they truly emerged the powerful forces on the world stage, and this really was an economic miracle and victory of the people.
If I would personally assess the heritage of the socialist era, I would say it was a massive win for the world. But if we want for the socialism to finally take over the world, we need to be fair with ourselves and others on the shortcomings of the bygone times. At the very least, not to repeat them again.
Not sure where you are from, but your type of worldly reasoned view does not come without exposure to multiple systems of governance. Labels like “socialism”, “communism”, “capitalism” are the Newspeak that are used to place the populace opinion into buckets with which to control. And I completely agree about the US - its entire history is based upon capitalism and will always be based upon capitalism. Biden is the MOST progressive president in 50 years, yet it’s a stretch to even call him a centrist he’s so enmeshed with the existing corporatists.
I operate dictionary definitions.
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production.
Socialism is dictated by the common (social) ownership of the means of production, and communism is a subset of socialism that entails absence of money and private property (note: not personal property).
US is blatantly capitalist. Nordic countries are capitalist, too. USSR was socialist, Russia is capitalist; revolutionary regime preceding the creation of USSR was also briefly communist (see: War communism), though, make no mistake, this wasn’t the kind of communism anyone wanted, it’s just that government couldn’t run monetary policy properly at the time and had even bigger issues.
I operate dictionary definitions.
What. The. Fuck?
Clarify, please?..
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.
If you’re new to Lemmy then it won’t be common knowledge at all.
Because Lemmy is usually marketed as the Fediverse alternative to Reddit, not as a communist platform.
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).
Great. now we have fediverse Stalin :D
That’s not quite correct, they are Marxists Leninists, who are the more Authoritarian and reactionary counterparts.
All Marxist-Leninists are Marxists, not all Marxists are Marxist-Leninists.
It’s accurate to describe them as Marxists still.
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?
Exactly. They’re the left sect of fascism, and have “purged” communists in the past
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.
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.
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.
I may not agree with the devs political view, but I think their work developing lemmy is excellent and made me subscribe to monthly donation on opencollective. Lemmy is an open source project where the devs have absolutely no say over how the software being used, as evidenced by so many lemmy instances defederating from lemmygrad and lemmy.ml. Their political belief won’t affect other instance.
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.
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. @[email protected] especially is a tremendous help for the open source community.
But of course you‘re entitled to your opinion. Have a good day.
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
Wait what? A communism advocate who also develops Free and Open Source Software, which is literally communist philosphy applied to computers?
I’m blown away
OP isn’t taking issue with that. They’re taking issue with the CPP/USSR apologetics.
A communist who supports communism?? GASP!!
You can be communist without sucking stalins cock or looking massacres and going “we didnt do and if we did it wasnt that bad, and if it was, they probably deserved it.” Its the uncritical idolation of the dictatorial aspects of communist projects that i object to.
The CPP and USSR are about as communist as the DPRK is democratic.
Lmao okay bud, I’m sure you’ve done lots and lots of research on the topic 🤭
Yeah, about a year ago when all the “wow, lemmy really feels like an edgy early internet discussion forum” threads were popping up, I think people forgot that those early forums were just eternal flame wars between communists and anarchists.
Communism didn’t invent empathy, humanism, solidarity, freedom or free sharing; it probably grew from there, and other things like FOSS can grow from there without being communist.
Yeah I didn’t mean that FOSS was born out of communism, I believe culturally/antropologically speaking is more a direct product of the hippie movements from the 60s.
What I meant is that FOSS is aimed at “giving the means of production back to the people” and “rejecting the privatization of intellectual property” (Stallman talked about those concepts in many interviews) and those are of the core principles in Marx’s philosophy.
I know that for some people “communism” can be a trigger word, but there’s a big difference between a philosophy and an authority.Also “empathy, humanism, solidarity…”: have you ever interacted with people on GitHub?
It’s not really communism. It’s all about freedom to compete. The bazaar is a market after all.
Note: Reference to The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Worth at least knowing of in regard to open source history.
Yes, but also they’re tankies. That’s basically Putler’s Russia if it were a Lemmy instance.
Do you know the political views of the developers of every piece of software you use? Why is Lemmy different?
Seriously
I am employed as a Software Engineer in the real estate sector. I’m also a commie. Many ultracapitalist assholes are using my software and they have no idea about my political views. I’m sure there are a lot more of us than one would normally think. It’s just that most of us are tired of having the same discussions with the same arguments over and over and over and over again, so we just don’t out ourselves 99% of the time :)
Because it’s not just any political view, tankism is part of the ideologies that support regimes which unmistakably restrict the freedom of speech. This could be an issue for an internet forum.
It’s actually not different from having a right wing billionaire buying a social media. It’s very much the same thing, and most people on the fediverse are there to avoid this kind of political influences on the platform.It’s actually not different from having a right wing billionaire buying a social media.
The difference with X/Twitter is that if you want to use it, you’re stuck with Elon Musk and the types of people that still use it.
With Lemmy, you can join an instance that has values you agree with, or even run your own instance and defederate/block any instances or people you don’t want to see. You’re not forced to see any particular communities or people.
It’s the radical moderators and developers of Lemmy that censor and delete posts and comments that fit their narrative. They are trying to foster authoritarian views and perpetuating lies (like tiananmen square didn’t happen, or Ukraine invaded russia). It’s a big mess that causes problems when people voice opposing views or even sourced material and get censored and banned. Using Lemmy feels like we have to accept their cooked views. I’m hoping there will be a fork or new federation project that doesn’t have baggage. Many moved here because of the reddit bs, and now there is extreme communism baggage.
It’s the radical moderators and developers of Lemmy that censor and delete posts and comments that fit their narrative.
The entire point of Lemmy and other decentralized and federated systems is that no one entity is in control of it. It’s not like a site like Reddit where the whole thing is controlled by one company.
They can only delete posts and comments from servers they’re moderators of. That’s probably just a few servers out of the thousands that exist. Nobody’s forcing any user to use those servers. If you don’t like the moderation on one server just move to a different one.
I’m hoping there will be a fork or new federation project that doesn’t have baggage.
Why fork it if the software works well as-is?
You can run your own Lemmy server and defederate from every other server if you want to, or only federated with a few hand-picked servers.
Because anti-communists will bicker about every single thing they’ve been taught not to like about communism and remain quiet in terms of criticism to the current system
Seems more “anti-authoritarian-communism” than anything.
It’s cool to be an anti-authoritarian communist. It’s not cool to spend half of your breathing time to talking shit about past leftist projects which were by all metrics less evil than capitalist ones.
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?
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.
