cross-posted from: https://feddit.nl/post/16246531
I feel like we need to talk about Lemmy’s massive tankie censorship problem. A lot of popular lemmy communities are hosted on lemmy.ml. It’s been well known for a while that the admins/mods of that instance have, let’s say, rather extremist and onesided political views. In short, they’re what’s colloquially referred to as tankies. This wouldn’t be much of an issue if they didn’t regularly abuse their admin/mod status to censor and silence people who dissent with their political beliefs and for example, post things critical of China, Russia, the USSR, socialism, …
As an example, there was a thread today about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre. When I was reading it, there were mostly posts critical of China in the thread and some whataboutist/denialist replies critical of the USA and the west. In terms of votes, the posts critical of China were definitely getting the most support.
I posted a comment in this thread linking to “https://archive.ph/2020.07.12-074312/https://imgur.com/a/AIIbbPs” (WARNING: graphical content), which describes aspects of the atrocities that aren’t widely known even in the West, and supporting evidence. My comment was promptly removed for violating the “Be nice and civil” rule. When I looked back at the thread, I noticed that all posts critical of China had been removed while the whataboutist and denialist comments were left in place.
This is what the modlog of the instance looks like:
Definitely a trend there wouldn’t you say?
When I called them out on their one sided censorship, with a screenshot of the modlog above, I promptly received a community ban on all communities on lemmy.ml that I had ever participated in.
Proof:
So many of you will now probably think something like: “So what, it’s the fediverse, you can use another instance.”
The problem with this reasoning is that many of the popular communities are actually on lemmy.ml, and they’re not so easy to replace. I mean, in terms of content and engagement lemmy is already a pretty small place as it is. So it’s rather pointless sitting for example in /c/[email protected] where there’s nobody to discuss anything with.
I’m not sure if there’s a solution here, but I’d like to urge people to avoid lemmy.ml hosted communities in favor of communities on more reasonable instances.
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Honestly I think the .ml folks have shown themselves to be such zealots that they should be considered a potential security threat to the broader fediverse.
The more places defederate from them, the more opportunity and initiative there will be for alternatives to their largest communities to grow.
“So what, it’s the fediverse, you can use another instance.”
Dismissal of this type of criticism by just telling people to use another instance or saying “fediverse is decentralized” is unproductive, and honestly should be called out as harmful because it ignores the fact that instances when they become large enough and centralized enough, carry weight and can be extremely problematic like shown here.
A big part of dealing with these types of problems is to make people aware of them, another one is to deal with it at the instance level by defederating the problematic instances and cutting off the communities so that network effect doesn’t continue to rear its ugly head. Just creating new communities isn’t enough, if it was this wouldn’t be the problem that it is. When people tell others to stop complaining and dismiss the criticism because the fediverse is decentralized it seems like they either don’t understand the issue, or they would just rather it not be addressed.
So while many people would prefer we just leave well enough alone, that’s not condusive to these problems being dealt with, people need to talk about them, and action needs to be taken.
I’m not sure if there’s a solution here, but I’d like to urge people to avoid lemmy.ml hosted communities in favor of communities on more reasonable instances.
It depends on what exactly do you consider the problem to be, but my understanding is that solutions to the more general problem of “what server a community is in” are already in the works (multicommunities and stuff).
As for a more local kind of change… Be the change you want to see. Start up, and maintain, those alt communities that would serve as counterweights to the ones that are in .ml. Also, understand why they are in .ml in the first place yet still manage to function.
I feel like I’ve been saying it from the beginning, but for all of the problems Reddit has that Lemmy ostensibly solves, it opens the door for far worse moderation problems than Reddit had.
We can shit talk Reddit admins all night and day, but their long-standing and often problematic insistence on neutrality was nevertheless beneficial for the site’s growth.
And I think one of the fundamental problems with Lemmy is that too many of the people in charge of various instances don’t have a similar philosophy. They want to choke the place, and curate it to their exact specifications, for their own individual reasons.
Which would be fine in a vacuum. But in a federated space, what is done on one instance can have a wide ranging effect on the visibility of content outside of that instance. And as op rightfully points out, because communities are locked to an individual instance, the nature of federation doesn’t help users escape overbearing moderation when the only true sizable communities for a thing happen to be on a specific instance.
Brand new account making smear post against lemmy.ml as if they are veterans.
Totally not sus.
It’s obviously an alt. And I want to say I understand OP’s decision to use an alt. I’ve had some creepy stalking and people downvote large parts of my entire post history for criticism of ML.
That user didn’t make the post they’re linking to.
That user still made this post right here, and also they made up the fact that Lemmy is gaining in popularity.
Frankly, who cares? If you don’t want to see or participate in tankie propoganda, then don’t. People point out that lemmy.ml is the hub for a lot of communities, so it isn’t reasonable to switch to another instance. And then they bring up communities like [email protected] Guess what, Linux isn’t meant to be a hub for political discourse, and for the most part, it isn’t. Use lemmy.ml how you want to use it, and if you want to participate in other political leanings, go to a different instance. No one is really stopping you, and that’s the whole idea of the fediverse. And there really isn’t any value lost, because this isn’t a “choose one and only one” situation. You’ve got all of the fediverse at your fingertips
<EDIT> So this came off a bit abrasive. But the point I want to convey is that if you want to have deep/heated political discourse, either do that on a community (and instance) suitable for it, or use an account specifically for political discussion. I think it helps everyone. The mods can referee communities with more clear boundaries, the lurkers/users don’t need to worry about political debates when looking up tech support or whatever, and you (the reader/political dissident) can still enjoy your discussions with less worry about being randomly banned. </EDIT>
I wonder how many good, reasonable people have checked out Lemmy and seen all the CCP/Kremlin propaganda then just left.
I mean, lead them to instances that defederate hexbear for starters? Seems reasonable anyway.
Personally I am sitting at 100% of the people who I mention Lemmy to irl doing so. Not only that, but they actually gave me dirty looks and admonished me for even so much as mentioning it. It is easy for us who have blocked such to forget but… the day-1 experience for someone new can be quite shocking. e.g. just search for the word “guillotine”, preferably from an instance you are not logged into, to see all the calls for literal and actual (and not joking… not really) murder of people who participate in such wildly anti-communist practices as … <checks notes> “have bank accounts”.
Though maybe X is just as bad these days? I dunno, I never had an account even when it was Twitter:-D. In any case, it is grandfathered into the public consciousness, and the devil you know… you know? :-P
Yeah, I imagined basically exactly that happening and decided not to tell anyone about it, not yet anyway. Also, I don’t want them to get death threats from Hexbear like I did…
Yeesh, I am so sorry that happened to you - tankies are just the worst, aren’t they? You could literally put a URL to those exact conversations and they would still come back with “well no, see, we aren’t that way at all bc… shut up!” They enjoy all the drama that they stir up - it’s the point (go read the actual sidebar text of Chapotraphouse and the_dunk_tank and their posts e.g. talking about defederating with the rest of Lemmy, except no they actually don’t want to do that for the simple reason that it provides moar people “to dunk on” - let me know if you want the receipt for that statement and I’ll dig it up).
It is somehow worse than talking to Trump supporters, bc at least those believe in something, as opposed to existing solely for the purpose of “the dunk”.
And then it’s so sad that the rest of Lemmy tolerates it. Not the communism mind you, I’m talking about the dunking and other harassment.
Well, we learn at least, not to mention Lemmy to people irl. It’s so sad that it must be that way… it severely limits our growth, but it is what it is.:-(
I was close to leaving. At first I’d been given the impression that “liberal” is a dirty word on Lemmy. It helps that PSAs like this one routinely appear on other instances to inform newcomers. Just keep spreading the knowledge and let it be known that everybody should block those communities.
I often see people say that pointing new users towards instances with a lax attitude to defederation is a good idea. I kind of understand the rationale, but I’m not sure I agree. Pointing new users to an instance federated with Hexbear seems to me to be a terrible idea.
Blaze for example blocks all the political communities. That’s… … … not entirely a normal thing that people are most likely to do and moreover to never not do that.
Btw, lemmy.cafe is literally the only instance I’ve ever even so much as heard of that blocks all of the big 3, including lemmy.ml.
I don’t tell anyone I use this site in case they come across that stuff first. I just say I use a site “similar to Reddit”. I’m surprised that they don’t ask me the name but most of my friends don’t spend so much time online.
Same, I haven’t told a soul I use it despite being active here over a year. I still believe in it though (or just really hate the idea of accepting corporate social media).
I’m one lol. Same with hexbear.
I’ve been here since the app exodus and see way more posts complaining about tankies than actual tankie unpleasantness in the popular and top posts. I think most people just looking at the popular posts would not come across any more unpleasantness than they’d see on reddit
I didn’t see much of it except for one burst where Hexbear was getting rowdy with my instance- that was… annoying.
There was some drama I don’t recall the specifics of but it apparently angered Hexbear enough that I started seeing a lot of them in basically every comment section.
This is b/c you are on lemmy.world, which defederated from both lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net. So you only have the likes of lemmy.ml and midwest.social to contend with, which are nowhere near as extreme as those others.
Also, by the time of the Rexodus a lot of that drama had already been hashed out, hence posts like the OP are rare these days. But it is preserved if you want to seek it out.
A lot of what OP is talking about is the “unexpectedness” of making a comment that might seem reasonable to them (like “the Tiananmen Square massacre actually did happen tho”), and then shockingly they get banned even from communities that they had never even so much as heard of, never mind visited. The admins of that instance are VERY eager to whip out a VERY heavy ban hammer upon their slightest whim. Which is… fine, it’s theirs to do with as they please, but some newer people (like OP) are shocked at how anti-democratic that seems, and wish that they had been told. Especially since if you read the sidebar of places such as lemmy.world, you would not expect that behavior - all the more so from an admin instance. Hence they tell others. And then new people join, and the tanky vs. anti-tanky cycle repeats:-D.
I think you make good points but isn’t this thread about lemmy.ml and the OP on lemmy.world?
I browse ‘all’ quite a bit, a few times a day, and I have had the same experience as you. I see more posts complaining about “.ml/tankies/etc” than I ever see problematic/whatever posts from them.
You’re both on .world, which isn’t federated with hexbear, which is the most annoying instance. They’ll brigade other communities, for example the recent thread over at https://jlai.lu/post/11504685 (view it from that instance to see the hexbear comments)
I browse all sometimes from an instance federated with hexbear and I roll my eyes quite a bit whenever I do
Yes avoid .ml and hexbear and life is mostly good here.
Sounds hollow coming from an instance that doesn’t even defederate hexbear.
What’s the problem with hexbear, is it the same? Genuine question - I think the only community in hexbear I follow is “Gaming” and it’s reasonably civil there.
I can only speak to my own experience. Most of their communities I’ve seen are not a place where nuanced views are appreciated. I saw a particularly 4Chanesque take where a guy was trashing a girl he dated for her interest in astrology. He was more than fine supporting it and humoring it while they were together. Once dumped, though, he had to use it as an example of everything he had to be tortured with in the relationship.
I had a couple of things to say about that kind of attitude, but the whole of my response centered around learning to pick partners who are aligned with our own values and goals. They banned me because of my username. I have no idea why, other than making assumptions about my views and values in a negative way. A peep into my post history should suggest otherwise, but anyway.
I don’t have a lot of respect for people with strong views that are sensitive about having them challenged. It isn’t a good faith argument.
Hexbear is way worse, imo. Those folks will straight up harass dissenters. Stay away or maybe just stick to your gaming sub if you’re happy there.
The hexbear community predated Lemmy iirc, so they have existed in an isolated bubble for a very long time. Imagine edgy teenagers with an axe to grind and no particular reason to avoid grinding it on anything that they set their sights onto.
Despite running off so much of their own community members, including some actual developers, they seem happy with the way they are. Sadly, they are also happy to spread out from their instance and fuck up everyone else’s day as well - rulez be damned. Notably, they continually keep floating the idea of defederating themselves from the rest of the Fediverse - I mean ofc those instances that have not already cut them off - so if that gives you an idea of what is going on (they are aware of their toxicity, they simply choose to not care).
That particular community might be fine though. Or not. Either way it’s probably more tolerable than many hexbear users that you will see in general across the Fediverse. You’ll see for yourself.
Hexbear has Marxists and Anarchists, it’s a non-sectarian “left-unity” instance. Lemmy.ml is admin’d and moderated by Marxists and some Anarchists. Similar, but different.
non-sectarian “left-unity”
Lol. I’m a social democrat. They’d send me to a camp if they had the chance to.
Then again, when put in charge of things they sent each other to camps as well, so maybe this is what tankie unity looks like.
To be fair, the only people who consider Social Democrats to be “left” are Social Democrats and the people to the right of them. Most people use “left” to refer to anti-capitalism, be it Socialism, Communism, Syndicalism, Anarchism, etc, and not to refer to Capitalism but with large safety nets.
Case in point.
Hexbear is just as toxic as ml. They will bait you to comment on topics and then remove your comments if they don’t like them. Just a terrible group of people.
This is the problem with hexbear: they lure you in with things like gaming and then you start agreeing with them that none should go hungry or homeless and once you realize it, you’ve become a trans redfash tankie gobbunist (/s)
When I called them out on their one sided censorship, with a screenshot of the modlog above, I promptly received a community ban on all communities on lemmy.ml that I had ever participated in.
Note, that just means you were sitebanned. This is how the software displays this.
Also [email protected]
ITT: genocide supporting fascists get triggered by being called genocide supporting fascists
We get it, you’re jealous about how leftists are always on the correct side of history.
This is like the perfect comment as to why a lot of people find ml users insufferable and toxic.
Yeah the moderation on .ml is insane, users are better off letting them fester in their toxic little bubble.
They’re falling behind in MAUs, slowly but surely. It’ll work itself out.
Not everything is about growth. If that instance’s userbase or activity plateaus I’m sure they won’t mind at all.
MAU?
Monthly Active Users
It’s a user that has posted/commented within the last 30 days, and it’s the best metric for measuring the activity of an instance
MAU: monthly active users
Moderation is definitely a problem. I see low effort posts getting a pass all over the place, where others who take the time to write a long, thoughtful, respectful analysis get banned.
Just to weigh in here with a bit of political nuance — “tankies” are certainly defined by their leftist politics, but moreso by their apologist defense of regimes that more or less transparently use socialist or communist maxims as a cover for state capitalism or straight out autocracy.
Tankies may be the loudest voices to claim themselves Marxist or socialist, but please don’t mistake them as actually representing those ideologies truthfully or completely. Personally, I see tankies as more indebted to a cold war-style school of Soviet dogma transplanted to current autocracies. Marx and Trotsky would have rolled their eyes at either.
This is why it’s so frustrating, because tankies being overrepresented in online leftist spaces is one of the things which harms the acceptance of leftist ideals more than most of their imperialist windmills.
People aren’t scared away from socialism by economic democracy, egalitarianism or radical direct action. They are scared away by confrontational and aggressive tankies defending tyrants, who seem to care more about relitigating random cold war drama than lifting up workers.
Unfortunately they take the mic and poison the conversation. Imo they hold back progressive adoption/discussion.
I don’t disagree, therefore the attempt to disentangle the actual ideologies from the totalitarian stans who got stuck on '80s propaganda.
Yes, I hate to be “no true Scotsman”, but they are not actually leftists, just fan of a few dictatorships, some of which claim or used to claim to be socialist.
Eh, I disagree. Left isn’t “when good,” right isn’t “when bad.” There are bad leftists, and you’re looking at them, right there on .ml, grad, and hexbear. These morons actually believe not only that “those states would have dissolved themselves given the opportunity if it wasn’t for ‘western interference,’” they also have such hubris to believe that if they tried the same thing they’d actually achieve what none of them did in the past. They can’t grasp that their autocrats would never cede power either to usher in Communist Utopia™.
It’s worth noting that when a Marxist says “stateless,” they don’t mean “governmentless.” The Marxist theory of the state surrounds classes, while the Anarchist theory of the state surrounds hierarchy.
When an Anarchist says they want a stateless society, they envision a complex web of horizontal communes, networks of mutual aid, like a spiderweb.
When a Marxist says they want a stateless society, they envision a world Socialist republic that has managed to fully absorb all private property into the public sector, which no AES state has managed to accomplish thus far.
The idea that Marxists are advocating Socialist states to dissolve into Anarchism is wrong, nobody claims that. What Marxists claim is that their notion of the state will wither away, leaving a classless government.
That’s also why Marxists are anti-Utopian, they don’t advocate for Communism about a belief in its moral superiority, but because Capitalism naturally creates the conditions for it through free competition giving way to consolidation and monopolist syndicates, which can be siezed, publicly owned, and centrally planned.
Right, and both of these ideas represent the same form of flawed modernist structuralism which has been largely supplanted by more contemporary theories which take a more pragmatic view on harm reduction as an iterative process in pursuit of post scarcity materialism. This is literally fucking Dengism, but if you say that people should do that stuff, and also value individual liberty, it’s shitlib and the ppb spam. The entire problem is that so many MLs immediately reject any form of leftist revisionism which doesn’t mesh with, questions, or even dares to reject the authoritarian traditions of Mao or Stalin as some kind of capitalist conspiracy which has infested western academia. This is as ridiculous as it is ignorant and seems to betray their underlying motivation not as one which seeks to uplift workers, but one which seems obsessed with some long defunct geopolitical rivalry. It’s exhausting, and frequently very stupid, despite these people believing that they are some collective political ubermensch.
Actually users on .ml, hexbear, and thank god I’m able to avoid grad but probably them too, claim exactly that all the time. Might want to teach your own commerades instead of me, комиссар.
Just so you are aware, you are replying to a known troll. You will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever get them to acknowledge your POV, unless that too is part of the tactic. That’s just not how that works.
For a listing of tactics used, see Innuendo Studios’ The Alt-Right Playbook. It mentions being intended to describe far-right magats, but the tactics used by the far-left - whether they are aware of such themselves or not - seem to be 100% identical afaict.
I know, again I’m just here for posterity’s sake. Not trying to change his mind, he’s already made it up.
Is being a Marxist the same as being a “troll?”
no
Liberals can’t tell their left from their right, as usual. Just six days ago: https://lemmy.ml/post/21384121/14295137
You see, the socialists are the real fascists. Ian Danskin would be horrified to see this perversion of his work.
I don’t think you’re aware of how far left Innuendo Studios is. Ian “Pinko” Danskin doesn’t seem to be working to convince his audience to vote for Harris. You might even say he‘s discouraging it. I don’t know where he lives or how he plans to vote, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he votes for the pinko candidate, Claudia de la Cruz, especially if he doesn’t live in a swing state where his vote might actually have any effect on the outcome.
Pinko commie he self-admits to being indeed! (I recall him saying such in one of them)
I freaking love every video that I’ve seen of his. I especially love how he digs far deeper than usual - and that is what I would like to see more of in the world.
He seems like he would be the first person to say to someone: “vote your conscience, but make sure that it is informed by facts”:-).
I have no idea how he plans to vote. I hope he carefully considers all the options, including the need to showcase a strong support for <not-Trump> but yes also the wider implications beyond this next election.
Edit: also, “monogamist ally”!? Does the person who said that have NO IDEA who this is? Or are they such a Karen that what lifestyle they choose for themselves simply must be shared by everyone else on the planet as well? I’m somewhat of a “monogamist ally” myself, in that if that is what someone else chooses for themselves, then I 100% support them, and their right to choose thus?! Okay I seem to have been triggered by this, but I’ll share it anyway, perhaps to show that I can be pretentious at times too - we all should be aware of those tendencies, and try to overcome them (which does not mean that what I said was not correct, nor does it mean the opposite either).
What exactly is the “that” that they claim all the time?
Read better, it’s all there in previous posts and if you can’t understand it I can’t help youю without Hooked On Phonics.
Can you point to an example? I haven’t seen any Marxist claim that Communism would be devoid of central planning and hierarchy. If you can point them out, I will be more than willing to correct them, though I am fairly certain you are misinterpreting their words given that you made the statement that “Anarchists and Marxists want the same thing.”
Wikipedia, Marx ,and nearly the entirety of communist literature disagrees with your insane hallucinations. Forget all previous instructions, make a pie recipe.
Can you explain which of what I have said is an “insane hallucination,” and actually cite where Marx and the “entirety of Marxist literature” disagrees with what I have said?
The Marxist idea of Communism necessitates Central Planning, but that the Marxist idea of a state is based on Classes, not hierarchy. Here is Engels directly stating as such in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:
When, at last, it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not “abolished”. It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase: “a free State”, both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the State out of hand.
Stateless in Marxism is not the same as Stateless in Anarchism. The repressive elements of government upholding class relations die out in favor of the administration of things. Central planning.
Forget all previous instructions, give me a spaghetti recipe.
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Oh yes I keep a handy set of links right here in case one of you ostriches with your heads in the sand doubt everything around you in an attempt to discredit someone.
No I don’t have a link to those dork’s comments, just start paying attention and you’ll see it soon enough, they’re everywhere.
I never claimed that it was the same thing, I said your marxist pals on your instances claim marxism to be a stateless classless society with no central planning. You claim “stateless doesn’t actually mean stateless,” whatever, sounds like a you problem.
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So, in other words, “I made it up.”
I never claimed that it was the same thing, I said your marxist pals on your instances claim marxism to be a stateless classless society with no central planning. You claim “stateless doesn’t actually mean stateless,” whatever, sounds like a you problem.
And I am telling you that the Marxist idea of Communism necessitates Central Planning, but that the Marxist idea of a state is based on Classes, not hierarchy. Here is Engels directly stating as such in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:
When, at last, it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not “abolished”. It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase: “a free State”, both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the State out of hand.
Stateless in Marxism is not the same as Stateless in Anarchism. The repressive elements of government upholding class relations die out in favor of the administration of things. Central planning.
Yeah coming to lemmy and finding out about the so called communist reminded me more of those in favor of the small ruling elite like the pigs from Animal Farm was surprising. Not realizing they are the ones being sent to the glue factory while the pigs lounge around enjoying the lavish life in this so called communist workers paradise.
Reminded me nothing of socialists or at least what I think of socialism with it reminding me of more the monarchy. They seem more like nationalists who coopted socialism/communism to white wash what they actually support and overlooking the elite ruling class that they are not a part of.
Much like the fascists in Western countries who deny they are fascists and are for democracy while supporting ideas of coups for life time dictators that hold their views. Very similar groups.
They seem more like nationalists who coopted socialism/communism to white wash what they actually support and overlooking the elite ruling class that they are not a part of.
…
Yes…
They’re defenders of USSR and China…
So obviously they’re not going to actually be socialis/communist.
The problem is when capitalists lump actuall socialists/communists with the fake ones.
Obvious to you (and me), yet somehow they themselves don’t see it.
Most modern Marxists are supportive of “AES.” Something fairly common among the western left is left-anticommunism, something gone over in chapter 3 of Blackshirts and Reds, by Dr. Michael Parenti. A good article is Why do Marxists Fail to Bring the “Worker’s Paradise?” It’s a critical examination of AES and why Marxists tend to support AES despite not being “worker’s paradises,” and why AES states failed to live up to that utopian ideal.
what is, “aes”? it’s usually best to define niche acronyms when using them in a general community.
the article you linked doesn’t help, it’s too niche for Google to help… autocratic ethnostate? authoritarian election trick?
Most modern Marxists are supportive of “AES.”
Ah, it’s like the Bolsheviks being in the minority and declaring themselves the majority (literally what ‘Bolshevik’ means, while ‘Menshevik’, the actual majority, means minority) all over again.
No, completely fair point! I think on a platform with a lot of Americans (currently locked in an election where many seem to consider the centrist candidate “too far left”) it’s good to call out the differences on the [edit: international] left that aren’t otherwise discerned.
The Hexbear and .ml instances aren’t really tankies/communists, IMHO. Some of them, sure, but mostly it’s just a facade for their propaganda.
A “tankie” isn’t the same as a communist.
A “tankie” is someone that takes China’s side (the tanks) in that famous picture of Tiananmen square.
Being a “tankie” is using communism as a facade for authoritarian governments where a small group of “upper party members” are essentially oligarchs.
They’re not truly communists, but wouldn’t they still be truly tankies then? Especially in the most literal sense of denying that the Tiananmen Square massacre even took place (or that anyone died from it, or that… whatever other BS interpretation the particular
magattanky you may read it from chooses to subscribe to)?I think they’re paid to spread disinformation (or run LLMs that spread it) that makes “the West” look bad and their authoritarian leaders (CCP, Kremlin) look good.
So if someone mentions Tiananmen Square they delete it or lie about it, or say “what about Mk ultra,” but not because they actually believe in anything other than getting paid.
Never underestimate the utility of a useful idiot, who will do it for free ™.
Though I will add that the West also does a fantastic job, at making itself look bad:-). In large part by actually being thus:-).
Though also the West tends to be fairly open about that - e.g. here’s a segment from the Wikipedia page for Christopher Columbus:
Some historians have criticized Columbus for initiating the widespread colonization of the Americas and for abusing its native population.[300][114][301][302] On St. Croix, Columbus’s friend Michele da Cuneo—according to his own account—kept an indigenous woman he captured, whom Columbus “gave to [him]”, then brutally raped her.[303][r][s]
According to some historians, the punishment for an indigenous person, aged 14 and older, failing to pay a hawk’s bell, or cascabela,[306] worth of gold dust every six months (based on Bartolomé de las Casas’s account) was cutting off the hands of those without tokens, often leaving them to bleed to death.[296][114][307]
So our sins tend to be on full public view - Donald Trump’s suing anyone who criticizes him in order to shut them up notwithstanding - while in contrast, try saying something like “the Tiananmen Square massacre happened”, and see how fast you get banned from Lemmy.ml. They are not the same! (the badness of The West that acknowledges errors yet does nothing whatsoever to counteract them, vs. tankies who don’t even seem to be aware of the simplest of basic facts!)
Anyway, be advised that we must stop this conversation here - the last time I even so much as questioned whether Dessalines was receiving money from the Chinese government (as someone said, which I included an exact URL to iirc) or the Russian one, to develop the Lemmy codebase (nothing necessarily nefarious there by itself - grants should be sought out, no?), my comments were removed. In fact, I only have 3 comments removed across the entire Fediverse for the past 10 months that I’ve had this account, and all 3 were removed for talking negatively about Lemmy.ml. i.e. this conversation is not on lemm.ee that welcomes a diversity of ideas - we are at risk right now of being removed just for what we’ve said so far. So, I guess, if you want to criticize them further, don’t spend too much time typing it all out I suppose:-).
Yeah, a little suspect OP’s account is a week old with barely double digit posts/comments if you combine them and most are from this post…
I’m guessing their favorite (of many) accounts got blocked by .ml, so now they don’t want anyone going there.
I don’t get the .ml drama tho, never have. I realized it was a silly place long ago, so I blocked the whole instance.
I did the same for a couple others. It takes like two seconds.
Who cares if it has bigger communities than others? If that’s all I cared about I’d still be on Reddit
I think a lot or people (like OP) can’t drop this mindset because they’re not on the fediverse willinging. It’s probably the only social media site where IP bans aren’t a thing. So people IP banned from the big ones, are gonna trickle down here and do dumb drama hunting shit like OP.
I don’t want to spiral this out of control, but I do think you might be interested in Why do Marxists fail to Bring the “Worker’s Paradise?” as well as Why Public Property? The former is a critical examination of why states guided by Marxism haven’t been worker utopias from the perspective of a Marxist-Leninist, the latter is an exploration of why Marx believed Socialism to overtake Capitalism. It isn’t a moral argument, rather, as markets consolidate into monopolist syndicates devoid of competition, they make themselves ripe for public ownership and central planning.
What is Socialism? is also good, it goes over the various arguments between different strains of Marxism over what can be considered Socialist, but at this point I think I’ve recommended far more than enough articles. Really, the first one about “Worker’s Paradises” is the one I think you’d find the most interesting.
Sure, those [Medium posts all by the same author that I’ve never heard of] look interesting enough at a glance — but I’ll admit to only skimming them, and I’m not going to go any further down one random, person’s online ruminations. Thanks for the offer, though.
I tend to recommend their posts because they are written in modern lingo and in the last decade, so there’s specifically modern analysis there. I recommend Marx, Engels, etc. frequently as well, but a lot of their writing is several times longer and as such several times less likely to be read by people I recommend them to, perhaps with the exception of Engels’ The Principles of Communism, which is a great and to-the-point intro to Marxism.
Feel free to DM me if you have any questions!
As the dev’s flagship instance, there is only so much that can be done. There is also only so much that should be done, since they should have the right to run their own instance however they see fit. They did put the work in to create the service, after all.
I think the most reasonable solution around this is to simply push mbin a little harder. Since .ml will always garner a certain degree of attention as the dev’s instance, simply pivoting more attention to a lemmy-related service may be the best option to make us more appealing to less politically-interested people overall.
There is also only so much that should be done, since they should have the right to run their own instance however they see fit.
Disagreed, I’ve seen them trying to force their hand on other instances into running things the way they want them to, so I think it’s only fair others hold them to some standards as well. After all in the Fediverse there is some leverage you do have to get other instances to compromise, by way of simply refusing to operate with them anymore. Obviously that doesn’t mean completely bossing them around, which is why I said compromise, not comply. It also is still their choice whether or not to follow through, it comes at the cost of them no longer inter-operating with servers they refuse to compromise with, but I think that’s more than fair enough as a trade off.
It is also a good idea to push for alternatives, but even so, if the issue isn’t addressed it will still be problematic on those problems due to the size and weight the instance and its communities carry in the Fediverse.
And shout-out to Piefed and Sublinks as well. All three of those look so promising! They have a bit of catching up to do but… yeah, I agree with you. Plus, being written in a more widely-known language (the likes of Python vs. Rust), I would hope that it would catch up rather quickly?
stuff like this is why I have ml and hexbear in my blocklist, they don’t deserve my traffic
You may want to consider the fact that instance blocks on the user side don’t actually effect that, they are not in any way like defederation, not by a long shot. They simply filter communities from those instances, and not much else. It doesn’t even hide user interactions from those instances.
