Many people on lemmy.ml deeply respect and admire authoritarian governments and organizations.
Iran, China, North Korea, Soviet Union…
The West has many flaws. But our flaws are nothing compared to these guys.
Iran hangs homosexuals. Iran shot 30,000 people in less than than 2 weeks. The Soviet Union had to build a fucking Iron wall to prevent people from escaping. The Soviets lied about the Chernobyl nuclear explosion. China censors the internet. China wants to eliminate Islam. North Korea is a totalitarian hellscape. Watching anime is a crime.
Why is lemmy.ml so fascinated with authoritarians?
Keep it nice people!
Locking. Too many people breaking rule 1.
In my experience the attitude of many of the more prolific users there is something like “America and the West are doing evil things, so their enemies must be the good guys”. Atrocities by Western-aligned states are readily accepted as facts, but those committed by countries on “their” side never happened and are merely Western propaganda. They’ll cite North Korea’s constitution to “prove” that it’s a free and democratic country, but when you point out reports showing that the reality on the ground is quite different from what’s written in the constitution, that’s of course just Western propaganda and the people who fled the country are being paid to spread lies. That dismissive attitude makes it impossible to have a serious discussion with them.
That said, I now have a solid blocklist of their “worst offenders” and found that there are plenty of people with way more balanced opinions as well.
Hello, a rational .ml guy reporting in
My political opinions are:
what if we just like were able to eat and stuff like that, that’d be pretty dope
Actually after meaning to do it for a while and constantly forgetting about it I’ve decided to make myself go ahead and make a piefed account before I once again fall into the loop of “eh I’ll make it later” and them promptly forgetting it 2 seconds later
I’ll be a bit greedy and add in: Not kill each other over ideological differences and just do our own shit and be happy.
I realize this sounds like Utopia, but one can dream!
The greed of it all!!! 😱
It’s honestly suspicious that you haven’t been banned yet.
Nah, they fit right in at Lemmy.ml.
“America and the West are doing evil things, so their enemies must be the good guys”
It’s illuminating. I used to be a hardcore anarco-capitalist/radical libertarian and that community had exactly the same thought pattern:
- Vietnam/Middle East show how USA lies for domination
- Snowden showed how CIA/NSA lies for control
- Markets showed how the Fed lies for moneyed elites
… and so on, so that it becomes a given truth that everything the government says is a lie, no matter what.
So then COVID comes along and all the libertarians are “FAUCI LIES! COVID IS JUST FLU!”
A few months (and a lot of Russian influence ) later, these people are believing that mRNA vaccines cause heart disease, etc etc etcANYWAY, what’s interesting to me is how these two diametrically opposed ideological communities – Tankies and AnCaps – have almost exactly the same group dynamics pathology.
it’s because they want to feel special.
the root of so much of the people that get caught in these delusional thought pattern is simple massive insecurity. and by clinging to a delusion you can mask it with a feeling of superiority because you KNOW THE TRUTH.
same reason people get recruited into cults. the cultists specifically target insecure people they can emotionally exploit and isolate. they are not interested in secure people who are grounded in reality, because there is nothing for their manipulation tactics to work on.
extremist politics also always become quasi-religions, or merge with fundamentalist religious belief.
superiority because you KNOW THE TRUTH
Oh God yes, this this this!!
The Conspiracy folks all really get off on being Smarter Than You because the have Access to the Secret Knowledge. Once you have seen the evidence (eg “Fahrenheit 451”) and started associating yourself with “like-minded people”, then you too will become an Anointed One.
Culty culty cult
It is very seductive for people who feel their intellect and insights are not being seen.
Relevant Contrapoints: https://youtu.be/teqkK0RLNkI
Edit: lol at the .mls downvoting this
Telling on yourself
I can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of “anarcho-capitalists”. Glad it’s past tense for you.
You think Tankies were anti-vaxxers?
If not, how do you account for that difference?
Me personally? I’d say it’s because Tankies have critical thinking skills.
Tankies and ancaps both want to be unrestricted in their capacity to dominate others. The only difference is their proposed mechanism of domination.
Sure, that’s why the absolute greatest poverty alleviation programs have come from Tankies
Yeah, it’s so easy to solve poverty when you just kill all the poor people, take their grain, and distribute it to everyone who passes your purity test as a True Believer (which is everyone you didn’t kill)
Horseshoe theory strikes again
Horseshoe theory is agitprop, no academic takes it remotely seriously because it’s patently bullshit with no support. If you believe horseshoe theory, congratulations, you’re uncritically consuming accelerationist propaganda.
Care to PM this list of offenders, please? I’m also trying to sanitize my feed.
I blocked the entire lemmy.ml. After a few months of paying attention I found that there were no thoughtful or interesting posts or comments from any user there, only glorification of authoritarians.
i blocked them because .ml users constantly harass me, telling me what a brainwashed idiot I am for not thinking China is a utopia.
I don’t block them. I just keep pressing them for an explanation of their personal philosophy. Not regurgitated, preconstructed points, actual personal philosophy. It usually goes “accusation of fascism/zionist”, “bad faith/strawman/red herring/I don’t have to explain it to you”, “you’re a nihilistic anarchist”, non-sequitur, list of actions they’ve taken irl but can’t/won’t break anonymity to prove (anybody can claim they’ve done anything in an anonymous forum), and finally inform me they’re blocking me. I mean, that’s great, block me online. I still exist in the real world and you’re going to have to face me someday. Unless of course you empower your own authoritarian regime that will keep my constant demands for your individual opinion and “nihilistic anarchist” viewpoints blocked from society. Which is what I think they want, zero challenge from any source or counter philosophy.
i feel like thier accusation of zionism, is just the same thing as being anti-semetic in a way too.
That is a good summary.
I see this refrain a ton but have not had the same experience and I fairly regularly get into arguments with them. I’m perma banned from some communities on those instances cause of the PTBs they are. The worst I received was my first ever “kys” message from one member’s alt(but them and their main were handled in pretty short order). But that was one message of harassment, out of the probably hundred or so people I’ve pissed off so far.
To be very clear, I don’t go into their communities looking for fights. But I have 2 big principles I’m not willing to waiver even a tiny bit on. Those being Hasan absolutely shocked his dog, and Harris would in fact have been better than trump.
They just hate me because I have a basic grasp of economics and I don’t think businesses and landlords are inherently evil.
Who is Hasan? Some dumbass tiktoker?
don’t think businesses and landlords are inherently evil.
Literally every capitalist theory, from Adam Smith’s to Mill, from Hayek to Henry George:
Landlords are inherently evil.
Streamer they worship like maga worship trump.
Why did he shock his dog? Not that there is any reasonable justification, I just want context.
right, so an abusive narcissistic POS person they wish they could be.
make sense he’d abuse his dog rather than train it. god forbid you like… have empathy or compassion for another living thing and use that to bond with it… lol
Why do right wingers and “both sidesers” always imagine the left uplifts cults of personality like they do? Lefties mostly don’t care about this guy. His fanboys stan the guy pretty hard but his fanboys ain’t “the left.”
i blocked the triads, hexbear, lemmygrad, ml. lemmygrad is less of a problem since i dont see thier posts as much anyways, usually its mostly ml or hexbear, and they have taken over some other instances too.
like israel/palestine being a terrorist is a totally fine resistance against 100 years of apartheid and colonialism
but they don’t support terrorism
authoritarian mass murderers are the logical class struggle government of resistance against the war mongering, CIA backed coup colonials
but they don’t like stalin some of the time
having cake and eating it - no accounting for the intellectually diverse/broken
Well I can’t speak for others, but I’m on lemmy.ml because the instance says it’s “A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers”. And in my experience that pretty much checks out, for all the talk I see from others about how it’s a den of authoritarianism and whatnot the actual amount of that I see on the actual instance is minimal. Yeah moderation sucks sometimes, but so it does on most every other instance though. Their approach to defederation seems to be avoiding it, and I don’t have to see any Nazi stuff or shit like that, so I’m good for now. Pick your poison.
The West has many flaws. But our flaws are nothing compared to these guys.
Well if you look a bit closer at the history of the cold war you will find that “the West”, mostly in the form of the CIA, destroyed a lot of nascent communist or even just social democratic governments worldwide through covert means, and sometimes even militarily. In the face of such a threat you are basically forced to become even more authoritarian, if you want your communist government to survive that is. So “the West” instituted a process of selection through political (and military) pressure if you will. Hence why there are no surviving liberal communist states left to discuss.
Anyway, I don’t think there is much of consensus here on lemmy.ml whether these countries are good or bad (or even something more nuanced). What I think often happens is that someone voices “critical support”, as in they say something like “Iran has a right to self-defence” although they don’t agree with everything else Iran does, and someone from another instance comes along to read it and confirmation-biases that into “typical lemmy.ml user, fully supports that theocratic regime”.
I mean just look at the straw man you build in your OP, supposedly I’m supporting the Islamic regime in Iran, and the anti-Islamic regime in China!? Bit of a stretch there mate…
I had my first account on .ml because “hey this is the official instance run by the devs, that sounds like a solid starting point” but after seeing how strong the anti-west, pro-authoritarian nonsense is on there (especially leading up to the 2024 election, the apathetic “both sides” people were out in full force), I decided to move to a different instance.
I’m not denying that there are such people around, but I don’t really think they are in the majority. Most of the specific things you mention I saw coming just as much if not more from other servers.
Certainly the most vocal
“A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts
An admin over there literally tried to dox me and deleted any trace of it within a few hours. No. You are not safe visiting
lemmy.mllolUsing this post as a honeypot for my blocklist. We need a fresh post like this every month.
Cool story
.ml Is made by and ran by Marxist-Leninists.
Marxist-Leninism being an entirely made up bullshit ideology from Stalin to paint any and all actions he committed as “communism” or “progress to communism”.
Its also the adopted “ideology” of every self proclaimed communist state such as China, North Korea, Vietnam, etc. Any contradictions of the ideology between how these states practice it is brushed off by M-L fans as “Marxist-Leninism with <INSERT COUNTRY> characteristics”.
To a M-L fan, none of the core principles of communism actually matter, and are never actually pursued. They don’t care about::
- Proletariat ownership of the means of production
- Elimination of the system of Capital
- Proletariat rule of society
And both hilariously and bafflingly, they will point to what benefits a respective M-L country has as “proof” that that country is following or pursuing communism, even if that country blatantly shows it refuses to adopt those big three above. They also blame the West, specifically the USA for those faux communist countries failing to achieve communism.
I.E. M-L fans fall for bread and circuses very easy as long as they’re told its a communist bread and circus
So TL;DR, .ml’s are Marxist-Leninists who don’t actually care about socialism or communism and are voluntary NPC propaganda machines for authoritarian regimes that abandoned a pursuit of communism long ago.
my favorite part was when you pointed out corruption and capitalism so rife in every country that is supposedly communist, they say it’s ‘necessary for the transition’… right.
some of them are still under the delusion that Russia still a ML state…
necessary for the transition
Eerily similar to the MAGAs who are happy to suffer the “temporary” pain of tariffs today, since it’s going to “Make Us Great” in the ill-defined future
There’s a reason M-Ls are called “tankies” and “red fascists”.
They just simply are. They are fascists in Che Guevara t-shirts.
So … fascists who idolize rapists
Isn’t that all fascists tho?
che was a rapist? wow thats news to me
Do anybody care about anarchist/liberal opinion about MLs? ML ideology defeated nazis and has changed landscape of the planet, your ideology is cringe and non existent, keep seething. ML is a science and it will always exist
Do anybody care about anarchist/liberal opinion about MLs?
I care more about their opinions on MLs than MLs’ opinions on anything
ML ideology defeated nazis
No, it didn’t. Defeat of the Nazis was a collaborative effort between allied nations and factions of varying ideologies, mostly liberal, one made up (Marxist-Leninist)
Actually, you can credit MLs (especially as its OG was in charge at the time), with severely weakening the Soviet Union with massive purges (including of the military), famine of Ukraine, complete fumbling of preparation for war, and the Nazis almost reaching Moscow until Stalin’s generals begged him just enough to fuck off and let them do their jobs.
Oh, and let’s not forget the alliance MLs made with the Nazis to take Poland together. Their first instinct was alliance with Nazis. That only changed after Operation Barbarossa.
and has changed landscape of the planet,
Yeah, it caused irreparable damage to the communist movement by appropriating it for fascism that pretends to be communist.
your ideology is cringe and non existent, keep seething.
- What is my ideology? Do inform me and provide evidence.
- Psychological projection that rivals your average MAGAt
ML is a science and it will always exist
FUCKING
LMAO
ML wouldn’t even cut it as an art, let alone a science. But I bet the rest of the 13 year olds in your discord server thought that line went hard.
I care more about their opinions on MLs than MLs’ opinions on anything
Ofcourse you care about opinion of CIA and global capital ideology
No, it didn’t. Defeat of the Nazis was a collaborative effort between allied nations and factions of varying ideologies, mostly liberal, one made up (Marxist-Leninist)
Such a shameless downplaying of sacrifices of soviet people. 80% nazis were killed on eastern front by the red army. Liberals suffered little to no damage in WW2. It was collaborative, sure but the biggest contributors by far were soviets.
Actually, you can credit MLs (especially as its OG was in charge at the time), with severely weakening the Soviet Union with massive purges (including of the military)
Debateable to say red army got weak due to purges, alot of counter revolutionaries were purged.
famine of Ukraine
not intentional
complete fumbling of preparation for war
Who told you that? stalin tripled size of red army in 2 years following the MR pact and shifted industries towards east, they were preparing but they just didnt have enough time.
Stalin’s generals begged him just enough to fuck off and let them do their jobs.
Lie.
alliance MLs made with the Nazis to take Poland together
No, it was a non aggression pact
Yeah, it caused irreparable damage to the communist movement by appropriating it for fascism that pretends to be communist.
I mean no other form of communism has ever been tried and people like you have played whatever the establishment say about communism, the global capital will obviously defame communism, it has done since century but so called people of left has played major role in spreading that narrative too. No other form of communism being tried results to no failures and no challenge to the global capital or status quo, so you can just keep blaming the tankies while the status quo isnt threatned at all. ML is still the morst popular far left ideology, theres a reason for it.
What is my ideology?
A radlib or democratic socialist, mamdani AOC type.
Psychological projection that rivals your average MAGAt
There is big world outside US politics, get some help.
ML wouldn’t even cut it as an art, let alone a science.
lol
But I bet the rest of the 13 year olds in your discord server thought that line went hard.
A lot of such parties made by 13 y.o. are at the forefront of communist movement while all you do is larp online
Or the Brexiteers convinced that the sunlit uplands are just around the corner of the “short term pain” of abandoning the UK’s closest and largest trade partner.
Fucking morons, happily led around by their prejudices.
“With every mistake, we must surely be learning” -George Harrison
Can you guys ever think out of your american chauvinist mindset? Marxism Leninism exists for more than a century, it has nothing to do with MAGA and have hundreds of pages of theory and have been applied in real life multiple times, atleast think, its crazy how stupid you people are.
some of them are still under the delusion that Russia still a ML state…
Literally no sane ML thinks that, russia is a liberal bourgeosie state
Wait… Do you think the Iron curtain was a literal iron wall?
It was mostly tin and zinc, that’s why it was not very efficient.
The Soviet Union had to build a fucking Iron wall to prevent people from escaping
holy fuck lmao
Well yeah, but then it rusted after 40 years and people could get back through.
? I mean it’s a true statement…
you really think the Soviet Union made a literal wall out of iron all along its border to keep people inside? you think they built a really big metal wall all along their ~60,000km land borders? 3 times as long as the Great Wall of China?
are you perhaps confusing this with the berlin wall? or do you think the phrase “the Iron Curtain” was meant very very literally?
For what it’s worth, when I read the OP my brain went to the Berlin wall, not the iron curtain. They said “iron wall,” not “Berlin wall” or “iron curtain” so I think there will be a mix of folks interpreting it each way.
Yeah, the vocab term was wrong but I didn’t see the whole statement as being that wrong.
they played too much RA2.
Obviously the guy isn’t a native speaker
Removed by mod
Whenever I come across a post like OP describes, and I check the instance, it’s ml (with a bit of hex in the mix). It seems fair to me to ask this question.
But then I guess the discrepancy is: “90% of a specific kind of users are on this instance”, which is absolutely not the same as “90% of this instances users are of this kind”
That handful includes the admins though.
A note on my biases: I am a leftist. I am generally “anti-authoritarian”, but I have read some theory and listened to enough commentary to understand why folks are pro-authoritarian (and why Authoritarian is a label only applied to enemies of american hegemony). I am on .ml - which I don’t think matters, anyone’s account can be anywhere: fediverse, baby.
Lemmy.ml is a website hosted on a server. Why do its mods and some users hold those beliefs?
Many of those people are communists. Opposition to american hegemony is the main reason, or critically supporting other actually existing socialist states. They may think China isn’t perfect, but they’re attempting socialism and are standing up to the US and have the best shot at success. In the case of North Korea, they may think that attempt at socialism is genuine and much of the bad stuff they do is falsified or exaggerated for propaganda or just be giving critical support to a country that has been destroyed by the US via war and sanctions.
Or, in the case of Russia & Iran, they have stood in firm opposition to American hegemony, military bullying, etc. even though they are not Communist/Socialist. So, even though they do a lot of bad things and don’t have socialist values, they are a lesser evil than America. For Russia, them pushing back against NATO is seen as a direct war against the advance of global capital, even though Russia is capitalistic and fascistic (much like a weaker version of the US).
In all of these cases, when a person supports these governments, they are not really saying “Country good”. They are saying “I critically support Country in opposition to American hegemony and global Capital”. There’s a lot of memes and jokes, and some people just really support Russia and NK uncritically - humanity is a rich tapestry - but that’s the gist of it.
Understanding this POV requires an understanding of history (re: socialism & US interventionalism), critical theory (re: media), and an ability to be generous to edgelords online who are not always the best messengers of this (valid) viewpoint. It is socialist realpolitik, not idealpolitik - a view where current events can be interpreted in a way that their outcomes may foment the material conditions favorable to socialism.
Now a question for you: How can a democratic & socialist country exist in a world where American hegemony exists and America is hell-bent on maintaining the global capitalistic order?
Given the US’ massive power and history of destroying socialist movements with tremendous violence (military and economic), can a country maintain its status as a real democracy without the US:
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covertly funding extremist groups to coup the democratic government (Iran),
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committing direct election tampering to elect a pro-US party (Venezuela, unsuccessfully),
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launching proxy wars to murder their people (Vietnam, North Korea),
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destroying the country’s economy with sanctions and completely disconnecting them from global trade - causing mass starvation and poverty (North Korea, Cuba)
The answer is that without the aid of a country capable of standing up to the US, they do not. These countries that still have socialist goverments have to hold on to power in a world where US hegemony is a fact.
The answer is that without a country capable of standing up to the US, they do not. These countries that still have socialist goverments have to hold on to power in a world where US hegemony is a fact.
Maybe a naive question but is there no way to have a country that stands strong against the US and its interference without being repressive/authoritarian against your own people? What’s the point of being a socialist dictator for many years/decades if you’re not allowing the people to gain collective control of the land/resources/means of production/etc. for their own benefit?
Socialist countries are generally more liberating for their working classes than oppressive, hence high public support, but necessarily curb absolute freedoms such as those of capitalists.
I think the trouble is that “freedom of speech”, “freedom of expression”, etc. can be and are weaponized by colonial/hegemonic forces.
But, that said, that’s why I am not 100% supportive of this view. Possibly naïvely on my end, I think those sorts of freedoms are important not only for individuals but also as a check on state power. That said, I see how manipulative the US state department can be - and for that matter how manipulative foreign govts have been to the US - especially in recent election cycles… so I think it is a double edged sword.
That’s part of the reason I am also not a full blown anarchist/libertarian socialist. I can see the value in centralized state power when it comes to defending the state and people
Thank you for sharing and clearly being one of the people able to hold two ideas in their head at the same time, even when the ideas don’t jive.
opposition to American hegemony and global Capital
Everybody who feels this way should be celebrating Donald Trump. He’s almost finished a job in 1 year that many thought would take generations.
I think they don’t completely diverge. I am sympatetic to this viewpoint, I just don’t fully endorse it. I think as leftists we should be generous to other leftists and their ideas.
Some do feel that way. Others feel that he isn’t a strong departure from where we were already heading. I think accelerationism is bad and we should never put ourselves in a position where fascism wins. Fascism needs to always be playing defense until it is totally defeated. Especially when it supports american hegemony, genocide, global poverty, etc.
Allow me to play Devils advocate. Can you give me an example of a country getting corporate money put of government without fascism?
The problem is that “critical support” effectively boils down to affirmative defense for being a hypocrite, and the entire framework has literally nothing to do with any particular economic system or theory of statecraft. It’s literally just being mad about the cold war in a very weird way which insulates them from self reflection. It’s the exact baggage which keeps leftist ideas marginalized in most of the world.
It’s no accident that .ml is banned in China. Even the world’s most ostensibly successful socialist state understands that this tankie extremism is not helpful.
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Define authoritarian in a way that excludes the US and Europe but includes any country you listed.
The mistake you’re making is thinking that criticising other authoritarian regimes means supporting the one you live in.
It’s not a zero sum game.
No, the mistake I’m making is pretending any person using the word ‘authoritarian’ has thought for two seconds about the word or what it means. Hence why I’m trying to encourage those to think beyond the propaganda and instead actually dive into the philosophy it’s trying to obscure.
Authoritarianism, also known as ‘any two or more humans living together,’ is a meaningless buzzword invented in the 1940s to try to differentiate American and Fascist societies to get Americans on board with fighting their ideological clones across the Atlantic.
It has no static definition that meaningfully separates any society from any other society.
No democracy. Single leader with cult following. Vanguard partyism.
The US and Europe aren’t democracies, while many of the listed countries are democracies.
Vanguard partyism
Might as well just define it as, “Has socialist in the name” at that point.
So you failed given every European country and the US also has that. (as much as China or Cuba at least.)
The US has literally never been a democracy, its never even been a particularly good representative republic, read a fucking book
These people are called “tankies”. It’s communists who like militarism and imperialism, as long as it’s of their own flavor. The internet has many such “bunkers” where these people congregate. They unironically support the countries you mention, and they do not represent the entire left-wing community.
I’d argue that they aren’t the result of capitalist policies being shitty. Such communities have existed on the internet since the early 00s. It’s just their ideology.
Why are they on lemmy? My guess is that Reddit banned some of their communities for posting violent content (threats of violence etc.) so they moved to lemmy, which does not censor people to the degree Reddit does.
The .ml for lemmy.ml supposedly stands for “marxism leninism”.
A few notes:
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Communists do not support imperialism. We do support millitarism against fascists, capitalists, landlords, colonizers, imperialists, etc, but not imperialism.
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Lemmy was made by communists. Communist communities on Reddit have been cracked down on, so the communists made a FOSS reddit alternative.
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The .ml in Lemmy.ml stands for Mali. Lemmy.ml is not a Marxist-Leninist instance, it just has a good number of us. Lemmygrad.ml is the Marxist-Leninist instance.
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lol.
I joined this instance because I thought that the ml stood for machine learning 🤦🏾♀️. However I am an anarcho-communist — mostly because I believe in things like open source and community which are great examples of anarchy and communism together.
deleted by creator
It’s not lemmy.ml as a source, but rather a symptom.
I see two things going on:
- A general fall in trust in democratic institutions, as those institutions fail to represent people adequately;
- A clear realization of global injustice perpetuated by democratc countries against the will of people.
There aren’t many that that think that Iran’s goverment is good for Iranian people, but they do see that they are defending their civilization. This umderstanding requires that the observer is able to maintain two observations at the same time, instead of requoring complete black & white intepretations.
by democratic countries against the will of the people
Seems like maybe they’re not actually democratic at all
as those institutions fail to represent people adequately
When have they ever? When black people were slaves? When women couldn’t vote? When marrying a Chinese man removed your US citizenship? When Leopold collected hands? They have NEVER represented the people. They have only ever represented the war mongering mass murdering extractionists and they have created a safe space for white men and those who do their bidding.
There aren’t many that that think that Iran’s goverment is good for Iranian people
There are literally millions of people that think Iran’s government is good for Iranian people. And the reason is because the LAST time the Iranian people organized a liberal democracy, it was infiltrated by the West, dismantled, and replaced by an extractivist depotism that did the West’s bidding against the will of the people. This current Iranian government has suffered the worst possible assaults at all levels political, economic, and military from the west for over 40 years and still hasn’t been infiltrated or replaced with Western puppets. This is the choice the Iranian people have - this current form of government or Western domination. The West has demonstrated that nothing else will be allowed.
They do it for the same reasons you vehemently defend Israel and their genocide of the Palestinians.
This comment really sums up the issue here. Notice how this user makes wild assumptions about OP. YOU vehemently defend Israel and genocide. Nowhere in this post is that said or implied. In fact the opposite is what’s implied. It’s like they’re setting up some kind of man made of straw to point a finger at but that man doesn’t really exist.
The .ml crowd, including the user I’m responding to, don’t care about anything other than feeling smug. They’ve found a moral issue and then put the entire world into one of two categories. 1. The in-group that spends all their time trolling on the Internet and creating straw men of everyone who seems even slightly less zealous than required on a single issue, and 2. the rest of humanity who are characterized as demons with no morals whose lives completely revolve around supporting the IDF. There is no one in between these two groups for them.
They are the same as the religious groups at abortion clinics who pat themselves on the backs for calling a bunch of people they don’t know murderers. Murder is bad so I’m right and I’m better than you. Well yes, murder is bad but you’re completely ignoring the fact that abortion is not murder and it’s far more nuanced than that. Their conclusion is that you either think abortion is murder, or you are the enemy.
Genocide is bad, which means I’m better than you because even though you also think genocide is bad you happen to have a slightly different opinion than me on how to stop genocide. Since your opposition to genocide is a little different than mine “you vehemently defend Israel and their genocide of the Palestinians”. God damn my farts smell good. You either think that voting for an imperfect candidate to stop a fascist one is identical to being a full throated supporter of the IDF, or you are the enemy.
This isn’t about genocide. It’s about tribalism and getting to feel that they’re better than others with absolutely no effort. If they cared about Palestinians they’d actually do something about it. Instead they spend all their energy dividing people into groups.
Next time you pass a stranger on the street make sure to let them know that they’re evil because someone in the county they live in is on the sex offender list and that means that they fully support pedophilia. This is the same as the accusations that are constantly thrown around by the white knight above and the most outspoken .ml users.
Whataboutism
Eh that’s relevant to the discussion since OPs argument is that they’re worse.
My arguing point is that at least the US has a free enough press to keep track of most of their bullshit.
The US never did. The American media has been lying to people for over a century and people have been pointing that out just as long. Now the media is so horrifically corrupt that everyone is starting to notice it, not just minorities or queer people.
people have been pointing that out just as long
exactly
just because people can give criticism does not mean the system actually accepts criticism or even that it does not retaliate against such criticism. yes there are instances where criticism has led to genuine change (easy example is “The Jungle”), but for every instance of successful criticism i argue there are hundres, thousands, even millions of instances where said criticism has led to the harassment and discrimination; tenfold if the person was a minority in any capacity. by and large american media, industry, government, and society has suppressed any and all forms of criticism or even nonhegemonic thought until its existence has been so normalized amongst cishet white peoplr that they finally let it exist in a heavily moderated and monetized manner. this can be seen time and time again with hayes codes, mccarthyism, the civil rights movement, the suffrage movement, queer acceptance, trans acceptance, the war on drugs, 9/11 and the wars in the middle east. we are actively seeing it right now; you cannot look at the NYT, Time magazone, the WSP, CNN, or any major American media institution and tell me that they are actually free press. At best they are controlled opposition. this is not a conspiracy theory, these are documented facts1. This has only gotten worse as more tech CEOs have bought more and more news and media companies. anyone who actually reports on important, topical information in a way that is contradictory to the Americam hegemonic system of thought has been target, oppressed, and even sanctioned2. Mainstream media has enjoyed a degree of freedom allowed by the understanding that maintaining the visage of a free press was important, the current high profile cases as of late3 are realistically the exception correcting itself.
America is not free, has never been free, and will never be free until the system is radically and fundamentally changed. The ideals expressed in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution are noble, but the implementation of those beliefs were created by entitled white men who encoded racism, misogyny, bigotry, and hatred into the DNA of the country. At one point there may have been an opportunity to change the direction of America to actually align with the values it professed, but much like a cancer that has metastasized to every part of the body any effective treatment would be lethal; America cannot both exist and actually improve. From the moment this country was built on stolen land we have placed ourselves on fhe wrong side of hidtory, and what has become evident now has always been evident to black, brown, queer, and disabled people. It is not a few apples that are rotten; the barrel itself has rotted.
^1. https://futureofmedia.hsites.harvard.edu/us-media-index^
^2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_government_attacks_on_journalists_in_the_United_States^
Idk, I personally have never met Ism but I heard they were a pretty cool cat
Straw man actually. Bullshit either way though
Just block all .ml instances and move to something not lemmy based. Piefed is good. Plus blocking an entire domain fork thing, whatever you call these, is as easy as one click.
This is the way.
If you don’t like ml, just block them and leave lemmy.
Why exactly is leaving Lemmy necessary? I blocked the .ml instances, but I’m content with Lemmy for the rest
Because Lemmy itself is developed by the same folks who run .ml instance. Luckily there is piefed and mbin, which are compatible.
Piefed is a 1 to 1 replacement with access to the same content.
The lead lemmy developer has some u n usual political ideologies which are incompatible with my own.
The lead lemmy developer has some u n usual political ideologies which are incompatible with my own
Ooh, interesting. Do you also leave buildings whenever someone plays Michael Jackson?
What a silly thing to say.
Firstly, it’s classic, textbook whataboutery.
Secondly, I’m struggling to remember the last time I would have been anywhere that would have played Michael Jackson.
Finally, you don’t seem to understand the basic concepts of approval, support, and patronage. The existence of alternatives is critical
- I may not like my government, but I can’t just flip to another one so I’ll vote accordingly but pretty much go about my life
- I don’t particularly like a lot of mozilla’s decisions in the last several years, but chrome & friends is worse. All I can do is use a soft fork. Still using a soft fork but at least not supporting firefox directly.
- I don’t align well with desalines, and given the ready availability of alternatives, I can switch away without issue.
Oh, well. Nice to meet you, I guess. I hope you have a good day
