In the past week I’ve been absolutely roasted for criticising two different countries. Normally I’d be okay with that, I can handle a mild toasting and after all debate is a good thing.
On both occasions though I was flamed for mentioning human rights issues that are established facts and have been known for many, many years. I was critical of the actions/laws of their governments and not the people, their race, religion, general political ideology or nationality.
On both occasions I was bombarded by long posts that parroted propaganda, and in the case of one country I was told (on multiple occasions) that I was ignorant, racist and even fascist for mentioning the issues I did. I’m not complaining about how I was treated, but as a reminder, I was discussing internationally-recognised human rights concerns that can be verified and based in fact.
I could just be paranoid but I’m fairly convinced the responses weren’t from patriotic citizens. I think they were paid trolls or bots, and I think their purpose was to quiet negative talking points about the countries that were mentioned.
Has anyone else had a similar experience?
Unfortunately the devs of lemmy and their instance (.ml) have some extremely questionable views, and they love to rile people up with false claims and bad faith arguments.
Some of their classics are that communism is the only acceptable form of society, and it is completely infallible. China and Russia have never done anything bad, and left wing people in democracies are just as bad as the right. Socialism bad, communism good. PS, you are a capitalist pig.
No they don’t, they just genuinely argue for their beliefs and you can’t accept that
I mean, the thing you can say for pro-communist arguers vs anti-communist arguers is that the former group is practically guaranteed to have read at least several books. It’a a total crapshoot with the latter.