Just blocked lemmy.ml from my Lemmy account, and I swear to god it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done on this platform. My homepage feels actually clean now.
For the past few months I’d been seeing a lot of tankie posting and pretty much far-left propaganda on my feed. It got tiring enough that I finally checked my blocked-user list, and realized pretty much everyone I’d blocked was from lemmy.ml. So I just blocked the whole instance instead.
Saying this as someone who considers themselves a leftist: I used to think Lemmy itself was an echo chamber. Turns out lemmy.ml was the problem the entire time. Probably the reason I tolerated it for so long is that I agreed with a lot of what they posted, but like an oversaturated meme, I’d had enough. Browsing the platform was starting to feel way too tiring instead of fun, which defeats the point of being here in the first place.
The breaking point was seeing some dude post a “meme” implying North Korea and China are basically communist utopias and that the West sucks. I mean, the West does suck, but come on - you’re saying North Korea is the ideal the West should strive for? What the hell…
All states are authoritarian. All states are monopolies on violence, in the interests of the ruling class of society. The major difference with socialist states is that the ruling class is the working class, while owning classes are subjugated by the authority of the state. Further, so-called tankies aren’t really concerned with excuses, but with dispelling bourgeois mythos. Information warfare is incredibly complex, and directed against anything that serves as an alternative to the dominance of western hegemony and neoimperialism, led by the dominance of finance capital and multinational corporations on a global scale.
If Tankies were anything like you’re trying to portray them. Then they wouldn’t blindly support Russia, China, North Korea which are dictatorships. They wouldn’t ban anyone who mentions tiananmen square or the China and Russian genocides…
I mean who actually believes the working class in China (which doesn’t own anything much less the means of production) supports getting “scored” for their social standing… Lol
Tankies don’t “blindly” support the Russian Federation, PRC, and DPRK. Ask a tankie about what they support about anything you find odd or abhorrent. Tankies don’t even support Russia, just their movements against the present hegemonic system of US imperialism, which by opposing they help take the boot off the necks of the global south. The PRC and DPRK are supported, as actually existing socialist countries, but not blindly. Ask away and you’ll get nuanced answers.
You aren’t banned for mentioning the 1989 Tian’anmen Square protests, nor the June 4th, 1989 Beijing Riots and suppression of said riots. You get banned for repeating now debunked atrocity propaganda about 10,000 students on the square itself getting killed, rather than the truth, which is that the hundreds that were killed that day, including dozens of PLA officers and a few hundred rioters, happened in areas all over Beijing as the PLA advanced towards the square. As for China and Russia’s genocides, not even western consensus agrees that these even exist. The UN doesn’t believe any repressions by China or Russia amount to genocide, and Wikipedia simply reports on the allegations, not taking a firm stance.
As for China, the working classes own and control the state, which in turn controls and owns the commanding heights of the economy. Virtually all finance is state-owned, and all strategic industries such as defense, electric power, petroleum and petrochemicals, telecommunications, coal, civil aviation, and shipping are overwhelmingly state owned. “Pillar industries” such as equipment manufacturing, auto, information technology, construction, iron and steel, nonferrous metals and chemicals are largely but not as thoroughly state owned, and emerging industries are largely private.
Private industry is allowed to assist with the socialization of production, developing the foundation of public ownership and planning. It’s very difficult to individually plan millions of tiny firms, but a few monopolies become very easy to plan, and folding them into the public sector turns them into public use. Markets create these monopolies naturally, and that’s how and why they are used.
As for the idea of a social credit score, it doesn’t exist outside of a few cities, and is largely used for corrupt businesses. The idea of an Orwellian style credit score simply is fiction meant to scare you, when in reality the west has social credit systems like FICO that apply to every citizen, and dramatically impact what you can afford to do and how to live.
Talk to a tankie sometime.
I got banned for “inventing reality” after talking about the 2009 Green Movement in Iran and how a lot of Iranians don’t love their regime. Basing this on Iranians living in Iran apparently was akin to “inventing reality”.
It went quite a bit deeper than that, you were contesting the idea that Iran is the most democratic country in West Asia. This is pretty true, considering their neighbors are largely monarchies or the genocidal apartheid settler-colony. The idea that Iran is all sunshine and rainbows is wrong, but that wasn’t the point actually being made, which was that Iran isn’t literally Mordor while many of their regional enemies are far worse than they are.
Yes, and I will contest this idea. Should I be banned for that? Are they more democratic than Turkey? Or is turkey not in West Asia? And how democratic can you be if, again, a protest questioning the results of an election gets 1.500 people shot?
That’s like saying that chicken is the tastiest vegetable. It’s not a vegetable.
Their supreme leader is an unelected position that controls, by design, all access roads to power. This position was now literally transferred from father to son.
The new Ayatollah was not picked based on inheriting the title, but through a council election. That’s like saying the presidency in the US was handed down from H.W. Bush to W. Bush. I’m not going to say that the democratic process in Iran is amazing or anything, but I’m also not going to waste time trying to argue against it while it is currently fighting for its life against a genocidal terrorist empire.
I will say, I am not a fan of the mod of Inventing Reality, Geneva is a doomed and essentially a liberal with better than average political instincts. This means Geneva is frequently wrong and often takes ultraleft positions, argues that Hexbear is “transzionist” and other such absurdities.
Every Tankie I’ve run into on .ml has blindly supported all three, banned me for even mentioning things like the square, genocide, Russia being a dictatorship, China “social report card”… The list goes on and and they are consistently as cultist as MAGA lovers in the US.
So forgive me if having been on Lemmy for several years now. I call complete bullshit on your statement.
Oh and seeing the rest of the statement, your attempt to down play the square massacre and split hairs about where and how many were killed. You are absolutely a Tankie and as bad as any MAGA cultist. Take your bullshit propaganda back to .ml
Unfortunately for you and your lies, your moderation history is public
It should be it illustrate the craziness of .ml mods. Good Bye!
I’d need to see any evidence of what you claim, because it sounds like you repeated right-wing mythology and got shut out even when shown direct evidence to the contrary. For example, I already explained how China doesn’t have the social credit system you think it does, yet you keep repeating it like it’s relevant and real.
No you don’t, you have no intention of discussing good faith. And you provided zero proof yourself. You are a typical propaganda agent. Heck your lies are proof enough. Good bye
I never lied a single time, you made the claims and failed to support them. This crashout on your part isn’t an actual point.
Would you mind rewriting that so someone not as versed in theory as you can understand it?
What part was difficult? I’ll do my best.
The whole thing is full of jargon.
I’ll try to define anything one might struggle with then, I guess.
Authoritarian - to hold a monopoly on authority, ie the political legitimacy to the use of force
Ruling class - that class which owns the commanding heights of the economy and controls the state
The state - the special administrative body for managing the affairs of the ruling class
Owning class - that class which gains their means of subsistence through ownership
Working class - that class which gains their means of subsistence through labor.
Tankies - those who defend socialist states
Bourgeoisie - those who own capital and employ it to profit off of the labor of others
Hegemony - the dominance of a given subject
Neoimperialism - the current, highly financialized system propogated worldwide whereby the more developed capitalist countries profit dramatically off of exploiting lesser developed countries
Finance capital - the monopolist merging of bank and industrial capital