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…
Nobody says Russia is a good place to live in, nor does anyone believe it to still be socialist. China is a socialist country and is good to live in, yes.
NATO did provoke the Russo-Ukrainian war, through backing the 2014 Euromaidan coup and using Ukraine the way they use Israel, as an attack dog. Not all Ukrainians are Nazis, but Nazi batallions like Azov have outsized influence, and train far-right death squads sent to Latin American and African countries to destabilize them, similar to how Israel trains Statesian police.
Capitalism is bad and communism is good, I agree with this.
Statesian imperialism is identified by the hegemonic role that US finance capital plays in the world economy, through institutions like the IMF, and is maintained through NATO and the overwhelming overseas military presence of the US.
Yes, NATO is bad. It’s a coalition of imperialist countries designed to protect against blowback from the global south, and to depress revolutionary movements.
What you describe as “actual leftist talking points” are largely relegated to the realm of social welfare. Equal housing, rights, and universal healthcare are of course wonderful things that we all want to achieve. The problem is that we cannot achieve these things at a global scale with the present system of US imperial hegemony, by which the global south is super exploited for superprofits. Socialism remains necessary, and Nordic style welfare States retain imperialism in order to both have large welfare and a healthy and dominant capitalist class.
Tons of tankies says Russia is a good place to live. And no China isn’t a good place to live either. Ask the Uyghurs.
Russia has been imperialist and aggressive long before 2014.
Communism is as much a fairy tale as the free market, for exactly the same reasons.
How about you now give a definition that isn’t country based and compare it to how Russia operates?
NATO wouldn’t need to exist if Russia didn’t invade every country they laid their eyes upon. Until then, it is a necessity. As is seen by the amount of countries joining voluntarily because of imperial Russia.
Yet again a very typical .ml comment.
I have never seen anyone say Russia is a good place to live in. Maybe you mean the USSR, that would make more sense, but certainly not the Russian Federation. As for the Uyghur people, the CPC is overwhelmingly popular, including in Xinjiang. Over 70% of people in people’s committees in Xinjiang come from ethnic minority groups as well.
Russia has a paltry amount of finance capital, it cannot be imperialist in the sense that Marxists analyze what the US Empire is doing with the global south. Aggressive? Sure, I can agree to that, but they aren’t the ones brutally exploiting the global south, because they can’t. The US can and does, and this is why its financial domination of the world is so important to oppose.
Communism isn’t a “fairy tale,” nor would any reason why the free market is a fairy tale be applicable to communism. I think this sounded good in your head, but reading it makes it incredibly obvious that you said nothing of note here. It’s just a slogan.
Alright, I’d love to give a definition of imperialism for you! Genuinely, this is actually the first major productive point you have raised.
In short, imperialism has the following characteristics:
-The monopolies generate the enormous finance capital.
-The banks are the vehicle through which this finance capital is organized and exported.
-The international monopolist associations are the cartelized form of this exported finance capital dividing the world.
-The territorial division is the political-military guarantee for the safe operation of this exported finance capital.
Russia has an absolutely paltry sum of finance capital, and the era of open neocolonial grabs in the global south is over. Russia has, at most, a national monopolist class, but cannot turn this into international monopoly. As a consequence, Russia cannot use super profits from the global south for a large welfare state like the west can and does.
As for NATO, it was formed against the USSR and the colonial liberation movements of the 20th century. The USSR just came out of an incredibly bloody war, and had no reason to attack. NATO was formed, therefore, to serve as a bulwark against anti-colonial revolution and socialism. This remains true today, where NATO is a gang of the imperialist powers protecting each other from the imperial boomerang.
I’m sure this comment is pretty typical, I’m able to elaborate my views coherently and back them up logically, as well as with evidence when needed, as is common among communists.