I’ve been trying to make people aware of Lemmy on discord and Mastodon, but it’s always met with resistance citing “the devs are pro authoritarianism tankies.” Kbin seems to be picking up steam because of the developer baggage.
Do you feel like this negative perception will hamstring Lemmy’s growth?
I think it might for a little while but not for much longer.
When the influx started, the two oldest and biggest Lemmy instances, the ones maintained by the developers, and thus presumably the flagship instances, were lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml. Tankies are definitely overrepresented in those two instances, and since the devs themselves are tankies, there’s a lot of moderation bias in favor of red fascist authoritarian regimes even in the nominally “neutral” lemmy.ml — such as them refusing to remove genocide denial or outright genocide justification, while also removing posts critical of China and so on.
You might argue that this doesn’t affect you if you just pick a different instance, because the culture of that instance will be different and so will the moderation, but the problem with that is that if the vast majority of users on a network are tankies and are moderated by tankies then that’s going to influence your experience of the network as a whole pretty much unavoidably unless you defederate with the largest instances and thereby intentionally hamstring yourself.
So even if you joined another instance, your experience of the site as a whole would be dominated by a tankie leaning culture via comments and posts, and that’s where the reputation (deservedly) came from. And it probably did and maybe still does hamper the growth a little bit. It definitely made me, a trans anarchist, think twice about joining.
However, with the more neutral and professionally-run lemmy.world taking over as the second largest and flagship instance, and beehaw as the third (iirc), as well as the overall influx of a variety of users from Reddit, I think over time the dominance of tankies in how the network is experienced by users, even from other instances, will drastically decrease, especially as many instances defederate from lemmmygrad, and so the reputation will also fade.
Do you include Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Vietnam, Laos, Nepal, etc in that? Is there a type of “red” (marxist) that you don’t call a fascist?
Nice strawmen. Nice combative response. This is why people don’t like to interact with your instance.
Huh? I asked you a real question. You’re dodging answering it?
This is not rhetorical, I want to know whether there is any kind of marxist (those of us waving red flags and organising the trade union movement) that you do not call a fascist and whether you include all of the above countries in your assessment of “red fascism” or whether you leave any of them out. Let’s put Nicaragua and Angola in there too although I would call them quite flawed in a number of ways myself. Also the Kerala district of India, do you call that fascist?
I’m dead serious. I’m trying to understand what you are.
I admit, it was a dodge. I do lack the knowledge of these countries or regions to actually give an honest answer. But IMHO your question was not in good faith as the answer was already given:
If any of the regimes ruling the countries you provided fall in that category, OP is against it. And it leaves me with the opinion you are just trying to put OP in a bad spot and fish for a ‘gotcha’ moment in their answers, as they (and I) do not know all the details you apparently have.
But you want to know ‘what’ I am. First, I am human. Second, this is my personal opinion and I do not speak for any group: I don’t like autocratic, totalitarian, fascistic, oppressive ways of ruling.
If people chose a ‘red’ government, and they are chosen through continued fair elections with no disingenuous means or force, all the power to them. And even if your chosen way of ruling doesn’t do elections. If people want change, and you deny them that change through force and oppression. You are wrong in my eyes.
And this isn’t just for communism, this is for all flavors of government:
I always voted ‘left’ and ‘green’, which might not be the ‘red’ you wave on your flag. I am not religious, but I am hoping, wishing, and praying for any power that is willing to listen, that the people of my country would vote for a different party besides the VVD (conservative liberal) and the PVV (populist) when we will vote for our next ‘2de kamer’.
But allow me to explain my hostility: I have only been a member for a very short time. And every time I see a post come up from lemmygrad.ml the comments are filled with just degenerative and reductive comments about ‘the others’, the ‘not enlightened us at lemmygrad’. I see comments being celebrated for being banned for posting shitty pig balls as replies. I see people talking down on people for having a less ‘red’ view. I see open hostility being upvoted, while voices of temperance are being downvoted. All I see is us versus them. And them are allowed to be ridiculed and made lesser of.
Maybe it is the selective behavior of the ‘all communities’ overview: that it prefers to show the controversial topics and charged comments. But it is painting any interaction that I see on or from the lemmygrad.ml instance with in that bad light. Just like I explained my view on your question asked in the first place, and you asking ‘what’ I am like I am an object.
In conclusion: I am a human. I have my biases. These biases are fed by what I see. And I have the same bias to other instances if I see them do the same shit I have seen rise out of lemmygrad.ml.
It’s weird how hating Russia is considered reflectively justified, but questioning anything about America requires all this hemming and hawing.
Like, you can’t just say that America has serious problems. You have to argue with a bunch of nationalists who might have hurt feelings and coddle the fence sitters because they don’t like your tone of voice.
Can’t help but think this is because we’re more reticent of people we’re neighbors with, while foreigners just don’t matter.
What would that look like? Specifically, let us imagine a world where it is true that Cuba or the DPRK or wherever does indeed hold free and fair elections on a regular basis, but that everything else about the world was exactly as you, I assume, admit it is (such as the vicious sanctioning and libel by western powers). From where you are sitting, what would the difference be? What sort of information would you be aware of, would you receive from where you are in the world and the media you consume, that was in any way different?
Only one of the countries you listed is a socialist country that “tankies” defend.
I listed countries that the people who accuse of being “tankies” defend. So-called tankies do not defend any of the countries you listed barring China, although we have plenty of criticisms of China as well. The only defence of Russia that we put up is that the conflict that is currently ongoing was caused by nato, and that no amount of pouring weapons into the country will save any lives, on the contrary it will in fact kill many more people. This is spun into “you support russia” by many but is an unfair characterisations of what those on the left actually believe. Yes you can probably find Z people to refute this but they are a minority. Russia is a capitalist shithole and we want to change that in the longterm just as we want to change it in every capitalist country.
The other person was calling them a supporter of fascism, no sense whining about them being “combative” when that’s a serious accusation
And I also misused straw man here as well. In hindsight, with a rested mind, I shouldn’t have listened to my primary response and instigated shit. But here we are.
Don’t get me wrong: I am not against communism. I am against the results of every experiment we have experienced so far with communism. I do recognize the way we currently run the unchecked capitalism and liberalism will also end up in authoritarianism I despise. Back to kings and fiefdoms but named companies and their CEO’s and their shadow council of shareholders.
I believe the golden road is somewhere in the middle. Where people can still choose who they want to be, free to choose how they wish to live as long it doesn’t hurt others, and enjoy the fruit of their labor. Companies are not faceless entities and everybody inside a company are held responsible for the actions they make. Where money can only buy yourself comfort, not power.
I know that is just a pipe dream. We were never able to achieve it now and never will. We humans can never hold a balance. Some people who just get a smidgen of power over others just abuse it for the thrill of it. And some won’t stop until they have everyone under their thumb. Greed, the worst human flaw of all. Even the fairest system we might ever think of will break as soon as we allow greed to fester. And greed does not care how power is collected, money, favors, goodwill, popularity. One wrong person who thinks they deserve more than the others, think they are more equal than the others, getting just that bit of power will set off a snowball that always ends in suffering of everyone except the few. Until the many revolt and bring justice to those on high.
Humanity loves their systems. Thinking of them, building them, bending them, corrupting them, and then breaking them with bloodshed. To just start the cycle again and again.
I will stop my nihilistic TED talk here. Best regards and may you find the communist utopia you seek.
A huge amount of what you discuss is covered very explicitly in “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific,” so I’ll just offer the text and audio formats of that in case you are interested and leave you on your way.
Thank you for the sources.
I have some memory of you being reasonable when actually presented with arguments. I would strongly encourage you to try to actual talk to these people that you speak about in such strong pejoratives, perhaps by asking them non-presumptuous questions. I think you will find that they have more to say than you give them credit for.
The people running beehaw are extremely dishonest about this issue, citing “hate speech” as a reason for defederation with platforms that aggressively ban and remove hate speech, including the only instance I know of that actually displays pronouns with the username (Hexbear.net , which they preemptively banned).