Full disclosure, I live in Africa and don’t have a dog in this fight. I like proper discourse and it’s alright if I and another person disagree on something, what is important is that we communicate and understand where the other is coming from. The ultimate goal is the satiation of needless and avoidable suffering for all minds.
I’ve only been on Lemmy for a few days but across any sub I’ve noticed any criticism of China or the CCP is met with immediate downvotes and anything remotely positive of the US or really any western country whatsoever meets a similar fate.
Anything pro-African is mostly neutral but in essence ignored, no upvotes, no downvotes, no comments.
Has anyone else noticed this? Am I completely off base here? And is there anything else here that seemingly gets downvoted automatically. It would be sad to see the fediverse and Lemmy be nothing more than just another echo chamber on the web.
Finally, I am posting this assuming it will also be downvoted to hell based on the title alone and that itself will be some monochrome of truth of the situation here.
I don’t know how true it is for where you live OP, but from my POV in western Europe, capitalism propaganda is non-stop. “Competition is good” is science, not a piece of ideology. “Billionaires are innovators” goes mostly unchallenged. “China is evil” is a fact, and when they do something good it must be because of corrupt intentions behind it all.
I agree that this constant rejection of that propaganda would be weird if you don’t live 24/7 with that glazing of capitalism to begin with (which may or may not exist depending on where you live in Africa)
You’re in .world, I sincerely doubt there are that many massively upvoted pro-China or anti-West comments coming from your instance.
Some core developers of Lemmy are hardcore tankies and that attracts others.
Also, for someone from Africa it’s weird to claim they are not involved in this. China is strategically investing in African countries. If your country has any mineral or other strategic resources, China is no doubt already there.
deleted by creator
cripes.
deleted by creator
I love to see dirt on china but I wish there was a better source than BBC since it’s not the most credible outlet (right wing aligned).
Do you have any other sources for this?
deleted by creator
Has the political stance of the devs ever impacted lemmy in any way? From what I can tell they do a pretty good job isolating their views to their instance. Honestly apart from a few comments I rarely see any tankies.
Yes. As per OP, tankies are everywhere in Lemmy. More so than other platforms, it’s hard to miss. OP isn’t wrong about that.
If a user isn’t aware of tankies, they could easily be swayed by the constant posting of pro-CCP crap here.
I keep reading about this, can you show me some examples of pro-CCP sentiment? Tbf I block political communities anyway but I’m curious what tankie behaviour people keep referring too.
just have a look at genzedong@lemmygrad.ml but put your tinfoil hat on before to prevent potential brain damage
I went to their instance but only found a single post?
Edit: Oh it’s a community, but it’s contained right? I’m getting pretty tired of people talking about Lemmy in general when a simple defederation solves the issue.
lemmygrad.ml is not federated with many, many other instances exactly because of their authoritarian BS, including dbzer0.com. you might need to log out and visit lemmygrad.ml directly.
If you want the general idea you can also just take a look at yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com and search for lemmy.ml.
I went to lemmygrad to view the user, I know about the defederationI didn’t realise you were talking about communities
Cowbee as well
Literally the #1 touter of the CCP and China.
Is wholly incapable of assessing China in an unbiased manner, will only see positives or reframe away the negatives.
Keyboard warrior w a billion sources on anything for his sophistry.
Tbh there is little evidence. There is a lot of shitposting people socialists are pissed off being called “tankie” or communist as a slur. I mean this shit is old. McCarthy would love this “oh you’re a tankie!” shit.
The worst I’ve seen is a communist community discussing that Stalin needs to be rehabilitated for his role in building up the USSR despite his “mistakes” (The big oopsie of 3.3 million dead in the great purge). I mean that is just stupid.
The larger issue is the laser focus the liberal community has on tankies, it’s not the fascists that are currently rising or already ruling, noooo it’s the “authoritarian tankies” that are at the lowest of their power ever. Whoever has been putting money into this tankie meme is brilliant. Just amplify that shit and stoke that hatred. Fascism bad, but oh please don’t be too radical lol.
So basically lemmy failed as a platform precisely because the neoliberal have managed to already cut out the socialist heart of lemmy.
Where are you getting 3.3 million killed in the purges? The number of sentencings to death was ~799,455, and we know many were canceled as the purges went beyond what was expected.
Wikipedia since I haven’t read history about this. I know it’s not a reliable source but without doing a deep dive, what is lol. And sending people to the gulag wasn’t much better than death, so counting the deaths there too you get 3.3 mil. But the precise number hardly matters. Not even the most favorable view matters outside of academia. It happened, it’s a mountain of bodies. It simply cannot be excused or rehabilitated. You must say “this was very bad, it must never happen again”.
And I’m sure you all would, but then how can you in the same breath rehabilitate the man at the head of the government that did it?
If you want to promote the (undoubtedly many) good things about Stalinism you’ll need to repackage, rebrand, rebrand it. Call it early Sovjietism or something.
But part of it is that we as humanity still lacks a good answer about what to do about how the “calculus of power” can subvert anything. There will always be sociopaths, narcissist and schemers that pay lip service while min-maxing their own gain, no matter the ideology or religion. There is no doubt that the worst people did the best during the purges. It must have been an easy promotion bonanza. Denounce, report, promote, repeat. Easy soviet-style rank-maxxing lol. The theory of communism is incomplete without an good answer to this.
Anyway that thread shocked me and gave me a new (worse) perspective on the whole “Liberals vs Tankies” culture war. Maybe the fundamental crisis is that we lack any theory or ideology that can lead us out of the current mess. All existing ideologies have demonstrably failed, and maybe we’ve reached the limit of what an average person can reasonably learn and understand and execute. People subconsciously know this so as things get more desperate, there is rising intellectual pain or tension and desire that “but something has to work!” and I just want to believe in something!! So people make themselves believe and ignore or rationalize the glaring problems and increasingly shut the door to discordant noises.
Wikipedia shows the figure I gave for the purges, not 3.3 million. The deaths in the gulag system should not at all be counted with those related to cracking down on corruption and terrorist organizing (ie the purges), as a huge portion happened during World War II due to starvation. The Nazis took Ukraine, the USSR’s breadbasket, and this caused mass famine that hit prisoners the hardest. The soviet prisons were actually fairly progressive for their time, see Russian Justice for that.
The problem with your framing, that we “must never let this happen again,” is that it assumes deliberate malpractice by the Soviets. The purges were a response to real infiltration, corruption, and terrorism, such as the assassination of Kirov. Your characterization of the purges as “soviet rank-maxxing” are absurd and baseless, it was a period of intense paranoia due to the successful assassination of one of the top soviet figures and the discovery of terrorist cells within the Soviet Union. The purges were widely supported by the public, it was not a period of terror.
The deaths in soviet prisons during World War II were causes by the Nazis, not the Soviets. Deaths due to dekulakization, which your Wikipedia article references, are analogous to the deaths of slave owners in the United States. Liberation of the peasants was paid for with the blood of the kulaks, bourgeois semi-slave owners.
There’s also the question of “Stalinism.” Stalinism does not exist outside of specific socioeconomic policies under Stalin, it isn’t an actual ideology. Marxism-Leninism is an ideology, and Stalin’s contributions to it are largely limited to advancements on the national question and linguistics. The bulk comes from Marx and Lenin, and moreso Engels than Stalin.
You were given good answer to all of these questions in that thread. The Marxist position isn’t that “Stalin did nothing wrong,” but that western framing of Stalin is incredibly biased. Your Wikipedia article does this well, it blames Stalin for deaths inflicted by the Nazis, and it capes for semi-slavers, fascists, and terrorists. Stalin of course made mistakes, and there was excess committed under Stalin, there is no doubt of this. However, you take the incorrect stance that Stalin was more bad than good, and do so by also caping for the same semi-slavers and fascists Wikipedia did. This is why historiography is important, and why dispelling the “black myth” around Stalin is important.
I highly recommend Domenico Losurdo’s Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend. Losurdo cites near exclusively western sources, and explains both why Stalin is so hated, and why Stalin is so loved as well. It’s a history and critique of Stalin’s legend more than the man himself, which is important considering how much the figure is distorted by historiography.
You admit to not knowing the history, maybe take that as a chance to dig into it?
I’m sorry but not one part of your comment shows any problem with lemmy. We’re using federated social media specifically so any instance/community can exist is a vacuum, and that includes those you do not agree with.
There are plenty of comms not having anything to do with politics that thrive, politically loaded content does slip into my feed and discussion is rarely uncivilised - on par with early reddit days.
lemmy failed as a platform
This is exactly my problem, you think lemmy is one platform. It is not. It’s interconnected but seperate bubbles of activity that are brought together by federation, which has always been optional.
Very early on there was a hard-coded slur censor list that was eventually changed to be settable by the instance admin, that’s about it.
From what I understand, the devs are not injecting their political views into the Lemmy code. That does not mean they have not had a pro-tankie influence on the Lemmy community. As the original developers, they also set up the first major instance, lemmy.ml and they moderate that instance to have a tankie lean. Since it was the first instance, many people created their first account for it and it was the de facto standard place to start communities. As far as I know, it is still one of the most active instances.
Judging by active users, lemmy.world is the default, .ml isn’t even top 3. I’m getting pretty tired of people referring to Lemmy as a single platform while it’s entire purpose is to have a decentralized network where federation is always optional.
Lemmy.ml is tankie breeding grounds.
I’ve yet to see this impact the rest of lemmy when a simple defederation is sufficient.
If you include impact to mean a bunch of bans and defederations, sure?
I’m specifically referring to the devs themselves. Defederation being used exactly how it was intended.
Has dbzer0 defederated from ml?
They haven’t, recently feddit was, but unfamiliar with the details.
I love that you think Africa’s dog in the fight is because China is strategically investing in Africa and chasing mineral and strategic resources when nearly every single African country’s borders were defined by the West, when entire countries were created and colonized by the West, when the US is actively bombing multiple countries in Africa and has been for decades, when the West was literally torturing, raping, kidnapping, murdering, and mass murdering Africans all over the content for centuries, when many African countries are economically subjugated by Western countries to this day by control over currency, predatory loans and structural adjustment programs designed to create dependencies, etc.
Africa’s dog in the fight between the West and Asia comes primarily from the West’s total subjugation of the continent.
And there’s the tankie whataboutism I have been expecting. Everything you said is true, but my point is that China is strategically investing and they don’t care about Africa, only China. African countries very much need to be aware of that.
China is strategically investing and they don’t care about Africa, only China
Yes, sure, it’s not altruistic. But there’s a huge difference between non-violent trade relationships which benefit one party more, and also benefit the other party, just less, and purposefully ensuring that an entire continent is in a constant state of civil war and desperate poverty so you can extract the maximum amount of resources through slavery. China’s foreign policy is absolutely for its own benefit but they’re taking a “rising tide lifts all boats” approach there and while there are some specific things which are fair to criticise it’s way better than what other major powers are doing.
As a westerner, is it really true that all Chinese investors in Africa really don’t care in the continent? It might be true but I have seen no stories showing positive relationships. That may be by design in western media?
Also, what the hell would it mean to you for one country to “care about” a continent? You’re basically doing the meme:
Holy shit? You think this history is whataboutism? The OP said “I don’t have a dog in this fight [because I am from Africa]” and you said “[you should have a dog in the fight because of China’s behavior]”
Hello? Reading comprehension? How does establishing that OP should have a dog in the fight because of Western history in Africa become “whataboutism”?
This is thought termination at its finest
We have a winner
The west decimating Africa shouldn’t mean China gets to, too.
Found the tankie!
See, this is the issue. Someone doesn’t absolutely obliterate China and the .world liberals all wake up and spout their state department talking points. “China BAD! Leftists tankies!”
What about any of that was untrue? Where’s the tankie part? Cite examples.
Anyone who disagrees with my worldview is a tankie
Who’s the tankie? The person saying that China hasn’t bombed anyone in over 35 years or the person saying “I don’t know why they hate the US so much” when the US attacked over 15 countries with tanks, bombs, drones, and missiles over the exact same time period. Might need to check yourself
Ok tankie.
Cope
These are the people complaining about lemmy being “overrun by tankies”, annoying redditers who are angry they don’t get showered with updoots here for mindlessly spouting Reddit catch phrases
This is irrelevant to OP’s point about Lemmy being pro-CCP.
Are you literally just going to ignore the entire other half of the post asking about why people are anti-western and saying they don’t have a dog in the fight because they are from Africa? Are you that committed to attacking your political opponents that you can’t even see the words that aren’t about your desired debate position?
Lemmy was created by communists, for communists. It’s gonna have communists in it.
Yea but not the cool kind of communists, the lame kind of Communists.
All the cool communists are out in the real world, robbing banks or something.
I though they were running food banks and offering legal aid to poor folks.
Anarchists. Those are anarchists your thinking of.
The communists are doing the thing they do best. Enjoying comfortable positions in western democracies.
deleted by creator
People who think Anarchy can actually work are dumb, though. It could only ever really work within a small community and where you can just kick people out when they suck.
.ml has a lot of cool users.
Unfortunately there are just enough asshats there to taint the entire userbase. I find myself looking askance at any @lemmy.ml, also @hexbear - IMO it’s well deserved. I’d recommend another instance besides those if you want to be taken seriously.
Oh it is deserved, it’s bad leadership, along with a sort of hierarchy, they have like enforcer types as well as their partizans.
If you say the wrong thing they will endlessly troll you, not just from their instance, from other non tankie instances.
Hexbear is the worst.
That said, they have a lot of cool users, you just have to stick to certain issues, politics is a waste of time. Yes things are bad in the west they agree, oh you want to improve it? Fuck you, (their attitude towards me and others not you personally,) there is no making it better only full scale revolution will help, they will say.
deleted by creator
First thing this is all purely personal opinion viewing stuff from outside and as a general interest in world history.
I am an American but I have lived outside the USA for a couple years and no it wasn’t on a military base.
So with that said my personal interpretation is that China is still largely the same China as in ancient times and has decided to take several large chunks of both Communism and Capitalism and add those to the far far larger just continuing to do/be the same as they have for thousands of years.
To put it a different way, it is a case of fix what they feel was/is broken and keep doing all the things that work and from their point of view China has kept itself as one of the largest Nations in history for one of the longest times of any country.
So on the bad side you have things like them being willing to be extremely repressive is terms of censorship. Or the oppression of minorities they don’t fall in line enough to the central control of the government. Or minimizing stories that damage their reputation like mining issues.
On the good side they seem to be able to at least partially consider long term large scale society value. At least from the point of view of engineering. The USA by comparison seems to exclusively only consider short term value. Often in terms of weeks or a financial quarter and occasionally the few year duration of a presidential or Senate term.
China also seems to care about improving the average life of it’s citizens. This is a big deal and probably the most “Communist” thing. However that also goes along with them seemingly not just allowing but being perfectly happy to have some people have truly horrific lives as long as the baseline average is improving.
For something created by communists, for communists - it’s amazing how the loudest voice is people complaining about tankies.
Nobody fights with “Marxists” like “Marxists”
That’s the problem with being the historical Main Character for a century and a half
Lemmy was made by communists, seeking to build an alternative to Reddit where communists will not be able to be fully censored. Federation also is similar to how the USSR was federated, and FOSS attracts the left. As such, many areas on Lemmy are going to be pro-CPC (and supportive of socialist states in general).
This isn’t the case on every instance, though. Each instance has its own political leanings, some very anti-China and anti-communist in general. It depends on the moderation, federation practices, and focus of the instance itself.
Communists tend to be pro-African, especially the Alliance of Sahel States.
I don’t know where in africa OP is but this conditioning of perpetual capitalism glazing we experience in the west might not be something they have to live with, so the constant need to reaffirm rejection of that capitalist propaganda might seem weird to them.
Makes sense, and I understand that.
The bit about censorship is cute given .ml and honestly .world as well, are both ban happy for any dissent.
But since lemmy is federated, those two communities cannot censor the whole website
Valid point.
Also, you can block the whole instance.
Yup. One of the first things I did.
As an end user?
if you are african you definitely have a dog in this fight.
africa has been ravaged by western colonialism not unlike we were.
China is currently doing soft-colonialism in huge parts if Africa. Both the west and China are still huge on colonialism, just in a modern form.
Then the old “It’s not <xyz> when WE do it!” always enters the chat.
deleted by creator
On one hand, Lemmy used to be a safe-space for communists (including those that wish for the USSR back) before Redditors moved in. The developers of Lemmy themselves are politically pro-China and anti-USA.
On the other hand, the USA have stopped being the shining beacon of freedom and democracy they used to be seen as by many people in the west. So anti-USA posts will get lots of upvotes even from people in the west or the USA itself.
And thirdly, the western countries’ refusal to speak out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Jordan and Lebanon has turned most of lemmy against their governments.China just looks less bad in comparison than it used to be.
When western governments don’t give a fuck about human rights anymore, they have no standing to criticize China over it. And when western media refuse to even address an ongoing genocide carried out with western weapons and money, trust in them is lost and people start to doubt whether the stories they tell about the evil adversary China are true after all.So it’s a mix of Lemmy’s original board culture, and a major shift in public perception in general.
P.S.: I’d love to read more news and stories from African countries on Lemmy!
deleted by creator
I’m interested in your take on the USAid funding cuts. It only made the news briefly where I am amid a long list of disruptions that have wreaked havoc closer to home, but I can’t help thinking this has to be one of the worst things that happened on a global scale?
deleted by creator
I don’t think only investing into business and production is what would help. If those businesses get taken over by venture capitalists or go into stocks, then the motive shifts towards profit, rather than people.
It’d help more if those labour groups were worker co-operatives, and their people worked together with trade unions and left-wing parties to establish community exchanges, and the workers use the profits of cooperatives to:
- save for crises, ensuring that even then, workers still can thrive.
- establish and support more labour groups in different sectors (media and culture included), being all horizontally federated.
- grow funds to outcompete capitalist structures, to take them over and turn them into other worker-owned cooperatives, and so the ball keeps on rolling.
- train themselves to defend one another, and learn each other’s jobs. This in case scabs (strike-breakers) or cops arrive and arrest some workers
Especially farms, mines, woodlands, – anything involving natural resources and land – would be crucial.
Sure, in this age of digitalisation, a lot happens online, too. But even then, at its root, for data centres you need land, water, and resources. For computers, you need minerals, from mines. For cables, you need boats of hardy materials. And for those labourers, you need farms and woodlands to supply them and their clothing.
Thanks for that. It set me straight on a few things.
What do you think about microloans then (kiva, etc.)? Is that a better approach? I know it’s more grassroots than a gov program, and I don’t know how much of an effect they have in the grand scheme of things.
no one cares because they’re fucking brown. That’s the honest truth. Sad to say.
deleted by creator
Turns out people aren’t going to be that moved by a decade of genocide accusations that still haven’t been able to produce any credible evidence, especially when they’re currently seeing an actual genocide being live streamed in front of their eyes
A lot of tankies will tell you that the Uyghur genocide isnt even happening and isnt real.
deleted by creator
100%
You can point directly to people and individuals impacted. And they will deny it to your face or find a way to attack the messenger without addressing the message. They have the word of the state. And as we all know. No State anywhere has ever lied or misled. Or any non Western State at least. /s
China just looks less bad in comparison than it used to be. When western governments don’t give a fuck about human rights anymore, they have no standing to criticize China over it. And when western media refuse to even address an ongoing genocide carried out with western weapons and money, trust in them is lost and people start to doubt whether the stories they tell about the evil adversary China are true after all.
In my opinion, of the two shitty governments in question, I believe China actually has the well-being of its citizens more in mind than do the oligarchs controlling the USA. China’s quality of life for its people has been rising by leaps and bounds in the past fifty years. Meanwhile over here the best people who aren’t in the 1% can hope for is stagnation, while for the majority things are just getting continually worse.
Yes, that was always the Chinese government’s deal with its citizens: We make your life better, as long as you don’t rebel, resist or demand “freedom”.
And the western model was “we give you personal freedom, consumer goods and some participation in government, so you don’t demand an actual redistribution of wealth and power”.But in many western countries, especially in the US, the rich and powerful have stopped honoring their part of the bargain, while the Chinese government is holding up their end.
China’s quality of life for its people has been rising by leaps and bounds in the past fifty years.
You have a long way to leap when you start out so far behind.
Don’t forget the main reason western countries moved all their manufacturing there is because of their lack of labour rights.
the USA have stopped being the shining beacon of freedom and democracy they used to be seen as by many people in the west
Only blind people ever saw it like that. In Latin-America we’ve known for a long time that USian foreign policy consists mostly in destroying inconvenient countries with resources for profit.
Only blind people ever saw it like that.
Maybe it was wrong to generalize. I grew up in West Germany, so my perception is naturally biased.
The contrast between how the USA used to be seen in West Germany before the W. Bush presidency and now is very, very strong.I’d say even Reagan already was a very weird president. Before the Watergate affair with Nixon, trust in American presidents was generally high in non-socialist Europe, though imho they went radically overboard with their anticommunism, conflating anarchism and all liberationist movements with what they saw as red fascism.
After Reagan, the surface may have seemed similar to how it was prior, but beneath in the cogs of the American system, something started breaking the labourers of which we see the effects even now. Reagan instigated a new level of arguments for abolishing the state anywhere, such as COINTELPRO, Operation Cyclone, indebting the American labourer while stagnating wages, and so on, and radicalising the discourse step for step.
Definitely Reagan.
American here and I think your wording was spot on.
It WAS seen as a “shining beacon” by many around the world.
SEEN as. And as someone who was born here, I can assure you that many in the US absolutely know that is a facade at best.
The shell began cracking in other parts of the world decades ago (longer in places like Africa), but for most Europeans and the mostly un-terrorized-by-US-military countries, I think the turning point was “WMDs” in the early 00s. When every other “Major” country is either silent or outright saying “we have no Intel suggesting this” then you can’t really claim to have moral superiority, and once you see a liar as a liar, it’s all downhill from there.
“seen as” was absolutely the correct phrase, as it was only an illusion.
On the other hand, the USA have stopped being the shining beacon of freedom and democracy they used to be seen as by many
people in the westof its own citizens.Are we talking about recent developments here? Because, honestly, I don’t think they’ve been a beacon in a looong time for those of us outside the US.
Yeah a lot of people in the USA thought we’d still had a chance to come back after 9/11, even if the before-times where also a farce.
2016 the mask came off at home and 2024 they’re not even trying to hide anymore
China looks less bad in comparison because it hasn’t dropped a bomb in a conflict since 1989. It hasn’t fired on boat since 1988. The US criminal justice system manages 10x more people than the Chinese criminal justice system with more than double the recidivism of China China doesn’t engage in structural adjustment programs like the IMF does and they forgive billions in loans unlike the West. There are grandparents alive today who were subsistence farming when they were 5 and are now experiencing consumer robotics and self-driving cars. China looks good because of reality, not just because the US is recently doing bad things.
So can non-Chinese reporters and journalists come in and check and make sure that reality is true?
I agree. I don’t see things overly pro China, but me being from the US, the US deservedly gets shit on. The rich and the crazy have been allowed to completely ruin it. Then, so many countries sucking the Israeli cock is just insane to me. Seems most countries are ran by terrible people. China included.
And thirdly, the western countries’ refusal to speak out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Jordan and Lebanon has turned most of lemmy against their governments.
You’re lumping in a whole lot of countries with America and England there.
Almost like that’s the whole point of the anti “West” thing.
This is the official stance of the EU on the matter:
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-position-situation-middle-east/The European Council strongly condemns Iran’s indiscriminate military strikes against countries in the region and expresses its solidarity with countries affected.
The European Council discussed the deteriorating situation in Gaza and the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem, which is of grave concern.
The word genocide doesn’t appear anywhere in the document.
Yeah they’re not going to use the word genocide without a pretty strict set of criteria being met by an international court. They don’t use that word on non-western countries either.
But it is nice to see they repeatedly condemn Israel’s actions on that page, which you didn’t quote.
When western governments don’t give a fuck about human rights anymore, they have no standing to criticize China over it.
I would expand this idea further… since all governments occasionally violate human rights, they shouldn’t be very much in the business of calling out human rights violations by other governments. That should mainly be the role of citizens or private organizations, not governments.
The founders of the platform are tankies. Dessalines, for example, is a tankie that banned me for criticizing china.
lmao gottem
Less Anti-West, more like Anti-US. And the China drones are another thing entirely.
deleted by creator
How did a slave mongering, genocidal colonial empire ever have potential to make the world better?
Goods question!!
Putting all patriotism aside, I don’t think there’s any reality in which the US uses its potential to make the world a better place.
The big difference nowadays is that it’s become patently clear that the US government isn’t even trying to make the US a better place.
deleted by creator
…As for today I wonder what their goal is…
There is no goal other than wealth accumulation. It’s a barefaced embrace of the “Gilded Age” corruption and excesses that existed before the bottom fell out in the early 20th century. On a high speed setting.
The underlying vibe is that there is an economic collapse coming (this is why we are in the “Late Stage Capitalism” phase where the middle class is now being eaten alive) and the power brokers and wealthy are grabbing as much as they can before it all falls apart.
Fun times ahead.
America is falling, and this should be an object lesson for the world in what happens when the billionaire classes are allowed to do what they want.
It is okay to set a maximum level of wealth for the ultra wealthy in your country. If not, do everything in your power to limit their policical power.
Protect yourselves.
Yeah, the only reason people are so pissed is because now instead of everyone in the US reaping the benefits of rampant imperialism and global oppression, only the elite are.
Americans are broadly incredibly self-centered and even here on Lemmy the majority of the leftists only consider what is best for them specifically, not what is best for the world.
That’s probably the best way to put it. We used to have a sense of hope here in the US. We could have made things better, raising the global standard. Instead we allowed corporations to poison everything to the point that our leaders are openly evil.
If you had hope in the US, you weren’t paying attention.
Yeah - the whole tankie thing is another matter entirely
Ha ha, no. The US never has, and never will, make the world a better place, in our lifetimes.
deleted by creator
The US spent a lot of money on soft power, essentially bribing countries to go along with their agenda. Much of that money did actually improve people’s lives, whether it was food aid, vaccinations, or AIDS care. Sure, it was to further their own objectives. Sure, it’s mostly because it’s cheaper to buy compliance than to bomb people into compliance. Humanitarian aid with strings attached is still humanitarian aid, though, or the collapse of USAID wouldn’t be such a problem.
Yet at the same time we were couping foreign countries’ democratically elected leaders to put genocidal strong men in power, sponsoring death squads in countries with leftist insurgencies in latin america and elsewhere, and making sure western corporations can get in and take their resources to no benefit and real harm to those countries, paying off and corrupting the aforementioned politicians we helped install because they are corrupt.
To say nothing of how we use sanctions, punishing entire countries to ostensibly create regime change, even though that has NEVER worked, and instead cements those regimes in power as people rally around the flag when attacked from without.
The US hasn’t been the good guy, since maybe world war II, and that was a one off.
I get your point, but the balance of US foreign policy is overwhelmingly bad.
Anyone else get a suspicious anti-genocide vibe from this place? 😳
As you can see from the above example, the users pushing the whole “America is the only bad country! China is amazing and never does anything wrong!” rhetoric are overwhelmingly from a single instance; lemmy.ml.
No matter the topic of conversation, an .ml user just can’t help themselves from virtue signaling in the comments about how much they hate imperialism and how they know that anything bad about China/Russia/NK is literally all Western propaganda.
deleted by creator
This is exactly the difference between kids and adults.
You’re reading a lot of posts from kids that wear their hearts on their sleeves and advocate for what they think is the “good” side.
There is a way to block the .ml instance, I did so within the first week I joined.
It winnows out the kids.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Anything pro-African is mostly neutral but in essence ignored.
This is sad.
I’m American, and I want the Fediverse to be Euro, Africa, South America heavy. Basically anyone but the usual suspects that dominate news. I want to see stuff from other countries.
I was fortunate enough to get to visit Tanzania, and it was great. It’d be nice if your continent took over the world. Please…
Anyway, be aware that many of the authoritarian shills actually live in the US, Western Europe or wherever. Some do not, but the bulk seem to.
They’re just terminally online.
They don’t know squat about what’s actually going on in North Korea or Iran or China, and they wouldn’t be here if they did because lemmy.ml is banned China, Iran, and obviously North Korea.
Talk to the Eastern European Fediverse folks.
They know precisely what the deal is. You do not hear them praising the Soviets, that’s for sure.
Wild seeing it here in .world and other instances all the time. People are entitled to their opinions, but so many comments praising xi or putin are detached from reality. It’s like those people don’t realize that in those countries just speaking your mind against the regime is enough to get you and your family disappeared in an instant. Wow China has great cities this is true - if you say the wrong thing online they’ll put you in a prison labor camp for decades. Ah yes pyongyang is a very clean city - 3 million people died of starvation there in the 90s, they’re experiencing another famine RIGHT NOW. Do people not realize the reality or is it turfing?
It brings to mind the Russian citizens holding “no war” signs being arrested at the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Eventually, even ones holding a blank piece of paper were being arrested.
There are absolutely pro-authoritarian agitators here who feel the need to inject their venomous or smug anti-west rhetoric at any opportunity, just looking to start an argument or push propaganda.
As far as posts about African nations being ignored I’d say that’s par for the course for the West. We’re wildly ignorant about the continent, so much so that we say that someone is “from Africa” while ignoring the 50+ countries that exist there. Our news doesn’t cover it unless we can bomb it or exploit it.
Not really on topic - but a shoutout to https://baraza.africa/ one of the older pre reddit exodus instances.
deleted by creator
I’m also African. I used to be fairly biased towards west, as in letting them get away with foreign intervention with just minor scrutiny while being strongly against china russia and islam for their downfalls(misogyny, oppression ect). up until the whole files release and that took me down a rabbit hole of learning about reality of 9/11 the magnitude of bias in mainstream media and finally reading about history of socialism and eventually communism starting from Che Guevara
That alone already made me have severe criticism of US as is but what sent me over the edge is how complacent americans are, if these things happened in any other country the entire economy would be shut down by the people, but they’re just trying to avoid talking or bringing up this subject, or saying it’s out of their power, then the next moment starting a topic about their latest high end keyboard and travel plans, then switching to the difficulties of living end to end
I do my best to try and be kind i swear i do, but things like this actually drive me insane not cause they happen but because of how often it does. I kid you not i’m completely sold that if anyone will stop the west’s imperialism and foreign intervention it’s going to be another African American or LGBTQ or some minority as usual, because only suffering can bring about change and i do not see suffering from the lifestyles of the americans i talk with, it’s always only on paper
The way i see it is they feel unmotivated to reign their government in due to their lifestyle no longer being at the top of charts or better than europe? How does that fix anything in their situation though, and what do i say living off only 2 meals a day to save money? The only thing that got majority of west sphere to hate genocidal regime wasn’t their tax money being spent on it but the raising of gas price? Please someone make me central again i’m so sad now
No i’m not paid off i’m just waiting for the American people to pull their weight in all of this or not silencing and smearing people that are trying to pull in their behalf before i can feel the brotherhood bond with them as i do with soviets(not current russia) and china fighting back against RAM cartel and fossil fuels, please
This exactly. Once you start actually engaging with history in earnest, and breaking down the narratives we’ve been fed our whole lives, it becomes impossible to see the world in the same way.
That would require reading a book that wasn’t assigned to them by their government in school, and they’d rather die.
Most of us are not being compliant because we want to be . Most of us are barely surviving and if we fight the system we lose everything. Or housing, our jobs, food, and families
I understand it’s very difficult when you’re just trying to get by. I truly get that. But if the average citizen doesn’t risk the things they hold dear in order to do the right thing, no one is going to do it for you. There’s a point where they’ve consolidated too much power for you to realistically do anything about it. You’re not there yet, though it’s headed in that direction fast. There’s still a window of opportunity.
I would look, for example, to the Ukrainian Euromaidan as inspiration. They risked everything, and many lost their lives. But they succeeded. It can be done. If you give up before the fight has started, what’s even the point of being alive?
So… Cowardice and moral bankruptcy.
Trying not to be homeless, jobless, and starving is cowardice and moral bankruptcy now?
To borrow from the famous and possibly fabled merkavist:
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own ruach? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his ruach?
https://www.chabad.org/search/keyword_cdo/kid/11366/jewish/Soul-levels-of.htm
Sorry I haven’t single handedly overthrown the most powerful empire in the world.
Most of us are not being compliant because we want to be .
If not overthrowing the entire government singlehandedly is what you think “compliance” means, I have a motorbike to sell you.
I didn’t say the thing you are responding to, bro. I said, “Sorry I haven’t single handedly overthrown the most powerful empire in the world.”
Have you read theory? Joined a group? Union? Doing any mutual aid? Community garden? Working to form a vanguard? You people are like children. No one expects you to put on a red cape and fly, we do expect you to get off your ass and do SOMETHING.
We are like children.
White Americans have been raised to believe the most preposterous set of lies about ourselves (land of freedom, etc) and the amount of effort to sustain that belief despite all evidence to the contrary is hard to imagine. Effort from the ruling class (eg “god save America” at the baseball game) but also internal efforts from the people themselves - because the collapse of the lie tears your self image apart. This actually started during the George Floyd Black Lives Matter moment but the reaction the other way brings us back to Trump.
People who want real change, and end to imperialism and capitalism feel isolated and hopeless. 1/3 if the country are committed to racism and misogyny. All lot of better off folks just want the illusions of the old normalcy back.
It doesn’t help that truly unedited critical voices here get shut down for somehow being responsible for Putin.
Fuck all the way off. Your point does not merit more than that as a response. Fuck off.
@PotatoPie
Not “current Russia” WTF?
Are you unaware that Russia helped kick out colonialist France from the Sahel???
Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, in particular are doing better than ever, creating their own infrastructure, mining gold and not handing their wealth over to the France.
Only African govts that are puppets of the West don’t like and appreciate Russia.No i’m still learning, my idea has always been that soviets foreign intervention was to support socialism and communism and to fight capitalism, that was their end goal in offering support, and my idea on russia is that their foreign intervention is to combat western influence and push for russian dependency which just means a change in management
It’s hard for me to praise them knowing they’re just as likely to exploit for sake of nationalism as the US is, but i have no doubt i’m Anti-US even if i’m not pro-russia, i don’t take sides based on who’s benefited even if it’s other africans more so i try to have a full picture of the political scene, that’s where i stand
If you have any documentaries or books i can read on russia’a support for independence against france i’d love to go through them!
@PotatoPie
Russia is NOT exploiting Africa. But that is what they WANT you to believe. Do you think France–who is allied with the US & NATO against Russia–is happy about Russia kicking them out of the Sahel?
The Sahel is now fully independent and as I said they’re mining their gold and keeping the wealth in their own country and using it to build infrastructure.
But the West is using terrorists to constantly undermine them & Russia helps them combat the terrorists.@PotatoPie
Here’s a few sources:
Burkina24SputnikAfrica
https://en.sputniknews.africa/Sputnik is state-funded by the Russian kleptocratic oligarchy. I’d rather believe a literal comedian.
And New York Crimes isn’t? ROFL 🤣
I don’t read them either. I go by independent worker-owned cooperatives.
Well I think it’s fair to mention Russia hasn’t been socialist since Gorbachev’s treachery, but that also doesn’t negate anything you’re saying.
