They’re not identical, but they have similarities. What Russia is trying to do to Ukraine is not dissimilar to what Israel did to Palestine half a century ago.
Two thirds of the rabid ones here are keyboard socialists. They type a good game, know all the stock phrases, but when it comes to actually doing shit, well, touching grass is scary.
They stay inside and rant and rave about how things SHOULD be while we are out there actually making the incremental changes to try to bring it about.
Then they post and pat themselves on the back for saying we’re not doing enough.
It’s very clear that this is every bit the senseless, thoughtless, reactionary, pathetic echo chamber that t_d was, just with red flags instead of red hats.
Thank you all for helping me to realize that so quickly.
while we are out there actually making the incremental changes to try to bring it about.
lmao most of the activism by liberals here is voting every 2 - 4 years and posting, don’t kid yourself. Just keep carrying water for an unrepentant segregationist and telling yourself that the incremental steps you are supporting are towards progress and not a third world war.
Sorry, I’m sure you’ll get your anti-imperialism candidate on the Primary debate stage one day! They still can’t win, but they’ll be on the stage once. And to make sure that that day comes, it only makes sense to do the bidding of imperialists in the meantime.
They stay inside and rant and rave about how things SHOULD be while we are out there actually making the incremental changes to try to bring it about.
Incremental changes like allowing abortion bans, trans bans, the cost of living to skyrocket, drone striking workers around the world, doing nothing about the climate, allowing millions of avoidable covid deaths for the sake of the rich… Oh and presiding over the restoration of child labour? Those incremental changes? Anything I missed?
You’re useless. You are projecting enormously when you say we socialists only talk when literally everything is going backwards even when you’re in power.
What do you even do anyway? Are you organising? Or do you just vote every few years and act like that means you do something? We organise.
And brigading ain’t fucking organising numbnuts, nor is anyone doing any brigading when it’s at the top of our /all/ page right now. I’m talking about unions, salting, activist groups, direct action, REAL shit. Not fucking voting and posting on the internet. What do you do? Anything at all?
Completely skipped over the fact that ALL of the above things happen when liberals are in power too didn’t ya? Just utterly sidestepped it. You ignore the reality happening in front of your eyes and only listen to meaningless words. You’re naive as fuck and very easily fooled.
I can’t speak for everyone but there are a lot of union members and organisers among the ranks of Hexbear. Before I went back to school I used to organise with my local Tennant Union personally, but trying to balance 2 jobs, school, and organising work came to be a bit much for me so I guess we really aren’t that different
The site actively recruits for communist orgs, mutual aid groups, and provides resources for labor organizers. My organizing committee at work exists because of Hexbear, for better or worse.
Once again, the moment someone whips this one out, all I gotta do is look at when they joined. And see yup, that’s a reddit refugee. Works 100% of the time, every time.
You’ve been here two weeks, cool your jets and enjoy federation.
Me personally, I teach and make my students aware of the dictatorship of capital, imperialism, the profite motive… Basically marxism-leninism 101 on a introductionary level.
Other than that, I’m active in the teachers union and volunteer in the local chapter of the Marxist leninist party tog et local projects of the ground, like extending the public transport network, social housing, and most important of all, talking with people about their problems, the rise of fascism where I live and how to counter it, as well as the current neoliberal line of thought in both local and federale government.
You’re not doing anything you’re literally just actively promoting fascism. Congratulations, you beat the Republicans by becoming Republicans. So cool and very effective!
Incremental change doesn’t work, but if it did we don’t have time for it with the climate as it is, but if we did I’d still rather change something quick so we can stop people from dying in poverty and starvation.
I believe the comrade is making a joke about our politics. Not everything we don’t like is fascism, some of it is liberalism. But of course, we all know what bleeds when a liberal gets scratched.
As communists we’re staunchly anti-NATO and against the US imperialist order. There’s a degree of critical support for the Russian Federations struggle against NATO, but thats not really pro-russia, or at least how we would define being pro-russia.
Similarly we have critical support for Iran in its struggle against the US led imperial order, and we support when they do things like engaging in trade with AES like Venezuela. Thats not the same as direct support for the theocracy there or all their domestic policies for example
NATO aid and their not allowing Ukraine to negotiate peace is what is prolonging this war. We aren’t arguing for all of Ukraine to become Russian territory, which hasn’t been the position of the Russian Federation either.
We would like a negotiated peace that alllows the Donbas republics to leave Ukraine and join the Russian Federation as they’ve voted to do, and a promise for Ukraine to not become part of NATO. That senario is not the alternative you’re talking about, or what you’re implying we support.
We act as if the land wasnt invaded. The quickest way to achieve peace is for Putin yo withdraw. If the Ukrainians push into Russia after a withdraw, then we are having a different conversation.
You cant claim to believe in peace while in another territory.
No, if he didn’t he would have been couped and the invasion launched anyway. Russia is a dictatorship of capital. Putin answers to the national bourgeoisie of Russia.
Also hypotheticals like that aren’t really relevant to discussing actual exit strategies. Unless you’ve found a way to hop realities.
Then they deserve defeat at the hands of Ukraine. If they want to go into a war on their own volition, then they will have to face to consequences. If that requires NATO might, then so be it. Peace was always an option.
Okay, but it doesn’t seem Ukraine is winning, even with NATO supporting them. So, that means a settlement is probably the best option to save lives all around.
I disagree. The fact that Russia (a supposed world super power) is still there means Ukraine is winning. Russia can’t beat little ol’ Ukraine in a war. I’d say they are in a better position than we think.
No, it means its getting increasingly bloody as more and more Russians and Ukrainians get thrown in the meat grinder without a path to victory for Ukraine. That isn’t winning.
You understand that “they should behave like they should behave” isnt very useful in understanding politics and developing personally actionable solutions, right?
The fact that Russia (a supposed world super power) is still there means Ukraine is winning.
The fact that Russia didnt shock and awe it’s way across a country that has the entirety of NATO backing it means Russia is losing? Lmao ok.
NATO is running out of equipment because it’s supplying Ukraine. Russia is basically taking on NATO and winning, but go off
I disagree, but even if I agreed I’d accept the material reality that is that Ukraine is bleeding people. The have a volksturm going on, it’s a meat grinder, I think they should stop this mindless slaughter
Your way of conceptializing this is so childlike as to be useless.
I want the war in Ukraine to end. I want them to negotiate the best and most obvious solution to this conflict for the parties involved. I want the war to end because then people will not be getting killed.
You want NATO to keep supporting Ukraine, to keep Ukraine away from negotiating. You want this, because… i don’t know why.
I’m saying the Ukrainians should not be expected to negotiate, given that it is their land being invaded. If Putin doesn’t like that, he can pound sand and leave.
If someone invades your house, you wouldn’t just given them a room and bath to have them clam down.
There was an ethnic cleansing attempt going on prior to the Russuan invasion. The Azov battalion was shelling ethnic Russians (who make up the majority of people in the Dnbas and Eastern Ukraine)in the Donbas for the last 8 years.
So if the Ukrainians were shown to be persecuting jews, roma, russian-ukrainians or commies you’d be against Ukraine?
Well have I got some news for you
If Putin doesn’t like that, he can pound sand and leave.
Or he can keep grinding Ukrainians that are poisoning their soil with mines, cluster ammo and depleted uranium because I assure you Ukraine isn’t winning this and even their NATO backers are announcing it now that the “spring counter-offensive” has failed.
If someone invades your house, you wouldn’t just given them a room and bath to have them clam down.
I sure am glad that libs are aware that international relations are complex issues that cannot be boiled down to household analogies. It sure would be frustrating if they tried to make this into some simple black/white scenario with good guys and bad guys separated from material reality and historical context
do you sincerely think Ukraine will be like “it’s all good you were a good sport we’re gonna end the match here, everyone go home” if Russia suddenly decided to up and leave.
Even if Russia were to withdraw to pre-war borders, Ukraine would keep fighting because they insist on taking Crimea which is a large majority Russians who want to be part of Russia.
Crimea has never truly been Ukrainian. It was internally transferred to the Ukrainian SSR in the 1950s, but its population was Russian then and stayed Russian the whole time since. But Ukraine insists on having it back.
And if they did somehow get it back, they would start ethnically cleansing it of Russians. I hope you understand how that’s a bad thing.
Without NATO aid, Ukraine will just plainly be taken over by Purine Russia.
The war would end, a whole lot of people would stop getting killed, and it would open a sliver of space to organize on class lines instead of nationalist ones.
As it is, it is basically illegal to be a communist or an anarchist in Ukraine, and the country is under martial law with NATO-armed and trained fascist brigades doling out summary justice. Could it get worse? Why should the left advocate for people to die on the hill of a country which arrests communists, dismantles labor unions, and liquidates public infrastructure on internet auctions for foreign investors?
If you take the most vulgar Anarchist approach, all states are bad, full stop. Political practice doesn’t even operate on that paradigm. You struggle to undermine oppressive hierarchical systems that you come in direct contact with through direct action. If you take the vulgar Leninist approach, the Proletariat should struggle for the overthrow of their Bourgeoisie (this would include the proletariat of Ukraine and Russia respectively, as well as the proletariat of Western countries which see this conflict only as a means to strengthen their military alliances and diplomatic positions). Of course, the situation is too nuanced to apply such a vulgar approach, but that should be the STARTING POINT for anybody who considers themselves anti-capitalists. You should be able to justify any deviation from those bedrock positions.
Im no fan of US imperialism, but you all conveniently leave out the alternative to NATO aid in Ukraine right now.
Nope it’s mentioned all the time: diplomacy, peace talks, and to make that even possible, establish legitimacy by abiding by your own agreements. The undermining of all of these things has been discussed at length. They don’t really need to be rehashed in our spaces for the benefit of new people that don’t ask questions, though.
Without NATO aid, Ukraine will just plainly be taken over by Purine Russia.
lol RF could take over UA any time they wanted to if they took the NATO approach of completely destroying civilian life and essential resources via bombing. Military “aid” to Ukraine just keeps Ukrainian soldiers getting killed en masse, which is characterized by Russia as their compromise version of Denazification.
As far as Im concerned, Putins expansion is really helping NATOs by giving them a justification to exist
NATO obviously requires no credible justification to exist. This doesn’t matter.
I find it completely unreasonable to request a peace talk whilst in a neighboring sovereign nation invading. That’s lunacy to think Ukrainians are being the unreasonable ones here in regards to a peace talk.
I find it completely unreasonable to request a peace talk whilst in a neighboring sovereign nation invading.
You have a very funny idea about the realities of war. By your logic most could never end. Wars are resolved through diplomacy or full collapse and loss. Your sociopathic ideas about what is “reasonable” devalues the lives and well-being of Ukrainians living through war.
This is liberal “moral victory” nonsense that no serious person believes.
That’s lunacy to think Ukrainians are being the unreasonable ones here in regards to a peace talk.
Thank you for conceding my point and implicitly retracting the claim I replied to.
Of course I do, I have family in Ukraine. I’d love to know how 2014 infringed on Russia’s sovereignty, though, since that’s the only way I could see it remotely justifying what Russia is doing today.
Is that your actual answer? That’s all you think that happened in 2014? I’m asking because it’s pretty impossible to gauge wether you’re being a smug idiot or just an idiot right now.
Getting an answer out of a lib really is like pulling teeth, you’re completely incapable of good faith discussion. Why is it so hard for you to answer a simple question? Why do you refuse to just engage in good faith with those that respond to you? Are you incapable of being a smugh shitheel?
You said Russia didn’t unilaterally invade Ukraine, because of what happened in 2014. I poked fun at how ridiculous that was and now you refuse to explain what you meant. Now you’re just projecting and insulting me instead of explaining what you mean and how Russia was threatened in any way that justifies Russia’s actions.
I know what happened in 2014, again, I have family in Ukraine. Are you going to explain your reasoning or are you just going to get yourself off on how much smarter you are than me, and how great your argument/discussion skills are, without giving anything of substance?
You said Russia didn’t unilaterally invade Ukraine, because of what happened in 2014.
I’ve so far said nothing about wether or not Russia invaded Ukraine. I’ve literally only asked you about what happened in 2014. So far you’ve failed to answer.
Now you’re just projecting and insulting me instead of explaining what you mean
Yeah, like you’ve been doing all the way through. Answer the question.
I know what happened in 2014,
Then tell me. Why is it so hard to just answer a question? What happened in 2014?
You’re the one making claims, you tell me what you think happened that justifies what Russia’s doing, or even provoked them in some way
What claims have I made? Quote them to me please. I’ve literally only asked you to answer the question, WHICH YOU STILL HAVENT DONE. Why is it so difficult?
In response to someone saying Russia invaded unilaterally, you referenced what happened in 2014, as if that provoked or justified Russia’s current actions. That is your argument, you should explain it. Unless you’re just Just Asking Questions.
I’m open to actually discussing it with you if you’ll actually explain what you mean and why you feel that way, because I’ve been following the situation for years and don’t know how one would come to that conclusion.
you referenced what happened in 2014, as if that provoked or justified Russia’s current actions.
I’m not the user that referenced it. Once again: I’ve literally only asked you to answer the question. Had I been the one to state the question initially, you still wouldn’t be able to make that conclusion, it is a huge assumption that that would be the line of reasoning, angle of argument or anything else. It could just as easily have been a way to see where we disagree, create a common basis from which to have an argument, to help illustrate a point of larger context or something else entirely. It is common for a discussion to create a basis of shared understanding from which we can then diverge or argue.
Im open to actually discussing it with you if you’ll actually explain what you mean and why you feel that way.
No thanks. Its pretty clear you’re not capable of pleasant or good faith discussion, instead choosing weird debate tactics, condescention and strawmanning me. I’ve literally only asked you to answer a question, and you haven’t been able to fulfill this simple request. It’s pretty clear any extended conversation would just be even worse.
Maybe when you’re less of an antagonistic debatelord.
When in the history of ever did a nation willingly withdraw from its enemy before even holding peace talks?
Did the US withdraw from Mexico before they started hashing out Guadalupe Hidalgo?
Did Germany withdraw from Russia before negotiating Brest-Litovsk?
Even the ‘we do not negotiate with terrorists’ US negotiated with the Taliban before leaving Afghanistan.
It’s a deal, and withdrawal is one of the terms. You don’t do it before the deal has been made. That gives up all leverage.
And Ukraine has already demanded they get absolutely everything, including Crimea. If you want a deal to be everything you want and nothing you don’t, you need an unconditional surrender, not peace talks. Good luck getting Ukrainian tanks into Moscow.
What if I told you that in March 2022 the Ukrainians and Russians came this close to closing a deal that would end the war… that is, before the Ukrainians decided to accept effectively unlimited NATO aid in exchange for scrapping said deal?
Putin has started multiple times that he does not consider Ukraine a legitimate country. If he does not think they should exist, where would the other portion of it go?
I think you are being reductive. One can simultaneously be anti Russia and Anti US imperialism.
Idk why America being bad means oligarchic Russia is good. There’s no nuance in your ideology. The US generally sucks. They happen to be in the correct side of this conflict. They arent always, but here they are.
I think you are being reductive. One can simultaneously be anti Russia and Anti US imperialism.
Yes we agree.
Idk why America being bad means oligarchic Russia is good.
So pointing out American lies shouldn’t be an issue, right? Pointing out propaganda shouldn’t be an issue, right?
There’s no nuance in your ideology.
I’m not the one boiling this down to good guys and bad guys being on “the right side”.
I support Russia in this conflict insofar as a defeat of Ukraine would be a defeat of the American empire, which would help usher in a multi-polar world - as we are seeing now - which aids national self-determination (as we are starting to see around the world, from the west African countries throwing off the yoke of France and the IMF, south American countries collaborating and throwing out US stooges, and middle eastern countries seeking peace with each other).
The US generally sucks. They happen to be in the correct side of this conflict.
If the US sucks, and the us has been shown to lie, and the us continues to lie, then ask yourself why the us supports Ukraine and to what end. Ask yourself why NATO felt the need to sabotage peace talks. Ask yourself why NATO felt the need to make Zelensky maintain an idea that Ukraine would join NATO, after being told it wouldn’t happen behind closed doors.
They arent always, but here they are.
Lmao is this your idea of nuance? “Well all the other times they were shown to be ghouls, but this time where I’m bought in, they’re definitely not”
Are you implying NATO is just the US? That no other NATO nation has sway, and that they are all US puppet?
This isnt a US vs Russia issue. Its the majority of Europe as well. I tend to trust them as a collective before Id trust Russia.
Again. I think you are being reductive and turning this into a US bad issue when the US isnt even the most important player here. ID argue Ukraine is the most important player here.
The US is not the center of the world. Its a very American perspective
Are you implying NATO is just the US? That no other NATO nation has sway, and that they are all US puppet?
NATO is and has always been an extension of the US political apparatus. NATO is a void husk of ghouls initially staffed by ex-nazis like Adolph heusinger.
NATO is allegedly a defensive alliance but has so far only been involved offensively.
When has NATO ever gone against the will of the US?
This isnt a US vs Russia issue. Its the majority of Europe as well.
The current Ukrainian government was installed by the US, the US president and his predecessor are both embroiled in corruption scandals in Ukraine, and the US is sending an inordinate amount of resources to Ukraine. The US is fighting a proxy war.
tend to trust them as a collective before Id trust Russia.
Why would you trust what Europe does more than Russia? Why is your skepticism a one way street? I trust neither, I observe the material conditions and the verifiable facts. That is what should lie to grounds for your belief, not vibes about “slavs being untrustworthy” or whatever. Why exactly does it matter how many parts a population is parted up in? Would you trust the Russian federation more if it was The Russian federation and it’s puppet states?
Besides - Far more countries are netural/pro-russia than opposed.
Again. I think you are being reductive and turning this into a US bad issue when the US isnt even the most important player here.
You keep coming back to this statement, this is now the third time I argue it. As before I do not think it is a question of “us bad”, however it is striking to me that you 1. Part this up into “good” and “bad” sides 2. Insist you’re on the “good” side 3. Discount any notion of nuance as wanting to make this about the us.
Seeing as how you keep returning to this way of dismissing me and seeing how you choose to avoid answering my questions It is clear you are not actually interested in a good faith discussion.
America centric.
As I’ve clearly illustrated it is about the US. You refusing to engage with this point does not make it less true.
Edit: you keep speaking of nuance, yet I see none from you. You reduce this to a question of right and wrong, good and bad, and then declare “were on the good side”. How is this nuanced? How is it nuanced to complain about added context? The fact that I am unwilling to mindlessly go “putler bad, zlava Zelensky” somehow makes me the unnuanced one? The fact that I think questions of NATO encroachment, breaches of treaties and economic interests are relevant to the discussion is somehow unnuanced?
Your willingness to reduce it all to “invasion wrong, all other doesn’t matter” is somehow nuanced? Please do some self-crit.
This is essentially what I used to think as well, until I spent more time there. There’s some stock phrases busted out, and some users probably leave it at that and don’t engage beyond it. However, they genuinely have a deeper framework for an analysis of the world than what you’re going to see from conservatives.
Basically as part of their extremely liberal ideology, they analyze things through a materialist lens, even the non-marxist liberals there, and through that there is a lot of seeking out of what material causes and contradictions have lead to where we are which can be really neat.
There is probably some disagreement over what is fascist, what’s not, blah blah. But it’s really not as simple as “what I don’t like is fascism”.
I am on hexbear because I like the memes. I consider myself a centrist, but I do agree with their general stance of a revolution that leads to the abolition of private property, there should be a dictatorship of the proletariat, and the complete dedication to elevating our marginalized comrades. I just try not to get political there, and it’s fine really.
Any argument in favor of Ukraine surrendering territory to Russia is pro-Putin. It doesn’t have to explicitly say “I support Putin”. If the comment suggests that the invasion is in any way justified or that the conquest of Ukrainian territory should be legitimized, it is a pro-Putin argument.
It’s only the most brainwashed liberals that turn into this kind of frothing cult of personality turning an entire country of hundreds of millions into a single figurehead.
Evidenced further by the reactionary stance “I’m not listening to a single fucking thing that doesn’t 100% align with the most one sided propaganda that I exclusively seek out”
Real good way to not know a single thing you’re talking about and look like an idiot when you try
Dumb fuck. You literally said that exact thing in your own words. Projection is something you can accuse someone of if you HAVEN’T completely walled yourself off from knowing the nature of their arguments.
My point and calling you a dumb fuck are one in the same. You need to be and deserve to be called a dumb fuck right now. Did you really read past my several valid criticisms of you and absorb nothing more from it than a pissy attitude?
Pro-Putin is when I want there to still be Ukranians after this. Pro-Ukranian is when I cheer on wave after wave of old men and young boys get mulched by artillery while a bald guy with a sonnenrad tattoo points a rifle at their backs to make sure they don’t try to run.
Abstract principles really do matter more than human lives to you libs. Don’t talk about “legitimate interest in fewer Ukrainians dying” when you wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice every last one of them for one inch of soil.
China lifted 800 million people out of poverty by building healthcare, transport, housing, jobs, education and food security? Heh, but what about that time European settlers got richer by genociding Native Americans? Technically that was “poverty reduction” too, commie smuglord
Chinese poverty elimination didn’t come on the backs of any of those things you goober. “Well have you considered that sometimes OTHER countries did bad things to reduce domestic poverty, and therefore China doing so is inherently bad actually !?” Grow the fuck up, this isn’t a real argument.
Please watch this documentary co-produced by literally PBS on the poverty alleviation campaign. I’m sure you’ll just dismiss it as all a charade and propaganda, but I hope you approach it with an open mind. What the Chinese have been able to accomplish (through sheer hard work and determination) is nothing short of incredible and it honestly pisses me off you would compare that to the literal genocide of Native Americans.
I don’t actually think. I just know I’m right. Then whenever I’m in an argument I can just link the [word we’re arguing about] wikipedia article. Since I’m right and wikipedia has objective information the argument is over every time and I win.
The conversation was you linking a Wikipedia article, I was at least hoping you’d link like a book or something. Like we could have a discussion if you were trying to argue against authoritarianiam as defined by say Bakunin or some other anarchist thinker.
Then I could respond with On Authority which argues that authority is a natural consequence of any organization and calling something authoritarian just means you’re saying that it’s a system that is able to successfully reproduce itself.
You could also try to link “authoritarianism” to fascism, but again that is pointless because there’s already a term for fascism, which is Fascism.
If you would reread the thread you’d notice it begins with the hexbear user making a simple request, which the user could not fulfill. Any further questions in the discussion were met with derision, which is when the bad-faith behaviour was reciprocrated by the hexbear user. Please do better and hold yourself to at least half the standard you expect of others
All governments are authoritiarian. They have the authority to tax you and can do that cuz they have a monopoly on violence. But if you have “HUMAN RIGHTS” written on a piece of paper in your capital building that basically makes you a democracy, right?
This argument is essentially “words have no real meaning”. Having authority does not make a government authoritarian. The term authoritarianism is defined. The CCP is authoritarian, by definition, starting with (but not ending with) having only one political party.
maybe if more people voted for them they would be bigger parties curious-marx does a party stop being a party because it’s smaller than the dominant party? By that measure, Japan is authoritarian as they’ve been run by a single party (the LDP) for nearly 70 years!
Bluntly, the definition of authoritarianism as any exercise of authority is far too broad to be useful, and is not consistent with actual academic discourse regarding political systems.
Excerising authority does not make a government authoritarian. If the law says “thou shalt not commit murder”, and the government enforces this law, would you label that as authoritarianism?
The Chinese government has much higher approval ratings from its people (consent of the governed) than the U.S. and most any other western “democracy”. It uses less violence against its citizens (US has the highest rate of incarceration in the world plus high rates of police murder and brutality) as well as internationally (China hasn’t bombed or invaded anybody in like 40 years while the U.S. does so daily over the same time period). Objectively, for the word to have any meaning at all the US is far more authoritarian. It uses its authority more violently and malevolently. If you can’t admit this you aren’t engaging with reality, you’re just afraid of challenging the propaganda you’ve been indoctrinated with.
What does the enforcement of this law entail? Police, prisons, arrests, all measures you could simply label authoritarian with no context, no matter how much we might agree on murder being bad, and laws against it being good.
America. This is America. It’s the same picture. America does the same thing but in a different fashion. Please at least admit America is authoritiarian. Why not? I’m a principled maoist, but this makes me want to burn down Walmarts anarxi
its not whataboutism, Im saying a lake is a pond a pond is a lake. I watched john oliver in high school, but really tho would you have supported the entente in ww1 cuz the axis were “authoritarian”??? I know history, I know this shit is bullshit. I’ll talk to you all day about the shortcomings of the USSR, or the PRC, or the DPRK, whatever the fuck, they all have valid criticism, but fuck if america aint some kinda authoritarian state, then idk what
Whataboutism is when you ignore a criticism of one party and instead say that another party is worse in some way, in order to distract from the original discussion. Hexbear users apparently love this underhanded tactic.
See that’s the fundamental mistake you libs make. You project your childlike black and white worldview onto people with a broader understanding, like the christians who think that atheists hate god.
How much influence do the 6 other parties hold in the us?
Would you think china was more democratic if the 8 parties had a larger share of the votes, or would you find some other way to downcut it? Why would a larger share be better? If it was equal would that then be the best? Is democracy a function of how many parties are in government? Would it be a good thing if the president had a minority share of the vote?
Would you think china was more democratic if the 8 parties had a larger share of the votes
Yes, broader representation would literally be more democratic.
Why would a larger share be better?
Because that’s how democracy works.
Is democracy a function of how many parties are in government?
Democracy is a function of broad representation in government, ideally complete representation, though this is difficult to achieve in practice.
Would it be a good thing if the president had a minority share of the vote?
In the PRC, only local officials are elected, and only candidates which are approved by the ruling party can be nominated for those elections. The president is not subject to direct popular election.
Under the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, the CCP is guaranteed a leadership role, and the National People’s Congress therefore does not serve as a forum of debate between government and opposition parties as is the case with Western parliaments.[9] At the same time, the Constitution makes the Party subordinate to laws passed by the National People’s Congress, and the NPC has been the forum for debates and conflict resolution between different interest groups. The CCP maintains control over the NPC by controlling delegate selection, maintaining control over the legislative agenda, and controlling the constitutional amendment process.[9]
The ruling party controls delegate selection, the legislative agenda, and constitutional amendments, which ensures that they can maintain their own control indefinitely. This is the opposite of democratic.
Yes, broader representation would literally be more democratic.
Okay so we should just redistribute some of the votes people cast for their choice of candidate? Ignoring who people voted for in order to get a more broad collection of parties would somehow be more democratic than following the will of the people? A broad selection in itself isn’t inherently “more democratic”. A broad representation is a symptom of a vibrant democracy, but it’s not a rule.
Because that’s how democracy works
I’m pretty sure democracy works by people voting for those they believe represent their values, but I guess I’m just misunderstanding things. Apparently the Democracymeter™ counts how many different parties are in a government, and the more there are the better it would be. I guess this at least means you’re admitting China is a better democracy than the US, Canada, Australia and most european countries, which is something.
In the PRC, only local officials are elected, and only candidates which are approved by the ruling party can be nominated for those elections. The president is not subject to direct popular election
Thanks for not answering my question! I do actually already know this, but it’s always nice to retread old ground. I’m gonna ask it again, since the point is to illustrate the absurdity of your statement. Would it be a good thing if the president had a minority share of the vote?
The ruling party controls delegate selection, the legislative agenda, and constitutional amendments, which ensures that they can maintain their own control indefinitely. This is the opposite of democratic.
Dawg you’re quoting wikipedia. Please bring some actual sources if you want me to take this seriously Wikipedia is prone to ideological bias it’s also a nazi cesspool Fact is that China has a very high voter approval - Now I already know what you’re going to say “Oh they lie, oh they repress!” Cope. I have no reason to think that. China isn’t the country with the largest prisoner population in the world. China isn’t the country that is legalising child-workers. China isn’t the country that is disappearing minority leaders China isn’t the country with media constantly housing state employess lying in order to drum up warfervor.
The parties represent interests separate from and under the CPC, which is one of the largest political parties on earth and comprises of a tenth of the eligible population in China. The CPC is the party which represents the majority interests of the population, of which mas multiparty organization would merely atomize and undermine socialization.
He is using it as an insult, and as a way to convey that you do not comprehend the text you are reading. He does not mean it literally, but figuratively. This is really basic-level communication, but sometimes it can be difficult to parse tone - Please indicate if you need tone signifier for communication.
The word authoritarian has no meaning. Any definition that covers the PRC also covers every other country. Unless of course the definition is “non-white people are in the government” but at that point the definition is just madk-off
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP),[3] officially the Communist Party of China (CPC),[4] is the founding and sole ruling party of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
I thought this exact thing, but the more I learned about them, it turned out to really not be true. While there is a kind of meme culture there of asking Xi to nuke the town they’re currently residing in, and pointing out all of the white supremacist symbols used by the Ukraine’s army or whatever, there is a deeper context for it.
They don’t necessarily support every move these people make and particularly in regards to Putin there is a lot of criticism towards his social stances.
They’re more looking at this through the lens of what a nato conflict is causing in terms of a more multi-polar world and also Russia turning away from the neoliberalism that has dominated it since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Not saying you have to agree with it. I’m more of a centrist myself, but it’s really not fair to say this as a blanket statement with no context.
Forget about Ukraine for a minute. I want you to explain to me your theory of democratic communism. What’s the theory of change? What does a democratic comminist revolutuon look like? Is there a theoretical basis for these beliefs?
I’m a marxist leninist, i am someone you would call a tankie. I want you to explain to me you’re version of communism
A) What makes you think we think the Russian Federation is “Communist”?
B) Why do you not also describe Ukraine as an oligarchy when it’s entire reputation for the last 30 years is as one of the most ludicrously corrupt places on Earth?
And if you instate that “real” democracy in a world that is full of capitalists that will work towards destroying it (as you for example saw with the USSR in its infancy or Nicaragua or Cuba), how do you think your newfound democracy should defend itself?
Before “tankie” became such a popular term the difference was framed as a question of “socialism from above” versus “socialism from below,” as discussed in this Hal Draper pamphlet.
300 years after the revolution people who talk about ‘communism’ will be using your definition. For now when people say ‘communism’ they’re talking about the ML(M) project of achieving that goal. This is a conversation that’s been going on for 150 years now. Not only have people argued out what you’re talking about, they’ve been able to see in real life what happens when you try to put principle to practice. You can’t have communism without class war. And if you don’t suppress the ruling class they will inevitably erode and destroy whatever victories you take from them. You have to use ‘authority’.
You should check out Vincent Bevins’ book The Jakarta Method. He covers the genocide of leftists in Indonesia but throughout it talks to people who’ve been victims of the Jakarta Method, people who were ostensibly where you are, they were communists who were against the use of force. And do you know what happened to them and their friends? They had to flee for their lives while their friends got murdered because as it turns out Capitalists will absolutely use authority to squash and kill anything that even remotely threatens their power. They’ve since changed their mind.
I appreciate that you are being more reasonable than the others commenting to me. I will give it a read.
to be clear though, I’m not even opposed to revolution, but a society can’t take one autocratic rule and replace it with another. I think, especially with this thread, that a lot of people here are taking their rightful hatred of capitalism and channeling it into the support of an oligarchic authoritarian (Putin and Russia). Oligarchic Russia should not be the model of communist nation. This is why I largely don’t consider these commenters to be arguing in good faith. They are rooting for a Capitalist nation to win in a fight with a bunch of other capitalist nations.
I don’t know a single communist who supports Russia or Putin. Why would they support a capitalist state? Do you mean that they argue why, in historical materialist terms, war between Russia and the West has been caused by western expansion? In that case, they are explaining geopolitical movements to our current situation, not supporting Russia if that makes sense. I can see how “critical support” against American imperialism (eg, support with heavy criticism) can come off as being “pro-Russia” from the outside, but it really is just explaining, contra the neoliberal take on geopolitical war, why war is happening. Communists don’t approach international politics as good vs bad, they are far more nuanced which can be read as “pro” things they aren’t. Does that make sense? I am inebriated
a lot of people here are taking their rightful hatred of capitalism and channeling it into the support of an oligarchic authoritarian (Putin and Russia)
Google “1993 constitutional crisis” to see where the correct channeling of hate for capitalism went.
FWIW similar fates for leftists have occurred in Iran, Palestine, Afghanistan, and other countries that hate the US but have ended up being run by highly reactionary factions.
I think you’re a really confused kid. I hope you read the Jakarta method, and hopefully at some point any book by an actual communist. Here’s a good one by Engel’s, its very short, www.marxists.org/archive/marx/…/prin-com.htm
If you’re communist you should learn what that means. And probably not tell us what you think we believe. Just deciding you know what we believe and telling us that our whole ideology is about misplaced anger, and how we don’t make sense is actually a little authoritarian to borrow your language
During World War I, Lenin advocated for a position called “Revolutionary Defeatism”, the idea that the working class does not benefit from sacrificing themselves for the sake of winning a bourgeois war, and that if the working class is organized, a war which is lost presents more of an opportunity for civil war to escalate into proletarian revolution than a war which is won.
I believe this is the stance of most people discussing Russia-Ukraine here, although delving into that seems like an easy way to get off topic.
I’ll second the Jakarta Method. It’s a very stark picture of what we are up against as people who believe in the abolition of money, among other things.
Who gives a shot what you believe in, when your actions and ideology supports the dictatorship of the bourgeoise? It doesn’t matter what esoteric strain you are, it matters what you do and it matters what the end of those actions are
I know this will sound patronising, but have you read Engels ‘Socialism: Scientific and Utopian’ and Lenin’s ‘State and Revolution’. If not, these would basically answer your implicit question as to why we can’t just wish a perfect society into existence.
“Authoritarian”, like so many other liberal concepts, is an idea that - while not completely without reality - is designed to obfuscate how power really operates. For example, non-authoritarian states have freedom of the press. But that press is owned by and will only give the point of view of the Bourgeoisie. The point of Communism is to put power into the hands of the proletariat rather than the parasitic Bourgeois.
So, someone who supports totalitarian rule to achieve communism? Like… A revolution vs voting? I’m asking in good faith btw, I am legit trying to understand
I think the framing is off on that question. Communism is not a political system, its an economic one. Tankies are pro authoritarian, but just so happen to have a communist economic theory.
I believe in Democratic communism, preferably with a much smaller government.
There aren’t that many Communist experiments, sadly. According to Marx, Communism as we think of it is post Capitalism. We just aren’t there yet unfortunately. I think we are edging towards the socialist stage, then we can achieve communism, although I’d like it sooner.
Communism is most definitely a political system as it has an inherent system of power relations, representation of workers, ownership of the means of production by the workers themselves, and distribution of decisions among the people until the state can be dissolved. Internationalism is a huge part of communism as is real politik, historical materialism, and other political approaches.
What I don’t understand is what you mean by authoritarian? Do you mean a literal dictatorship like in Latin America? I don’t know if a single communist country that has not had better representation than the USA as far as voting goes. I guess maybe the Khmer Rouge (I don’t know anything beyond Wikipedia for that one)?
authoritarianism is when you do things and get results, the more results you get the more authoritarian it is
true democracy is when so much nothing is happening that everyone is stochastically dissolving into elementary particles like it’s the heat death of the universe
How is human society organized? What do humans do? They create things and they consume things. What is politics? It is deciding who in a society resources are taken from and what they applied to.
Why do you draw a line between these things? Especially as a socialist who presumably wants to bring democracy to the workplace?
But you live in a world that does, and therefore you are forced to relate to it wether or not you believe in it.
It does not matter what you believe in, what.matters is the material reality in which we all exist
Communism is indissociable from its three components, which includes a political system: dialectical materialism (the philosophical part), the labour theory of value (the economic part), and the class struggle (the social thus political part).
Anything other than Marxism is ineffectual in the real world and leads to nothing as exemplified by 200 years of history. “Tankies” don’t “happen” to have an economic theory, it’s an integral part to the whole of Marxism and Marxism could not exist without the economic basis for it. Why do we dislike capitalism? Because through math we can prove it is rife with contradictions and invariably leads to imperialism. Otherwise why would we want communism? Just because it’s cool to be a communist? Just because it’s a hobby? There has to be an actual justification for what we want.
I appreciate the attempt to engage in discussion about it, but it is an interesting position. Do you not think your position directly competes with assertions from The Communist Manifesto, or State and Revolution, or most communist texts?
I do not think communism, as paid out by Marx, was anything more than an economic framework, and as such do not believe that an authoritarian component is required or even recommended for a communist society. So no
I mean, there’s pretty clearly a difference between the Cuban approach of letting capitalists leave vs the Russian approach of imprisoning them.
There’s also a difference between the Bolivian approach of arming and training the peasantry and the GDR approach of maintaining an armed military police into peace time.
There is a meaningful difference between methods of protecting working class power, and pretending there isn’t serves more heavy handed approaches.
For those of us who are abolitionists, this is a central question.
I don’t understand your response. How is what you’ve described authoritarian, especially in order to achieve communism as op stated? Those were all communist governments.
I could be mistaken, but this sounds people in different revolutions at different times defend themselves differently against the threats of the bourgeoisie. I don’t see how that is authoritarian, especially if the people are the ones involved, heard, and implementing decisions
“A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?” ― Frederick Engels
Moreover, the natural development of economic antagonisms, the waking consciousness of an important fraction of the proletariat, the constantly increasing number of unemployed, the blind resistance of the ruling classes, in short contemporary evolution as a whole, is conducting us inevitably towards the outbreak of a great revolution, which will overthrow everything by its violence, and the fore-running signs of which are already visible. This revolution will happen, with us or without us; and the existence of a revolutionary party, conscious of the end to be attained, will serve to give a useful direction to the violence, and to moderate its excesses by the influence of a lofty ideal.
The beginning of that quote is worth adding for context for folks unfamiliar with Engel’s argument here:
Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution?
And his conclusion:
Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don’t know what they’re talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction.
I was comparing more or less heavy handed ways of doing it. I’m advocating for as light a touch as possible. I’m trying to say that authority is a meaningful concept and that we should engage with it because it’s actually very important.
It’s like how some US cities put you on a payment plan for debts, while others put you in jail. They’re both situations of capitalist class rule, but it’s fair to call the latter authoritarian.
Those approaches came as a result of the material conditions. The capitalists in Russia had a literal army. The USSR was invaded by the us and the UK as well as the white army.
Yeah but still I wanted to draw extra attention to it because you made the point so briefly that it may not come off as the important sticking point that it is.
Looking back “why do you believe the thing you do” should be such an obvious line of interrogation if you disagree with someone it’s some kind of miracle you never see it in any of these all/active threads
I was hoping so hard for a Swanson meme. I thank you from the bottom of my weird little heart. “Why get a ham radio license?” Argh. Because I want to achieve my own Pyramid of Greatness.
I don’t understand how after all these years Steam doesn’t have more granular control over what games / activity you show to the world. Why can I just hide some games?
I prefer it this way. Having to hide all games provides a chance for introspection about the finite amount of time we get in our lives and wether or not tentacle Anime kitten girls are the company in which we want to spend it
Steam recently updated to make it way easier to switch between accounts. It used to be you had to authenticate every time, which was a pain with Steam Guard. Now there’s a Change Account function which won’t invalidate your authentication token though it does seem to sign you out until you switch back.
I use that to ensure I’m not advertising certain games to the world.
I mean, that’s a good one. But the problem for me is that I already have a few special games, and even without playing them they would show up on my profile if I ever set it to visible.
Hey you guys I just had an amazing thought, wouldn’t it be amazing if he just sort of accidentally dropped dead of natural causes or whatever so we could be relieved of all this nonsense? And Biden too…
seriously, imagine what a huge relief that would be.
of course politics would just replace them with some other yahoos up there but can we just move on already…
I disagree actually. It affects your life but you can’t do anything about it. What the politicians say is just hot air anyway. It’s pointless to get emotionally involved and manipulated by their statements. Even bad for you.
I absolutely do NOT follow politics, but am addicted to reddit & Lemmy in my downtime when I’m not doing yoga or massaging people or sleeping and it’s pretty impossible to avoid getting hit in the head with posts mentioning political figures every time we leisurely browse Lemmy.
it’s exactly as you say, but i think moving on and on with worse and worse options is not gonna be better than the current iteration. and no one’s gonna fix the social divide or the voting system. i recommend just stopping to vote and stopping to watch news. the losers have already won, why are we still playing
Local elections are still significant and will have impact on your area. These are the people allocate funds in your city - could be the difference in roads getting fixed or yet another pet project no one asked for.
What really sucks is my local politicians are very outwardly partisan, even though the positions are supposed to be nonpartisan. The surprising thing is that there are more liberalish residents than I expected. Unfortunately it’s just not enough to change what we get.
You know I do kinda wonder what effect that would have culturally, especially if that became a kind of trend or mainstay. Like, obviously a big investigation would take place as to the cause of death. Doubt they would come up with anything, but obviously, huge scandal. After that, do the successors keep getting killed since they’d probably be the same or worse, or what happens? What would happen in response to that? Would they rename the party, launch further investigations, would they attempt to dissolve the party? Would they attempt to believe in different ideals out of a kind of fear or natural selection, or what? Would they all just devolve into extremely conspiratorial thought as they desperately tried to ward it off?
I mean, if they figured it out, then they might even just start putting them out under aliases or fake names or something.
What happens when the government figures out who is in possession of the death note and arrests them/confiscates the death note? I don’t know what’s scarier, some rogue nobody with the death note or the United States Government.
I mean the government pretty much already has a death note, of a kind. If you’re not Gary Webb, then they could always just slip some shit in your water main or whatever, or otherwise just kinda kill you however they want. So it’s not all that useful for them to have, other than being cheaper and maybe making some political assassinations much easier.
To be fair, as a democrat, I generally view conservative voters as easily-misled people - essentially “dumb,” I view conservative leaders as thugs trying to overthrow America, and I view conservative corporate heads as ruling class elites. When you’re using such an overarching term as “Conservative” or “Left” it comes with the unsaid caveat that there are many subgroups that can differ greatly from one another.
I don’t know how anyone wants to self identify as a conservative whose platform is currently:
The dumbest with Donald Trump slurring and stumbling over his speeches
The thugs trying to overthrow America with “Project 2025”, war on WOKENESS, book burning and being anti-choice
The constant meddling of oil companies, cable companies, news companies into what information we get - along with dark money getting funneled to politicians to suddenly say moronic shit like “we can’t take gov money to feed school children”
A Self-made Business Man™ is miles better than Bumbling Biden the fascist communist.
WOKENESS IS KILLING AMERICA. Books brainwash you into being woke. Project 2025 will save us from woke.
Thats the liberal media, “my guys” are normal working men, they wear plaid shirts sometimes and pose for pictures in a workshop.
No I don’t actually believe any of that, but that’s your list in conservative language served to the masses by your friendly thousands of miles away neighborhood newscaster propagandist.
The conservative voters I know all stand for one thing: stubbornness. They make a decision to do something, they do it until they die, and they take great pride in doing so.
It’s essentially vikings if, instead of needing to die in battle to get to Valhalla, you needed to die of an easily-preventable disease because you never got that weird lump checked out, because if you’d admitted you had a problem you’d be weak, which is worse than death.
Now you’re reminding me of my uncle and his multiple hernias. He waited for years to get them taken care of because he didn’t want to have to deal with the recovery time.
I live in a very conservative neighborhood and can say that stubbornness seems to play a huge, huge part of it. But I also wouldn’t discount the insecurity that plays into a lot of conservative men as well. The kind that buys huge trucks, just to commute to an office job. The kind that tries overly hard to impress you in weird “manly” ways, like always having a beer in their hand when they know you’re coming over for something.
Basically half the guys around here are either stubborn dickheads who do things like refuse to tell their wives when they’re going out of town for work - and the other half are dudes constantly trying to validate their manhood by projecting a flimsy aura of toughness. Frankly, it’s exhausting.
Sorry, that was a very personal reference to a neighbor of mine. He does it all the time, so she’ll do stuff like make dinner and then he just doesn’t come home. When she texts him to find out if he’s working late, he’ll be like “I had to fly to Montana for work.”
He’s the most stereotypical stubborn Republican that I can imagine. He considers himself a libertarian because he doesn’t want to pay taxes for pesky things like roads and schools. But he also has very strong feelings that women shouldn’t be able to get abortions, which shouldn’t really jive with the small government thing. He’s a solid red voter down ballot every election.
This reminds me of a coworker I had who used to call the Department of natural resources and try to convince the poor clerk that he shouldn’t have to pay for a fishing license for him and his wife because gay people have the right to get married. I still don’t understand the logic on that but that’s what I overheard.
He then went on to attempt to abduct the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer.
Nah. I have friends that are alcoholics and this guy ain’t one. But a beer in his hand and a giant truck in the driveway might make you think he’s a blue collar bad ass instead of a skinny nerdy engineer.
A quote I heard from a Greek minister (from memory). “If Germany had a choice between doing the right thing and hurting France, they will hurt France.”
As a subscriber, one of the things I like about Kagi is how responsive the Kagi team is. I’ve reported a few bugs (4-5 maybe?) and they all got resolved fairly quickly. You can also find the founder on the Discord server talking with users. This was a breath of fresh air to me when I signed up.
I use Kagi too - they have a feature I haven’t seen before where you can basically optimize your own SEO. You can uprank or downrank any given website to varying degrees based on how much of that site you want to see in your future search results (I use this a lot for game wikis that have since migrated off of Fandom etc, but the stale Fandom page always shows up first in google search).
They’re also working on a feature to warn you which articles are paywalled directly from the search result, which I will use the hell out of.
They also have something they call Lenses, which are essentially search profiles that emphasize certain types of results (programming lens upranks stackoverflow, github, and API docs for instance).
All in all I’ve been extremely pleased with the quality of the product and the directions they’re exploring in. And being able to easily chat up the devs in discord doesn’t hurt either.
I had Kagi for a bit and enjoyed it, but I’m not sure I use search enough to justify the price tag.
I didn’t know about the personalized SEO thing- I wonder if you could have a “default SEO rank” that would basically average all the specific uprank/downranks from other users. So power users tweak their algo, and everyone else gets the benefit of using that human feedback to improve their results.
I can customise it to ignore AI spam with custom filters + academic search + custom rankings + other custom tools. I can yeet domains from ever being seen again. It’s just very tailored to whatever you need. I hardly go elsewhere now. I find it curbs my compulsive rumination googling because I get clear, trustworthy answers and not AI telling me I have cancer or am distracted by something dramatic.
I hadn’t even seen other paid providers but I got real sick of Google about six months back, tried kagi on trial and paid for it before the trial was up, that’s how good it is.
Here is an example for searching for “cats” with academic turned on. It’s not just .edus but it’s definitely part of the weighting. Nature is usually the first hit obviously.
You can also make custom searches with parameters and link easy access third party buttons. I did one for Google shopping for instance.
Yup, yup. Should be under recently visited in the selection settings iirc if you visit the page first. Trying to pen in my Google use to very specific things, but Brave will probably be last to go. Excited for mobile FF!
One of the biggest issues for me is that you can’t use ‘in:#channel’ anymore in searches for some inexplicable reason. But only on the mobile app — it works fine on desktop! If you could do that it would be fine.
there are now two different search buttons, very intuitive i know, one is channel specific - the one you see when you’re chatting in a channel (basically a pre-set in:channel for dumb people), and a universal server wide one that’s at the very top of the channel list, you can still od in:channel in there, but by default it searches all channels
at least i hope that’s the case, if it’s not i’ll riot
Huh, go figure. Thanks for the info! I honestly never would have found that myself.
I still think it should be possible to use in:channel on the channel-specific search though. One less button press and it can’t be that confusing UX-wise since you have clear intent when doing it (if anything, the fact that the two searches work differently has to be more confusing UX-wise).
That’s not lemmy, that’s all social media (albite divisive topics are a bit different among different communities).
This is a hot take, but I think humanity is slowly turning it’s back on social media because of it’s toxic nature. You can only open a browser and get your nuts kicked so many times before you finally decide you don’t like getting your nuts kicked.
Hmm, yeah I definitely see how I am biased there. I’ve been on social media since its inception, so my opinion is likely influenced mostly by people who have experienced social media for ~2 decades and are sick of it now.
Isn’t Lemmy suposed to be FOSS? I thought that was the main reason why people left Reddit for Lemmy was that and API changes. Wouldn´t other FOSS be of interestt too? Just a thought.
Reddit’s great strength was that it was big enough that niche communities could attract enough users to have interesting conversations and a steady flow of content, and if you are a Reddit refugee looking for those sorts of communities you aren’t likely to find them on Lemmy. I’ve more or less made my peace with that, but if you’re not the kind to stand on principle, a falling user count is bad news for the hope that the Fediverse might snowball into the sort of place that can support discussions about your passions and hobbies even if they’re not the sort of thing that is popular with a specific set of tech-savvy anti-capitalist leftwing activists (and I say this with love as a fellow tech-savvy leftie… but y’all got one-track minds and it shows in what communities live and die around here).
Yeah even a pretty unpopular car brand (Infiniti) has a pretty active sub due to the install base. I think I’m the only person here who has posted about it at all on lemmy.
Hey don’t forget about the other half of the posts, which are in a language you don’t understand. Seriously, my block list is long because language settings here mean nothing, and while I’m sure that’s quality content, uh, I can’t understand it.
Yeah the “All” in particular is pretty bad for the average person. They’re not going to enjoy a Star Trek meme, followed by a Arch meme, a Self-hosted post, a grad-student Science meme, followed by a privacy post.
I’m also convinced Lemmy’s “hot” algorithm is broken; I can easily find posts with ONE UPVOTE on the all feed. Hot is supposed to be a balance between acceleration and total vote count, but it seems like it just only acceleration. Go look at the front page of reddit. The difference is night and day.
We need a normie.world that has an “all” feed that doesn’t contain 70% niche communities. We have c/humor, c/news, etc but they’re completely diluted by overpowered niche posts.
Lol, yesterday it felt like there was at least half a dozen posts about Firefox, mostly claiming that YouTube was slowing them down. Which seemed really bad at first, till I dug into it and saw it was probably an unintended bug with ad handling.
And why were there so many posts? Who wants to see the same post more than once?
I have a potentially contentious opinion. Normies are what ruined Reddit and the crowd attracted by normie communities are why Reddit is even more toxic than it used to be.
We don’t need to attract normies, we just need to attract more people like us.
I don’t hate normies by any means, but I don’t want to hang out with them all day either.
Then go use Reddit if you want all the normies around. There’s a site that already exists that meets your desires. I still use it for niche content, but there has been an undeniable increase in toxicity on Reddit as the user count has increased.
Your grandstanding is cringe. This is a forum, not a political movement. If you want normie content then go back to Reddit. When I want normie content I’ll use TikTok.
Nope, I just don’t want the place overrun by people who are mostly just around to flame and insult.
Pick up moderating a few large subreddits and you’ll see what I mean. Even on a small sub like /r/Infiniti, I’ve seen a massive increase in people just being pricks, especially after a cross post. Smaller user base makes it less likely.
Like I said in another post, I don’t like using the word normie because it’s not actually descriptive of the behavior I’m talking about, but it’s the word the thread is using.
Gotta appeal to advertisers that want the normie eye balls.
I hate using the word normie, because these people truthfully haven’t done anything wrong. It’s the advertisers that follow them around like vampires that are the issue.
Under a centralized system, bans are terrible. But federation is awesome because it’s perfectly okay for an instance to be ban-happy. Just join another instance. (I’m on lemm.ee because I want to see everything)
Not only is it fine, but I think we actually need a variety of instances; no-bans, some-bans, lots-of-bans, and excessive-bans. People should have the choice.
Yeah I completely disagree. Imagine if a city/local gov wanted to use Lemmy in order to be self hosted (similar to EU govs switching to Mastodon) but the public just wonders why their local gov put their stuff on a weird circle jerk website that’s flooded with niche memes. “Why didn’t they use the normal thing (i.e. reddit)?”
We should be welcoming enough that, when someone wants to make a new subreddit, they make Lemmy community instead. And I don’t think thats the case right now.
If a person sees something they’ve never seen before, and turns around and flees, that’s a problem with them being sheltered and pathetic, not a problem with the new thing they haven’t encountered before.
While I don’t entirely disagree, I’m a little confused by your description of the front page of lemm.ee, which we’re both on. My front page when viewing All here is mostly memes/shitposts/news/technology when set to Active sort, is yours not?
I’ve admittedly blocked a fair amount and have show NSFW/bot posts disabled, but the communities you mention aren’t affected by that.
Yeah I could’ve been more clear. I mean the All feed not Local. I went and updated my comment. And to be fully clear, I’ve got no complaints about lemm.ee. It’s exactly what I want, e.g. show me everything and I’ll decide what to block. That said, I know I’m not the norm.
Saying you blocked a fair amount is exactly what I’m talking about, so have I. A little bit of effort can really make the feed more palletable. We need to have a place where that is done by default. Maybe even an open source AI or even just an algorithm that tailors it to the user. I’m already glad Lemmy.world is much more moderate than lemm.ee, and we just need a place that goes all the way; NSFW blocked by default, several communities blocked-by-default (not defederated), and somehow prevents All from being flooded by niche memes. I love Linux and the memes (even if they get a bit repetitive) but we shouldn’t have 3 of the top 10 posts be linux memes.
I tried to get my lab mate, a PhD in computer science and Linux Mint user, to get a Lemmy. He took one look at the all page, laughed, pointed out the circle jerk stuff and asked how some junk posts even made it to the all page and then said “yeah, no thanks” and has never touched Lemmy since. He was already 4 times more likely than the average person, but even he was instantly turned off.
I gotcha. Fwiw I kind of agree, even beyond Lemmy I’ve been a little surprised some of these sites/instances haven’t done more to tailor themselves to accommodate more folks or focus on specific demographics.
That’s supposed to be one of the big perks of the federation approach, being able to create more distinct communities, but outside of a few, they largely seem to run the software as-is, maybe with some backend adjustments to help reduce the costs of operation or the like.
Yeah, and maybe that means I should try making such an instance. I don’t have the funds for something like lemmy.world, but I’ve got the technical background. So maybe that’ll turn into my winter break project
It’s called reddit and that’s why I left. Fuck the normies. They’ll import fascism.
That sounds unnecessarily combative so let me expand my argument.
There’s a book called The Authoritarians by a man called Bob Altermyer. Altermyer is now retired but he was a professor of psychology at the University of Manitoba. During his career he did a lot of research into authoritarians, both followers and leaders. In the book he describes for laypeople the experiments and the findings. If you want to do a deep dive into his statistical analysis you can because the whole thing is fully referenced but for people who just want an easy to read description that is also easy to understand then this is the book for you.
After reading the book redditors behaviour became a lot more easy to understand. I was less upset by what was going on but I stopped engaging because I now understood that reddit wasn’t a site for me anymore. It was a site for people that enjoyed being normal and doing normal things. And that’s ok, why shouldn’t they be catered for?
I use reddit and lemmy exclusively on desktop or laptop. So when the app business came up I didn’t regard it as my fight, however I thought that if I expected people to stand up for my interests if they are challenged I should show a bit of solidarity with them. So I didn’t visit reddit at all for the days it was blacked out. I didn’t like how spez reacted. I saw that people were crossing to the fediverse and I took a look for myself. I liked it. I posted. I wasn’t attacked for having a non-normie viewpoint. I liked that a lot.
The thing about normies is they don’t read scientific studies for fun, they don’t like long winded explanations about why the world is the way it is. They think they can see something in the street and extrapolate an entire social policy from it and there are chancers that will tell them, ‘You know what? You’re right. We don’t need experts telling you that you’re wrong, what do they know?’
So your Jordan Petersons and your Nigel Farages and Alex whatever his nameis, these people and reddit’s normie audience are made for each other. I’ll even go as far as to say this extends to the people that think the Democrats or the Labour Party are going to fix their problems, Team Liberal aren’t doing themselves any favours but my point is that if your goal is a massive website that caters to the largest part of the reddit audience you’re going to end up swimming in cryptofascist and sometimes outright fascist content. Been there, seen that, got the t-shirt.
Interesting, I think I’ll take a look. You sorta skipper over what ‘normie’ or reddit behaviour was mentioned in his book specifically. Was it the lack of reading scientific articles you mentioned in another paragraph, that alone can’t be it right?
Listen, just go and read the thing; it will be time better spent than listening to me precis it from memory. but if you do read it a feel like it hasn’t given you an insight into what drives a whole host of behaviour that one sees on social media or that I’ve misunderstood the book then do come back to me and I will refresh my memory of the book to have that discussion with you.
Always treat a firearm as if it’s loaded. Never let the muzzle point at anything that you are not willing to destroy. Only put your finger on the trigger if you’re about to shoot. Be sure of your target and that there’s nothing behind it.
A gun is always loaded and the chamber could absolutely have a round in it. That is how literally every on-set gun death has happened. Round in the chamber that wasn’t supposed to be there.
Police once apprehended a man at a train station in Kyjov (Kiyov), Czech Republic. He was reported to be drunk but they only found him terribly confused. Turns out, he was a Ukrainian trying to return to Kyjev (Kyiv) but a cashier in another town misunderstood and showed him the wrong train.
In fact, the detour could be less than double that. The way to get to Kyiv from Czechia is to get on a train to Przemysl, Poland near Ukrainian borders, from where wide-gauge trains to Ukraine are available. From Zlín, a trolleybus or local train will take you 15 km to Otrokovice where direct trains to Przemysl are available. From Kyjov, the easiest way to get to the Przemysl train is 45 minutes on an express to Staré Město u Uherského Hradiště.
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