American Imperialism
the real primary goal of the project is to coopt and destroy the only corner of the internet where communists have any sense of sovereignty.
If more lemmy users, mods, and of course the devs are made aware that this is the piefed goal using the strategy you just described (and I very much agree with you that it is), is there anything in particular that can be done to try to counter it? Other than spread awareness, of course.
Yeah, FWIW, having a viable non-chud alternative to reddit 6 or so years ago was nothing short of a godsend. And that it was made by actual comrades was just icing on the community cake. Though clearly the libs will never be able to forgive you for making the best federated social media platform while being principled and ideologically consistent in ways they never can be.
So I figure what better place than yet another thread soiled by a tantrum-throwing toddler screeching about how mean the tankies are who made the platform he's screeching and sobbing on, to sincerely thank you & Dessalines for what you've made and for the work you do.
Proper organization is absolutely necessary and we will never achieve meaningful and lasting results without it. However that doesn't mean that individual acts are therefore inherently wrong or that they are ineffective. Don't confuse insufficiency with futility.
I realize you acknowledged in another comment that individual action is not inherently wrong but the constant fingerwagging and pooh-poohing at people who have made significant impact via individual action implies that it is. As LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins alluded to, a multiplicity of individual actions, even if not tied to one specific organization, very much can and will effect long term positive change even if it will ultimately never be enough on its own to "win the war." Organizational efforts and individual acts of resistance can (and often do) exist in tandem, with the latter playing a supportive role for the former. That's still true even if the individual's energy would ultimately be better off channeled directly into the organization, again that doesn't mean it doesn't help or that is serves no purpose whatsoever, which is just bad analysis.
This is unironically the big moral dilemma presented by so much western entertainment media it's nauseating. "Would you pRoTeCt yOuR FaMiLy even if it meant the world/everyone else would die?" and the correct moral position, after much soul searching and garment rending is usually presented as: "Yes, fuck the world, you gotta protect you and your own above literally ALL else." And it's always so contrived, with such manufactured scenarios to ignore the fact that in the vast majority of both real and imagined cases, the better option for the world is also going to be the better option for your family. But constantly pitting the individual and their immediate family's interests over the well being of the community and society is fundamentally necessary to maintain the capitalist mode, so they gotta keep reinforcing that false dichotomy as some kind of universal conundrum that is best answered by being as self centered as possible "for your family."
Or maybe try telling it to all the people of color shot by cops from 2020-2024, or the kids in cages that never went away when a Democrat was elected president but just silently forgotten about and suddenly ignored by the same media that had been using them for cheap political points during election season, or the thousands of people in NOT brand-new concentration camps but the ones that have existed the whole fucking time. Or are you saying that none of that shit mattered then since your blue team was in the big boy chair, but only matters now that a cheeto is office and it was a white person that got executed by the bipartisan fascists this time? Despicable.
That’s just not voting but with extra steps.
So voting for who or what we actually want is the same as just not voting. Got it. We HAVE to vote for fascists we're opposed to or our vote is meaningless.
Sounds like a pretty fucking airtight argument for not voting then, dipshit.
This isn't about hexbear "getting through" to people. Hexbear is a small niche community on the internet where some leftists who know about it like to come to hang out, commiserate, shitpost, and argue (usually but not always in a friendly way) with each other. I'm not OP but she's obviously talking about a much deeper endemic problem in western culture of anti-intellectualism and is not saying "nobody wants to learn the terminology of Dialectical Materialism" the way you seem to have taken it. Just because the users here tend to be educated enough to understand what bourgeois-enforced social reproduction is, that doesn't mean anyone here is expecting the average person on the street to nod in agreement when hearing it phrased that way.
I think you are capable of explaining your point with words and terms commonly understood by the laymen
Yes, I think almost if not everyone here is easily capable of doing that and many frequently do. God forbid we use Marxist jargon while discussing it amongst ourselves on our own communist community site.
Thanks for your concern trolling though, and missing the point while proving it.
The original version of this meme was problematic but my god this version of it is spot on accurate. And it still would be accurate for countless other things that could be put in the Biden/Trump speech bubble. Despite what Democrats pretend, and how they like to (ineffectively) play the role of opposition to Trump, they are fine with 90% of what he does, he just does it without any deference to the liberal theatrics of "law," with too much bombast instead of fake personal difficulty making "hard choices," and because he's not on team Blue. Granted, there are a few significant things I think it's safe to say would not have happened under a Democrat president, but vanishingly few of those are things they wouldn't have wanted to do.
In principle, I agree with you. But the problem is, these assholes already have the platform. They own it, in the literal sense (they outright own or hold large shares in the major social media platforms and the traditional media outlets) and in the more general, vague sense (their beliefs, even if fringe, will get pushed into mainstream discourse because of their grotesquely outsized disproportionate influence). He's a billionaire. If he wants his message heard by the world, it will be heard, period, because we live in a capitalist society, which isn't called a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie for nothing.
Given this reality that their ideas will be disseminated regardless, it becomes important to counter them. To shout out the truth that their ideas are disgusting and how they do great harm to regular people and to the world. It is important to mock them and show others how ridiculous and heinous their ideas are.
In short:If an evil voice has no platform or is struggling to grow one, then I absolutely agree - do not give it to them. But when they already have it, it can only make things worse if their opposition (we, ourselves) remain silent about the harm they're already doing.
If you're "finding balance" in an inherently imbalanced world, you're tipping the scales.
But no, that has nothing to do with why people arrive at Marxism-Leninism as a lens through which the world can be accurately seen and as a tool with which to change it. That comes only through a lot of difficult self examination and contrasting that with a thorough and honest examination of the broader world - not just your own immediate surroundings and not just your own time period, but empathizing with other cultures the world over and learning about the history that led things to be as they are now. That is how people arrive at a Marxist-Leninist view of the world.
THANK you. I was considering saying something similar here, and did in response to another ignorant, self-assuaging user elsewhere in the thread. So I'll just say the same thing I said to them, as a response to WatDabney above:
If you read the many comments in this thread, not to mention other threads on this topic, a significant chunk of western leftists who are ML arrive at Marxism Leninism only after going through a more anarchist phase, and only through a lot of examination of the world and themselves, coupled with a lot of study and reading, do they move from anarchism to come to recognize the undeniable accuracy of Marxism Leninism to reflect the real world and to offer an actually-working methodology for revolution.
Your fallacious description of people's process towards becoming Marxist Leninists as being the same sort of way that poor, ignorant, emotionally needy people latch onto a cult, is ridiculous, and the kind of things liberals like to say of all of us on the anticapitalist left to comfort themselves into maintaining their simplistic "I'm right but they're wrong" worldview and avoid having to engage with the many real reasons people become anticapitalists. But that's what you're doing. Don't be like the liberals. Try to understand the real why of things, don't make up nice little bedtime stories that ensure you don't have to examine your own misconceptions.
And some of them just get born into it.
No one is born into Marxism Leninism, anarchism, or any other ideology, and saying that is a grotesquely anti-anarchist thing to say.
And to add to that, when first coming to realize the lies you've been told by the state you live under, it is a lack of nuance to immediately jump to the false premise that just because your state is bad, that must mean all states are bad. That's just the easy and childish answer. That doesn't make it inherently wrong, but it does make it the one that requires further examination and sometimes a hard look at ones misconceptions. MLs are the ones who have done that hard work, not the ones who have fallen for the easy, un-nuanced end point. As someone else here went into a lot of detail describing but I can't find at the moment, the typical and more easy trajectory for a young leftist is to go from disillusionment at their own state to anarchism. It is only after a lot more learning, examination, and recognition of nuance, that a person comes to see that the understandable kneejerk reaction that "all of them are evil!" is naive, simplistic, and totally lacking the nuance these things need.
It takes more internal work to conclude that "oh wow, all these other things I assumed were just the flat truth, common knowledge, - like how evil the communist states were and how bad they were for their people - were actually just more lies I was being told for a reason." Which is why we have so many young anarchists who over time become ML's but only rarely the other way around. @WatDabney@lemmy.dbzer0.com has it exactly backwards.
My experience on Lemmy has been that most users have a generally negative view of MLs , but 90% of the rants, memes, etc bashing another (non-maga) political side are MLs bashing “leftists” as opposed to the other way around.
I have been on lemmy for years, on multiple instances, including ones on the side of the .world liberals who preemptively defederate with the "tankie" instances. And the above statement is just wild to me. Most users having a generally negative view of MLs is highly dependent on which instance you're a user on. Lemmy.ml, while not the largest, is still seen as a very central and kind of basic instance because it was the founding instance of lemmy in general and those founders are themselves Marxist Leninists. But if you're on .world, then a core principle of your very instance is a frothing hatred of Marxists, and if you're on one of the instances that blocks the same instances .world blocks, but sees mostly .world posts, you're going to see a majority having a "genrally negative view of MLs." If you are part of an instance that hasn't blanket-blocked all the communist instances, the ones that can actually engage with, for example hexbear, you're going to see a more representative slice of the fediverse that has a fair aount, though obviously not majority of MLs.
But this...
but 90% of the rants, memes, etc bashing another (non-maga) political side are MLs bashing “leftists” as opposed to the other way around.
Does not align with my experience at all on any of the instances. ML's for the most part, are fine to go along and get along when it comes to other anticapitalist leftists. Look at @Cowbee@lemmy.ml for example. Highly prolific ML poster, but never punching left, always cam, even generous with whoever there is a disagreement with, and openly talks about having been an anarchist. Obviously one person is anecdotal and not necessarily representative, but I think in this case he very much is representative, since the other major ML power posters (especially here on .ml) tend that way as well. Hexbear on the other hand was well known for being on the more belligerent side, ready and willing to pick fights with libs. But hexbear is a left unity site that literally bans people for being sectarian. It is a majority ML instance but there are tons of anarchists, even as power posters there. And most of the anti-"tankie" instances never even considered federating with them, famously or infamously "preemptively defederating" in the case of .world.
On the other hand, the high amount of anti-"tankie" shit-flinging I see on lemmy is the most disappointing thing about it. Certain supposed leftist instances putting in anti-tankie clauses in their sign up forms, the nazi bars that form around the comms that are nothing but hating on "tankies" (the mwog comm being the obvious example), the frequent, tired old posts about "those damned aUtHoRiTaRiAn-loving tankies are so aUtHoRiTaRiAn," like this very OP. No, ML's are almost never the shit-flingers, rather it's the other way around, ML's constantly having to defend themselves against the trolls who scream "tankie" at them and think they've won an argument.
The only thing I can think of to reconcile your stated experience with my own is that you're lumping in "liberals" with leftists. Because yes, as ML's we very much deride liberals and look down at liberalism as the pathetic joke of an ideology that it is. We have no problem flinging shit at liberals because they are not leftists. But anarchists hate liberals too, and rightly so, so it is definitely not just the ML's hating on liberalism. Any actual (anticapitalist) leftist can and should do so. We are punching right when we take liberals down a peg. Maybe MLs do it best, and that's why you are under the mistaken belief that it's "MLs bashing leftists," maybe? It's the only way I can think of for that not to be just a demonstrably inaccurate claim.
If you read the many comments in this thread, not to mention other threads on this topic, a significant chunk of western leftists who are ML arrive at Marxism Leninism only after going through a more anarchist phase, and only through a lot of examination of the world and themselves, coupled with a lot of study and reading, do they move from anarchism to come to recognize the undeniable accuracy of Marxism Leninism to reflect the real world and to offer an actually-working methodology for revolution.
Your fallacious description of people's process towards becoming Marxist Leninists as being the same sort of way that poor, ignorant, emotionally needy people latch onto a cult, is ridiculous, and the kind of things liberals like to say of all of us on the anticapitalist left to comfort themselves into maintaining their simplistic "I'm right but they're wrong" worldview and avoid having to engage with the many real reasons people become anticapitalists. But that's what you're doing. Don't be like the liberals. Try to understand the real why of things, don't make up nice little bedtime stories that ensure you don't have to examine your own misconceptions.
And some of them just get born into it.
No one is born into Marxism Leninism, anarchism, or any other ideology, and saying that is a grotesquely anti-anarchist thing to say.
The working class in China are not being crushed under anyone's bootheel, though. They really do enjoy a dictatorship over the bourgeoisie, which has been used to great effect to improve working class lives. Yes, a dictatorship of the proletariat as mediated by the party, but vast swathes of the working class people are the party. And those who are not, well, there is a reason the party has an over 90% approval rating and it's not some disgusting racist trope about Asians being sheep. It is because they've watched their quality of life rise by leaps and bounds, repeatedly.
Uh, what? Look at the context of this post, jackass. The meme is trying to portray Russia as a misunderstood good guy
The flag of Russia isn't even in the meme, "jackass." The flag of the USSR is, though sadly it hasn't existed for a few decades now. Like most clueless liberals happily drowning in propaganda, you are falsely equating modern capitalist Russia with the USSR.
And that's not even getting into the fact that even modern Russia (whose flag appears nowhere in this image, genius) was wholly justified in entering the civil war that had already been ongoing inside Ukraine on behalf of the eastern regions of Ukraine whose civilians were being slaughtered by the Ukrainian government's militias. But I admit that it's hard to keep a straight face when talking to someone who uses NATO buzzwords like "unjustified foreign aggressor" because I keep having to facepalm.
You're assuming libs apply their racism consistently rather than in whatever way immediately suits their interests. "How can you accuse me of hating black people, I loved Obama!" -countless libs.
As much as anyone on the left should agree that the fall of the Soviet Union was a horrible, tragic event for workers there (if not worldwide), I think many if not the majority of Social Democrats and even a few who like to call themselves Anarchists, would deny that fact as vehemently as any capitalist. Western hatred for the USSR runs deep. Chomsky is a perfect example, and there are droves of supposed "lefties" who readily side with him on insisting that “The collapse of USSR was victory for the working class.”
Here is a video of Chomsky from 2020, before the connection between JE and Chomsky had been revealed. He gets a little indignant and defensive about Epstein, interesting flavor info.
Did you maybe forget to paste the link for this? I'm assuming it's probably this one, but if there's another I'd like to see it. In this one, Chomsky first defends Epstein (and his own relationship with Epstein) by citing how it's a foundational tenant of western law that a person who has "served their sentence" is then absolved or "the same as everybody else" as Chomsky puts it. Which is amusing in itself coming from someone who supposedly is such a critic of how asymmetrically that law punishes the weak and powerless vs the rich and powerful. He then does an actual whataboutism by basically saying "well David Koch was even worse, and he also gave money to MIT where I worked. Did anybody say anything about that?" Ok then, Noam, would you go have brunch with Koch on his private jet too, or are you saying that's where you draw the line? I wish the interviewer, who was obviously dissatisfied with his answers had been less deferential to Chomsky.
But if I found out my best friend was hanging out with Jamie Dimon, Donald Trump, and Alan Dershowitz, as well as a cavalcade of notorious villains and literal monsters
I was surprised to learn how close Epstein and Steve Bannon were. Not at all surprised by the connection, but if you read the ongoing conversations they had, they were like a couple of teens gossiping with each other over the phone every night. I do wonder exactly how aware he was that his good buddy Epstein was besties with, as you said, notorious villians and literal monsters (like would Chomsky still be ok if Epstein had been good friends with David Koch for example?), but I doubt Chomsky was as in the dark about it as his fans would like to think. He was aware that Epstein had at least in the past, if not currently was outright human-trafficking children for SA on his private island, but apparently he did his time, and that makes him "the same as everybody else."
It really is an illuminating example of how interconnected so many of the so-called elite really are, even those whose public personas would make us think they could be nothing but bitter enemies. My personal vibes-based belief is that it's a soft form of class solidarity.
Its government came to power as a result of a US-backed coup, for starters.
edit: For the record, I upvoted you because your question is fair and valid if you don't know the history and context of the situation. And the western media where many people understandably (if sadly) get their information from will never provide that history and context. That is why we get these confidently ignorant people coming into threads like this gobsmacked that anyone can deny what they see as the obvious truth of Russia's "unjustified invasion by a foreign aggressor."
Do ya gotta do it? Do you really? Nah.
Comments no longer visible with youtube frontends?
lol who is downvoting this? Is it just because it's not funny since it's a 1:1 representation of reality, so not really anything satirical?
Evergreen:https://leftypol.org/edu/src/1662026001627.webm
The excuses that libs will insist on making for loudly openly self-procliamed nazis will never cease to... disappoint me.