The right to be airstriked by NATO peacekeepers, duh

But the terminology 'authoritarian and oppressive' doesn't really make sense in leftist circles where all states are understood to be just that by definition. I mean, that's why people are socialists. Tankie is lib terminology referencing anything that undermines liberal democracy. It only makes sense when coming from anarchists.

If Xi sent the balloons it's proof of his evil schemes. If Xi didn't send the balloons it's because he failed to keep his regime in line. He can't win no matter what he does lol

Intelligence and political awareness aren't correlated. Confrontation with politics in everyday life and political awareness are.

Maybe a hot take, but we really shouldn't be glorifying intelligence the way we do, it has a lot of resemblance to fascist ideology.

The spread in intelligence really isn't that wide. People without clinical impairments or other disorders can specialize in practically whatever field they like. It's primarily just a function of wealth and mental health. What distinguishes 'intelligent' people' from the less intelligent is that, for whatever reason, they have an edge in learning speed. That's it. They're not transcendental beings who somehow have more access to 'the truth' of the universe.

Of course, on the very rare occasion, there are people who excel at very specific tasks but even then that says nothing about their ability to do anything else.

Yes, but that doesn't make them more authoritarian or oppressive because no matter what every state is using what it deems the most effective path to enforcing its will and if that means violence it will always resort to violence. It makes them bad communists.

It's not a matter of oppression or no oppression but a matter of oppressing the right people. If the USSR and PRC were perfect they would be a contradiction to their own purpose, no?

the only kind of politics that are banned here are those which enable hate speech such as fascism

What's with all the backlash? They just announced they're banning anything promoting the US state (ergo CIA) or NATO. Sounds like a W to me.

Jokes aside and at the risk of sounding like an armchair intellectual, this is sort of a small scale experiment proving why liberals make peaceful progress impossible. Dating back to the colonial era, they love writing walls and walls of vague idealist text (especially the part about the psychology of internet users reads like a middle schooler padding out an essay) about the moral virtue of their actions to distract from the fact they are shamelessly plundering, murdering and exploiting others. In this relatively harmless case, exploiting the devs ideological conviction and choice to show vulnerability. Using their resources to take the platform for their own, despite quite ironically being in direct in violation of their own conceptions of intellectual property that are supposed to be so non-negotiable.

Maybe that's why liberals are such firm believers in private property to begin with. Not due to principle, but because they project their shameless opportunism on us all; they fear others will do to them what they have done and continue to do to their vulnerable targets of choice.

Liberal logic. Distinguishing their ideology based on fair democracy and the "fight for your right to express yourself freely"...

...except when your expression challenges the status quo power structure or what constitutes fair democracy. You know like... every 'totalitarian' ideology?

I mean the Azov Batallion is a nazi organization. This is commonly accepted knowledge and a result of Stepan Bandera (a nazi who wanted independence from the Soviet Union) being the primary driver of nationalist sentiment in Ukraine. The western media just want to pretend like the fact that they 'only' run the propaganda for the National Guard isn't bad enough to make every soldier a nazi.

...And that's a fair point but irrelevant to whether the Ukrainian military has fascist sympathies. Imperialist wars are always motivated by capitalist interests and fought with the blood of workers. The question is who's material interests those workers are serving, wittingly or no. The Ukrainian ministry is giving a lot of power very specifically to the tiny militia of Azov Batallion which I think answers that question.

Finally, yes it's also Russian propaganda but that says more about the west than Russia. If the Kremlin can invade a country and make itself look like it has the moral highground while doing it using commonly accepted facts you really fucked up. They might not be on the right side of history, but you are on the really really far outer edge of the wrong side of it.

The liberal aversion doesn't only stem from ignorance of the definition, but also and imo most importantly from their liberal dogma on power structures that makes them view the "commendable but deceptive" virtues of communism as eternally doomed to devolve into corruption when put to practice. AKA "Absolute power corrupts absolutely".

In order for liberals and leftcoms to understand our perspective we shouldn't deny the legitimate ethical objections to the practices of socialist states but rather explain that these practices and power structures are a necessary evil resulting from the transient anti-communist global society we live in today and not intrinsic nor exclusive to states without liberal democracy.

I don't know how, but we need propaganda that efficiently communicates that the ideological competition between capitalism and communism is not of the same nature as the competition between, say, the labor party and the liberal party. There is no mutual respect nor tolerance from either party to allow the other flourish.

This is a WAR. No, not figuratively speaking. An ACTUAL war. In fact the war of the greatest caliber and of the same nature as the 1939 war on European and Asian soil, the 2001 war on Afghan soil and the current war on Ukrainian soil. This is war on socialist soil and the socialists are heavily overpowered and outnumbered.

Therefore, yes, socialist countries are less 'free' than western countries but it's not this lack of freedom that compells capitalist aggression but rather capitalist aggression that necessitates the EMERGENCY power structure that restricts freedom.

Fascism is capitalism in its emergency state such that fascism and Leninism/Stalinism are NOT two sides of the same coin, but opposite forces resorting to the same resources to achieve opposite goals. This is no different from the way both parties in the Ukraine war use weaponry and politically regulate their media and has nothing to do with 'authoritarian' flaws of their respective ideologies.

So if you want to compare communism with capitalism in good faith, the real question becomes "Is Leninism/Stalinism better than Fascism?", or worded differently "Do communists operate better in warzones than capitalists?". I think everyone but the most hardline conservatives will agree the answer is a resounding yes.

If someone can formulate this more efficiently than me, that would be great.

Sorry, but here in America we don't tolerate any kind of hate. That includes hate towards our passion to to keep as many people malnourished as possible. Thank you for your understanding :)

I don't think he's particularly well versed on politics. iirc he has a bachelors in Latin American history but otherwise he's essentially just a shitposter with common sense like most of us here and admits as much. Not an intellectual by any means.

Have a general resentment towards reddit > read about alternatives to reddit as a result of the API controversy > Lemmy gets brought up because it's private and decentralized > libs in comments: "Nooo it's full of communists!!!"(gee I wonder why) "Not hating CPC = basically fascism!! I don't care that I can make my own instances, 'supporting' communists who for some weird reason keep building good software is icky" > me: sounds based

“yeah dude that’s life”

I hate that so much. No it's not life. You're not living that way, I'm not living that way and neither of us would accept if we were suddenly living that way. I understand, because it's a sort of learned helpness in a way I guess, but it still makes my blood boil because it is direct hostility towards those people.

I like to imagine everyone going 'okay!' making them switch all their belongings with those of the homeless person and see how 'normal' they think it is then.

The US didn't provoke it in Turkey, they provoked it in Cuba when they kept trying to overthrow Castro, eventually leading to the blatant Bay of Pigs military invasion. Only THEN did Cuba get nukes.

and to check out backup communities on Lemmy?

I asked a few subs why they didn't just point people to a clone community on Lemmy during the blackout. They said that Lemmy was too confusing for new users.

...sounds like a load of bs to me. I think the mods just like the way reddit works from the modding end and/or don't want to lose their communities to other mods. Kind of immature if that's the case, but I wouldn't be surprised.

I'm sorry am I missing something? How does being a programmer relate to political leaning?

I wonder what's greener. 1. Eating steak or 2. giving birth to a child, raising it to adulthood on a steak diet and then eating them.

I mean it doesn't really matter either way because it's really a moral issue, but there's no way anyone thinks it takes more resources to grow crops than it does to breed entire animals

Which episode?

1990: Don't worry, the free market will save us!

2000: Sure it's a slow start but we'll get there eventually.

2010: Okay, it's getting kind of scary guys. Hurry up.

2020: ...guys?

2030: We're doomed. Here's why it's all Stalin's fault.

Most people who are labeled tankies don't support Russia like the Beehaw user wants you to believe FYI, we just think historical conditions caused the Ukraine war and that those conditions show a trend of US expansionism rather than expansionist ambitions by a country with the GDP of Italy.

...But just like how not supporting democrats makes you a republican, not supporting America makes you a Putinist in their eyes. So wharever.

China is actually a controversial subject because a lot of people think the Deng reforms marked the moment China turned capitalist. Others think it was necessary to mature China's economy and particularly since Xi Jing Ping became chairman have had a lot of faith in China's transition plan.

What they said about tankies being fascists also doesn't make sense. Fadcists exist because of the threat of communism. They took state power to eradicate communists, preserve capital and, often times, establishing a superior racial class while doing so. Communists takes state power to abolish capitalism, eradicate poverty and create a classless society. They are literally opposites.

And always remember this suppression of free speech ONLY happened after western powers attempted to "strangle Bolshevism in its crib" through invasions, coup attempts and supporting reactionary groups.

So yes, surprisingly, socialist states suppressed dissent after the most powerful states in modern history openly declared a holy war on their existence (which includes supporting fascist states like Nazi Germany btw). Very strange.