Many people on lemmy.ml deeply respect and admire authoritarian governments and organizations.
Iran, China, North Korea, Soviet Union…
The West has many flaws. But our flaws are nothing compared to these guys.
Iran hangs homosexuals. Iran shot 30,000 people in less than than 2 weeks. The Soviet Union had to build a fucking Iron wall to prevent people from escaping. The Soviets lied about the Chernobyl nuclear explosion. China censors the internet. China wants to eliminate Islam. North Korea is a totalitarian hellscape. Watching anime is a crime.
Why is lemmy.ml so fascinated with authoritarians?
It’s not lemmy.ml as a source, but rather a symptom.
I see two things going on:
- A general fall in trust in democratic institutions, as those institutions fail to represent people adequately;
- A clear realization of global injustice perpetuated by democratc countries against the will of people.
There aren’t many that that think that Iran’s goverment is good for Iranian people, but they do see that they are defending their civilization. This umderstanding requires that the observer is able to maintain two observations at the same time, instead of requoring complete black & white intepretations.
Short answer: the Kremlin.
Long answer: Kremlin paid propaganda leaking everywhere.
Democratic socialism is a much better move towards communism than an authoritarian approach. Therefor Europe is already more communist than China and Russia.
Mad, tankies?
Europe isn’t socialist in the slightest, though, so I’m more confused than mad. Socialism is a form of society where public ownership is principal, and the state is run by the working classes. No country in Europe has this, nor the modern Russian Federation, they are all capitalist states where state authority lies in the capitalist class, while the PRC and former USSR do fit this.
The USSR had steady and consistent economic growth, and provided free, high quality education and healthcare, full employment, cheap or free housing, and fantastic infrastructure and city planning that still lasts to this day despite capitalism neglecting it. This rapid development resulted in dramatic democratization of society, reduced disparity, doubling of life expectancy, tripling of functional literacy rates to 99.9%, and much more. Living in the 1930s famine would not have been good, but it was the last major famine outside of wartime because the soviets ended famine in their countries.
Literacy rates, societal guarantees in the 1936 constitution, reports on the healthcare system over time, and more are good sources for these claims.
The USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about.
The form of democracy and the mode of production in China ensures that there is a connection between the people and the state. Policies like the mass line are in place to ensure this direct connection remains. This is why over 90% of the Chinese population supports the government, and why they have such strong perceptions around democracy:
The Chinese political system is based on whole-process people’s democracy, a form of consultative democracy. The local government is directly elected, and then these governments elect people to higher rungs, meaning any candidate at the top level must have worked their way up from the bottom and directly proved themselves. Combining this consultative, ground-up democracy with top-down economic planning is the key to China’s success.
I highly recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. Socialist democracy has been imperfect, but has gone through a number of changes and adaptations over the years as we’ve learned more from testing theory to practice. Boer goes over the history behind socialist democracy in this textbook.
our flaws are nothing
Completely true if you don’t consider Palestinians as equals. Or Vietnamese. Or Koreans. Or Black people. Or Ukrainians. Or women. Or the entire continent of Africa. Or the entire continent of South America. Or the entire continent of Asia.
Literally unbelievable you’d be saying this during genocide in Palestine and western invasion of Iran.
mirror images of conservatives, just look at them. they are more closer to liberterian-republicans, too afraid to be called republicans but support thier policies 100%.
Totally, we communists support republican policies like checks notes universal healthcare, free education, guaranteed housing, guaranteed employment, state pensions…
And then there’s .ml tankies that also support wars of conquest (if by Russia or probably if China, too), harsh censorship, wholesale slaughter of perceived enemies, etc.
The question wasn’t about communists. It was about the dipshit tankies on .ml.
Please do tell me which conquest war China has engaged in the past 50 years.
harsh censorship
It’s 2026, we’ve seen how western legacy media are owned by Zionists and social media are owned by oligarch Epstein class, we literally go into the Lemmyverse running away from this. Only thanks to Chinese-born social media such as Tiktok have we been able to witness the genocide in Gaza and open our collective eyes to the Palestinian cause. How, with this hindsight, can we criticise a country wanting to protect its citizens from this?
wholesale slaughter of perceived enemies
I believe you’re mistaken, the countries currently engaged in the genocide of Palestinians and threatening Iran with “the total elimination of a civilization” are the US and Isntreal, not communist.
Can you now bring up some points that are not projection of Western imperialism onto China?
“Tankie” is a pejorative for communist, I think you’re confused here.
It’s a specific kind of communist, not all communists are tankies
The ones of any relevance seem to count. It’s a term levied against every major Marxist party and every socialist state.
you need to think like a cave man, conspiracy theorist, and an idiot all at the same time. america bad, therefore not-Amera good. Wikipedia is anti-communist propaganda
It’s on you that you’re incapable of understanding criticism to Wikipedia, it’s actually quite simple:
Wikipedia, especially so English Wikipedia, is edited primarily by tech-literate men living in the Anglosphere, and it’s sourced primarily by Anglosphere sources. For this reason, Wikipedia will portray the same bias that those individuals and sources portray.
That’s it, that’s literally it, it’s not so hard to understand. Now, if you understand this, and you are aware that Anglo media and individuals portray an Anticommunist view, then Wikipedia will simply replicate this view. It’s not just anticommunist, Wikipedia has its share of misogyny, of racism…
Wait… Do you think the Iron curtain was a literal iron wall?
I can’t speak for everyone, but a lot of people have learned to just ignore many reports from international news organizations about anything, since those same organizations routinely repeat the US government’s released data, which has been filtered by international conglomerates with their own interests.
This is because those claims are often found to be untrue or wildly exaggerated after the dust settles.
That skepticism is the result of decades of “fake news” leading to a general doubt of any claim as a baseline.
…and that’s just for starters.
So, first, you must agree on what the truth is with sources that you can trust. Good luck.
I’ve read that Iran killed 30,000 people, but can’t read Arabic or know the context of images I have seen, and this could be true, however, given the track record of US media, I would consider the number to be wildly exaggerated just as a matter of course.
Also, I know that even IF it is true, that Iran has killed 30,000 protestors, the “good guys” can’t stop Iran and “win one for democracy and human civilization” without murdering many magnitudes more.
Anyway, I want to read about the IRON WALL the USSR built to stop people from escaping, please share
(not a tankie, and I think Muslims and all other religions should pay the same taxes as everybody else, which they consider to be a wild affront to their dignity)
Anyway, I want to read about the IRON WALL the USSR built to stop people from escaping, please share
Not OP, but my guess is the “IRON WALL” they’re referencing is a conglomeration of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. The vast majority of the iron curtain was enforced with military patrols, not a literal wall.
The Soviet Union had to build a fucking Iron wall to prevent people from escaping
holy fuck lmao
Well yeah, but then it rusted after 40 years and people could get back through.
? I mean it’s a true statement…
you really think the Soviet Union made a literal wall out of iron all along its border to keep people inside? you think they built a really big metal wall all along their ~60,000km land borders? 3 times as long as the Great Wall of China?
are you perhaps confusing this with the berlin wall? or do you think the phrase “the Iron Curtain” was meant very very literally?
they played too much RA2.
Obviously the guy isn’t a native speaker
They are carzy over there don’t even try. I once started debating an idea and the answer was “you support american captalism propaganda” These people and just like maga weirdos You can be agains everyone. I don’t have to choose between comunism or captalist.
common sense is not for everyone
Neither is spell check eh?
Lol. The idea that you are asking this in .world. My god. How has the irony not killed you?
They do it for the same reasons you vehemently defend Israel and their genocide of the Palestinians.
Whataboutism
The post literally says “our flaws are nothing compared”, can you read?
Eh that’s relevant to the discussion since OPs argument is that they’re worse.
My arguing point is that at least the US has a free enough press to keep track of most of their bullshit.
The US never did. The American media has been lying to people for over a century and people have been pointing that out just as long. Now the media is so horrifically corrupt that everyone is starting to notice it, not just minorities or queer people.
people have been pointing that out just as long
exactly
just because people can give criticism does not mean the system actually accepts criticism or even that it does not retaliate against such criticism. yes there are instances where criticism has led to genuine change (easy example is “The Jungle”), but for every instance of successful criticism i argue there are hundres, thousands, even millions of instances where said criticism has led to the harassment and discrimination; tenfold if the person was a minority in any capacity. by and large american media, industry, government, and society has suppressed any and all forms of criticism or even nonhegemonic thought until its existence has been so normalized amongst cishet white peoplr that they finally let it exist in a heavily moderated and monetized manner. this can be seen time and time again with hayes codes, mccarthyism, the civil rights movement, the suffrage movement, queer acceptance, trans acceptance, the war on drugs, 9/11 and the wars in the middle east. we are actively seeing it right now; you cannot look at the NYT, Time magazone, the WSP, CNN, or any major American media institution and tell me that they are actually free press. At best they are controlled opposition. this is not a conspiracy theory, these are documented facts1. This has only gotten worse as more tech CEOs have bought more and more news and media companies. anyone who actually reports on important, topical information in a way that is contradictory to the Americam hegemonic system of thought has been target, oppressed, and even sanctioned2. Mainstream media has enjoyed a degree of freedom allowed by the understanding that maintaining the visage of a free press was important, the current high profile cases as of late3 are realistically the exception correcting itself.
America is not free, has never been free, and will never be free until the system is radically and fundamentally changed. The ideals expressed in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution are noble, but the implementation of those beliefs were created by entitled white men who encoded racism, misogyny, bigotry, and hatred into the DNA of the country. At one point there may have been an opportunity to change the direction of America to actually align with the values it professed, but much like a cancer that has metastasized to every part of the body any effective treatment would be lethal; America cannot both exist and actually improve. From the moment this country was built on stolen land we have placed ourselves on fhe wrong side of hidtory, and what has become evident now has always been evident to black, brown, queer, and disabled people. It is not a few apples that are rotten; the barrel itself has rotted.
^1. https://futureofmedia.hsites.harvard.edu/us-media-index^
^2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_government_attacks_on_journalists_in_the_United_States^
Idk, I personally have never met Ism but I heard they were a pretty cool cat
Lemmy.ml is largely made up of communists, who support the working classes holding state authority, rather than capitalist states where authoritarian control is in the hands of the tiny capitalist class over the working classes. State authority isn’t independent of class struggle, but is a product of it, and as such all states are “authoritarian,” but it’s far better for the working classes to hold that. And for what it’s worth, Iran is supported against the west and Israel, not as a socialist state.
As for your post body, a number of claims you made are lies.
Iran shot 30,000 people in less than than 2 weeks.
Incorrect, the UN estimates ~3100 total deaths. Western press made up the 30,000 figure at the behest of the CIA/Mossad to help foment regime change before their invasion.
The Soviet Union had to build a fucking Iron wall to prevent people from escaping.
No? Do you really think a landmass that large would do something like that? There was a wall in Berlin, but that was just as much to keep West Germans out, as the Cold War had tons of spies on both sides.
China censors the internet.
Not really a problem, it’s a good thing western spyware like Facebook isn’t allowed, and VPNs are plentiful. Censorship isn’t willy-nilly, it’s largely the internet equivalent of industrial protectionism.
China wants to eliminate Islam.
No? China has freedom of religion.
Watching anime is a crime.
No it isn’t, lol.
The West has many flaws. But our flaws are nothing compared to these guys.
It’s the opposite. Socialist countries have flaws and real problems, but the genocidal western empire is the biggest obstacle holding human progress back. They plunder the global south, are obliterating Palestine, and are all surging to the rightas the empire falls.
According to your UN site there:
Iranian authorities have acknowledged 3,117 deaths and approximately 3,000 arrests, whereas human rights organisations estimate these figures to be in the tens of thousands.
So its IRAN claiming 3100. Not the UN
The “Human Rights Orgs” have provided little to no evidence of there being deaths in the tens of thousands.
In my experience the attitude of many of the more prolific users there is something like “America and the West are doing evil things, so their enemies must be the good guys”. Atrocities by Western-aligned states are readily accepted as facts, but those committed by countries on “their” side never happened and are merely Western propaganda. They’ll cite North Korea’s constitution to “prove” that it’s a free and democratic country, but when you point out reports showing that the reality on the ground is quite different from what’s written in the constitution, that’s of course just Western propaganda and the people who fled the country are being paid to spread lies. That dismissive attitude makes it impossible to have a serious discussion with them.
That said, I now have a solid blocklist of their “worst offenders” and found that there are plenty of people with way more balanced opinions as well.
Also some people have complete and utter, naive faith in the written law and intent.
Atrocities by Western-aligned states are readily accepted as facts, but those committed by countries on “their” side never happened and are merely Western propaganda
You’ll never find more staunch and nuanced criticism of socialist mistakes than that which takes place within socialism. It’s through communists that I learned and loathed things such as the deportation of ethnic Koreans in THE USSR, the actual scope and mechanisms and functioning of the GULAG system, or the anti-landlord revolts in China.
I highly encourage you to actually go with an open mind, and have an honest conversation with a comrade like @Cowbee@lemmy.ml or @AnarchoBolshevik@lemmygrad.ml about any of those topics. Not an argument, just a discussion to listen to what they have to say. You may be surprised.
And you still think that communism is the way? If so you’re just spreading their propaganda.
It did volunteerly kill millions, and still is in its remnants of russia for example. If you need a nuanced person to “open your eyes” for the atrocities made in URSS/USSR why not talk with a nuanced nazi, you might learn that they too did bad things. /s
Those discussions are such shit shows, stop trying to reanimate the old horrors of past, we actually have new interesting theories that might actually work without killing everyone.
Of course those people exist. Heck, I consider myself a socialist and the socialist party in my country has no issues whatsoever criticizing countries like China or North Korea. But those kind of nuanced opinions aren’t really the ones you’ll find over and over again on the frontpage of ml.
Of the users you named, I only know Cowbee, as Lemmygrad is defederated anyway. He’s definitely very knowledgable about communist theory and he’s capable of having an actual discussion, yes. Not even close to one of the worst users over there. But from my discussions with him, he’s quite obsessed with theory over practice and is perfectly willing to defend the IMO indefensible regime of North Korea.
the socialist party in my country has no issues whatsoever criticizing countries like China or North Korea
But they exclusively criticise said countries, no praise for their achievements. Assuming you’re from the EU/US/Canada/Australia, your “socialist” party offers no alternative to Capitalism, just milquetoast reforming at best and continuation of austerity policy (as for the past 20 years) at worst. If they don’t want off capitalism, they can hardly call themselves socialists.
I don’t put theory over practice, they are both crucial. I am perfectly willing to defend the DPRK from Yeonmi Park-style nonsense as it’s the most propagandized against country in the world. Is it perfect? No, no country is, but it also isn’t literally hell on Earth either, it’s a real socialist state that does a lot with how little they have due to sanctions, similar to Cuba (and both Cuba and the DPRK have historically been on great terms, which is a good litmus test to begin with).
Hello, a rational .ml guy reporting in
My political opinions are:
what if we just like were able to eat and stuff like that, that’d be pretty dope
Come over to our server 😘
That’s implying that this is actually controversial and ot supported by other ideologies.
But that’s just a pet peave of mine.
Actually after meaning to do it for a while and constantly forgetting about it I’ve decided to make myself go ahead and make a piefed account before I once again fall into the loop of “eh I’ll make it later” and them promptly forgetting it 2 seconds later
It’s honestly suspicious that you haven’t been banned yet.
Nah, they fit right in at Lemmy.ml.
“America and the West are doing evil things, so their enemies must be the good guys”
It’s illuminating. I used to be a hardcore anarco-capitalist/radical libertarian and that community had exactly the same thought pattern:
- Vietnam/Middle East show how USA lies for domination
- Snowden showed how CIA/NSA lies for control
- Markets showed how the Fed lies for moneyed elites
… and so on, so that it becomes a given truth that everything the government says is a lie, no matter what.
So then COVID comes along and all the libertarians are “FAUCI LIES! COVID IS JUST FLU!”
A few months (and a lot of Russian influence ) later, these people are believing that mRNA vaccines cause heart disease, etc etc etcANYWAY, what’s interesting to me is how these two diametrically opposed ideological communities – Tankies and AnCaps – have almost exactly the same group dynamics pathology.
I can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of “anarcho-capitalists”. Glad it’s past tense for you.
Wait until you read what real anarchists think of AnCaps.
ofc you understand AnCaps feel the same way about AnComs; that they’re fundamentally a contradiction
If one lacks compassion, then of course they won’t understand how someone can choose to support their community even without the government making them do it.
it’s because they want to feel special.
the root of so much of the people that get caught in these delusional thought pattern is simple massive insecurity. and by clinging to a delusion you can mask it with a feeling of superiority because you KNOW THE TRUTH.
same reason people get recruited into cults. the cultists specifically target insecure people they can emotionally exploit and isolate. they are not interested in secure people who are grounded in reality, because there is nothing for their manipulation tactics to work on.
extremist politics also always become quasi-religions, or merge with fundamentalist religious belief.
superiority because you KNOW THE TRUTH
Oh God yes, this this this!!
The Conspiracy folks all really get off on being Smarter Than You because the have Access to the Secret Knowledge. Once you have seen the evidence (eg “Fahrenheit 451”) and started associating yourself with “like-minded people”, then you too will become an Anointed One.
Culty culty cult
It is very seductive for people who feel their intellect and insights are not being seen.
Relevant Contrapoints: https://youtu.be/teqkK0RLNkI
Edit: lol at the .mls downvoting this
Horseshoe theory strikes again
Care to PM this list of offenders, please? I’m also trying to sanitize my feed.
I blocked the entire lemmy.ml. After a few months of paying attention I found that there were no thoughtful or interesting posts or comments from any user there, only glorification of authoritarians.
i blocked the triads, hexbear, lemmygrad, ml. lemmygrad is less of a problem since i dont see thier posts as much anyways, usually its mostly ml or hexbear, and they have taken over some other instances too.
i blocked them because .ml users constantly harass me, telling me what a brainwashed idiot I am for not thinking China is a utopia.
I don’t block them. I just keep pressing them for an explanation of their personal philosophy. Not regurgitated, preconstructed points, actual personal philosophy. It usually goes “accusation of fascism/zionist”, “bad faith/strawman/red herring/I don’t have to explain it to you”, “you’re a nihilistic anarchist”, non-sequitur, list of actions they’ve taken irl but can’t/won’t break anonymity to prove (anybody can claim they’ve done anything in an anonymous forum), and finally inform me they’re blocking me. I mean, that’s great, block me online. I still exist in the real world and you’re going to have to face me someday. Unless of course you empower your own authoritarian regime that will keep my constant demands for your individual opinion and “nihilistic anarchist” viewpoints blocked from society. Which is what I think they want, zero challenge from any source or counter philosophy.
i feel like thier accusation of zionism, is just the same thing as being anti-semetic in a way too.
That is a good summary.
I see this refrain a ton but have not had the same experience and I fairly regularly get into arguments with them. I’m perma banned from some communities on those instances cause of the PTBs they are. The worst I received was my first ever “kys” message from one member’s alt(but them and their main were handled in pretty short order). But that was one message of harassment, out of the probably hundred or so people I’ve pissed off so far.
To be very clear, I don’t go into their communities looking for fights. But I have 2 big principles I’m not willing to waiver even a tiny bit on. Those being Hasan absolutely shocked his dog, and Harris would in fact have been better than trump.
They just hate me because I have a basic grasp of economics and I don’t think businesses and landlords are inherently evil.
Who is Hasan? Some dumbass tiktoker?
don’t think businesses and landlords are inherently evil.
Literally every capitalist theory, from Adam Smith’s to Mill, from Hayek to Henry George:
Landlords are inherently evil.
Streamer they worship like maga worship trump.
Why did he shock his dog? Not that there is any reasonable justification, I just want context.
right, so an abusive narcissistic POS person they wish they could be.
make sense he’d abuse his dog rather than train it. god forbid you like… have empathy or compassion for another living thing and use that to bond with it… lol
Well I can’t speak for others, but I’m on lemmy.ml because the instance says it’s “A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers”. And in my experience that pretty much checks out, for all the talk I see from others about how it’s a den of authoritarianism and whatnot the actual amount of that I see on the actual instance is minimal. Yeah moderation sucks sometimes, but so it does on most every other instance though. Their approach to defederation seems to be avoiding it, and I don’t have to see any Nazi stuff or shit like that, so I’m good for now. Pick your poison.
The West has many flaws. But our flaws are nothing compared to these guys.
Well if you look a bit closer at the history of the cold war you will find that “the West”, mostly in the form of the CIA, destroyed a lot of nascent communist or even just social democratic governments worldwide through covert means, and sometimes even militarily. In the face of such a threat you are basically forced to become even more authoritarian, if you want your communist government to survive that is. So “the West” instituted a process of selection through political (and military) pressure if you will. Hence why there are no surviving liberal communist states left to discuss.
Anyway, I don’t think there is much of consensus here on lemmy.ml whether these countries are good or bad (or even something more nuanced). What I think often happens is that someone voices “critical support”, as in they say something like “Iran has a right to self-defence” although they don’t agree with everything else Iran does, and someone from another instance comes along to read it and confirmation-biases that into “typical lemmy.ml user, fully supports that theocratic regime”.
I mean just look at the straw man you build in your OP, supposedly I’m supporting the Islamic regime in Iran, and the anti-Islamic regime in China!? Bit of a stretch there mate…
I had my first account on .ml because “hey this is the official instance run by the devs, that sounds like a solid starting point” but after seeing how strong the anti-west, pro-authoritarian nonsense is on there (especially leading up to the 2024 election, the apathetic “both sides” people were out in full force), I decided to move to a different instance.
I’m not denying that there are such people around, but I don’t really think they are in the majority. Most of the specific things you mention I saw coming just as much if not more from other servers.
A table with an unopposed Nazi is a nazi table.
Same goes for stalinists.
The Nazi bar example comes to mind.
Certainly the most vocal
You haven’t been paying attention then. Dessalines, the head admin, regularly instance bans people for speaking about the genocide in China in .ml communities.
I mean I have seen that accusation thrown around a lot, but from what I remember it was a few cases a long time (years?) back. But yeah to be honest I haven’t really been paying attention, so if you have evidence to the contrary feel free to let me know. The goals and rules of the server as stated seem fine to me, and I haven’t seen anything that really deviated too far from that.
Anyway, like I said I may not agree with every moderation decision, but I probably wouldn’t on other instances either. Didn’t your instance just defederate the Germans for their heavy-handed moderation of anything remotely antisemitic? I mean I would get it with any other instance I guess, but your users didn’t get why the Germans would be a bit iffy with this stuff?
You seem way too knowledgeable about lemmy sever bans and federations for being “just some casual ml dude”.
Defending the TERF dessalines too … Bravo
This is part of why ml users get a bad rap. Both of your core statements/assumptions here are false, to a degree that it would be easier to assume bad faith and move on with my life than to type this response up.
So Dessalines’s continued and ongoing banning of any negative talk about China or Russia:
I’m not a particular fan of !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works, but what I see when I look at that community for the past month is mostly a running log of questionable at best bans that lemmy.ml admins, including Dessalines, have handed out.
I picked out some that stand out to me, but please peruse that community and your own instance’s mod logs at your leisure. You should be able to filter the mod logs themselves by action, and I believe by the mod or admin that took the action.
- https://infosec.pub/post/45516756
- https://infosec.pub/post/45465185
- https://infosec.pub/post/45126301
- https://lemmy.cafe/post/33294487
- https://lemmy.cafe/post/32620981
That poster clearly has a bone to pick, and that community does especially, but there is a concerning pattern there as well.
Didn’t your instance just defederate the Germans for their heavy-handed moderation of anything remotely antisemitic?
That is… quite an interpretation of what happened. Anti-semitism is not tolerated on db0. You see it, go report it and tell us what happens. Anti-zionism is not anti-semitism.
From the db0 admin team’s mouths, their take on what happened: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/63525728
Funny enough, they don’t look kindly on Meanwhile on Grad/MoG. And I downvoted that post, voting that I did not want to defed from feddit.
