Just a little thought I wanna discuss.
Unlike the more massive social media or the real world where theres not many leftists and we are gladly more united Lemmy and its left leaning tendencies with the instances providing natural cult grouping tendencies. Add to that the matrix in groups there and we all seem to be making a thing out of how to anger each other. How to troll each other or annoy x or y instance.
I hate this.
Living in an extreme right wing nation I know no other anarchist. A few left wingers. Even the libs here are right wing extremists by the standards of a western nation. I hold dear any solidarity.
I support unions here even when everyone there is a religious fundamentalist who wants sharia law bc they still qantnto improve the conditions of the working class.
Many folks here, who again I don’t have any hate for, I see intending these fights and dramas. Having the goal to be banned from x or y community or instance.
- Why!?!?
- What do you gain?
- What is the desire here??
I can say so much fked up shit on tiktok and it gets appealed, anything leftest/liberal gets auto removed with no appeal
Because politics is not limited to Left and Right, compressed down to it’s minimum reasonable simplicity it is at least two dimensional. In mass media you see “Left” vs “Right” division, on Lemmy you see Lib Left vs Auth Right vs Center divisions, which are just as strong but largely suppressed by entrenched political interests especially in the US but also across the industrialized world where Lib Left has been suppressed by the capitalist political apparatus.
Note that most of the time when someone on the Fediverse decries “Liberals” they mean capitalist centrist in the “Neo-Liberal” mode. In some specific circumstances though you might see Auth Left criticizing Lib Left with the term, essentially insulting them by lumping them in with the Centrists. In other cases more in line with mass media you might see any Right position using the term against anyone center or left of center.
Essentially, Liberal has become a term only meaningful in context, and for that reason largely useless in common discourse. This is why the Political Compass is so useful a tool, situating political positions in their context, though of course it is flawed by being only two dimensional when actual political groups are very much multidimensional.
The political compass is actually a terrible tool. Left vs right is broadly okay if framed as collectivized ownership as principle vs privatized ownership as principle, but economies in the real world aren’t “pure,” and trying to gauge how left or right a country is by proportion of the economy that is public vs private can be misleading. The next part, “libertarian vs authoritarian,” is a false binary. The state is thoroughly linked to the mode of production, you don’t just pick something on a board and create it in real life. There’s no such thing as “libertarian capitalism,” as an example. Centralization vs decentralization may make more sense, but that can also be misleading, as centralized systems can be more democratic than decentralized systems.
This is a pretty good, if long, video on the subject. The creator of the compass is also politically biased.
As a fun little side-note, I can answer the standard political compass quiz and get right around the bottom-left while being a Marxist-Leninist that approves of full collevtivization of production and central planning. Yet, at the same time, the quiz will put socialist states in the top left, seemingly based on how the creator wants to represent things. It’s deeply flawed. Add on the fact that it’s more of an idealist interpretation of political economy than a materialist one, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
At first read I see a flaw in the first part of your argument, which is that centralization vs collectivization of economic ownership is not directly indicative of policy, rather it is the percentage of economic output which is used for collective services that dictates the Left/Right spectrum, which indeed is how a Far Left position can be coextant with a market economy and private ownership but with a tax or public stake in economic actors that returns a majority of the “profit” to collective service, it is rather the degree of enforcement of property rights as one of a set of rights and regulations by a central Authority which lies on the Auth/Lib spectrum that dictates the structure of the economic order. This is how for example you could be a Lib/Left Marxist who prefers central planning of the economy, so long as you don’t believe the central planning should be enforced by monopoly of violence and instead implemented by collective consensus, there is no fundamental conflict in the position. Leninism on the other hand implies use of force by a centralized state military/police to restructure the economy along central planned lines, which is an Authoritarian position.
I agree the “quiz” is very flawed, it would need an order of magnitude more questions to be accurate, and authorship bias is certainly an issue.
That said, the compass itself I find to be quite accurate to the mental political models of most individuals. What you are pointing to, Centralization vs Distribution, is a relatively new way to concieve of the older Federal vs Local or State vs Community political framework. I would indeed view this as a “third axis” or omission by the two axis compass, as both Authority and Economy can have organization and flow biased towards fewer or more numerous nodes of participation/enforcement. To go back to your Lib Left Marxism, you could say that the Marxism part of that formula calls for a State economic planning model with high collectivization of economic output and low State enforcement of policy. On thing often missing from the Auth/Lib axis description is that reduced State enforcement does not mean reduced enforcement overall, but rather that the enforcement does not rely on the state monopoly on violence, instead directing enforcement through social exchange relying on the individuals applying their independent power onto each other to discourage deviancy from the consensus.
An easy example of this is in many tribal groups and including pacifist Western religious sects the worst corrective action an individual faces is shunning, which relies on all of the individuals of the community independently choosing to no longer participate socially or economically with the individual being corrected. The decision to do so may be more or less centralized or decentralized (for example a Priarch/Priest might declare shunning in a nonviolent Christian community, while a specific tribal group may only do so through a process of full group consensus, or even the most lib/local of all a spontaneous reaction of each individual against the deviant based on norms.
You’re wrong about the Marxist-Leninist position, though, and that’s exactly why the compass makes no sense. Marxists all agree on using the state as the collective means by which planning is accomplished. All the compass does is make things more confusing.
Overall, it is much better to abandon trying to measure things on a non-existent spectrum than it is to try to force them into one.
Hmmm… not sure why the image won’t load https://imgur.com/a/Lgl07Uf
most other SOCIAL media, astroturfs left leaning communities with right wingers. its very hard to find them. and likely most of them were banned on other SC media.
I just kinda wanna know what your basis for this is? It sound outrageous because it is. Maybe it’s troll farms, or bot farms? But anyway, it could also be that you are seeing a problem because you want to, you know we can easily find anything if we look for it these days
Might be worth looking at the behaviour of so called leftists on Lemmy.
Many of them openly support and cheer for russia’s invasion of Ukraine and support summary killing of Ukrainians (“summary executions in Bucha [and beyond] is a BIA conspiracy!!!” is not a serious statement), openly state that Ukraine does not have the right to self-determination and generally support the extermination of Ukrainian culture, language and identity.
I am from Ukraine, from Donbas (Lugansk) no less. What sort of reaction do you expect when you see alleged leftists cheers for the total occupation of Lugansk by the Russians with BS like “Lugansk is free of da Nasizzz !1!1!”.
Or what about Jeromy Corbyn fanboys denying Corbyn’s open support for russian genocidal imperialism (keep in mind these type of things get reported in Ukrainian media)? The fucker literally worked for Russia Today (which is managed by russian intel) and cheered the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
As far as I am concerned, I hope all tankies meet the same fate as “Donbas Cowboy”, Russell Bentley.
Bentley’s wife, Lyudmila, then claimed that Russian soldiers from a tank battalion abducted him.
According to the Investigative Committee, Vansyatsky, Agaltsev, and Iordanov tortured Bentley on April 8, and he died shortly afterward.
Vansyatsky and Agaltsev are suspected of blowing up a car with Bentley’s body in it and ordering Bazhin to get rid of what was left of his remains.
Is this an unreasonable reaction to disgusting tankies? What reaction do you expect?
Agreed. I’m anti-authoriatiran first and a leftist second. I’ll gladly overlook disagreements on most policy for the sake of unity, but I won’t overlook authoritariansm.
Yeah, the support of a blatantly fascist/imperialist state like Putin’s Russia by self-described leftists is absolutely wild to me. I’m not convinced they’re serious people. Like, yeah, there’s some silly infighting between leftists online, but from my experience, it’s usually tankies saying some smug bullshit blanket statements and defending authoritarian douchecanoes.
Don’t forget the libs supporting the fascist/imperial state of USA, EU, etc. Completely wild and unserious.
To call America a fascist state is just dishonest. To call the EU fascist is unhinged. Where America is certainly struggling internally with a legitimate attempt at a fascist takeover, too many fundamental principles of the republic remain intact to honestly define the country as a fascist state. There are plenty of things to criticize about the US government, it being fascist isn’t one of them.
Russia, however, is literally doing an old school imperialist invasion right now. Like, shaky casus belli and everything. They’re even throwing in a whole host of red flags indicating a genocide. Their “elections” are consistently used as textbook examples of rigged elections using statistical analysis. Political enemies of Putin are assassinated, jailed, and suppressed. The state sponsors a narrative campaign of a fictitious idealized Russian ethno-state. Public dissent is actively and harshly suppressed by the state. There are re-education camps to indoctrinate certain demographics with Russian supremacist propaganda. Russia is a fascist state. The tankies that rush to defend Russia online are defending a fascist state. That is directly contradictory to leftist principles and is, quite frankly, fucking stupid.
So to reply to someone pointing out how ridiculous it is for tankies to support a fascist state like Russia with “hurrdurr libs support fascist usa/eu” is yet another dishonest strawman wrapped in a red herring. And, certainly no surprise to anyone paying attention, just serves as another example of a tankie talking point that refuses to engage the actual argument.
It’s still possible for internal US dynamics to change and there have been positive outcomes from US foreign policy (Germany, Japan, Poland, Baltic nations).
The same cannot be said about russia and China.
openly state that Ukraine does not have the right to self-determination
It was my understanding that the USSR insisted that its constituent republics were independent. Maybe the tankies need to revisit that.
So independent that Moscow could extract all food supplies from Ukraine to create a horrific man-made famine.
The fact of the matter is that tankies don’t believe in self-determination or democracy (the few who are not shitposting and/or engaging malicious demagoguery).
You should leave any instance that is federated with the Triad, imo. Lemmygrad, Hexbear, and ML are all Russia sponsored/supported instances that should be shunned by Lemmy as a whole.
I have Lemmygrad and Hexbear blocked. ML still has a few communities that need to move off ML.
FWIW, I actively mod/curate several communities that have become vibrant alternatives to the original (half dead) ML variants.
I actually joined Threadiverse via ML (did think the domain and their application was strange but didn’t think too much about it) and then I realized Dessalines also admins Lemmygrad and he is a scumbag; of course I left ML ASAP.
I am generally doing my part to move over to Piefed, which also has a lot of cool features and better devs.
Yeah, I am on .World which for some reason still federates with .ml. I’ve moved over to Piefed on Desktop, just not on mobile yet.
Ha, don’t worry, they do it for free!
Don’t forget the libs openly promoting genocide in palestine.
Tankies and libs are basically the same thing with different imperial branding.
Strongly disagree on this one. Tankies and MLs are almost universally supportive of genocidal imperialism and authoritarianism.
Had some unhinged ML quote tweet my post about how she was in no position to complain about removal of Soviet monuments (she doesn’t live in Kyiv, doesn’t walk in Kyiv’s parks and doesn’t pay local taxes).
“Libs” do not all hold identical views on Palestine. If anything, negative perceptions of Israel (not just the current leadership) is on the rise. Libs are no where near tankies or MLs in terms of toxicity and comical stupid polemics (I refuse to believe tankies genuinely believe NK is a vanguard against imperialism and a great place to live).
If anything, negative perceptions of Israel (not just the current leadership) is on the rise
So only after a genocide is escalated do libs finally move away from open support? Damn what a group to be aligned with.
What a myopic and childish worldview.
We live in an imperfect world, good trends need to be capitalized on and not dismissed with some edgelord BS.
good trends need to be capitalized on
The good trend in this case is murdering half a million Palestinians has slightly shifted liberals views on their chosen settler state?
By god, at this rate it will only take the genocide of the entire middle east by israel to finally have liberals decide that it all should end. Just in time for the racially pure ethnostate to by complete! How convenient!!
Nobody hates leftists like other leftists with a slightly different flavour of leftism. This is by tradition as long as the leftist discourse has been up. Plenty of people find it unthinkable with nuances or compromises even for communal goals that would benefit everybody.
Add to this that social media is inherently toxic and anonymity brings out the absolute worst in many people to spew hate for slight differences in opinion.
It’s too bad but I’d recommend you to not get caught up in it and don’t let it get to you. People are people and the chances that they will change in any foreseeable future are small. Keep doing what you think is positive and constructive and don’t let others make you disappointed.
I just feel like the parent in the room half the time lol
It would be interesting to learn something about the demographics on Lemmy.
I usually liken the bad vibes on Lemmy to being stuck with a bunch of cynical teenagers. Nothing is ever good enough, nothing good can happen. They know this with absolute certainty.
I am also probably older than average here.
I think some of it is intentional, and some are just taken along by that.
Also it’s always easier to throw rocks from the sidelines than to actually lead. It’s so much easier to find something wrong with everything than it is to try to figure out the right thing to do.
Plus nuance is always difficult. Better to just treat everything as back and white.
Amen.
Honestly, IRL or online, once that ‘my leftism is the only good leftism’ shit starts, I leave the community. I have no time for bigots and bullies in my life. No matter the flavor of their politics.
And I go find another group where they actually do good work, rather than sitting on their asses pontificating about how noble and good they are and how they need more minorities in the group to improve their brand image.
It’s just tribalism. This is ingrained in us. Our group good. Other group bad. It’s survival.
Doesn’t make it right. Or logical. Best we can do is check ourselves when we have these thoughts or perform these actions. And to call out others who do it.
Yeah, having instance identities really does tap into that very strongly.
In my experience, we don’t have quite that many leftists trying to rile each other up. What often happens is that some people want to character assassinate some others due to previous dislikes or because they oppose one of their core beliefs, so they try to blow up any “impurities” they can find in order to turn people against them. You can see it with people who get short term bans from leftist places and then get into year-long grudges.
Generally I would suggest people start ignoring people who constantly post and try to stir up drama about whole instances or specific subgroups of lemmy users. For example, I dislike intensely, like threads.net, hilariouschaos and lemmygrad and yet you don’t see me constantly opening drama threads about them.There’s some caveats in this statement, but it by and large, it applies imho.
Yeah ‘my honor has been slighted and so i must now escalate’ is quite common.
Character assassinations too.
But yesterday we had 2 fellow dbzer0 folks do this very trolling/ baiting. Which they also planned in the matrix channel. I think I instantly made clear I strongly disliked that. So did the community. And there was an apology luckily.
But we both know there’s one provocateur there. Who I personally always have had lovely chats with. But someone who likes to go looking for trouble.
And thats not an isolated case. Many similar profiles I’ve seen.
I know the “provocateur” you’re talking about, and I’ve never seen them go to troll others outside their own space. I also haven’t seen many similar profiles either.
There’s a lot of .ml users that make accounts on db0 because so many instances blocked .ml and their users.
db0 also doesn’t do much to stop their instance from being abused like this.
You have repeatedly made this claim but still haven’t given any proof after a few weeks.
Please demonstrate the users you believe are alts of .ml and other instances. Any and all of them.
What instances block .ml that I’d be upset to miss?
Any examples?
I don’t think we’ll get any, she’s been asked before as hasn’t given any evidence before.
They’ve previously claimed other users are alts of me, which is especially funny considering I only use accounts with the same name for the sake of transparency.
3·7 hours agoNo actually, I am your alt.
Oh shit, that’s news to me! 🫠
Guess I have an alternate personality that actually knows tech and can host awesome wesites like ComLib? News to me! Or, this personality of me?
Now this I haven’t seen at all
Libs claim tankies make sockpuppets in our instance, tankies claim libs make sockpuppets in our instance. It’s just inability to comprehend the anarchist perspectives
And then they never back it up.
A lie gets around the world before the truth puts on its pants.
Ive never seen non anarchists capable of understanding the anarchist perspective. Its like theres some mental block preventing it.
And not just on Lemmy. Just generally, unimaginable idea for people
To be fair, some of us Marxist-Leninists used to be anarchists. That’s how I came to Marxism-Leninism, actually, so it isn’t that I misunderstand the anarchist viewpoint, I’ve just come to agree more with Marxists over time and after reading more theory from both.
I can say I have, used to see a lot of propaganda from my country being constantly crossposted from ml and hexbear, since dbzero (among others) tolerates them, it helps them bypass the faulty defederation/blocking system that lemmy has so it kept appearing in my feed and I had to see accounts dedicated to defend the propaganda.
Until I moved to Piefed and was able to actually block them (also this instance defederated them).Tribalism isn’t always bad, sometimes it’s needed to help take care of others by cutting off bad instances or instances that enable them. It’s not black and white.
Right wingers will be like, “Well he’s racist but we agree on taxes and the gays so he’s all right with me.”
Left wingers will be like, “We disagree on one of the 100 most important issues to me, therefore you are my enemy!”
“I’d rather die alone shot down by a fascist than teaming up with this pal that do not share 100% of my vision on what this dead dude did 100 years ago”
No.
Centrists lie when they claim to agree with progressives, as indicated by their legislative accomplishments: blocking progressive legislation and arming genocide.
You may agree with them on those points, but don’t pretend that centrists care about anything else at all because they just fucking don’t.
(Case in point)
You were going to say that about anyone who didn’t agree with you about how great genocide is.
I’m going to go right now into your history and upvote every comment of yours I agree with
Edit: I found a few dozen from recent weeks. We agree on more than you think. Many I’d already upvoted.
It’s great that you agree with me on some things.
Democrats still need to listen to criticism. They still need to realize that there are things they can do that will cause people who would otherwise vote for them to stay home in well-earned disgust. Voters have standards, and when they see a party willing to do nothing for them and anything for a genocidal apartheid regime on the other side of the planet, the expectation of unquestioning enthusiasm takes a lot of gall.
You can blame voters all you want, but the party wasn’t failed by the voters. The voters were failed, repeatedly, over the course of decades, by a party that has no interest in ever actually representing them.
You’re encouraging people to “stay home in well-earned disgust”. That serves the fascists.
End of story.
There are ways to say what you want to say carefully. But in my opinion stopping the Nazis needs to come before any other priorities.
You’re encouraging people to “stay home in well-earned disgust”.
I’m remarking on a genuine phenomenon. At no point did I tell anyone to stay home, but anyone who wants no criticism of the party interprets all criticism as such.
There are ways to say what you want to say carefully.
There is no criticism of the worst behavior of the party that won’t be regarded as disloyalty from people who like how the party moved so far to the right that it supported genocide.
But in my opinion stopping the Nazis needs to come before any other priorities.
democrats didn’t even consider that enough of a problem to change their most odious position.
No one here brought up the Democratic Party or genocide except you.
This is a post about division on Lemmy.
You actually don’t have to demonstrate that. You can choose to find common ground in the culture of the platform and save the division for matters that are important to you in the communities that discuss them. That’s up to you, friend.
No one here brought up the Democratic Party or genocide except you.
This is a post about division on Lemmy.
And it sure would be nice for all the centrists who spent a solid year screeching abuse at anyone who dared to say that genocide was wrong if anyone who said it could be silenced by saying that they’re being divisive.
Meanwhile, I don’t see you saying boo to anyone who’s calling anyone to their left a tankie in this thread. “Divisive” is a club used by the orthodox to enforce orthodoxy.
You actually don’t have to demonstrate that. You can choose to find common ground in the culture of the platform and save the division for matters that are important to you in the communities that discuss them.
I can choose to agree with genocide or shut up. That’s the only thing you’re saying.
I’m kind of surprised to not see this answer, so I’ll throw it in: it seems to me that there are a lot of people from various countries who have built-in language for politics that they believe is shared across the world - but it isn’t.
As a dumb American, I’ve always been a liberal because that was the inclusive, progressive, luxury-gay-space-communism option as opposed to the conservative, regressive, racist, ignorant violent option. People from other countries don’t seem to appreciate that at all, because their “liberal” is what we’d call neoliberal or corporate Democrat, and they apparently don’t have a FPTP / Slaver’s College fix on their elections and they just don’t grok the two party thing.
As you can imagine on here there’s a lot of hate from both conservatives and leftists for “liberals”. I think that’s ridiculous but it’s usually easier to try and adopt their definitions than to explain why the other 379,999,999 of us don’t use it that way. (Well - 350M, say. Parts of the PNW use it that way too.). It’s just kind of exhausting in threads about American politics.
If someone calls me a “liberal” (or libtard, libcuck, etc) I naturally assume they’re racist, fascist, AM radio fuckwits. But then they want to jump into some world where H4A, UBI, No Oil is what they’re all about and once again I’m like - well, yeah we agree, again. So.
(Usually the retort is, “well then why are you a liberal?!” Which. Goes back to the exhausting thing.)
Liberalism has an actual definition. Neoliberalism is a subset of liberalism. Either way, neither position is socialist and both are capitalist. That’s the distinction. That’s always been the distinction. Leftist politics is distinctly anti capitalist.
To leftists, liberalism, even progressive liberalism, can never address the material concerns for workers, inequal accumulation, and capitalism’s contradictions because it cannot attack the central tenet of its ideology: the private ownership of land and resources. And most of the social stuff was being advocated by leftist groups in the west for years before they became popular enough for the mainstream, liberal parties to embrace.
I’m an American. Conflating liberalism with leftism is a media game that has successfully ensured the Overton window does not shift left. It reveals the mass political ignorance here. Of the policies you’ve listed, only H4A is arguably socialist.
You can understand the two party system and make decisions to support certain candidates/policies in an election without identifying as a liberal.
To leftists, liberalism, even progressive liberalism, can never address the material concerns for workers, inequal accumulation, and capitalism’s contradictions because it cannot attack the central tenet of its ideology: the private ownership of land and resources.To leftists, liberalism, even progressive liberalism, can never address the material concerns for workers, inequal accumulation, and capitalism’s contradictions because it cannot attack the central tenet of its ideology: the private ownership of land and resources.
Well put, and yes I’d agree. Where I seem to draw the ire of leftists is when I point to the clock and say we have one year before we have to vote, and all things being equal we’re going to vote for the Democrats because attacking the central tenet of this country’s dominant ideology is not going to happen in this election cycle.
The 2024 Presidential election threads were a depressing reminder that some leftists can’t get out of their heads, or ivory towers, or whatever to make incremental progress because the glorious revolution is at hand. Or something. So I get to be the evil liberal who wants healthcare for all, student loan forgiveness, and a Green New Deal. And all of those things go down the shitter because republiQans vote as a single juggernaut bloc and we don’t.
To me as a European, posts and comments about US politics can be very confusing. There’s the different interpretation on the word liberal you mentioned. There’s also the fact that the colours are reversed: here red is for the left - socialists and communists - while blue is the liberal right (not so much conservative right, though there are conservative subgroups of the “blues”). And there’s the fact that they often assume familiarity with political events and people unknown to me.
Somewhat related: posts and comments from the far and extreme left are often even more incomprehensible. They seem to have their own language entirely.
The most important point of unity for the left is the economics. Political identity must be defined by being the proletariat first and foremost.
When you have people who break that, well their place is questioned.
Mmm hmmm. Yeah. Yes.
So an American proletariat is . . . Anyone who is limited by health insurance, student loans, and mortgage rates? Or is it something else?
We don’t really use the word proletariat, uh, at all. Ever.
In a very basic sense (and this may very well be debated but to explain it simply I’ll say): anyone who doesn’t own their own labour, as in you work for someone else.
That’s pretty much every liberal I know, yeah.
Well. I know some house painters I guess. They don’t work for someone else, per se.
Yeah being part of smth and identifying as smth are two separate things.
I’m a man, straight, brown, proletariat etc. The question is what part of that do I see as the most fundamental part of my identity or politics.
Hm. Well, that’s interesting.
This is also where the concept of alienation in the Marxist sense comes in. He took Hegel’s framework, which Feuerbach and Bauer had used to analyse religion and he applied that to law and economics.
So this Marxist alienation which is in the Hegelian tradition is worth reading.
Now alienation can interestingly also be a desired outcome in leftist movements as the French existentialists talked about.
We also have a third brand of alienation in Buddhism etc.
Some want it some hate it.
I’m with Marx on this one.
If you are interested I can find some introductory article for you to take a look at.
I’d like to share my offline perspective here. All online spaces are kind of heightened versions of the discourse, Lemmy less so than other places but it’s still there.
In the real world leftists are generally kind and empathetic people who genuinely want to do good. It’s nice when you find another leftist, I have friends who are various flavours of anarchist and socialist and even some real life, genuine, aging commune hippies now living in town. There is no animosity and we would basically all agree on local direct action or local politics. In my experience even most liberals are just naive rather than genuinely holding counterproductive political beliefs.
It can feel very lonely but you’re not alone.
Congratulations on noticing the human tendency to form tribes.
It would be best to focus on policies and ideas rather than ideological alignement. The moment someone says “thats socialist!” “That’s right wing!” Is the moment where no meaningful action is taken, where discussion ends since you suddenly decide that your alignment is irreconcilable and makes no outcome possible.
Hey, I don’t speak for anyone here, but this isn’t a problem. Decentralization is a means to an end, not a desirable state in and of itself. Federated networks being separate from each other is fine. I feel this has been a critical misunderstanding among advocates of open source social media.
Honestly, best experiences I have had on ActivityPub were replacements for a group chat of 40-200 persons, not an attempted replacement for Twitter. (Also crucially not on a Mastodon fork but stuff like Akkoma.)
Since this app is clearly for some people a replacement for the general mechanics of websites like Stack Overflow, HN, and Reddit, and for other people meant to be a direct fork of specific Reddit communities, it makes sense to me that the networks would diverge completely, though it seems it hasn’t happened yet.
What really kept me from using Lemmy is the poor integration with Mastodon. It’s not a UI thing. Mbin and Kbin were a step in the wrong direction by furthrt splitting the UI between two types of posts that are the same under the hood
Libs and tankies are both right-wingers masquerading as left. So they’re constantly locking horns over whose empire is better, whose glorious leader is more righteous, whose genocide (ukr/pal) is more the fault of the victims, etc. It’s as simple as this:
Youre an anarchist so I get seeing tankies as right wing. Infact I’m the weird one for not seeing them as right wing but i don’t.
Libs yes are righties
You’re correct. They aren’t right wing. They are communists.
I haven’t figured out if I’m fully anarchist, a “left libertarian” who can accept a restrained state, or if I’m coming around to being an ML, tbh.
And I’m not sure if I care. I just want capitalism dismantled and fascism/conservativism opposed. And I don’t want a police state.
But, and this is gonna be hypocritical of me, I feel like the sectarianism always seems to be coming from online anarchist and progressive spaces. Like no don’t join our mass movement against capitalism if you, IDK, don’t dislike China enough? Doesn’t make sense to me.
Tankies feel like they push pseudo communism with the bourgeoisie still at the top giving scraps to the proletariat and passing it off as paltry socialism. There’s no societal change to the hierarchy, balance of power, or wealth. Usually some power of personality to rally around as their God who’s surrounded themselves with oligarchs who are enriching themselves and providing scraps to pass off as communist enough.
It’s more a weird ultra nationalism where proletariats are being tricked into thinking power has been given to the people when the ones at top are abusing their power to oppress forms of counter thought to seize whatever they want and retain their wealth. I wouldn’t consider them left just because there’s some form of socialism. Lot of countries do if at the very least they fix roads and have fire fighters.
The integration of authoritarianism just conflicts with my idea of communism, since my idea of communism is power to the people and one where the government fears the people because people control the means of production and they choose who stays in power. Not trading the usual suspects of kings, dictators, warlords, or whatever they call themselves for a different coat of paint.
That is because “left and right” conflate too much in the same name and depending on what you are thinking they may be right wing or not. I feel like tankies, in regard of social policies are more left wing, for economic policies it may be right or left wing depending on how you see it, but on the control, political, democratic policies they are right wing, because they are more authoritarian.
Economics is the core of political identity. That I share with Marx.
