cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/72685299
I discovered this after upgrading our instance yesterday, which also upgraded all frontends to their latest versions as well. After I did, our Tesseract frontend stopped working and I noticed immediately as it’s been my primary for a while. Initially I thought it was an API version mismatch, but no, it was much worse.
Someone pointed out that the developer of the frontend added an explicit hidden and unmodifiably blacklist which includes any and all instances to the left of Kissinger. There’s a commit which also explains their specious reasoning about our instance specifically, as it seems we’ve been on their shit list for a bit longer than that.
This instance and its admin staff encourages identity politics, groupthink, mob mentality, and extremist solutions to societal problems. Users who advocate violence are not moderated so long as the admins agree with the target. Caution and critical thinking are advised when interacting with this instance or its users.
When you use tesseract to connect to one blacklisted such instance , you just get a message informing you that Tesseract is “incompatible with that instance” which leads one to think of a technical issue, like an API mismatch, rather than the dev being an opinionated coward.
Isn’t it funny how all the software developed by turbolibs, like Piefed and Tesseract, end up with hidden control mechanisms from developers who think they know better than everyone else? That they don’t just think they deserve to tell you what you should think, but they should manipulate you to think it? Isn’t it funny how libs go on about how bad it is to support lemmy due to the ideology of the devs behind it, and yet lemmy has 0 opinions as a software? It does make one think…
Anyway, I forked - it as one does - and disabled the blacklist, but since this is a massively ideologically compromised software, I’ll doubt I’ll keep this frontend up after Lemmy 1.0. I think we’ll bring up mlmym again now that someone’s maintaining it again.
I’m no expert, but it sounds like they were killed by authoritarianism, not communism. I don’t think communism requires concentration camps, famines, or cultural purges.
Deafboy dramatically and intentionally misrepresented the point, but all states are monopolies on violence, all are “authoritarian.” The excesses committed in socialist States are genuine excesses of socialism.
That being said, “concentration camps” is a bit disingenuous. No socialist state has had industrialized mass murder like the Nazis, UK, US, etc. Most deaths in prisons in the Soviet Union, for example, happened due to starvation during World War II, after the Nazis took Ukraine, the USSR’s breadbasket.
Contributing famine to socialism is even more disingenuous. In all instances of famine in socialist countries, these have been in countries historically food insecure with common famine, and the socialists were the ones to end the cycle of famine. Socialism did not cause the famines, weather disaster and underdeveloped agricultural forces did. Mismanagement often played a part, but not in a way intrinsic to socialism nor in a manner that would have made capitalism preferable.
As for cultural purges, this is more vague. The cultural revolution in China, for example, is recognized as a mistake by the CPC. This is all I can really think of, though, when it comes to “cultural purges.”
As established in the other thread here, state-wide communism can only be achieved by the violent means.
What needs to follow is for the people to willingly forget some of what they know, uninvent the market, money, and give up every possesion that’s of any significant value. That is not going to happen without violence either.
And to keep the society in this state, you need an aparatus that will constantly keep them in fear, or ar least apply some kind of double-think. A dictatorship is the only way to do that.
This is how the soviet style communism has been brought to my city:
Communism is inherently authoritarian.
And to that I say: Authoritarians of the world, gurgle my balls!
Socialists do not “uninvent the market,” or “require people to willingly forget what they know,” and certainly not “give up any possession of value.” Socialists solve the contradiction between socialized production, which markets are great at establishing, and private appropriation of the spoils of production, which creates the tiny and wealthy capitalist class. This is not an “un-invention” of the productive forces created by markets, but a solution to markets that have already fulfilled their historic role in creating socialized production.
Those that have their property appropriated are the owning classes, the capitalists, landlords, etc. This isn’t “anything of value,” it’s specifically the means of production and distribution, to create a better society for everyone based on the labor they actually perform and contribute to society.
Further still, socialism is democratic. Capitalism cannot be. Those kept in fear in socialism and deprived of power are the formerly and present owning classes. For the proletariat, the workers, socialism is the first taste of actual democracy. Violent, revolutionary means are necessary to gain this democracy and end the oppression of capitalism, which keeps workers in fear and dictatorial control.
States are inherently monopolies on violence. Either capitalists control the state, or the working classes do. Either there’s capitalism, or socialism. Only once class has been abolished can the state wither away.