both are. have fun fighting eachother in the mud.
All states are authoritarian, in that they are instruments by which one class oppresses the others. What this doesn’t say anything about alone, though, is which class is in power. In the US Empire, the capitalists are in power, and use the authority of the state to crush workers when workers rise up. In the PRC, the working class is in power, and the state keeps capitalists in check and appropriates their capital gradually.
The only way out of authoritarian control by any class is to get rid of classes entirely, which requires full collectivization of production. China is actively building towards that, the US Empire is opposing it. Until we get to a classless society, it’s better for the working class to be in charge.
In other words, class struggle will continue to exist even after the proletariat takes control. All of the tensions from class struggle continue to exist, only they are resolved in favor of the working class. This is what “authoritarianism” looks like, class conflict expressed in state response.
“the working class” meaning the (one) party tho, lol.
Yes. Democracy isn’t about choosing between parties, but having substantive input on direction that results in the will of the people being carried out. This is true of China, policy is typically driven from the bottom-up, a process called “whole process people’s democracy.” This is expressed, as an example, through Five Year Plans that are the result of mass polling and suggestions among the populace. The CPC has over 100 million members in a country of 1.4 billion.
The state isn’t a class in and of itself, it can only serve as representative of a class. In the PRC, that class is the working class. The communists beat the nationalists in the Chinese Civil War, and from that point on the working class has been in control.
liberals brain breaking
The fuck is up with the Chinese propaganda on this website…
There are a lot of communists on Lemmy, and communists tend to support socialist countries. Simple as that. Plus, in the current era where the US Empire is dying, China is presenting itself as a better trade partner for the global south, one focused more on multilateralism and not on imperialism.
Why are they trying to brute-force propaganda? At least be subtle, and bribe us next time.
What do you mean by “brute-forcing” propaganda? Agitprop is one of the main ways communists recruit new members.
To the liberal brain pickled from a lifetime of soaking in American propaganda, the stating of simple and demonstrable fact in an online discussion = “brute forcing propaganda.”
Also I hate to do a redditism, but fucking hell does that username check out.
lol would you prefer for us to lie and say all the countries of the world are horrible, cynicism is the only consistent ideology, and we’re all doomed so nothing matters?
Removed by mod
ew a China apologist
Lemmy.ml has a ton of communists, communists tend to support socialist countries 🤷
China is about as socialist as my shit is a bouquet of roses.
It’s capitalism. It’s always capitalism.
The large firms and key industries are overwhelmingly publicly owned, and the working class is in charge of the state. It’s been socialist since the CPC beat the Kuomintang. The presence of private property in a system doesn’t mean the system is capitalist, this was already understood in Marx’s time.
Fun fact: It’s actually possible for two countries to both be authoritarian!
People really need to stop getting their views from the internet.
They should get them from TV and newspapers right!?
“Authoritarian” is largely a meaningless term. All it really means is one group using force against another group, but it doesn’t say anything about which group is which. In the US Empire, the capitalists use the state to crush the workers, and export genocide and chaos to the global south. In the PRC, the working class uses the state to keep the capitalists in check as they progress and develop along socialist lines. This stark difference in which class is in power is shown with immense popular support in the PRC:
Better answer the survey correctly when you live in a country that has laws like “disagreeing with the government is a crime”
Although state censorship and propaganda are widespread in China, these findings highlight that citizen perceptions of governmental performance respond most to real, measurable changes in individuals’ material well-being. Satisfaction and support must be consistently reinforced. As a result, the data point to specific areas in which citizen satisfaction could decline in today’s era of slowing economic growth and continued environmental degradation.
The CPC does restrict the speech of capitalists, yes. However, the reason the people support the CPC is because of dramatic improvements in living conditions, not fear of the state.
The data from this article is up to 2016. Things have changed quite a bit since the COVID crisis.
The data from the source I provided on perceptions of democracy is from 2024. The Ash Center Study proves that this isn’t a recent thing, the CPC has broad support and successfully maintains it. Here are even more sources on the matter.
You have a hypothesis but no evidence that it actually matters.
Alright, you did convince me that the Chinese people report strong support to the CCP and report a strong perception of democracy. What I am still not convinced of however, is that PRC IS democratic.
In my book, for a country to be democratic it needs to have:
- Freedom of speech
- Freedom of press
- Freedom of reunion
- Freedom of protest
- Universal access to education
- Political plurality
- Universal suffrage
- Universal respect of human right
My opinion today is that, I highly doubt PRC qualifies to any of this points, but I don’t know for sure. If you convince me with credible evidence that PRC is better than, let’s say, France, Germany or Norway, on all these points, then I am ready to move to China with you next year.
Edit: I forgot a few important point on my democratic list of requirements:
- Laicity (division of state and religion and tolerance for all religions)
- Division of power (Legislative, Justice, Executive, etc, must be help by different institution regulating each other)
First of all, you have a very liberal-minded understanding of democracy. A lot of these values are really only “valid” in as much as they apply to capitalists in the west. For example:
- Freedom of Speech
- Freedom of Press
Both of these only exist in the west as far as they can be abused by those with enough money to buy the media narrative. In China, speech of capitalists and misinformation is cracked down on, but the working class is largely left to speak what they want.
Freedom of reunion (I take to mean freedom of assembly) is partially valid. As China is a socialist country, and the class struggle is very much still alive, creating groups opposed to socialism is cracked down on more. However, there exist many specialty groups, in fact there are 8 political parties other than the CPC that work cooperatively with the CPC when it comes to governing.
Freedom of protest is fine. Protests and public backlash are what caused the CPC to back off on COVID restrictions, even though the CPC was correct. You can’t really aim to overthrow socialism or anything, but protests for example are often supported by the CPC against capitalists.
Education is kept extremely cheap in China. Schools are extremely competitive as well, partially because of how many people there are competing for the top universities, but overall education is extremely affordable. It isn’t free as far as I’m aware, but it isn’t a block for the working class.
Regarding political plurality, there’s a saying in China: “let a hundred flowers bloom, a hundred schools of thought contend.” I recommend this article on Roland Boer’s trip to China.
As for universal suffrage:
As for universal respect of human rights, China does quite well, and unlike the countries you listed, it isn’t imperialist. France, Germany, Norway, the west in general, all depend on vast looting and plundering of the global south. China doesn’t, it runs on largely its own production, which is why countries in the global south are flocking to China for construction contracts and to join the Belt and Road Initiative.
Imperialist countries in the west use vast exports of capital to super-exploit international labor for super-profits, that’s where western safety nets come from. Essentially, you can think of the west as capitalists in country form, exploiting those under their domination, while China is aligned with the global south and doesn’t have that private domination of finance capital that enables imperialism in the first place.
I’m not moving to China anytime soon. I can’t speak Mandarin, and I have friends and family where I live. I do organize with communists, though, and would love to bring about socialism in my country.
Edit for your edit:
Religion is protected.
As for “separation of powers,” this circles back to you having a thoroughly liberal understanding of politics. Government should cooperate in a functional society, not work against itself. Capitalist countries rely on this instability of government in order to keep capital on top, but there’s no actual reasoning for it. The churn, the competition, it’s all by design to keep society turned against itself instead of cooperating.
Can you please provide a source for the graphic?
It’s in the bottom left, here’s another bunch of sources.
Bottom left of the picture would be a good start
So you consider a state censoring all it’s citizens from discussing certain words and topics to not be authoritarian?
I stated that all states are “authoritarian,” all are methods by which one class exerts authority over another. The only way out of “authoritarianism” is to fully collectivize production, eliminating class distinctions. Until then, it’s better for capitalists to be under the thumb of the workers, rather than the inverse. Like I said, it’s a largely meaningless term.
In the PRC, the working class uses the state to keep the capitalists in check
The state used the police to crush the working class when they demanded the money from the banks that invested it in a runaway housing scam.
You are believing in a fantasy. There are countless countries around the world that are arguably more socialist than China without even calling themselves such. Quite frankly, I trust actions and numbers more than words.
Using a western, anti-communist news source for a report on how China is supposedly crushing the working class? Color me shocked! You have no points.
What would be a source you deem valid in this case. The only thing I can say is that multiple news sources published about this topic.
And what do you have to say about the problem of half-assed building projects that keep killing people in china because they used the wrong type of sand for concrete for example?
What’s important is the framing, and what is left in vs what is left out. Those that were harmed by the government popping the real estate bubble were those who had the extra money to invest in real estate, which is the primary vehicle for balooning your wealth in China. The user I replied to specifically stated working class, which in reality should be more like the petty bourgeois.
Secondly, the scale of violence inplied by the user is the idea that the state sent in jackbooted thugs to crush the protest, but reading the article it seems as though it was only a handful of people that got into a skirmish with plainclothes police officers. That doesn’t excuse anything, of course, but now we know “CPC crushes working class protestors with police” is at best an exaggeration of “crushes” and the “working class” part is an embellishment.
Finally, the article says the government worked to address the complaints! This wasn’t a protest against the government, but a protest for government intervention. This wasn’t because the CPC did something bad, but was a request for the CPC to step into the banking system failing and help people harmed by that.
So, again, we have what appears to be light police skirmishes with upper-middle class people harmed by a banking failure that requested CPC intervention, which they did. What they framed it as was poor, working class protestors harmed by CPC action being met by overwhelming jackbooted thugs in order to squash dissent against the CPC. See how that’s dishonest? And that’s taking the Guardian at face value, just reading between the lines.
Do you have more information on what the specific banking error was, because most sources I was able to find are focused on the violent intervention and less about what exactly happened in the banks.
If not, the incident doesn’t make china as bad or worse than the us but it does make the perfect image of the chinese government seem a bit more questionable.
Also, what do you think about the issue of things like tofu dreg construction? Why do you think that happens or did it even happen as shown on multiple videos from chine?
I don’t personally know more about this single event, but the broader housing bubble has been widely reported on. If you want a Chinese perspective, I recommend searching CGTN.
As for the CPC, it is by no means perfect. As a socialist country, the PRC does a much better job of meeting the needs of the people. Even the linked article was a protest for government action, not against it. The CPC makes mistakes, but the system itself is better, so it’s likely shortcomings are resolved over time.
As for “tofu-dregs,” they aren’t all that common. It has happened, it was a term coined by Zhu Rongji, premier of the CPC at the time. Using insufficient rebar, poor quality concrete, etc has happened because of rapid development and the ability for individuals to cut corners for higher profits or to meet deadlines. However, this is more of a problem of the past, and not a widescale problem, despite how western countries would report on it.
Really, identifying bias within an article and engaging with it critically is good practice in general.
Meta argument: charts like this are basically useless.
I was raised in a very religious town. If you asked, the people in that town would say “my religion is a religion of love” “people should be as free as possible because it’s an extension of personal agency” and all the while they beat their kids and would rather die than let gay or trans people be themselves.
They can quote the scriptures and could likely write some pretty strong rhetoric implying they are loving and kind and caring, but it wouldn’t be anywhere near the truth.
Point is that just because you get phrases pounded into your head doesn’t mean you truly believe them or even know what they imply.
If your country’s rhetoric specifically states that the government serves the people and says it over and over, regardless of the truth of that statement, people will have a tendency to select it. (Like if your government called itself the people’s republic…)
If you asked Americans and Chinese if they think personal freedom is important, you’d likely get the reverse pattern in your graph. Is this because America has more freedom? No, more likely it’s because the historical rhetoric we get exposed to emphasizes “freedom” whereas China’s revolutionary rhetoric was centered around “democracy”
If you asked Americans if they support socialism, you’d get lower bars than if you asked it indirectly. Just using the word socialism skews your metric.
People will say they support or don’t support concepts they don’t understand, or that they view in a different light than others. Does democracy mean more than two political parties? Does democracy mean no capitalism? Does democracy require freedom to spread information freely? Etc.
So once again these metrics are useless because I’d imagine most of these countries’ voters would disagree on what the statements even mean.
You’d have more of a point if the fact that the people of China support their system wasn’t regularly proven in various metrics, not just a single poll.
Why would that have any effect on the point of my argument?
My point is about the ineffectiveness and unscientific nature of this kind of questionnaire.
Doesn’t matter what topics or debates these are used in or who is right in those debates; the point is that these kind of charts are useless regardless of their content.
Sidenote: if you had “various metrics” why’d you post the least scientific one? Like bro, brain-dead “libertarians” could probably pull out some statistic or study that is more sound than this chart to support their idiotic bullshit. If a fellow anarchist tried to use a metric like this I’d call them out too even if I agreed with their point
The questionaire is valid, though. It highlights differences in the system, in an easy to understand graph. If you want, here’s another bunch of sources.
The only thing the questionnaire does, assuming it is built well, is show that when asked those questions people in different countries answered differently.
Did the Chinese populations sampled by the study respond more positively to those four questions more than the samples of other nations? Yes.
Can you assert that this is proof that china is more democratic and less authoritarian than those countries? NO.
At best, this study shows that public opinion of the government in china is higher than that of the other countries. Which definitely doesn’t mean all that much at all, for example I could ask half my family members and they’d say that things are better now under trump than they’ve ever been before. Is that the case? Absolutely not. Does that change their minds? No.
Now, the original article you linked seems much more soft science but the article it first mentions actually has more concrete data but still that data is on public opinion.
Unfortunately the democracy index site appears to be missing and “for sale”
If you could find me the actual questionnaire in mandarin so we could read it as it was presented and compare with the English version we could rule out some of the bias I presented earlier, but not all.
Lastly, kairos buddy, your argument was that a country (which many of the people you’re trying to persuade think is George Orwell big brother level controlling) isn’t authoritarian. Using polled data, especially that which was “implemented by a reputable domestic Chinese polling firm” is not going to hold much evidentiary worth to your target audience.
I’m not Anti-China, in fact I was and possibly still am thinking about taking a semester or internship out there; I only wanted to point out that you aren’t actually backing your argument up with any solid evidence especially with regards to your target audience.
I really am curious about the test though, especially since the democracy index paper is on a dead site, so if you could find it in Mandarin I’d be interested. If you could find a source on what “reputable polling firm” Harvard used I’d be interested in that too since the report didn’t actually mention the name…?
Oh and one last thing is that the article mentions “Furthermore, China outperforms the US and most European countries on these indicators – in fact, it has some of the strongest results in the world.” Fun statistical fact: outliers are a sign your sampling methodology is flawed, especially when the outliers are a set of samples and not just a singular data point.
From just the “my government serves the people” bars alone, it would appear the Chinese dataset is well beyond 1.5 standard deviations if the other three are so much lower and show such low variation. If this was a single data point, one would throw it out, but considering it is supposedly a longitudinal collection of samples it implies that there is a very strong influencing factor that is only largely affecting the Chinese survey takers.
If the pattern holds for many other metrics, then it implies this singular factor (or other factors) have significantly biased the Chinese samples. This doesn’t necessarily mean that factor is government intervention or bias from being raised in rhetoric from an authoritarian state, but it is statistically unlikely that this factor is simply due to china just somehow having a better democracy than every single country on earth (including all of its allies and enemies alike) by a statistically gigantic margin.
Fun statistical fact: outliers are a sign your sampling methodology is flawed, especially when the outliers are a set of samples and not just a singular data point.
“This jet’s speed is an outlier in this set of planes. Outliers mean the methodology must be invalid, so jets can’t be faster than planes.”
This is nonsense. China and the euros have fundamentally different political systems, there is no reason to suppose they should have similar outcomes. The whole point of the discussion is that China’s system is superior, if you say that any data that supports that is an outlier, and therefore must be invalid you’re just presupposing your conclusion.
On your other point about the usefulness of this data: while it is true that there can be many different explanations for the observed results, that just means that we need more evidence to show which system is more democratic, not that this evidence is useless. Saying that people’s opinion of their own system is irrelevant is extremely chauvinistic. In the case of China, we can see the massive increase in quality of life of it’s citizens, as well as a systematic overview of it’s political structures like here. I’ve also heard the book Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners is good, but I haven’t read it yet myself.
Furthermore, your point about manipulation of public opinion goes the other way, too. Where did the idea that China is authoritarian come from? People going to China and studying what life is like there, or media manipulation? Who do you think is more likely to be manipulated like that, the people living there who actually experience the political structures of China, or rando westerners whos only source of information is capitalist media? A simple poll like this is more than enough to debunk the people who think China is authoritarian based on nothing but vibes from capitalist media.
KimBongUn already provided other sources, I’m not going to go through the trouble of finding a poll in mandarin when I can’t speak it. Popular support for the PRC is well-documented, as well as the ability for the people to direct policy in a far more material way than in liberal countries.
China has democracy comparable to other socialist states. The difference is socialism vs capitalism, it’s as simple as that.
Okay, but we are talking about a country where you aren’t allowed to form a political party that opposes the CCP, right? How can we tell the difference between “hell yeah, my country is making my life great” and “there is exactly one answer to this survey question that will not get me in trouble”? I always try to keep in mind that I am not immune to propaganda, but I’ve personally known Chinese people who have very explicitly declined to offer any criticism of the Chinese government or go against the party line, even in private conversation, because they didn’t want trouble.
Yes, capitalists are prevented from undermining socialism. If you read the studies, the reason the people of China support their system is because it supports them and represents their interests.
But it’s also a ban on other socialist parties, not just capitalist ones, and it plays directly into the talking point that socialism is an authoritarian system that is imposed on people, not chosen on its merits. If the CCP really has enjoyed resounding, unwavering support from the proletariat for 75 years straight, why appear so weak by never allowing any competition whatsoever?
There are 8 other minor parties in China.
The PRC is officially organized under what the CCP terms a “system of multi-party cooperation and political consultation under the leadership of the CCP,” in which the minor parties must accept the leadership of the CCP.
The PRC isn’t weak for not allowing capitalist and other liberal parties to compete, and socialist democracy has never cared too much about multi-party “democracy.” The PRC values cohesion and cooperation, not needless competition. Any competing “socialist” party would, in all reality, be used by the west to undermine the long-term socialist project.
Further, they have 8 minor political parties that cooperate with the CPC.
Yeah, those don’t count, if they’re required to align with the party then they’re just subcommittees or something, not actual political parties.
I promise I’m keeping my mind open, but all of these answers seem indistinguishable from authoritarian rule, which was kinda my original point. The same organization has to rule in perpetuity because foreign influence would subvert the interests of the country if there were other options, quite lucky that they locked in the right one. Practically all one billion people are aligned on this and agree that this system is working for them, but no, they will not be allowing that to be tested at the ballot box or in a media environment where people can speak their mind, it might all fall apart despite how unified they are. It’s a party controlled by the workers and acting for their interests, with total control of the levers of power, they just felt like keeping some ultra-rich and ultra-powerful folks around for a laugh, not because they’re the ones who actually have the power.
Honestly, shit’s so bad in the west that I’m kinda open to the idea that maybe a totalitarian government that recognizes it needs to keep workers decently happy to allow them to rule is, in fact, better than what we’ve got going on now, but it’s really hard to go as far as saying that it’s an active, ongoing, consensual choice by the workers to never give themselves a choice.
“I want a different party”
There are 8 to choose from
“They don’t count”
Unserious af
You keep repeating the idea that the PRC is “totalitarian,” despite being broadly democratic with comprehensivs influence being driven from the bottom-up. You’re getting too wrapped-up in liberal, multiparty democracy that it’s running interference for your understanding of cooperative, socialist democracy.
A party that opposes the communists? Like, a fascist party?
They refuse to offer criticism to you, they will criticize the CCP constantly amongst themselves. They’ve sadly learned right or wrong that westerners are always trying to make China look bad. It’s largely from western news like BBC. Just look up the phrase China, but at what cost. The most hilarious one I read was China is curing cancer fast, but at what cost.
I’m in awe of your ability to read minds, because that was not at all the vibe I got when I was actually in that conversation.
Of course not? If they gave you that impression then you would pry. As I said, it’s pretty universal at this point. No mind reading needed. The fact that you were trying to do exactly what they’re trying to avoid is hilarious to me.
Indeed, one can be authoritarian towards workers and people all around the globe while other can be authoritarian towards their national and foreign capitalists.
It’s possible, but it’s objectively not the case. Don’t take my word for it though, it’s what people actually living in China say.
- https://www.newsweek.com/most-china-call-their-nation-democracy-most-us-say-america-isnt-1711176
- https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2021/0218/Vilified-abroad-popular-at-home-China-s-Communist-Party-at-100
- https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-06-26/which-nations-are-democracies-some-citizens-might-disagree
- https://web.archive.org/web/20230511041927/https://6389062.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6389062/Canva images/Democracy Perception Index 2023.pdf
- https://www.tbsnews.net/world/china-more-democratic-america-say-people-98686
- https://web.archive.org/web/20201229132410/https://en.news-front.info/2020/06/27/studies-have-shown-that-china-is-more-democratic-than-the-united-states-russia-is-nearby-and-ukraine-is-at-the-bottom/
That’s why deepseek refuses to criticize the CCP
🙄 Previously.
I absolutely love how libs have just memorized a handful or talking points they regurgitate like chatbots.
The person just replying “Wrong” and refusing to elaborate 😂
hard to elaborate on a topic you have absolutely no clue regarding :)
Removed by mod
is see see pee in the room with you right now?
@KoboldCoterie
Exactly this.Removed by mod
Deleted by a suckass loser
What would you suggest? Something by Xi Xinping?
Who the Hell is Xi Xinping?
I have committed the grave sin of spelling the name of the Dear Leader wrong. I’ll report to the nearest reeducation camp as soon as possible.
You have committed the grave error of credibility by getting the most obvious and trivially checked facts of something (a name) wrong.
I think you’ll find the “reeducation camp” is called a “school” in common English. If you want to go for the melodramatic name, however, no skin off my nose.
Yes, actually. Would be a great place to start.
Dialectical Materialism is the Worldview and Methodology of Chinese Communists
Regarding the Construction of Socialism With Chinese Characteristics
Except one country is authoritarian and lying about the authoritarianism of China
China?
Except one country is authoritarian and lying about the authoritarianism of China
Right now the US is led by fan of xi and putin, so no surprise he wants to implement the same things there.
If that was actually true, then NATO would be dissolved and the US would be trying to dedollarize and join BRICS.
I love the liberal fanfic that he’s completely subservient to the bad foreigners, but won’t do the things that would benefit them the most because… uhh… he’s hiding his power level or something? 5D Chess? I dunno
Yea, there are far easier and better ways to capitulate if he wanted to.
Not when he wants to appear that he fights for America.
That’s a lot of effort for no personal payoff, lol. There’s no reason to believe it’s true.
And what do you think is happening when he is saying he won’t honor article 5 of NATO treaty?
Why is he pushing India (one of biggest proponents of BRICS that didn’t want to get rid of dollar) toward Russia by imposing tariffs so high that are essentially an embargo?
He’s bad at his job and is flailing around because the US Empire is finding the end result of hollowing out domestic industry for decades.
Idk what sort of DuPont/Monsanto/Pfizer cocktail y’all got in your drinking water but I stg I listen to any voting gringo talk politics and y’all start frothing at the mouth with the most unhinged theories. Tinfoil sellers gotta be making a killing over there.
Libs be like “this is a totally organic movement with broad local support”
Take a moment to imagine the absolutely demonic levels of McCarthyism that would be unleashed if it was discovered that BLM or the Green Party were headquartered in Beijing.
They even have the same fucking graphic design style of the state department fam lmao how are gringos real
Poor analogy. The US kills muslim people like they were rats. The secretary of offense is covered in tattoos glorifying the Medieval crusades and wrote a book titled “American Crusade” explaining the US is in a “holy war” agains muslims and China.
So “East Turkestan government in exile” is headquartered in the capital of the empire that is is in a bloodthirsthy fanatical war against muslims. This empire also has “must destroy China” as its foreign policy absolute priority.
Therefore, the corret analogy would be a separatist Jewish movement that wanted to take away a critical part of the USSR. And it is funded and headquartered in Nazi Germany. Who would believe them? The same people who believe the US is motivated by love of Muslims and only reluctantly funds a separatist movement to take away a critical part of China.
Don’t forget they also love Israel. Xinjiang avoided the fate of Gaza and all the people complaining about China being “heavy handed” there should just shut up.
Holy shit
China is indeed authoritarian, rich people cannot shape society however they want in China.
Responding to a federated comment because I don’t have a .ml account:
Okay, but we are talking about a country where you aren’t allowed to form a political party that opposes the CCP, right?
There are eight other parties in the People’s Republic of China other than the *CPC
My favorite is the ICP
This is your brain on black-and-white thinking
I just gotta pop in and say: thank you, comrades, for absolutely making my morning by dunking on some capitalists’ useful idiots.
I don’t know what it is about this post in particular, but the threadiverse isn’t sending its best 🤷
Edit to add: Some of them were so angry that they broke out their alt accounts to downvote some more.
I think some of the Reddit refuges honestly think Reddit sucks because Spez Man Bad. There’s no analysis of what creates Reddits and Spezes, and therefore they don’t recognize who made this platform and why.
I have to believe ultimately some of these people will come around, so that’s good at least.
Many do come around, Lemmy is quite good at radicalizing and educating in my experience.
The Chapotraphouse subreddit was radicalizing a lot of redditors when it was repeatedly hitting the front page of reddit fairly regularly and exposing people to counter-ideologies to liberalism that they never would have seen otherwise. Which is the reason why it (and then a slew of other popular lefty subs) had to be banned*. Despite all the lib-brained nonsense we have to constantly correct on this platform (the fediverse), there are an untold number of lurkers reading these discussions who are getting to see what actual leftist thought looks like when the narrow guardrails on the dominant narrative get removed. That exposure, especially when combined with witnessing the rapid intensifying of contradictions in their irl experiences, is enough to radicalize any thinking, genuinely open person. Lemmy being one of the few spaces on the internet where these things aren’t hidden or removed on sight absolutely plays a role in a lot of users’ leftward political evolution.
*It’s also why the fed instances like .world and piefed preemptively defederate, block, and continuously slander and demonize all of the leftist instances. They are literally trying to mitigate the spread of leftism that is inevitable when exposure to thought that’s outside the dominant ideology has a chance to get seen and voiced.
Very well said! Far better than I did, haha. I comment a lot on the Lemmy.ml side of things, and have gotten lurkers thanking me in DMs from time to time so I can absolutely back uo what you’re saying. I also just like using Hex to relax, when I don’t want to argue, haha.
I’m kind of new to lemmy in general and judging by the other comments I want to ask: is lemmy.ml full of ultras? Or is that what you’re talking about in saying they didn’t send their best?
If it is full of ultras, do you know of an instance(?) that either critically supports AES countries or at least has more of a mixed set of users? I don’t mind debate, but on every single comment it would get tiring.
Lemmy.ml is largely Marxist-Leninist, ultras are few on the fediverse. If you want an instance that is explicitly ML, then there’s Lemmygrad.ml. Hexbear.net is left-unity but doesn’t allow sectarianism, and is generally ML/anarchist, not generally ultra.
I have an account on lemmygrad as well so that’s good news to me. I’m now thinking that it’s more of an issue of me not fully grasping how the instances are organised having come from reddit.
Thanks for your input, my friend :)
No problem, comrade!
How frequent are alt-downvotes?
Not as frequent as they used to be.
Gotcha.
Anytime comrade 🫡
Freedom with the most people in prison
They’re not always in prison, sometimes we let them do their forced labor outside.
Agreed, the US prison system is legalized form of slavery
China has noodles though.
Delicious noodles!
What does a totalitarian state even mean? Based on liberals, left communists, and anarchists, it’s every socialist experiment that had lasted a great amount of time and accomplished better living standards for their citizens. 😂
System of a Down - The Prison Song
