Did I say that all authoritarians are enabled by liberals? What agenda are you trying to push by misconstruing my words? Like seriously what point are you trying to reach here?
But that =/= “every fascist is and always has been enabled by liberals.”
They’re saying that it’s very common for liberals to side with a rising fascist over the left in a misguided attempt to maintain the status quo. They’d typically rather move to the right instead of giving any quarter to the left, because the left wants to upend the structures of oppression, while the right wants to bolster them—while scapegoating an out-group.
Look at what macron is doing in France right now. Moving to the right to build a coalition with them to go against the majority left coalition that won the election.
You seem to be under the impression that liberals have a logically and ethically consistent belief structure.
The realization that liberals are unscratched fascists is a tough one, but you are one of the few intelligent folks able to recognize it… it’s a curse.
Your use of tankie is exactly like the conservative use of woke. You're not even close to superior to those you mock. Hopefully one day you realize that and actually apply that human brain of yours.
Just to be clear, you don't think I should be against liberals enabling fascism? You don't see anything wrong with the slow march to the far right that's happening in so many parts of the world recently?
I'm just really annoyed by "liberal" constantly being equated with "fascist enabler" round here. If anyone calls themselves a liberal while supporting fascists, they're just fascists in disguise. While there are people like that, that's not what liberalism means, in fact, it's quite the opposite.
It's a language issue. You're likely from the United States, where liberal is used to suggest an adherent to classical liberalism or progressivism. Most of the rest of the English speaking world means neoliberal, as in an advocate or supporter of free-market capitalism, deregulation, and the reduction of government spending.
Please, enlighten me about what you think liberalism means. In my view (as an anarchist) liberalism is at best ineffective at preventing fascism from taking over. It enables colonialism and imperialism, and offers no solution to the horrors of capitalism. Liberal ideology is one of state violence and compromise with literal fascists.
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law. Liberals espouse various and often mutually warring views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion, Liberalism is frequently cited as the dominant ideology of modern history.
imperialism is the subjugation of one country for the benefit of the first. DPRK is not imperialist (how could it be under UN sanctions), PRC is not imperialist, USSR was not imperialist.
Communists critically support the DPRK, the USSR, and the PCR, progressive liberals uncritically support Obama, Biden, conservative liberals uncritically support Trump, Bush, etc
Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak? Quite a few comrades always keep their eyes shut and talk nonsense, and for a Communist that is disgraceful. How can a Communist keep his eyes shut and talk nonsense?
Poland and most of eastern Europe would like a word
I've answered already to someone else making the example of Estonia, but I'll answer you too so that you can see my take.
After 30+ years of anti-communist propaganda, of course many countries in Eastern Europe may “disagree”. As a currently ongoing example, the other day there was an article ( paywalled, but you can read it pasting the link in 12ft.io ) in the Spanish newspaper “El País” about a new museum in Moldova dedicated to the forcibly relocated to other parts of the USSR during the late 30s. The article talks about the horrors of Stalinism and how 90k people from the region were forcibly relocated in 1937-1941, although the majority were allowed to return in the 50s. All that’s good, having a memory of our history is a good thing. But then, the article goes on with some conversation with the “Director of the National Agency of Archives in Moldova”, Igor Casu. I’ll translate to Spanish:
Casu considers that the war in neighboring Ukraine started by Russia has made the [Moldovan] citizens begin to perceive the Soviet regime as one of occupation and colonisation
So, basically, conflating the current imperialist capitalist Russia with communist USSR. But the funny part comes now, when they actually quote Casu:
“We hope that if the deportations keep being exposed ni the following five years, we’ll achieve that a solid part of the population will be really informed, and, at the same time, that they’ll consolidate a national identity”
So, they’re going FULL mask-off, and basically saying “we want to show this particular side of history not with the objective of remembrance of victims, but actually to create a new national identity based on the independence from supposedly oppressive Russia”. Fostering nationalism and anti-Russian sentiment as part of the new national identity. This is the recipe that’s been successfully applied to most of Eastern Europe for the past 30+ years, and you can see the results by asking any Polish person what they think of Russians. If this isn’t clear enough, the article reminds us:
During the last years, under the rule of the pro-European government, this ex-Soviet republic has been making efforts to propagate knowledge of the suffering created by the phenomenon of “Russification” that took place […]
Mind you, not a single reference in the article or the monument, to the 140.000 Jews deported by the Nazis during the 1940s invasion in Moldova, of whom 90.000+ were murdered in concentration camps. Let’s remember the victims of horrors of our history, but only those politically convenient to us now. Since we want to get closer to western Europe, including Germany, let’s put those killed by Nazis (many more than by Soviets) aside for now.
If you look at historical evidence, you can’t possibly make the argument that Estonia was subjugated and exploited by the USSR. The local language was preserved and there was an abundance of written publications in Estonian, people were allowed to study in the local language, the salaries were similar to those in the rest of the USSR (or higher actually), industrialization rates were equal or higher to those of the rest of the USSR, number of doctors/teachers and hospital beds per capita were equal… really, none of the telltales of imperialism are there. If you want to see a discussion with actual data regarding this, I suggest you have a look at “Human Rights in the Soviet Union” by Albert Szymanski, a wonderful book filled to the brim with data and a rather nuanced discussion.
So let’s not pretend that there hasn’t been a strong effort from pro-western authorities in all of Eastern Europe into pushing the narrative that this made-up historically continuous “Russia” has been exploiting and colonising Eastern Europe, and let’s not pretend that the opinion of most people in Eastern Europe who’ve been exposed to this campaign for the past 3 decades is unbiased and historically accurate (because public opinion never is).
Oh, and Tibet, Taiwan
Funny that you mention those two as well. Taiwan's national identity, again, has been manufactured from the ground up over the past 30+ years. The data that western countries celebrate of Taiwanese people mostly declaring themselves to be "only Taiwanese", is a fairly recent trend. From the link above:
According to the latest survey by National Chengchi University in Taipei (June 2023), 62.8 percent of the inhabitants of the Republic of China perceive themselves as “Taiwanese only,” 30.5 percent “both Taiwanese and Chinese,” and 2.5 percent “Chinese only.” In 1992, when surveys began, 25.5 percent described themselves as “Chinese only” and 17.6 percent “Taiwanese only,” with the remaining 46.4 percent “both Taiwanese and Chinese.”
So the country has gone from a 17.6% of "Taiwanese only" and a 25.5% of "both Taiwanese and Chinese" in 1992, to 63% of "Taiwanese only" and 2.5% of "Chinese only". Funny how it's the exact same process that I was describing above for Estonia and Moldova, in which 30+ years of propaganda can generate a new national identity and generate negative feelings towards previously friendly neighboring countries!
Regarding Tibet, I don't think I'll find such polls about national identity. However, until the Sino-Tibetan war, Tibet was literally a feudal country in which an aristocracy owned the lands and serfs were legally bound to the land as workers. When you criticise the lack of Tibet's autonomy after the Sino-Tibetan war, remember that you're arguing in favor of a literal feudal regime with aristocrats and serfs.
Look dude I've worked with many MLs and MLMs. I've read some of both Lenin and Mao's works. I think the recent rhetoric of calling communists fascist is wholely harmful to the left and I don't participate in it. I never called the DPRK imperialist for obvious reasons. I didn't even call the PRC imperialist because I do recognize that western media is not a reliable source on the matter. I recognize my own ignorance in these matters and don't take part in uncritically decrying post-revolution communist states.
We disagree on the way a just society should be structured, or the methods of achieving that end. I consider authoritarianism and unjust hierarchies as a problem of both capitalism and state communism, but as long as my viewpoints can be heard and addressed, I personally don't have issue with MLs and MLMs. The atrocities of capitalism far outweigh the failures of established communist states.
Communism is neither left nor right. It is just a construct of governance. While it was originally promoted by leftists, it can be either left or right. Some communists are conservative and/or fascist (ex. China).
The Left/Right divide is about property. Should it be collectivized, or individually owned and traded, ie Socialism vs Capitalism. Communism, therefore, must be left-wing.
It is just a construct of governance.
Yes and no. Communism is also economic in nature.
While it was originally promoted by leftists, it can be either left or right.
You cannot have Right-Wing Communists.
Some communists are conservative and/or fascist (ex. China).
The PRC is socially conservative, yes. Economically, it is Socialist, though certainly not yet Lower-Stage Communist. This does not make China "fascist" or right-wing. It is a socially reactionary, economicaly progressive state.
After 30+ years of anti-communist propaganda, of course many countries in Eastern Europe may "disagree". As a currently ongoing example, the other day there was an article ( paywalled, but you can read it pasting the link in 12ft.io ) in the Spanish newspaper "El País" about a new museum in Moldova dedicated to the forcibly relocated to other parts of the USSR during the late 30s. The article talks about the horrors of Stalinism and how 90k people from the region were forcibly relocated in 1937-1941, although the majority were allowed to return in the 50s. All that's good, having a memory of our history is a good thing. But then, the article goes on with some conversation with the "Director of the National Agency of Archives in Moldova", Igor Casu. I'll translate to Spanish:
Casu considers that the war in neighboring Ukraine started by Russia has made the [Moldovan] citizens begin to perceive the Soviet regime as one of occupation and colonisation
So, basically, conflating the current imperialist capitalist Russia with communist USSR. But the funny part comes now, when they actually quote Casu:
"We hope that if the deportations keep being exposed ni the following five years, we'll achieve that a solid part of the population will be really informed, and, at the same time, that they'll consolidate a national identity"
So, they're going FULL mask-off, and basically saying "we want to show this particular side of history not with the objective of remembrance of victims, but actually to create a new national identity based on the independence from supposedly oppressive Russia". Fostering nationalism and anti-Russian sentiment as part of the new national identity. This is the recipe that's been successfully applied to most of Eastern Europe for the past 30+ years, and you can see the results by asking any Polish person what they think of Russians. If this isn't clear enough, the article reminds us:
During the last years, under the rule of the pro-European government, this ex-Soviet republic has been making efforts to propagate knowledge of the suffering created by the phenomenon of "Russification" that took place [...]
Mind you, not a single reference in the article or the monument, to the 140.000 Jews deported by the Nazis during the 1940s invasion in Moldova, of whom 90.000+ were murdered in concentration camps. Let's remember the victims of horrors of our history, but only those politically convenient to us now. Since we want to get closer to western Europe, including Germany, let's put those killed by Nazis (many more than by Soviets) aside for now.
If you look at historical evidence, you can't possibly make the argument that Estonia was subjugated and exploited by the USSR. The local language was preserved and there was an abundance of written publications in Estonian, people were allowed to study in the local language, the salaries were similar to those in the rest of the USSR (or higher actually), industrialization rates were equal or higher to those of the rest of the USSR, number of doctors/teachers and hospital beds per capita were equal... really, none of the telltales of imperialism are there. If you want to see a discussion with actual data regarding this, I suggest you have a look at "Human Rights in the Soviet Union" by Albert Szymanski, a wonderful book filled to the brim with data and a rather nuanced discussion.
So let's not pretend that there hasn't been a strong effort from pro-western authorities in all of Eastern Europe into pushing the narrative that this made-up historically continuous "Russia" has been exploiting and colonising Eastern Europe, and let's not pretend that the opinion of most people in Eastern Europe who've been exposed to this campaign for the past 3 decades is unbiased and historically accurate (because public opinion never is).
Invading another country preventively in the wake of WW2 and the threat of Nazism =/= imperialism, I'm sorry buddy. Not defending the invasion of Estonia, but categorising it as imperialism is dumb and ahistorical.
These "tankies" are conservative right-wing shitbag trolls trying to convince the normal people that supporting oppression and dictators is somehow "left-wing". Do not fall for their conservative bullshit.
Just like any other conservative, every word they utter is deception or manipulation. Tankies are conservative trolls through and through.
They made it for themselves but let us set up instances outside of their control due to their morals that software should be open for all. Again proving the best open source software comes from scratching a personal itch.
The problem was childhood-trauma-induced fake-smiles-forcing cutiemark-taking with propaganda. Remove it and what remains isn't bad. Doesn't seem to be much different from ideology of other places.
As an example from first season there is Winter Wrap-up, which is basically annual subbotnik.
It was never closed to non-tankies, but it wasn't very welcoming. I had an account on .ml early on and most of the time I got hammered with downvotes, despite having opinions that I'd describe as being on the left edge of liberalism.
Some members of LDPR(e.g. Furgal) seem to be more left than Bernie. And LDPR is former LDPSU - first right-wing party of USSR. Or some members of Union of Right Forces.
Not corporate neofeudalist is better than corporate neofeudalist, which is improvement for US. But I can't say he is on edge even of liberalism.
I can see the decentralized platform as a communist parallel. I don't, however, understand the fanaticism for the murdery shit show dictatorship that was Russia/China though.
Communism and conservatism are not mutually exclusive. Conservative communism involves dictators and oppression. That's how that weird nonsense happened.
It's a pretty standard take on the commie side that stuff like colonialism and American slavery are pretty much the capitalist equivalent of the communist mass deaths, so I think their position is that everyone's a hypocrite who has to support a government committing some kind of mass murder (in the modern day, America's mass murder in this lens is its alliance with Israel). Since Americans won't admit their government's atrocities (even though a lot of them do call out the US, but that's not how they see it), why should they admit the atrocities of the USSR?
I'm seeing more and more tankies migrate to lemmy.world, because they don't do anything against them, but lemmy.world is also much less likely to get defederated by other instances. Fuck big, centralized instances. People should move to smaller, niche servers like db0, blahaj.zone, beehaw, etc.
It's weird that Mao, Sun Yat Sen, and Chiang Kai Shek, were all part of the same pro-democracy party early on in China's civil war.
Mao won the war, Sun Yat Sen got out of there, Chiang Kai Shek was pushed out and became dictator of Taiwan.
China is weird.
Also weird is that one guy caused most of the deaths from famine in both the USSR and China: A conman named Trofim Lysenko, who was lying about having a new science of agriculture... He was bury seeds way further than they could handle then faking his results to keep his job.... Killed like, 30 million people who were ordered to take up his techniques.
About China, you know what they say, it's easier to be the opposition than to actually govern. Many of those who govern end up being corrupt or incompetent or both.
Who knows if mainland China under ROC would have been better. People say that will be the case when we look at Taiwan. But Taiwan suffered from thirty years of so-called White Terror and Taiwan eventually democratising is arguably pure luck due to a man whose name escapes me.
The trajectory of history is never predictable. There are far too many factors to consider; factors which are themselves caused by chain reactions of previous factors and events, which themselves are influenced by other previous events.
Chiang had to work with various warlords and bore most of the fight against the Japanese, while Mao gathered strength and let ROC to bleed itself. Even if ROC won and the CCP got destroyed, we don't know if factionalism and warlord-ism will emerge since ROC had been weakened severely. Or, in another alternative time, Chiang and KMT had somehow pulled a miracle, and somehow made the entirety of China industrialised as quickly as post-war Japan and never had to resort to dictatorship and hence had always been democratic after World War 2.
If I remember it correctly, in China Mao ordered sparrow to be killed en masse because they supposedly ate the grain: turns out that what they ate were the pests that attacked the plants.
95% correct, the sparrows were also eating the grain, but removing the natural predator to the far worse pests resulted in far worse famine due to an explosion in population of pests. This was one of the factors that resulted in Mao losing influence in the party over time.
heck you don't even have to go that far. the second picture can be pretty much every republican president whos held office. When was the last ware we started happen while a dem president was in office?
What do you mean "Source?" Are you asking for a source that Israel invaded Gaza? A source that the US funded it? A source that it escalated during Biden's presidency?
I don't see how. you would need to consider any military action by any ally then as a proxy war for any nation. So it would be a proxy ware for most of europe to and asia and a good part of both africa and the americas.
Well Wikipedia considers it a war, I bet the poor mother fuckers that died think so too, but that list has 7 other conflicts that Obama started, weirdly there isn’t a single one by the ultimate mega hitler everyone is talking about.
Megahitler closed a “don’t shoot while I’m running away” deal with the Taliban that Biden had to mop up, now you can hate on Sleepy Joe as much as you want, but that is Drumpf’s doing.
Another day, another comment I’ll block for stupidity.
The 10 people who died in the defense of merchant ship from houthis is totally comparable to the tens of thousands of homeless people, protestors, victims of police violence, inability to pay for medical care, resulting from Trump era policies, not to mention what banning abortion will do.
If Trump wins and he starts marching the Latino and queer people into camps like in the threats his people are making, I want you to remember that you said this.
Show me where anyone is threatening internment camps for gay people.
The Latino thing is going to be the exact same thing that all 4 of the last sitting presidents did, but you’re going to act like it’s worse when someone red is in charge.
Oh yeah. That’d be stupid. Besides billionaires, sadly arms manufacturers are the one group you don’t mess with.
I wish we had let them succeed. Russia can help out America and themselves at the same time
In context it doesn't sound as stupid. Like if someone dropping bunker-penertating bomb and killing Putin will help both Russia and Ukraine. Despite my wishing for Putin rather being sent to Hauge or Russian prison, any option is better than Putin continuing war.
And there are other things that better not exist for entire world like all those spying and censorship agencies like FSB, RKN, FBI, NSA.
That feeling when you get banned from [email protected] and other communities (moderator log: "commie") for warning about bad faith actors among those spending their entire online political discourse complaining about tankies
Now, I don't like violence. But even I can see that there's a difference between violence waged for imperialism and violence waged against imperialism.
And you can see the difference too. That's why Obama and Biden always say that their wars are being waged "for freedom". That's why you accept the violence of historical revolutions like the American Revolution.
The problem is, Obama and Biden are lying when they say their wars are for freedom. Their wars are for profit and control.
People here claiming it's not the case are just wrong. I've been banned from multiple instances and had posts deleted by these bozos. Actually authoritarians lol
I'd upvote the meme if it wasn't also controversial to criticize all war criminals, including both those at the top and the bottom.
Edit: For a source, see people in this thread rushing to argue and feel called out when someone criticizes "all forms of imperialism", including the Western ones.
I was in discussion (if you can even call it that) with someone and when he spoke about "Occupied Korea" i knew there was no point what so ever to continue.
There's no laddar long enough in the world to climb out of that hole.
Has anyone ever thought that if you combined Stalin and Xi Jinping, it would probably look a lot like Kim Jong Un? Like, if you fed the two of them into a 'What would our baby look like' generator, I feel like it would be real close.
Turns out, if you’re not willing to commit violence of some sort asserting power is pretty much impossible. (not saying we should assert violence, but historically, atleast since the agricultural revolution, it is rare not too see)
Edit2: see the responses to this comment below. I misunderstood the above comment and shouldn't have taken mecfs to be endorsing violence.
And that doesn't lead you to the conclusion that the state should not be exerting power over (or committing violence on) people? You really just wrote that and said 'yea this is a great defense of my political view'?
Edit: Welcome to the mind of a liberal - where war crimes are excusable and state violence is just how things get done.
Never did I say my political affiliation was liberalism.
As for my comment above, you could probably have concluded (rightly) that I have anarcho-primitivist tendencies. This post wasn’t meant as an apologia for liberalism but as a critique of authoritarian leftism.
Lemmy is worse for political discussion than Reddit has ever been. At least Reddit has had the numbers for people to call out extreme views on either side, but the number of absolute nutjobs on here that either call for the downfall of capitalism immediately, or to let right-wing thinking slide as a natural progression of politics today. They're the sort of people that post memes about murdering Nazis in the streets, but would cower at the sight of one - or those that would happily march if they weren't so fucking awkward.
Anyone here calling for collapse is indulging in fantastical or privileged collapse fantasy. Hoping that from chaos, their preferred brand will come out on top
Ha, this reminds me of a scene from the movie Miss Sloane where they easily discredit some politician on their left by hiring some shmuck to go stand in the background of their speech with a 'abolish money' banner
A lot of the Hexbears genuininely seem to be under the impression that escaping the horrors of capitalism to be freed from wage-slavery would mean that they'll finally have the time for "self-healing and growing their own food" which sparked a funny comment from another lemming that it exposed their fantasy that under communism they'd have a job gardening as opposed to farming
Many people on .world are the so-called 'Reddit refugees'. I've noticed a large portion of them tend to be liberals (as in neoliberals) from the United States and accordingly think of anything left of center as "radical/extreme leftism". A few weeks back, they were all agitated over some leftist strawmen a few of their more vocal members have been fabricating to gripe about. This is likely just a continuation of the same.
I'm a Reddit refugee too. But thanks for the context. I haven't seen the straw man. I have noticed a really strong streak of "blue no matter who" which is a terrible attitude to have, that's the way the Maga folks think.
I'm not even in the US (I'm an Aussie) but my opinion is blue, but like, do better? We gotta do better. Please do better.
To be fair we have the same thing here with shills for the mainstream parties. (But we do have viable 3rd options)
The straw man is "tankies". There are actual tankies on Lemmy, but these geniuses are using it like United States fascists use woke: to describe anything they don't like and to shut down discourse. They're pretty much blue MAGA. It's gross.
I feel the same way, both about the cultish behavior and that people can and should do better. Unfortunately, the United States treats politics much like it treats sports, and I believe this is partly why idiocy like this manifests so frequently.
Tankies is not a straw man. There's literally someone in this very thread lying about the events of Tianamen Square by claiming the literal tanks were totally peaceful and not used as part of the CCP's oppression of people protesting.
blue maga is a nonsensical term. MAGA literally want to end democracy and execute their "enemies'. The people you describe as blue maga are...checks notes...shutting down discussions on social media.
The dramatic irony of your discourse poisoning comment in response to a comment about poisoning discourse may be immeasurable using today's technology.
They're doing more than that, but clearly you're not interested in discourse so much as... Checks notes... Looking for opportunities to tell people they're wrong, so I'm not going to waste my time explaining further.
Facts..
If you are maga, you want a king in America.. or are a complete idiot. Like so much so, that you deliberately avoid the evidence of the crimes your ex president committees specifically against the American people and process.
There are almost no other options. Want a king/fool.
The extremist views are almost entirely left wing, as in like literal communism. Not like how Republicans call everything communism, but people who want honest to god Marxist-Leninist communism.
And then there's the tankies, who pretend to like communism but actually just simp for geopolitical enemies of the US.
In no small part because those types of people are the main developers and because, let's face it, they need a federated medium in case their disinformation campaigns in main social networks begin to be taken down (although given how much their owners like money and that governments seem to be doing shit all to abusive behind-the-scenes misuse of them, not currently likely at all).
No one says fetch, really. Do they? Surely that's just a mean girls reference.
Anyway - language evolves regardless of your preferences, unfortunately. Both "mid" and "based" have been around literally decades now, they are going nowhere.
It's why I went back to reddit. I check in here occasionally to check. I can handle the reddit hive if I limit where and how I participate. But the hardcore political ideologies sprinkled everywhere in lemmy ruin even a limited browsing experience for me.
Oh, cool, I must have hallucinated all of those emigration restrictions during the Cold War, along with the Berlin Wall and civilians getting machine-gunned for trying to leave their glorious socialist paradise. Silly me.
Amazing how far fascists will go to deny reality.
vietnamese can leave,
Yeah, now they can. You wanna remind me what the most pro-free market country in Asia is?
chinese can and do go everywhere
Since the 80s, sure. Before that, not so much. You also wanna remember what happened to China's economy in the 80s? Something that rhymes with 'Lengism'? Unless you want to claim China today as socialist, in which case, I have a few hundred People's Billionaires to sell you.
cubans too.
Wanna remind me how Cubans escaped to the US throughout the Cold War and into the modern day?
Funny enough, you completely missed one of the socialist countries that DIDN'T have ridiculous emigration restrictions during the Cold War, but I guess Yugoslavia just isn't pure enough for you lot.
if we are talking about heavily propagandized policies enacted 100 years ago to try and curb imperialism, we could be talking about all the death bought upon them by the west.
the us is the very last country that can talk about machine gunnings, because they were the ones sponsoring most of it through all of recent history, including and especially in the socialist countries you seem to hate so hard for.... doing just that?
americans and the brits did full on scorched earth in vietnam and china, and nowadays they have healthcare while you are still shooting up kids in schools. the us sponsored dictatorship throughout my entire continent. literally.
talk about denying reality. i guess they don't teach you world history for a reason. nononono everyone else is the fascist here.
if we are talking about heavily propagandized policies enacted 100 years ago to try and curb imperialism,
"You don't understand, they HAD to gun down people for trying to escape our Socialist Paradise, or else Imperialism would win!"
Impressive.
Thanks for being utterly unable to contradict any of the points brought up that disprove your half-hearted attempt to defend the massacres of your favorite fascist states.
the us is the very last country that can talk about machine gunnings, because they were the ones sponsoring most of it through all of recent history, including and especially in the socialist countries you seem to hate so hard for… doing just that?
Cool, so you can back up the part where we were supposedly machine-gunning our own citizens to stop them from fleeing this capitalist hellhole, right? Since that was the topic brought up?
Oh, wait, of course you can't.
americans and the brits did full on scorched earth in vietnam and china, and nowadays they have healthcare while you are still shooting up kids in schools.
Oh, of course, having healthcare now justifies all of your fascist regime's atrocities. By the way, would you like to elaborate on the economic systems of China and Vietnam in the modern day? You know, now that they have healthcare? Just curious.
Also, when did the Brits do 'full on scorched earth' in China? 1901?
He said that the Commie countries had many people wanting to leave, because they were shit holes. Which is true. Soviets broke our economies, killed our innocents (Milada Horáková) and hurt the people. Go to hell sov-tard
Just to remind you comrade, Soviet leaders themselves found it unbelievable how full the supermarket shelves are when they visit the West
Overly full shelves in supermarkets weren't the case in the USSR by design, not by accident. Most capitalist countries run what are called "surplus economies", in which companies normally manufacture more goods and services than they can allocate, and a certain percentage of output, as well as input, is wasted. The Soviet economy, on the contrary, ran a shortage economy. In a shortage economy, you plan the production of goods and services so that it will match the demand as closely as possible, therefore very rarely having a surplus of any good or service unless that's designed to be exported, but also not leaving any capital or any human labor available without using. Since the Soviet economy was mostly closed off to the outside world and was primarily self-reliant, it wanted to employ its resources in the most efficient way possible. Unemployment was literally 0%. Producing, say, 10% more loaves of bread, or 10% more milk, or 10% more eggs, in an attempt to create a surplus in supermarkets as in the western world, necessarily implied lowering the amount of labor and capital used in other sectors of the economy, e.g. 10% fewer electric drills or 10% fewer trolleybus parts.
Surplus in supermarkets in the west compared to lack of surplus in supermarkets in the Soviet Union isn't a consequence of "the success" of the west, but of the different priorities and designs. Either way, surplus in supermarkets in the US isn't very useful when 40 million US citizen, of whom 12 million are children, live in food insecurity.
Sure, it's an effective system to develop patience waiting in line for hours and perfecting rationing.
There was zero employment at the expense of national budget. People are paid regardless of productivity. And even then, productivity is questionable given the restrictive period plans whereby workers and managers are under pressure to meet quotas, and resort to distorting statistics and figures to appease the party apparatchiks, or else they get punished in euphemistic term. Who knows if there was actual more abundance in certain goods and commodities in Soviet Union.
Thank you for showing us that you've never read any seriou economic analysis about the USSR and you're just regurgitating anti-communist propaganda. Productivity in the USSR was comparable to any western capitalist country, except possibly in agriculture for complicated reasons that I'm not gonna get into. If you make such claims of big productivity differences between USSR and western countries, you should back that up with serious sources, so please go ahead and enlighten us all.
Breadlines happened during wartime and during the perestroika, not at any other times, again please feel free to look that up.
There was zero employment at the expense of national budget
I take it you mean unemployment. But your logic doesn't make any sense. Employed people, you know, produce goods and services. Not like unemployed people. The inefficient thing that runs at the expense of the national budget is unemployment, you know, when you have to maintain people who don't work.
Nobody claims that the USSR didn't have flaws in its economic planning. The lack of supervision and crackdown on infringement led to a decent bit of stealing from state property and resale at the black market. The fake production quotas happened in some sectors at times. And too-strong top-down planning led to some problems like the plan to plant corn in Siberia. But all economic systems have flaws and the USSR was absolutely not less efficient on average than any western country, as proven by the fact that it went from being a feudal backwater empire in 1917 to the second world power of the 20th century.
Thank you for showing us that you've never read any seriou economic analysis about the USSR and you're just regurgitating anti-communist propaganda.
The standard communist thought terminating response "you haven't the theory, so you don't know what you're talking about and shut up". That maybe the case, but that is irrelevant. Which system is still standing as we speak? Even China is communist in name only and is a state capitalist with rapid increasing number of billionaires than the United States in the past couple of years.
Rationing and breadlines still happened for more years as opposed to free market economy, man. It's not even consumer and basic commodities that is scarce, but even cars are. It is well known how Soviets had to wait seven to ten years just to buy a car. There is scarcity economy because the system is not great, with prices of everything controlled by the state, which is contrary to the realities of market supply and demand. If communism is great, it wouldn't have fell. And the remaining "communist" countries are only as such in name only.
Again, thank you for enlightening us with your lack of researched analysis. Please, I beg you to tell me a single book on the topic that you've read.
It's not even consumer and basic commodities that is scarce, but even cars are
Cars are a consumer commodity. I already explained the shortage economy of the USSR. You're trying to compare the consumer capabilities of citizens of the USSR with what, those of the US? The literal hegemon country of the world, participating in colonialism and unequal exchange to absurd degrees, and industrialized for 100 years more than the USSR? The comparison is ridiculous.
If communism is great, it wouldn't have fell
...which it didn't. The illegal, antidemocratic, top-down dismantling of the USSR, was a political decision taken by a few politicians in the party, not a "failure that made the country crumble". The USSR survived to a civil war, and to a WW2 in which Nazis murdered 25mn+ soviet inhabitants. Much worse economies like that of Cuba still subsist with a very healthy base of communist citizens. Please, go read a history book, instead of spouting the anti-communist propaganda we've all heard a million times. The USSR didn't fall, it was dismantled.
Mate, stop with the coping and repeating the same drivel of "read theory" because communists can't think for themselves. The theory is nil when the empirical evidence is there. Communism fell. USSR fell when the constituent states seceded. The former Eastern European elected to form their own independence. China is communist in name only. Cuba is as you said-- subsisting-- as a result they cannot maintain their buildings and many historical buildings are deteriorating. Many Cubans earn more money as taxi drivers than doctors!
More people risked crossing the wall and borders being shot and crossing the sea to flee from communist countries, than people from capitalist countries to communist states.
You're trying to compare the consumer capabilities of citizens of the USSR with what, those of the US?
Oh the strawman, the refuge of those who are-- well-- grasping for straws. I never said anything about the US. But sure, do so and ignore the other capitalist countries whose citizens could easily buy more cars and in an instant, such as UK, France, Japan, South Korea and Italy. And those countries are known for car manufacturing.
But sure go ahead, keep coping with the drivel that scarcity economy in communist states is by design when it is just a cover that communist countries are, in fact, experiencing chronic food, consumer and commodity shortages because of voodoo economics they practice. Lol, "scarcity by design" is the funniest cope I have seen from tankies. Tell that to the people who died from Holodomor, famine in China, and from Lysenko's agricultural bonkers of a science. Even China abandoned communism wholesale and Cuba finally acknowledged that the "market is a fact of life" and allowed greater degree of economic liberalisation into their constitution.
Dream on bud. Communism will work any minute now despite contrary to empirical evidence that it is plain as day for the eyes to see. See with your eyes for yourself, instead of spouting what you call "theory" with your script like an non-thinking NPC.
We love our supermarket shelves, don't we folks? The biggest and the fullest in the world, mao zedong, stalin, they all love our supermarket shelves. 30 different flavors of oreos, all in one aisle. can't have that in russia, folks, can't have that, horrible country, horrible country. You can only have pizza hutt in russia, folks, believe me, or, as I call it, pizza butt, and that's only because of our favorite supreme leader gorbachev. You couldn't even choose your healthcare plan in the USSR, folks, can you believe it? They only had one plan, horrible, horrible healthcare. I'm going to go make out with supreme leader Kim, folks, but I'm going to hate every second of it, believe me.
Don't forget the 30 different kinds of bread and cheese available at supermarket shelves.... without rationing or waiting in line for hours to be given one loaf of bread for the day....
Oh, cool, you wanna compare nutrition statistics between North and South Korea? I'm sure this will back you up about how terrible the capitalist hellhole of South Korea is!
sure, but lets factor in the brutal sanctions, and how the north is sectioned off on mostly unfertile mountain land.
stop doing that to cuba btw, its starting to stink. if socialism were so bad i think you could let them fail fair and square, and show us how bad it actually is, no?
How cute that you always have an excuse for why life under your favorite regimes that actually follow your ideal policies instead of departing from ML orthodoxy is always so dog shite, without exception. Almost like MLs are just fascists searching for excuses to brutalize the proletariat.
stop doing that to cuba btw, its starting to stink. if socialism were so bad i think you could let them fail fair and square, and show us how bad it actually is, no?
Sure. I've been an opponent of sanctions on Cuba for years. Btw, you want to remind me how many capitalist countries are sanctioning Cuba right now? I always lose track.
Hillary Clinton, the boogeyman, also supports lifting sanctions, I suppose since she's such a good socialist?
Also, if the ML systems you so adore can't operate without being subsidized by capitalism, aren't they really just extensions of capitalist regimes?
Cuba isn't even their dream communist utopia in terms of their own ideology, but they don't care. Cuba hasn't nationalized their extremely lucrative tourism industry. The massive profits from those fancy resorts aren't being redistributed to the workers.
But apparently they think that as long as you call yourself communist, you are.
See also: China- private property ownership and investment, billionaires and a fucking stock exchange. I actually had a Tankie tell me that if I just read Marx, I would see that earning capital is a feature of communism. That's how nuts these people are.
Wanna know how South Korea grew what it is to be? Implementing a fascist government that pushed against workers' rights and performed crackdown against unions, applied protectionism to key industries, and welcomed international investment into those sectors, thus becoming a tech giant at the expense of workers of the past, and now participating in unequal exchange as do all other developed capitalist countries
Oh, cool, so North Korea is behind because they didn't implement a fascist government that pushed against workers' rights and performed crackdowns against unions, applied protectionism to key industries, and welcomed foreign capital into those sectors?
Fucking lmao.
But sure, tell me how South Korea's greatest periods of growth were definitely under the periods of dictatorship and military junta and not the democratic period that resulted in reaction to that.
It being broadcasted to the entire world causing a collapse of 90s era trade relationships being the intended goal of this collaborative effort to defame China, orcestrated by the secret western legion of overlords. /s
Pro tip, you need to include the /s when you make over the top jokes like that. There are so many insane losers that actually believe it, if you don't make it clear you're not serious, you look like you're one of them.
The Soviets invaded Afghanistan, a bordering country, after the USA had armed radical theocratic militias with modern weapons. And whatever they did in Afghanistan pales in comparison with US actions in non-neighboring Vietnam. If you want to see the true impact of the USSR in central-asian countries vs that of the west, why don't you compare the Human Development Index of Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan (ex-Soviet republics) to that of Pakistan (ex-English colony).
It’s not a “whose worse” competition, but you tankies can’t seem to accept that countries other than the us also do and did bad shit. It’s all whataboutism with you.
Nobody in this thread is denying what the us has done, nor celebrating it. But keep on telling us what a nice guy Stalin was!
There we go, the generic word to refer to everyone who doesn't uncritically peddle anti-communist discourse.
you tankies can’t seem to accept that countries other than the us also do and did bad shit.
But keep on telling us what a nice guy Stalin was!
I'm not a Stalinist. The great terror was terrible, unjustified, and overall a disaster. The collectivisation policy led to chaos and hunger. The democratic functioning of Soviets was seriously undermined. It's just, as much as you probably don't consider that the whole existence of the UK as a country is illegitimate as a consequence of its colonialist history, I don't consider that the USSR as a whole should have been dismantled, and I consider that its overall impact on the world was positive, especially comparing it to what was before and to what came after.
The article doesn’t really dismiss the argument even if the initial paragraphs make it seem like it, it just concludes that it seems unlikely to reach a point where the US could leverage the influence on a future local government, which is true but does not exclude/invalidate the previous proposition
I'm not. I'm saying both are bad. The others mass murder too. Choosing them out of spite for the first is wishing a similar mass death on someone else. You'd be as guilty of those deaths as liberal voters are for yours.
So if I understand correctly, all 2.5 million in Gaza over 40% children deserve to be slaughtered in the most cruel way possible? Did you even watch the doctor's testimony?
Edit: Also no one is asking you to vote for Hamas. Hamas is not on the ballot. And despite the pinkwashing Israel is a fascist racist country.
Oh I will absolutely denounce Israeli wartime tactics as excessive, as well as call their settlements illegal. The question is whether you will likewise denounce Hamas as terrorists, or will you lift them up as freedom fighters?
I'm not sure if you could apply to all of them... because, I'm not sure what Kim Jong Un would be doing in the middle east... That would definitely be an interesting one but, that at least applies to Stalin too, it didn't last long, but Stalin absolutely steamrolled Iran there for a bit.
If you wanna know "what would happen" to central-asian countries under soviet rule, you can, well, look at central-asian countries under soviet rule, such as Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan, lightyears away in terms of progress from other central-asian countries with a history of western colonialism like Pakistan.
Fuck all imperialist and hierarchical power structures. Fuck colonialism and fuck the police. Fuck fascists and the libs that enable them.
Xi Jinping is a fascist, and I don't think it was liberals that enabled him
Xi's also an imperialist and implemented a hierarchical government. Nothing I said was paradoxical. Fuck 'em all.
What liberals enabled Xi??
Did I say that all authoritarians are enabled by liberals? What agenda are you trying to push by misconstruing my words? Like seriously what point are you trying to reach here?
I think it was this part where you link fascists to liberal enablers.
But that =/= “every fascist is and always has been enabled by liberals.”
They’re saying that it’s very common for liberals to side with a rising fascist over the left in a misguided attempt to maintain the status quo. They’d typically rather move to the right instead of giving any quarter to the left, because the left wants to upend the structures of oppression, while the right wants to bolster them—while scapegoating an out-group.
Look at what macron is doing in France right now. Moving to the right to build a coalition with them to go against the majority left coalition that won the election.
I didn't stutter. Fuck every liberal enabling the rise of fascism.
Ah I see. Your point would have been clearer if it was “ fuck the fascists and
theany liberals who enable them”Nixon
The only country actually running over people with tanks is Israel and does it with the unconditional support of the US
Liberals as always don’t see Arabs as people. Don’t you dare come asking for our votes.
Do Arabs get to vote in the US?
Or if you mean Arabs that chose to go live in the US, I don't think they care too much about a country that, well, murdered all the natives
Yes, Arab Americans do and are enough to swing elections in Michigan and a few other states
https://www.axios.com/2023/11/29/arab-american-voter-defections-biden-2024
Hear fuckin hear!
Here here
How many billionaires before a country is a liberal shit-hole?
600?
675?
Idk man, one seems like too many to me.
China's around 695, guessing the threshold is 700. That's when the tankies will turn on it for sure.
Punk is not dead
'The Libs,' LOL!!!!
From a anon American, it's hilarious seeing the hick come out. 'the Libs hur durrr.'
Hahaha that shits always funny
You're replying to a leftist, not a conservative "hick."
And by "liberal" you mean anyone who dares criticise Daddy Putin and Supreme Leader Xi, amirite?
Dude my very first sentence was "Fuck all imperialist and hierarchical power structures." How can you think that I support China or Russia?
Uh oh, you've activated the libs. Now they'll make wild assumptions and other fabrications instead of actually addressing anything you've said.
FTFY, lib
You seem to be under the impression that liberals have a logically and ethically consistent belief structure.
The realization that liberals are unscratched fascists is a tough one, but you are one of the few intelligent folks able to recognize it… it’s a curse.
you're such an online edgelord that you're fighting straw men of your own creation. sign off, your family probably misses you.
Oops. Posted on tankie news again. Always forget to check.
Edit: actually, i retract that. I got mixed up with another thread.
Your use of tankie is exactly like the conservative use of woke. You're not even close to superior to those you mock. Hopefully one day you realize that and actually apply that human brain of yours.
Just to be clear, you don't think I should be against liberals enabling fascism? You don't see anything wrong with the slow march to the far right that's happening in so many parts of the world recently?
The irony of a liberal calling an anarchist authoritarian.... Liberals are simps for an authoritarian economic system
I'm just really annoyed by "liberal" constantly being equated with "fascist enabler" round here. If anyone calls themselves a liberal while supporting fascists, they're just fascists in disguise. While there are people like that, that's not what liberalism means, in fact, it's quite the opposite.
It's a language issue. You're likely from the United States, where liberal is used to suggest an adherent to classical liberalism or progressivism. Most of the rest of the English speaking world means neoliberal, as in an advocate or supporter of free-market capitalism, deregulation, and the reduction of government spending.
I'm fortunately not from the US. But you're right. A lot of people equate liberal with neoliberal or libertarian. Which is a real bummer.
Please, enlighten me about what you think liberalism means. In my view (as an anarchist) liberalism is at best ineffective at preventing fascism from taking over. It enables colonialism and imperialism, and offers no solution to the horrors of capitalism. Liberal ideology is one of state violence and compromise with literal fascists.
focusing on voting as the only allowed political action, supporting capitalism, valuing order over justice...
Dude, liberals literally helped Hitler become Reichskanzler.
For anyone not familiar, that was in no small part thanks to Paul von Hindenburg. If only he had instead gone the way of the zeppelin named after him.
So many of them on Lemmy lol
They clearly wrote fuck hierarchical powers. Fuck any supreme leader.
They think liberal is the same as neoliberal
imperialism is the subjugation of one country for the benefit of the first. DPRK is not imperialist (how could it be under UN sanctions), PRC is not imperialist, USSR was not imperialist.
Communists critically support the DPRK, the USSR, and the PCR, progressive liberals uncritically support Obama, Biden, conservative liberals uncritically support Trump, Bush, etc
read lenin.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-6/mswv6_11.htm
The instance you use is named after an Ikea plush. I will not debate you.
The South China Sea, Poland and most of eastern Europe would like a word...
Edit: Oh, and Tibet, Taiwan, etc...
I've answered already to someone else making the example of Estonia, but I'll answer you too so that you can see my take.
After 30+ years of anti-communist propaganda, of course many countries in Eastern Europe may “disagree”. As a currently ongoing example, the other day there was an article ( paywalled, but you can read it pasting the link in 12ft.io ) in the Spanish newspaper “El País” about a new museum in Moldova dedicated to the forcibly relocated to other parts of the USSR during the late 30s. The article talks about the horrors of Stalinism and how 90k people from the region were forcibly relocated in 1937-1941, although the majority were allowed to return in the 50s. All that’s good, having a memory of our history is a good thing. But then, the article goes on with some conversation with the “Director of the National Agency of Archives in Moldova”, Igor Casu. I’ll translate to Spanish:
So, basically, conflating the current imperialist capitalist Russia with communist USSR. But the funny part comes now, when they actually quote Casu:
So, they’re going FULL mask-off, and basically saying “we want to show this particular side of history not with the objective of remembrance of victims, but actually to create a new national identity based on the independence from supposedly oppressive Russia”. Fostering nationalism and anti-Russian sentiment as part of the new national identity. This is the recipe that’s been successfully applied to most of Eastern Europe for the past 30+ years, and you can see the results by asking any Polish person what they think of Russians. If this isn’t clear enough, the article reminds us:
Mind you, not a single reference in the article or the monument, to the 140.000 Jews deported by the Nazis during the 1940s invasion in Moldova, of whom 90.000+ were murdered in concentration camps. Let’s remember the victims of horrors of our history, but only those politically convenient to us now. Since we want to get closer to western Europe, including Germany, let’s put those killed by Nazis (many more than by Soviets) aside for now.
If you look at historical evidence, you can’t possibly make the argument that Estonia was subjugated and exploited by the USSR. The local language was preserved and there was an abundance of written publications in Estonian, people were allowed to study in the local language, the salaries were similar to those in the rest of the USSR (or higher actually), industrialization rates were equal or higher to those of the rest of the USSR, number of doctors/teachers and hospital beds per capita were equal… really, none of the telltales of imperialism are there. If you want to see a discussion with actual data regarding this, I suggest you have a look at “Human Rights in the Soviet Union” by Albert Szymanski, a wonderful book filled to the brim with data and a rather nuanced discussion.
So let’s not pretend that there hasn’t been a strong effort from pro-western authorities in all of Eastern Europe into pushing the narrative that this made-up historically continuous “Russia” has been exploiting and colonising Eastern Europe, and let’s not pretend that the opinion of most people in Eastern Europe who’ve been exposed to this campaign for the past 3 decades is unbiased and historically accurate (because public opinion never is).
Funny that you mention those two as well. Taiwan's national identity, again, has been manufactured from the ground up over the past 30+ years. The data that western countries celebrate of Taiwanese people mostly declaring themselves to be "only Taiwanese", is a fairly recent trend. From the link above:
So the country has gone from a 17.6% of "Taiwanese only" and a 25.5% of "both Taiwanese and Chinese" in 1992, to 63% of "Taiwanese only" and 2.5% of "Chinese only". Funny how it's the exact same process that I was describing above for Estonia and Moldova, in which 30+ years of propaganda can generate a new national identity and generate negative feelings towards previously friendly neighboring countries!
Regarding Tibet, I don't think I'll find such polls about national identity. However, until the Sino-Tibetan war, Tibet was literally a feudal country in which an aristocracy owned the lands and serfs were legally bound to the land as workers. When you criticise the lack of Tibet's autonomy after the Sino-Tibetan war, remember that you're arguing in favor of a literal feudal regime with aristocrats and serfs.
Look dude I've worked with many MLs and MLMs. I've read some of both Lenin and Mao's works. I think the recent rhetoric of calling communists fascist is wholely harmful to the left and I don't participate in it. I never called the DPRK imperialist for obvious reasons. I didn't even call the PRC imperialist because I do recognize that western media is not a reliable source on the matter. I recognize my own ignorance in these matters and don't take part in uncritically decrying post-revolution communist states.
We disagree on the way a just society should be structured, or the methods of achieving that end. I consider authoritarianism and unjust hierarchies as a problem of both capitalism and state communism, but as long as my viewpoints can be heard and addressed, I personally don't have issue with MLs and MLMs. The atrocities of capitalism far outweigh the failures of established communist states.
Communism is neither left nor right. It is just a construct of governance. While it was originally promoted by leftists, it can be either left or right. Some communists are conservative and/or fascist (ex. China).
The Left/Right divide is about property. Should it be collectivized, or individually owned and traded, ie Socialism vs Capitalism. Communism, therefore, must be left-wing.
Yes and no. Communism is also economic in nature.
You cannot have Right-Wing Communists.
The PRC is socially conservative, yes. Economically, it is Socialist, though certainly not yet Lower-Stage Communist. This does not make China "fascist" or right-wing. It is a socially reactionary, economicaly progressive state.
Countries like Estonia might disagree with you there, buddy.
After 30+ years of anti-communist propaganda, of course many countries in Eastern Europe may "disagree". As a currently ongoing example, the other day there was an article ( paywalled, but you can read it pasting the link in 12ft.io ) in the Spanish newspaper "El País" about a new museum in Moldova dedicated to the forcibly relocated to other parts of the USSR during the late 30s. The article talks about the horrors of Stalinism and how 90k people from the region were forcibly relocated in 1937-1941, although the majority were allowed to return in the 50s. All that's good, having a memory of our history is a good thing. But then, the article goes on with some conversation with the "Director of the National Agency of Archives in Moldova", Igor Casu. I'll translate to Spanish:
So, basically, conflating the current imperialist capitalist Russia with communist USSR. But the funny part comes now, when they actually quote Casu:
So, they're going FULL mask-off, and basically saying "we want to show this particular side of history not with the objective of remembrance of victims, but actually to create a new national identity based on the independence from supposedly oppressive Russia". Fostering nationalism and anti-Russian sentiment as part of the new national identity. This is the recipe that's been successfully applied to most of Eastern Europe for the past 30+ years, and you can see the results by asking any Polish person what they think of Russians. If this isn't clear enough, the article reminds us:
Mind you, not a single reference in the article or the monument, to the 140.000 Jews deported by the Nazis during the 1940s invasion in Moldova, of whom 90.000+ were murdered in concentration camps. Let's remember the victims of horrors of our history, but only those politically convenient to us now. Since we want to get closer to western Europe, including Germany, let's put those killed by Nazis (many more than by Soviets) aside for now.
If you look at historical evidence, you can't possibly make the argument that Estonia was subjugated and exploited by the USSR. The local language was preserved and there was an abundance of written publications in Estonian, people were allowed to study in the local language, the salaries were similar to those in the rest of the USSR (or higher actually), industrialization rates were equal or higher to those of the rest of the USSR, number of doctors/teachers and hospital beds per capita were equal... really, none of the telltales of imperialism are there. If you want to see a discussion with actual data regarding this, I suggest you have a look at "Human Rights in the Soviet Union" by Albert Szymanski, a wonderful book filled to the brim with data and a rather nuanced discussion.
So let's not pretend that there hasn't been a strong effort from pro-western authorities in all of Eastern Europe into pushing the narrative that this made-up historically continuous "Russia" has been exploiting and colonising Eastern Europe, and let's not pretend that the opinion of most people in Eastern Europe who've been exposed to this campaign for the past 3 decades is unbiased and historically accurate (because public opinion never is).
Cool. The USSR still invaded and annexed Estonia. And Lithuania. And Latvia. And Armenia. Shall I go on?
Military invasion =/= imperialism, I'm surprised I have to explain this to a leftist.
Funny, invading multiple countries and making them part of your country sure sounds like it fits that definition to me.
Invading another country preventively in the wake of WW2 and the threat of Nazism =/= imperialism, I'm sorry buddy. Not defending the invasion of Estonia, but categorising it as imperialism is dumb and ahistorical.
'The instance you use is named after an Ikea plush. I will not debate you.'
This JK Rowling?
I think you proved their point. Also, your ad hominem attack (or ad urbem attack) could be construed as transphobic.
Lmao
These "tankies" are conservative right-wing shitbag trolls trying to convince the normal people that supporting oppression and dictators is somehow "left-wing". Do not fall for their conservative bullshit.
Just like any other conservative, every word they utter is deception or manipulation. Tankies are conservative trolls through and through.
Lemmy was originally built by and for tankies, so this is completely unsurprising. The .ml TLD on the original instance isn't a coincidence.
Lemmygrad was literally made to be an even more mask off .ml
Weird they made a decentralized platform for one single group.
They made it for themselves but let us set up instances outside of their control due to their morals that software should be open for all. Again proving the best open source software comes from scratching a personal itch.
Of course it’s OUR SOFTWARE
(cue soviet anthem)
/s
Which one? I choose The Internationale.
Off-topic, but the Starlight Glimmer art is on the point so well.
Starlight is one of the best representations of the Tankie IMO.
And the writers had the guts to pull it off in a show meant for a 5yo.
That’s impressive honestly.
Kinda. S5 GlimGlam? Yes. S6? Nah.
The problem was childhood-trauma-induced fake-smiles-forcing cutiemark-taking with propaganda. Remove it and what remains isn't bad. Doesn't seem to be much different from ideology of other places.
As an example from first season there is Winter Wrap-up, which is basically annual subbotnik.
That’s true, now that I think about it. But I still think the writers nailed the mindset in S5.
The final battle between Starlight and Twilight was epic for the lack of a better word.
How authoritarian of them
It was never closed to non-tankies, but it wasn't very welcoming. I had an account on .ml early on and most of the time I got hammered with downvotes, despite having opinions that I'd describe as being on the left edge of liberalism.
Downvotes are federated.
Yeah but this was 3 years ago, Lemmy was basically only the .ml instance at that time.
To be clear, the left edge of liberalism is bernie sanders. Is that what youre saying?
By US standards maybe, but I'm to the left of that.
Meh, I'd say Bernie is either a social democrat or a reformist socialist who hides his power level.
He's a self described democratic socialist
Correct, but I'm pretty sure he said he doesn't want to completely socialize the economy.
Some members of LDPR(e.g. Furgal) seem to be more left than Bernie. And LDPR is former LDPSU - first right-wing party of USSR. Or some members of Union of Right Forces.
Not corporate neofeudalist is better than corporate neofeudalist, which is improvement for US. But I can't say he is on edge even of liberalism.
I can see the decentralized platform as a communist parallel. I don't, however, understand the fanaticism for the murdery shit show dictatorship that was Russia/China though.
And that's okay. Most of them stay to their own instance and don't come over and bother us normal people. Just ignore the crazies and move on
Communism and conservatism are not mutually exclusive. Conservative communism involves dictators and oppression. That's how that weird nonsense happened.
It's a pretty standard take on the commie side that stuff like colonialism and American slavery are pretty much the capitalist equivalent of the communist mass deaths, so I think their position is that everyone's a hypocrite who has to support a government committing some kind of mass murder (in the modern day, America's mass murder in this lens is its alliance with Israel). Since Americans won't admit their government's atrocities (even though a lot of them do call out the US, but that's not how they see it), why should they admit the atrocities of the USSR?
I mean... I see people around here presumably amarrican have zero issues discussing US atrocities. So at all Americans at least.
Never seem a tankie admit Stalin did a genocide once
It's almost like the dishonest nature is built into their every move.
CTH has been eradicated from every platform it's arisen on, then they built Lemmy.
That is enlightening and not very surprising.
I had one of these fucks try to tell me that North Korea is very democratic.
hexbear has entered the chat
lemmygrad
lemmy.ml too increasingly
I'm seeing more and more tankies migrate to lemmy.world, because they don't do anything against them, but lemmy.world is also much less likely to get defederated by other instances. Fuck big, centralized instances. People should move to smaller, niche servers like db0, blahaj.zone, beehaw, etc.
my alt is on blahaj and I really enjoy the local stuff there but its so slow for me sometimes :/
Beehaw has explicitly stated that they do not want more people to join, they want to maintain it as a micro-server, by the way.
In general, I do think joining smaller servers is a good idea.
It's weird that Mao, Sun Yat Sen, and Chiang Kai Shek, were all part of the same pro-democracy party early on in China's civil war.
Mao won the war, Sun Yat Sen got out of there, Chiang Kai Shek was pushed out and became dictator of Taiwan.
China is weird.
Also weird is that one guy caused most of the deaths from famine in both the USSR and China: A conman named Trofim Lysenko, who was lying about having a new science of agriculture... He was bury seeds way further than they could handle then faking his results to keep his job.... Killed like, 30 million people who were ordered to take up his techniques.
About China, you know what they say, it's easier to be the opposition than to actually govern. Many of those who govern end up being corrupt or incompetent or both.
Who knows if mainland China under ROC would have been better. People say that will be the case when we look at Taiwan. But Taiwan suffered from thirty years of so-called White Terror and Taiwan eventually democratising is arguably pure luck due to a man whose name escapes me.
The trajectory of history is never predictable. There are far too many factors to consider; factors which are themselves caused by chain reactions of previous factors and events, which themselves are influenced by other previous events.
Lee Teng-Hui is the man that helped Taiwan transition into a democracy.
Chiang Kai Shek already oversaw a China beset with hyperinflation, pervasive corruption, and famine. That, too, is history.
It's why the Maoists were able to launch a popular revolution in the first place. Chinese people had literally nothing to lose but their chains.
Chiang had to work with various warlords and bore most of the fight against the Japanese, while Mao gathered strength and let ROC to bleed itself. Even if ROC won and the CCP got destroyed, we don't know if factionalism and warlord-ism will emerge since ROC had been weakened severely. Or, in another alternative time, Chiang and KMT had somehow pulled a miracle, and somehow made the entirety of China industrialised as quickly as post-war Japan and never had to resort to dictatorship and hence had always been democratic after World War 2.
If I remember it correctly, in China Mao ordered sparrow to be killed en masse because they supposedly ate the grain: turns out that what they ate were the pests that attacked the plants.
95% correct, the sparrows were also eating the grain, but removing the natural predator to the far worse pests resulted in far worse famine due to an explosion in population of pests. This was one of the factors that resulted in Mao losing influence in the party over time.
Is it? There are plenty of examples of smaller factions joining forces to overthrow a common enemy, who later battled it out amongst themselves.
This is bidens fault
/S cause lemmy
That's the average lemmy.ml user
heck you don't even have to go that far. the second picture can be pretty much every republican president whos held office. When was the last ware we started happen while a dem president was in office?
Israel's invasion of Gaza could be considered a proxy war
Howdy, Stretch!
It isn't as much of a stretch as that created by Israel sticking their hands far up U.S. govt's ass.
Wait, so the US is the puppet? Is the US fighting Israel's proxy war? Do you people even know what you're saying when you say stuff like this?
Of course not! US bad it’s as simple as that.
It is a stretch, but it's also a proxy war funded by the US that escalated several fold under Biden
You're gonna pop a shoulder soon!
A proxy war implies they're using another nation to fight an enemy. Which enemy are they fighting? Palestine is not an enemy or threat to the US.
You could consider Ukraine as potentially a proxy war, but you'd have to be pretty stupid or pretty mislead to think Gaza is.
Source?
What do you mean "Source?" Are you asking for a source that Israel invaded Gaza? A source that the US funded it? A source that it escalated during Biden's presidency?
They're "stinkyonions".
They're asking for sauce.
Are you implying that on a quiet morning somewhere around last October, Biden gave Bibi a call and ordered him to escalate?
I don't see how. you would need to consider any military action by any ally then as a proxy war for any nation. So it would be a proxy ware for most of europe to and asia and a good part of both africa and the americas.
Also Ukraine
Operation Prosperity Guardian, started by Joe. That took me about 10 seconds.
More like a defense of merchant ships attacked by houthis.
I wouldn’t call that a “war started by Joe Biden”.
Well Wikipedia considers it a war, I bet the poor mother fuckers that died think so too, but that list has 7 other conflicts that Obama started, weirdly there isn’t a single one by the ultimate mega hitler everyone is talking about.
Megahitler closed a “don’t shoot while I’m running away” deal with the Taliban that Biden had to mop up, now you can hate on Sleepy Joe as much as you want, but that is Drumpf’s doing.
Another day, another comment I’ll block for stupidity.
The 10 people who died in the defense of merchant ship from houthis is totally comparable to the tens of thousands of homeless people, protestors, victims of police violence, inability to pay for medical care, resulting from Trump era policies, not to mention what banning abortion will do.
I’m not trying to defend Trump, I’m just saying that the proposition that all Democrats are bloodless pacifists is completely removed from reality.
Megahitler is currently focused on the enemy within, after that is exhausted they will need to start on the enemy without.
Oh well if Wikipedia says it is then I guess we have no choice. Who invented the toaster again?
If Trump wins and he starts marching the Latino and queer people into camps like in the threats his people are making, I want you to remember that you said this.
Absolute lunacy. You really believe this?
Do I really believe that they'll do what they're threatening to do when they get into power if they get into power?
Yes, I do. Why shouldn't I? Why would I even want that risk?
There's already an ongoing transgender genocide in the U.S. caused in great part by Republicans. Why would I want to make that worse?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_genocide#United_States
Show me where anyone is threatening internment camps for gay people.
The Latino thing is going to be the exact same thing that all 4 of the last sitting presidents did, but you’re going to act like it’s worse when someone red is in charge.
The US hasn't declared war since WW2. Wikipedia will tell you that, too.
You don't have to declare war for it to be a war. The US has carried out plenty of wars since WW2.
Sorry for your loss.
What
So the war on Ukraine isn't a war because Putin didn't declare it? You guys are delusional.
Ansar Allah could just take Iran's fist out of their ass. But they seem to love being front line puppets.
Go make another account, this one is getting blocked en masse.
Good, I’d rather not talk to people who settle their differences of opinion by stamping their feet and plugging their ears.
Link?
I have little hope you'll grab the concept, but
Did that 'war' start with the Houthis firing missiles, or them being fired upon?
Oooooh, this thread'll let my blocklist feast for days as the Tankies come out to whatabbout
Edit: Man yall are too kind! Thank you for helping me make Lemmy a more intelligent place! <3
it's an honor getting to avoid shitlibs; block me too.
Oooh, block me too!
Hell yeah brother!
Add me! I don't see a single decent leader in this meme, but governance/economic debate by mascot is counterproductive.
Done!
Bro tankie doesnt even mean anything anymore, what are you actually saying?
You said in another thread that you wished Russia had succeeded in assassinating a German arms manufacturer.
I think it means something in your case.
https://lemmy.world/comment/11122258
In context it doesn't sound as stupid. Like if someone dropping bunker-penertating bomb and killing Putin will help both Russia and Ukraine. Despite my wishing for Putin rather being sent to Hauge or Russian prison, any option is better than Putin continuing war.
And there are other things that better not exist for entire world like all those spying and censorship agencies like FSB, RKN, FBI, NSA.
Tankies
omg so true, esp on the OG Lemmy instance, where even the admins/creators of Lemmy on there are tankies.
That feeling when you get banned for mentioning Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
The pain of having to walk on eggshells just in case some admins decide to have a power mod day.
I used to have an account on lemmy.ml. I didn't know they were delusional. Now I won't even subscribe to anything on lemmy.ml.
Ate an instance wide ban for saying democratic republics are, by definition, a form of democracy 🤷♂️
I suppose that makes the DPRK a democracy?
You really thought you had something there, huh?
Just saying your point doesn't hold up
Russia isn't even leftist? It's oil oligarchy and kleptocracy. They love authoritarianism, they don't give a shit about economics.
Vatniks don't care about anything but Russian nationalism.
Yeah but they are fighting the imperialist west by invading a brotherly nation which they have historu of repressing but in a family type of way tho
Probably should have said Putinism war crimes instead. Everyone would agree to this.
That feeling when you get banned from [email protected] and other communities (moderator log: "commie") for warning about bad faith actors among those spending their entire online political discourse complaining about tankies
You mean lemmy.ml?
Yes
Now, I don't like violence. But even I can see that there's a difference between violence waged for imperialism and violence waged against imperialism.
And you can see the difference too. That's why Obama and Biden always say that their wars are being waged "for freedom". That's why you accept the violence of historical revolutions like the American Revolution.
The problem is, Obama and Biden are lying when they say their wars are for freedom. Their wars are for profit and control.
People here claiming it's not the case are just wrong. I've been banned from multiple instances and had posts deleted by these bozos. Actually authoritarians lol
I can agree with the text while being against the authoritarians pictured.
I just hope people don't think that everyone complaining about US imperialism is somehow fine with Russian or Chinese actions of the same hue.
The US as least has a flawed democracy.
I'd upvote the meme if it wasn't also controversial to criticize all war criminals, including both those at the top and the bottom.
Edit: For a source, see people in this thread rushing to argue and feel called out when someone criticizes "all forms of imperialism", including the Western ones.
Still have yet to see more than a lone tankie on any thread
Plenty of people vaguely gesturing at lemmy.ml for some reason thiugh
There are far too many of these people on ~Lemmy~~ Earth.
Lots of straw man wrestlers in this thread. 🥹
I was in discussion (if you can even call it that) with someone and when he spoke about "Occupied Korea" i knew there was no point what so ever to continue.
There's no laddar long enough in the world to climb out of that hole.
Aright anyone have a blocklist for all these extreme politics?
Has anyone ever thought that if you combined Stalin and Xi Jinping, it would probably look a lot like Kim Jong Un? Like, if you fed the two of them into a 'What would our baby look like' generator, I feel like it would be real close.
Too many
Liberal war criminals! Left wing criminals! Right wing criminals!
Everyone gets war crimes!
Yup.
Turns out, if you’re not willing to commit violence of some sort asserting power is pretty much impossible. (not saying we should assert violence, but historically, atleast since the agricultural revolution, it is rare not too see)
Edit2: see the responses to this comment below. I misunderstood the above comment and shouldn't have taken mecfs to be endorsing violence.
And that doesn't lead you to the conclusion that the state should not be exerting power over (or committing violence on) people? You really just wrote that and said 'yea this is a great defense of my political view'?
Edit: Welcome to the mind of a liberal - where war crimes are excusable and state violence is just how things get done.
?
Never did I say my political affiliation was liberalism.
As for my comment above, you could probably have concluded (rightly) that I have anarcho-primitivist tendencies. This post wasn’t meant as an apologia for liberalism but as a critique of authoritarian leftism.
Apologies for my confrontational tone and for misunderstanding you. I read your comment as a justification of violence, but I can see that it wasn't.
I got a bit hot arguing with people defending liberalism elsewhere in this thread and forgot that isn't actually what the post is about haha.
No worries
You could stop being triggered by a comment thread on a forum and go do something with your time.
You aren't trapped at your keyboard. You're doing this to yourself lmao
I hear war isn't that fun.
Why is taking the position that the alternative to Americas violent hegemony is more violence?
Da
The only country actually running over people with tanks is Israel and does it with the unconditional support of the US
Liberals as always don’t see Arabs as people. Don’t you dare come asking for our votes.
Lemmy is worse for political discussion than Reddit has ever been. At least Reddit has had the numbers for people to call out extreme views on either side, but the number of absolute nutjobs on here that either call for the downfall of capitalism immediately, or to let right-wing thinking slide as a natural progression of politics today. They're the sort of people that post memes about murdering Nazis in the streets, but would cower at the sight of one - or those that would happily march if they weren't so fucking awkward.
Some of us just want to enjoy the memes.
Imagine unironically comparing wanting the end of capitalism to fascism
The way of it's end matters.
Anyone here calling for collapse is indulging in fantastical or privileged collapse fantasy. Hoping that from chaos, their preferred brand will come out on top
Ha, this reminds me of a scene from the movie Miss Sloane where they easily discredit some politician on their left by hiring some shmuck to go stand in the background of their speech with a 'abolish money' banner
A lot of the Hexbears genuininely seem to be under the impression that escaping the horrors of capitalism to be freed from wage-slavery would mean that they'll finally have the time for "self-healing and growing their own food" which sparked a funny comment from another lemming that it exposed their fantasy that under communism they'd have a job gardening as opposed to farming
Not sure I agree. Just from the number of pro-kamala threads and negative Trump threads. I don't see that much in the way of extreme views.
Many people on .world are the so-called 'Reddit refugees'. I've noticed a large portion of them tend to be liberals (as in neoliberals) from the United States and accordingly think of anything left of center as "radical/extreme leftism". A few weeks back, they were all agitated over some leftist strawmen a few of their more vocal members have been fabricating to gripe about. This is likely just a continuation of the same.
I'm a Reddit refugee too. But thanks for the context. I haven't seen the straw man. I have noticed a really strong streak of "blue no matter who" which is a terrible attitude to have, that's the way the Maga folks think.
I'm not even in the US (I'm an Aussie) but my opinion is blue, but like, do better? We gotta do better. Please do better.
To be fair we have the same thing here with shills for the mainstream parties. (But we do have viable 3rd options)
The straw man is "tankies". There are actual tankies on Lemmy, but these geniuses are using it like United States fascists use woke: to describe anything they don't like and to shut down discourse. They're pretty much blue MAGA. It's gross.
I feel the same way, both about the cultish behavior and that people can and should do better. Unfortunately, the United States treats politics much like it treats sports, and I believe this is partly why idiocy like this manifests so frequently.
Tankies is not a straw man. There's literally someone in this very thread lying about the events of Tianamen Square by claiming the literal tanks were totally peaceful and not used as part of the CCP's oppression of people protesting.
It's almost like you ignored the entire content of the comment you responded to so you could refute a point that isn't being made.
blue maga is a nonsensical term. MAGA literally want to end democracy and execute their "enemies'. The people you describe as blue maga are...checks notes...shutting down discussions on social media.
The dramatic irony of your discourse poisoning comment in response to a comment about poisoning discourse may be immeasurable using today's technology.
Yo. I'm not American. (Have lived there before)
But this is hilarious.... Maga and the republicans have used the most horrendous language and discourse for the last 8 or so years...
Democrats been little pussy cats...
This shits undoubtable.
They're doing more than that, but clearly you're not interested in discourse so much as... Checks notes... Looking for opportunities to tell people they're wrong, so I'm not going to waste my time explaining further.
Facts.. If you are maga, you want a king in America.. or are a complete idiot. Like so much so, that you deliberately avoid the evidence of the crimes your ex president committees specifically against the American people and process.
There are almost no other options. Want a king/fool.
Unfortunately I see tankie sentiments expressed far too often on Lemmy. Case in point this very thread: https://lemmy.world/comment/11331168
I did see this kind of extremist view expressed on Reddit too, but far less commonly than here.
The extremist views are almost entirely left wing, as in like literal communism. Not like how Republicans call everything communism, but people who want honest to god Marxist-Leninist communism.
And then there's the tankies, who pretend to like communism but actually just simp for geopolitical enemies of the US.
In no small part because those types of people are the main developers and because, let's face it, they need a federated medium in case their disinformation campaigns in main social networks begin to be taken down (although given how much their owners like money and that governments seem to be doing shit all to abusive behind-the-scenes misuse of them, not currently likely at all).
Only on the far left and far right is "liberal" seen as an insult.
I'm conditioned to disbelieve anyone who says 'based', 'mid' or 'fetch'. I prefer those who don't follow the vapid cliques.
They really should stop trying to make fetch happen. Fetch is never going to happen.
No one says fetch, really. Do they? Surely that's just a mean girls reference.
Anyway - language evolves regardless of your preferences, unfortunately. Both "mid" and "based" have been around literally decades now, they are going nowhere.
Yo, you just said all three codewords out loud, I'm just gonna block you instead of disbelieving you.
Eat shit you cocksucking motherfucking tankies. Wash your skin, I'm pretty sure your stench reaches the ISS.
It's why I went back to reddit. I check in here occasionally to check. I can handle the reddit hive if I limit where and how I participate. But the hardcore political ideologies sprinkled everywhere in lemmy ruin even a limited browsing experience for me.
I mean Biden is supporting Israel so he ain’t any better.
Is the tankie in the room with us right now?
you could pull waayy more ugly pictures from us imperialism. or against their own.
socialists have something to show for in the form of actual progress in the quality of life of its citizens.
Oh, good, so they didn't have to go to extreme measures to keep their own citizens from fleeing to the capitalist hellholes of the West?
not really
vietnamese can leave, chinese can and do go everywhere. cubans too.
Oh, cool, I must have hallucinated all of those emigration restrictions during the Cold War, along with the Berlin Wall and civilians getting machine-gunned for trying to leave their glorious socialist paradise. Silly me.
Amazing how far fascists will go to deny reality.
Yeah, now they can. You wanna remind me what the most pro-free market country in Asia is?
Since the 80s, sure. Before that, not so much. You also wanna remember what happened to China's economy in the 80s? Something that rhymes with 'Lengism'? Unless you want to claim China today as socialist, in which case, I have a few hundred People's Billionaires to sell you.
Wanna remind me how Cubans escaped to the US throughout the Cold War and into the modern day?
Funny enough, you completely missed one of the socialist countries that DIDN'T have ridiculous emigration restrictions during the Cold War, but I guess Yugoslavia just isn't pure enough for you lot.
if we are talking about heavily propagandized policies enacted 100 years ago to try and curb imperialism, we could be talking about all the death bought upon them by the west.
the us is the very last country that can talk about machine gunnings, because they were the ones sponsoring most of it through all of recent history, including and especially in the socialist countries you seem to hate so hard for.... doing just that?
americans and the brits did full on scorched earth in vietnam and china, and nowadays they have healthcare while you are still shooting up kids in schools. the us sponsored dictatorship throughout my entire continent. literally.
talk about denying reality. i guess they don't teach you world history for a reason. nononono everyone else is the fascist here.
"You don't understand, they HAD to gun down people for trying to escape our Socialist Paradise, or else Imperialism would win!"
Impressive.
Thanks for being utterly unable to contradict any of the points brought up that disprove your half-hearted attempt to defend the massacres of your favorite fascist states.
Cool, so you can back up the part where we were supposedly machine-gunning our own citizens to stop them from fleeing this capitalist hellhole, right? Since that was the topic brought up?
Oh, wait, of course you can't.
Oh, of course, having healthcare now justifies all of your fascist regime's atrocities. By the way, would you like to elaborate on the economic systems of China and Vietnam in the modern day? You know, now that they have healthcare? Just curious.
Also, when did the Brits do 'full on scorched earth' in China? 1901?
He said that the Commie countries had many people wanting to leave, because they were shit holes. Which is true. Soviets broke our economies, killed our innocents (Milada Horáková) and hurt the people. Go to hell sov-tard
Don't hurt yourself in your confusion.
Just to remind you comrade, Soviet leaders themselves found it unbelievable how full the supermarket shelves are when they visit the West.
South Koreans are far taller than North Koreans-- because the latter enjoy supermarket shelves always being full.
Overly full shelves in supermarkets weren't the case in the USSR by design, not by accident. Most capitalist countries run what are called "surplus economies", in which companies normally manufacture more goods and services than they can allocate, and a certain percentage of output, as well as input, is wasted. The Soviet economy, on the contrary, ran a shortage economy. In a shortage economy, you plan the production of goods and services so that it will match the demand as closely as possible, therefore very rarely having a surplus of any good or service unless that's designed to be exported, but also not leaving any capital or any human labor available without using. Since the Soviet economy was mostly closed off to the outside world and was primarily self-reliant, it wanted to employ its resources in the most efficient way possible. Unemployment was literally 0%. Producing, say, 10% more loaves of bread, or 10% more milk, or 10% more eggs, in an attempt to create a surplus in supermarkets as in the western world, necessarily implied lowering the amount of labor and capital used in other sectors of the economy, e.g. 10% fewer electric drills or 10% fewer trolleybus parts.
Surplus in supermarkets in the west compared to lack of surplus in supermarkets in the Soviet Union isn't a consequence of "the success" of the west, but of the different priorities and designs. Either way, surplus in supermarkets in the US isn't very useful when 40 million US citizen, of whom 12 million are children, live in food insecurity.
Sure, it's an effective system to develop patience waiting in line for hours and perfecting rationing.
There was zero employment at the expense of national budget. People are paid regardless of productivity. And even then, productivity is questionable given the restrictive period plans whereby workers and managers are under pressure to meet quotas, and resort to distorting statistics and figures to appease the party apparatchiks, or else they get punished in euphemistic term. Who knows if there was actual more abundance in certain goods and commodities in Soviet Union.
Thank you for showing us that you've never read any seriou economic analysis about the USSR and you're just regurgitating anti-communist propaganda. Productivity in the USSR was comparable to any western capitalist country, except possibly in agriculture for complicated reasons that I'm not gonna get into. If you make such claims of big productivity differences between USSR and western countries, you should back that up with serious sources, so please go ahead and enlighten us all.
Breadlines happened during wartime and during the perestroika, not at any other times, again please feel free to look that up.
I take it you mean unemployment. But your logic doesn't make any sense. Employed people, you know, produce goods and services. Not like unemployed people. The inefficient thing that runs at the expense of the national budget is unemployment, you know, when you have to maintain people who don't work.
Nobody claims that the USSR didn't have flaws in its economic planning. The lack of supervision and crackdown on infringement led to a decent bit of stealing from state property and resale at the black market. The fake production quotas happened in some sectors at times. And too-strong top-down planning led to some problems like the plan to plant corn in Siberia. But all economic systems have flaws and the USSR was absolutely not less efficient on average than any western country, as proven by the fact that it went from being a feudal backwater empire in 1917 to the second world power of the 20th century.
The standard communist thought terminating response "you haven't the theory, so you don't know what you're talking about and shut up". That maybe the case, but that is irrelevant. Which system is still standing as we speak? Even China is communist in name only and is a state capitalist with rapid increasing number of billionaires than the United States in the past couple of years.
Rationing and breadlines still happened for more years as opposed to free market economy, man. It's not even consumer and basic commodities that is scarce, but even cars are. It is well known how Soviets had to wait seven to ten years just to buy a car. There is scarcity economy because the system is not great, with prices of everything controlled by the state, which is contrary to the realities of market supply and demand. If communism is great, it wouldn't have fell. And the remaining "communist" countries are only as such in name only.
Again, thank you for enlightening us with your lack of researched analysis. Please, I beg you to tell me a single book on the topic that you've read.
Cars are a consumer commodity. I already explained the shortage economy of the USSR. You're trying to compare the consumer capabilities of citizens of the USSR with what, those of the US? The literal hegemon country of the world, participating in colonialism and unequal exchange to absurd degrees, and industrialized for 100 years more than the USSR? The comparison is ridiculous.
...which it didn't. The illegal, antidemocratic, top-down dismantling of the USSR, was a political decision taken by a few politicians in the party, not a "failure that made the country crumble". The USSR survived to a civil war, and to a WW2 in which Nazis murdered 25mn+ soviet inhabitants. Much worse economies like that of Cuba still subsist with a very healthy base of communist citizens. Please, go read a history book, instead of spouting the anti-communist propaganda we've all heard a million times. The USSR didn't fall, it was dismantled.
Mate, stop with the coping and repeating the same drivel of "read theory" because communists can't think for themselves. The theory is nil when the empirical evidence is there. Communism fell. USSR fell when the constituent states seceded. The former Eastern European elected to form their own independence. China is communist in name only. Cuba is as you said-- subsisting-- as a result they cannot maintain their buildings and many historical buildings are deteriorating. Many Cubans earn more money as taxi drivers than doctors!
More people risked crossing the wall and borders being shot and crossing the sea to flee from communist countries, than people from capitalist countries to communist states.
Oh the strawman, the refuge of those who are-- well-- grasping for straws. I never said anything about the US. But sure, do so and ignore the other capitalist countries whose citizens could easily buy more cars and in an instant, such as UK, France, Japan, South Korea and Italy. And those countries are known for car manufacturing.
But sure go ahead, keep coping with the drivel that scarcity economy in communist states is by design when it is just a cover that communist countries are, in fact, experiencing chronic food, consumer and commodity shortages because of voodoo economics they practice. Lol, "scarcity by design" is the funniest cope I have seen from tankies. Tell that to the people who died from Holodomor, famine in China, and from Lysenko's agricultural bonkers of a science. Even China abandoned communism wholesale and Cuba finally acknowledged that the "market is a fact of life" and allowed greater degree of economic liberalisation into their constitution.
Dream on bud. Communism will work any minute now despite contrary to empirical evidence that it is plain as day for the eyes to see. See with your eyes for yourself, instead of spouting what you call "theory" with your script like an non-thinking NPC.
We love our supermarket shelves, don't we folks? The biggest and the fullest in the world, mao zedong, stalin, they all love our supermarket shelves. 30 different flavors of oreos, all in one aisle. can't have that in russia, folks, can't have that, horrible country, horrible country. You can only have pizza hutt in russia, folks, believe me, or, as I call it, pizza butt, and that's only because of our favorite supreme leader gorbachev. You couldn't even choose your healthcare plan in the USSR, folks, can you believe it? They only had one plan, horrible, horrible healthcare. I'm going to go make out with supreme leader Kim, folks, but I'm going to hate every second of it, believe me.
Don't forget the 30 different kinds of bread and cheese available at supermarket shelves.... without rationing or waiting in line for hours to be given one loaf of bread for the day....
no use in having full shelves when half of the citizens in capitalist countries cant afford eating it.
south korea is a great example of a hugely unequal society where this is the norm.
Oh, cool, you wanna compare nutrition statistics between North and South Korea? I'm sure this will back you up about how terrible the capitalist hellhole of South Korea is!
sure, but lets factor in the brutal sanctions, and how the north is sectioned off on mostly unfertile mountain land.
stop doing that to cuba btw, its starting to stink. if socialism were so bad i think you could let them fail fair and square, and show us how bad it actually is, no?
How cute that you always have an excuse for why life under your favorite regimes that actually follow your ideal policies instead of departing from ML orthodoxy is always so dog shite, without exception. Almost like MLs are just fascists searching for excuses to brutalize the proletariat.
Sure. I've been an opponent of sanctions on Cuba for years. Btw, you want to remind me how many capitalist countries are sanctioning Cuba right now? I always lose track.
Hillary Clinton, the boogeyman, also supports lifting sanctions, I suppose since she's such a good socialist?
Also, if the ML systems you so adore can't operate without being subsidized by capitalism, aren't they really just extensions of capitalist regimes?
Cuba isn't even their dream communist utopia in terms of their own ideology, but they don't care. Cuba hasn't nationalized their extremely lucrative tourism industry. The massive profits from those fancy resorts aren't being redistributed to the workers.
But apparently they think that as long as you call yourself communist, you are.
See also: China- private property ownership and investment, billionaires and a fucking stock exchange. I actually had a Tankie tell me that if I just read Marx, I would see that earning capital is a feature of communism. That's how nuts these people are.
Go ahead and mentally travel in time to when there are only socialist countries left on earth.
With all the dirty liberal countries wiped out, who do the socialists blame for every bad thing that happens?
Oh no, your leader got caught embezzling "guess we missed a lib at the last culling". Get fucked lmao
Nutrition in the USSR by the 70s was literally healthier than that of the USA...
lol
No response for the capitalist hellhole of South Korea, I see.
Wanna know how South Korea grew what it is to be? Implementing a fascist government that pushed against workers' rights and performed crackdown against unions, applied protectionism to key industries, and welcomed international investment into those sectors, thus becoming a tech giant at the expense of workers of the past, and now participating in unequal exchange as do all other developed capitalist countries
Oh, cool, so North Korea is behind because they didn't implement a fascist government that pushed against workers' rights and performed crackdowns against unions, applied protectionism to key industries, and welcomed foreign capital into those sectors?
Fucking lmao.
But sure, tell me how South Korea's greatest periods of growth were definitely under the periods of dictatorship and military junta and not the democratic period that resulted in reaction to that.
Whataboutism. The only way for libs to cope with reality
Holy shit are you real? Are there really people who still think like this?
The comment is deleted but I do have the user tagged as "tankie asshole" so yeah.
Wait how do you tag users?? I couldn't find a way to do that, but it might just be the app I use
Did you miss a /S there champ?
It being broadcasted to the entire world causing a collapse of 90s era trade relationships being the intended goal of this collaborative effort to defame China, orcestrated by the secret western legion of overlords. /s
Pro tip, you need to include the /s when you make over the top jokes like that. There are so many insane losers that actually believe it, if you don't make it clear you're not serious, you look like you're one of them.
Hope this helps!
The folks on the top bombed the middle east, and killed a lot of people.
As someone who lives there, the choice is an easy one.
And the Soviets invaded Afghanistan with flowers and love, right??
The Soviets invaded Afghanistan, a bordering country, after the USA had armed radical theocratic militias with modern weapons. And whatever they did in Afghanistan pales in comparison with US actions in non-neighboring Vietnam. If you want to see the true impact of the USSR in central-asian countries vs that of the west, why don't you compare the Human Development Index of Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan (ex-Soviet republics) to that of Pakistan (ex-English colony).
It’s not a “whose worse” competition, but you tankies can’t seem to accept that countries other than the us also do and did bad shit. It’s all whataboutism with you.
Nobody in this thread is denying what the us has done, nor celebrating it. But keep on telling us what a nice guy Stalin was!
There we go, the generic word to refer to everyone who doesn't uncritically peddle anti-communist discourse.
I'm not a Stalinist. The great terror was terrible, unjustified, and overall a disaster. The collectivisation policy led to chaos and hunger. The democratic functioning of Soviets was seriously undermined. It's just, as much as you probably don't consider that the whole existence of the UK as a country is illegitimate as a consequence of its colonialist history, I don't consider that the USSR as a whole should have been dismantled, and I consider that its overall impact on the world was positive, especially comparing it to what was before and to what came after.
Soviet Union fell decades ago. Israel is comitting mass murder with America's blessing right now.
No no you’re right, America bad, Russia China good!
And Russia invaded Ukraine with flowers and love, right?
Far as I know Putin didn't invade Ukraine because of the Soviet Union, is mostly because he's a little shit.
Two ex-Soviet countries are fighting about how to split the inheritance. Hardly suprising.
i mean afghani society was better off before the us swooped in to destroy it after the soviet era
can't have all that progress around that much oil
The US swooped in to destroy Afghanistan after the Soviet era.
Afghanistan having strategic value because of oil.
Jesus Christ.
And people wonder why I don't treat tankie history takes seriously.
EDIT: No, no, please, downvoters, inform me as to the history of Afghanistan's booming oil industry.
No one said it was due to a booming oil industry, but it was because of oil, I'm not sure how you're not aware of this.
Reporting at the time: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/23/afghanistan.terrorism11
Huh, it's almost like "BUT MUH OIL" has been an easy refrain of people with a simplified view of world politics for decades now, even when it's not actually relevant
The article doesn’t really dismiss the argument even if the initial paragraphs make it seem like it, it just concludes that it seems unlikely to reach a point where the US could leverage the influence on a future local government, which is true but does not exclude/invalidate the previous proposition
oh yeah the us destroyed the middle east and former socialist countries for democracy, my bad.
So you’re doubling down on oil in Afghanistan?
reread the post you are responding to
No u
Well, how else could the Taliban have made so much societal progress?
those terrorist organizations are usually funded by the us....
That's only because you know nothing about the history of the others, and they gave even less of a shit back then.
Istanbul wasn’t “bombed” since Mehmet the 2nd and turkey is doing the same with the Kurds right now. So…
Edit: Holy shit. Going through your history made me want to take a shower.
whatever makes you feel better after supporting mass murder.
Ah! And the folks on bottom?
Do you really have to pick one side out of these two?
And if you lived in Tibet, Taiwan, Korea, etc, you’d probably not be super into the folks on the bottom.
Who said anything about a choice?
They both killed a lot of people. Choose neither. Don't wish that death upon strangers.
The only country actually running over people with tanks is Israel and does it with the unconditional support of the US
Liberals as always don’t see Arabs as people. Don’t you dare come asking for our votes.
I'm not. I'm saying both are bad. The others mass murder too. Choosing them out of spite for the first is wishing a similar mass death on someone else. You'd be as guilty of those deaths as liberal voters are for yours.
Vote for who you want just don’t pretend your helping yourself or anyone else
Right back at ya
And Hamas doesn't see LGBT people as people. Liberals don't want to murder me for the way I was created.
So if I understand correctly, all 2.5 million in Gaza over 40% children deserve to be slaughtered in the most cruel way possible? Did you even watch the doctor's testimony?
Edit: Also no one is asking you to vote for Hamas. Hamas is not on the ballot. And despite the pinkwashing Israel is a fascist racist country.
Oh I will absolutely denounce Israeli wartime tactics as excessive, as well as call their settlements illegal. The question is whether you will likewise denounce Hamas as terrorists, or will you lift them up as freedom fighters?
I'm not sure if you could apply to all of them... because, I'm not sure what Kim Jong Un would be doing in the middle east... That would definitely be an interesting one but, that at least applies to Stalin too, it didn't last long, but Stalin absolutely steamrolled Iran there for a bit.
If you wanna know "what would happen" to central-asian countries under soviet rule, you can, well, look at central-asian countries under soviet rule, such as Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan, lightyears away in terms of progress from other central-asian countries with a history of western colonialism like Pakistan.
How very republican of you.
I'm not am American. How can I be a Republican?
By only caring of things when they affect you.
I could say the same about you. Do you care about the mass murders Obama and Biden has comitted?
Solidarity forever