I… am?
What is this, I am against dictatorial abominations, so that means I am in favor of capitalist abuse? I am literally saying that opposition to capitalism is shooting itself in the foot by tolerating the existence of authoritarian “communists”.
Unless you’re an actual tankie, your words towards me make no sense.
Poorly, but not worse than a dictatorship(such as the USSR).
What’s your point?
No, I’m just saying tankie infestations are so widespread and loud that they have a decent amount of leverage on what the average person thinks of communism, and tankie opposing leftists are either not loud enough, or not numerous enough.
Failing to account for greed for power some people have is in itself a fatal flaw, to be honest. Anyone who advocates for the exact same actions and glorifies the USSR knows what they are doing, they’re hoping to come out on top after their desired revolution. Unfortunately, there are plenty of those kinds of people on this platform…
It doesn’t, but in this thread’s we see a simultaneous claim of “We aren’t tankies, of course Stalin and Mao are not good examples of communists” and “Eastern european people were better off under the USSR”. Of course, I don’t think the same people are making both claims, but just the fact that some people can claim the latter and not get collectively shunned is indicative of a huge problem in leftist spaces, it’s disgusting frankly. Tankies are significant force, at least partially representing leftism to everyone else.
“observable scientific and philosophical truths” cannot point to an existence of any sort of higher power, by the very definition of a higher power. All you can do is believe in a higher power, all religion is dogma.
And when people who actually lived in these area during that period almost ALL of them say communism was better!
Lol. Almost all of my grandparents and greatgrandparents disagreed and personally told me about their life during USSR occupation, and the two that don’t were well connected with officials and generally lived much better than the average person, enjoying vacations to Cuba frequently, something tue average person could never afford.
Everyone else just lived in pretty poor, if stable, conditions. None of that “communism = starve to death” meme nonsense that some try to push, but it just wasn’t good. After fall of the USSR, things went worse before they became better, but now things are significantly better for the average person.
From my eastern block friends they are very confused how the USA could have allow homelessness
Yeah, looking from the outside, the USA seems like it’s in a mess that it needs to fix.
but they do talk about how everyone at least had a home and some standard of living - where it seems the standard of living is higher in Western countries.
It is easy to look back at worse times in the past with pink glasses of nostalgia… Yes, everyone did have a home, but the standard of living was piss-poor - except for people with connections, who had it much muuuuch better, like my aforementioned grandparents.
I’m from one of the Baltic states, and honestly the standards of living now are much better for the vast majority of people than it was in the USSR, even for minimum wage earners.
Sure, but the meme refers to the communities on the internet that unironically go full tankie, praising Stalin and Mao.
Worst of all, tankies tend to inflitrate sane leftist spaces and slowly transform them. I’ve witnessed it many times, and that just makes me think that Marxists-Leninists are just the most dominant form of leftism on the internet, which is horrible.
A lot of eastern Europeans actually miss/look back fondly on the USSR days…
Being from here, I can say that those are are people who either 1. Look back fondly just because they were young back then, and now they’re old, or 2. Were connected enough to the party to be privileged.
Grandparents from one side of my family were the latter, and their political views nowadays are strongly pro-Russian these days, while everyone else(whose lives were improved after fall of USSR) is pro-Western. Funny how that works.
It’s easy to register on an instance, the hard part is choosing one. “Which one is the right one to choose and commit to?” is a newbie question that honestly is often overthought. Choice paralysis is real for some people…
My problem with Lemmy is the lack of activity in niche communities. You’re right that there needs to be a critical mass and arguably Lemmy has it, but only for the most mainstream, generic type of content. It doesn’t have the mass to sustain any sort of niche, outside of maybe tech related topics because of the way the userbase is slanted.
I find myself going back there often because of that, but I hope that the userbase for generic content enough to sustain and grow, from where more active niche communities can spring up.