Many people on lemmy.ml deeply respect and admire authoritarian governments and organizations.
Iran, China, North Korea, Soviet Union…
The West has many flaws. But our flaws are nothing compared to these guys.
Iran hangs homosexuals. Iran shot 30,000 people in less than than 2 weeks. The Soviet Union had to build a fucking Iron wall to prevent people from escaping. The Soviets lied about the Chernobyl nuclear explosion. China censors the internet. China wants to eliminate Islam. North Korea is a totalitarian hellscape. Watching anime is a crime.
Why is lemmy.ml so fascinated with authoritarians?
You’ll never find more staunch and nuanced criticism of socialist mistakes than that which takes place within socialism. It’s through communists that I learned and loathed things such as the deportation of ethnic Koreans in THE USSR, the actual scope and mechanisms and functioning of the GULAG system, or the anti-landlord revolts in China.
I highly encourage you to actually go with an open mind, and have an honest conversation with a comrade like @Cowbee@lemmy.ml or @AnarchoBolshevik@lemmygrad.ml about any of those topics. Not an argument, just a discussion to listen to what they have to say. You may be surprised.
Of course those people exist. Heck, I consider myself a socialist and the socialist party in my country has no issues whatsoever criticizing countries like China or North Korea. But those kind of nuanced opinions aren’t really the ones you’ll find over and over again on the frontpage of ml.
Of the users you named, I only know Cowbee, as Lemmygrad is defederated anyway. He’s definitely very knowledgable about communist theory and he’s capable of having an actual discussion, yes. Not even close to one of the worst users over there. But from my discussions with him, he’s quite obsessed with theory over practice and is perfectly willing to defend the IMO indefensible regime of North Korea.
But they exclusively criticise said countries, no praise for their achievements. Assuming you’re from the EU/US/Canada/Australia, your “socialist” party offers no alternative to Capitalism, just milquetoast reforming at best and continuation of austerity policy (as for the past 20 years) at worst. If they don’t want off capitalism, they can hardly call themselves socialists.
No, that’s entirely untrue. They (Die Linke in Germany FYI) have frequently praised China’s economic system and social progress, while still criticizing its authoritarianism and aggressive foreign policy.
Lol thank you for destroying your own credibility and saving me the trouble
Die Linke? Die “Israel’s right to exist is non-negotiable” Linke? If “socialists” are Zionist they’re not socialists.
Also, Germany saying that a country’s foreign policy is aggressive is laughable. At least Chinese men below 45 can leave their country without notifying their army lmfao
So instead of staying on-topic (the claim that Western socialist parties never praise China’s achievements), you’re somehow trying to deflect the topic to Israel when disproven. Then instead of judging China’s foreign policy on its own merit, you go all “what about” and with false, outdated information as well. And that’s supposed to be the “honest conversation” you were talking about? Yeah no. It’s exactly what I described in my initial post. My blocklist grows by 1 today.
Keep supporting “socialist” pro-Israel parties, you keep proving us how much German “leftists” care about non-germans. Bunch of fucking Nazis supporting genocide.
Criticise China, support Israel, what a fucking great socialist party!
Ok but it’s fucking ridiculous to criticize China’s foreign policy as aggressive and then defend Israel.
Marxist criticism of China is they aren’t aggressive enough! (I don’t necessarily agree with that)
Okay, I didn’t really want to get into it, but since you seem to take Riverside’s statement as fact, let me put the actual facts straight: It definitely can’t be said that the party “supports Israel”. Their official position is to stop all arms sales to Israel, sanction them and to officially recognize Palestine as an independent state. They actively participate in protests for Gaza etc, as you can read about here. The statement that Riverside referred to was a response to party members going “too far” with their criticism in the minds of the leadership, by denying Israel their right to exist. Criticism of Israel in Germany is often more careful and muted than elsewhere. Surely, you can see why that’s the case in the country that murdered 6 million Jews. They have a fine line to walk.
It’s definitely a topic you can have a discussion about. But bringing it up in this thread only served to derail the discussion. And the way they phrased it to make the party appear like they’re supporting the genocide was just plain manipulative.
The Germans murdered tens of millions of communists in the same war, why not tread carefully in their criticism of communists?
I don’t put theory over practice, they are both crucial. I am perfectly willing to defend the DPRK from Yeonmi Park-style nonsense as it’s the most propagandized against country in the world. Is it perfect? No, no country is, but it also isn’t literally hell on Earth either, it’s a real socialist state that does a lot with how little they have due to sanctions, similar to Cuba (and both Cuba and the DPRK have historically been on great terms, which is a good litmus test to begin with).
You dont have a socialist party, they are social democrats at best and proponents of western imperialism
And you still think that communism is the way? If so you’re just spreading their propaganda.
It did volunteerly kill millions, and still is in its remnants of russia for example. If you need a nuanced person to “open your eyes” for the atrocities made in URSS/USSR why not talk with a nuanced nazi, you might learn that they too did bad things. /s
Those discussions are such shit shows, stop trying to reanimate the old horrors of past, we actually have new interesting theories that might actually work without killing everyone.
Socialism in real life has achieved the absolute highest rates of improvement for the working classes in terms of life metrics, immense social equality, and has presented a path forward in an era of dying capitalist imperialism. You’re spreading propaganda too, knowingly or not, given that propaganda is merely agitating for your own beliefs.
The “millions intentionally killed” by socialism consist of landlords, capitalists, fascists, the Nazis, etc. Socialism has never killed people willy-nilly, but has run into conflict with the old ruling classes time and time again, as socialism is the establishment of working class power over the former ruling classes.
This implies the communists and Nazis are equal evils, a form of Holocaust trivialization called Double Genocide Theory. Communists, upon gaining politucal power, did and do their best to uplift the lives of working people. The Nazis on the other hand built industrialized mass murder, and attempted to colonize Europe the way Europe had colonized the world.
What are these theories? Any establishment of socialism will necessarily put you into conflict with the ruling classes of capitalism. Socialism historically has not been a “horror” for the working classes, and as such has been popularly supported by them. A theory being “interesting” doesn’t make it practical, nor is socialism “killing everyone.”
Above all, here, you cling to vagueposting. You erase class analysis, weeping for killed Nazis, and when it comes time to present a solution, you just say “other things might work” without elaborating. It’s sterile and negative “left” criticism that serves nobody.
Lol ok genocide lover, if it’s the URSS doing it, it’s okay.
Blocked.
Get a job
I despise genocide, what the hell is that pivot? The USSR never committed genocide, this is backed up by modern historical analysis. Are you calling killing Nazis “genocide?”
The Holodomor was a genocide
No, it was not. Once discovered that a famine was occuring, the soviets did what they could to prevent and alleviate it once it had started. The idea of an intentional famine is simply fringe among contemporary historians, same with claims of white genocide in South Africa. For example, serious bourgeois academic sources tend to say it was a failure of planning, rather than intentional and genocide. For instance, Mark Tauger wrote:
Tauger believes it was a failure of economic policy, not an intentional attack on ethnic Ukrainians. The 1930s famine was a combination of drought, flooding, and mismanagement. Further, the Kulaks, wealthy bourgeois farmers, magnified matters by killing their own crops in the midst of a famine rather than letting the Red Army collectivize them. The Politburo was also kept in the dark about how bad the famine was getting:
From: Archive of the President of the Russian Federation. Fond 3, Record Series 40, File 80, Page 58.
Excerpt from the protocol number of the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist party (Bolsheviks) “Regarding Measures to Prevent Failure to Sow in Ukraine, March 16th, 1932.
Letter to Joseph Stalin from Stanislaw Kosior, 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine regarding the course and the perspectives of the sowing campaign in Ukraine, April 26th, 1932.
Letter from Joseph Stalin to Stanislaw Kosior, 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, April 26th, 1932.
Muggeridge and Jones reported on the famine. Völkischer Beobachter reported on it as intentional, and then spread the story around further. Why would the soviets try to starve their own people? It was because of the soviets and collectivization of agriculture that famine was ended, and that’s why outside of wartime the 1930s famine was the final famine in those regions, with life expectancies doubling.
Overall, trying to hold on to red scare historiography does absolutely nothing to help the cause of socialism. The soviet archives have provided a wealth of knowledge largely affirming the communist narrative, and debunking liberal and fascist narratives about existing socialism. If you consider yourself a leftist of any sort, then you’ll inevitably run into people using the red scare against you too, so perpetuating their mythos just shoots your own movement in the foot.
Nice copy paste of r/communism talking points you got there
If your argument can be dismantled by copying and pasting that’s entirely your own fault
If I have spoken about something before, then there’s no advantage to rewriting the same information, is there? Do you dispute any of the evidence I brought? Do you have any of your own? It seems like you’re using the fact that this topic has been discussed before as proof of not needing to look at existing evidence, which is blatantly wrong. The fact that communists tend to agree on something is not evidence of it being “false,” no matter how much you frame agreement as “talking points.”
Either way, I am curious how long it will take you to become a Marxist, given you seem more curious about theory than most anti-communists.
Yeah, killing Nazis and landlords is necessary for progress sometimes, not something to criticise. Those are the vast majority of the people communism killed on purpose.
Because you’re committing a fallacy by comparing the two. Socialism has achieved, in practice, lowest inequality where it has been applied, universal healthcare, universal education, guaranteed employment, guaranteed housing, guaranteed state pensions for retirees, redistribution of land from landlords and nobility to peasants… In my homeland of Spain we had fascism, and it literally fought against all those things, we still have plenty of people in their 70s and 80s who cannot even read as a consequence. Communism saved Europe from Fascism, they’re literally the antithesis.
Stop trying to maintain capitalism by fighting against the only system in history which has proven it can destroy it and improve our lives.
The old: if you’re not with me you Must be pro USA/Capitalism.
Is that all you got?
Also the millions killed I referred to were the direct orders from stalin to kill millions of their own people (holodomor included).
But that’s just propaganda from “the west” right?
Anything’s possible when you make shit up kiddo
You’re literally making that up, though. Executions in the USSR aren’t numbered in the millions during the great terror, and holodomor was an unintentional famine, nobody was “killed”, it’s the result of unintentional side effects of the first successful mass collectivization in human history. The Soviet leaders knew the process would be chaotic if they embarked in rapid collectivization as they did, but it was a necessary choice enforced by the threat of external invasion and the need for rapid industrialization. It was a hard measure but it worked, and thanks to the rapid collectivization and industrialization, the soviets could create the industry that would 15 years later enable them to defeat Nazism, saving many more tens of millions than were lost in Holodomor.
See? We can do nuanced analysis of the policy. However, if you make ahistorical claims, such as “Stalin ordering the holodomor” (which is untenable under modern historiography), you’ll get called out for it.
For clarity, clashes between the kulaks and Red Army absolutely happened during collectivization in the 1930s, and many kulaks were killed as they took up arms to defend their bourgeois lifestyle. I’m not shedding tears for them just like I won’t shed tears for Nazis, landlords, etc, but these clashes did happen.
I did specify the great terror, for the most part the destiny of Kulaks in the early 1930s was sentenced by peasant trials, not by the Red Army. If I’m not wrong, most Kulaks who died during collectivization weren’t executed, they died during deportation.
Ah, gotcha. Definitely agree that the majority of the kulaks were dealt with by the peasantry that were under their thumb, just wanted to point out that frustrations between kulaks and the Red Army did happen.
Thankfully the red army was there to carry out the will of the masses
Stalin never gave direct orders to kill millions of soviet citizens, nor indirect. Even the Great Purge never exceeded ~700,000 sentencings to death, and was stopped because these sentencings far exceeded what Stalin and Molotov had set at a maximum number, which was around 70,000. The famine in the 1930s was not intentionally caused even if you believe it to have been amplified by mismanagement, either.
Once discovered that a famine was occuring, the soviets did what they could to prevent and alleviate it once it had started. The idea of an intentional famine is simply fringe among contemporary historians, same with claims of white genocide in South Africa. For example, serious bourgeois academic sources tend to say it was a failure of planning, rather than intentional and genocide. For instance, Mark Tauger wrote:
Tauger believes it was a failure of economic policy, not an intentional attack on ethnic Ukrainians. The 1930s famine was a combination of drought, flooding, and mismanagement. Further, the Kulaks, wealthy bourgeois farmers, magnified matters by killing their own crops in the midst of a famine rather than letting the Red Army collectivize them. The Politburo was also kept in the dark about how bad the famine was getting:
From: Archive of the President of the Russian Federation. Fond 3, Record Series 40, File 80, Page 58.
Excerpt from the protocol number of the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist party (Bolsheviks) “Regarding Measures to Prevent Failure to Sow in Ukraine, March 16th, 1932.
Letter to Joseph Stalin from Stanislaw Kosior, 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine regarding the course and the perspectives of the sowing campaign in Ukraine, April 26th, 1932.
Letter from Joseph Stalin to Stanislaw Kosior, 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, April 26th, 1932.
Muggeridge and Jones reported on the famine. Völkischer Beobachter reported on it as intentional, and then spread the story around further. Why would the soviets try to starve their own people? It was because of the soviets and collectivization of agriculture that famine was ended, and that’s why outside of wartime the 1930s famine was the final famine in those regions, with life expectancies doubling.
Overall, trying to hold on to red scare historiography does absolutely nothing to help the cause of socialism. The soviet archives have provided a wealth of knowledge largely affirming the communist narrative, and debunking liberal and fascist narratives about existing socialism. If you consider yourself a leftist of any sort, then you’ll inevitably run into people using the red scare against you too, so perpetuating their mythos just shoots your own movement in the foot.
Wow, one minute and downvoted.
Guess that’s all you have left.