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?
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