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?
Short answer: the Kremlin.
Long answer: Kremlin paid propaganda leaking everywhere.
It’s not lemmy.ml as a source, but rather a symptom.
I see two things going on:
- A general fall in trust in democratic institutions, as those institutions fail to represent people adequately;
- A clear realization of global injustice perpetuated by democratc countries against the will of people.
There aren’t many that that think that Iran’s goverment is good for Iranian people, but they do see that they are defending their civilization. This umderstanding requires that the observer is able to maintain two observations at the same time, instead of requoring complete black & white intepretations.
our flaws are nothing
Completely true if you don’t consider Palestinians as equals. Or Vietnamese. Or Koreans. Or Black people. Or Ukrainians. Or women. Or the entire continent of Africa. Or the entire continent of South America. Or the entire continent of Asia.
Literally unbelievable you’d be saying this during genocide in Palestine and western invasion of Iran.
you need to think like a cave man, conspiracy theorist, and an idiot all at the same time. america bad, therefore not-Amera good. Wikipedia is anti-communist propaganda
It’s on you that you’re incapable of understanding criticism to Wikipedia, it’s actually quite simple:
Wikipedia, especially so English Wikipedia, is edited primarily by tech-literate men living in the Anglosphere, and it’s sourced primarily by Anglosphere sources. For this reason, Wikipedia will portray the same bias that those individuals and sources portray.
That’s it, that’s literally it, it’s not so hard to understand. Now, if you understand this, and you are aware that Anglo media and individuals portray an Anticommunist view, then Wikipedia will simply replicate this view. It’s not just anticommunist, Wikipedia has its share of misogyny, of racism…
mirror images of conservatives, just look at them. they are more closer to liberterian-republicans, too afraid to be called republicans but support thier policies 100%.
Totally, we communists support republican policies like checks notes universal healthcare, free education, guaranteed housing, guaranteed employment, state pensions…
And then there’s .ml tankies that also support wars of conquest (if by Russia or probably if China, too), harsh censorship, wholesale slaughter of perceived enemies, etc.
The question wasn’t about communists. It was about the dipshit tankies on .ml.
“Tankie” is a pejorative for communist, I think you’re confused here.
I can’t speak for everyone, but a lot of people have learned to just ignore many reports from international news organizations about anything, since those same organizations routinely repeat the US government’s released data, which has been filtered by international conglomerates with their own interests.
This is because those claims are often found to be untrue or wildly exaggerated after the dust settles.
That skepticism is the result of decades of “fake news” leading to a general doubt of any claim as a baseline.
…and that’s just for starters.
So, first, you must agree on what the truth is with sources that you can trust. Good luck.
I’ve read that Iran killed 30,000 people, but can’t read Arabic or know the context of images I have seen, and this could be true, however, given the track record of US media, I would consider the number to be wildly exaggerated just as a matter of course.
Also, I know that even IF it is true, that Iran has killed 30,000 protestors, the “good guys” can’t stop Iran and “win one for democracy and human civilization” without murdering many magnitudes more.
Anyway, I want to read about the IRON WALL the USSR built to stop people from escaping, please share
(not a tankie, and I think Muslims and all other religions should pay the same taxes as everybody else, which they consider to be a wild affront to their dignity)
Anyway, I want to read about the IRON WALL the USSR built to stop people from escaping, please share
Not OP, but my guess is the “IRON WALL” they’re referencing is a conglomeration of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. The vast majority of the iron curtain was enforced with military patrols, not a literal wall.
Wait… Do you think the Iron curtain was a literal iron wall?
Lemmy.ml is largely made up of communists, who support the working classes holding state authority, rather than capitalist states where authoritarian control is in the hands of the tiny capitalist class over the working classes. State authority isn’t independent of class struggle, but is a product of it, and as such all states are “authoritarian,” but it’s far better for the working classes to hold that. And for what it’s worth, Iran is supported against the west and Israel, not as a socialist state.
As for your post body, a number of claims you made are lies.
Iran shot 30,000 people in less than than 2 weeks.
Incorrect, the UN estimates ~3100 total deaths. Western press made up the 30,000 figure at the behest of the CIA/Mossad to help foment regime change before their invasion.
The Soviet Union had to build a fucking Iron wall to prevent people from escaping.
No? Do you really think a landmass that large would do something like that? There was a wall in Berlin, but that was just as much to keep West Germans out, as the Cold War had tons of spies on both sides.
China censors the internet.
Not really a problem, it’s a good thing western spyware like Facebook isn’t allowed, and VPNs are plentiful. Censorship isn’t willy-nilly, it’s largely the internet equivalent of industrial protectionism.
China wants to eliminate Islam.
No? China has freedom of religion.
Watching anime is a crime.
No it isn’t, lol.
The West has many flaws. But our flaws are nothing compared to these guys.
It’s the opposite. Socialist countries have flaws and real problems, but the genocidal western empire is the biggest obstacle holding human progress back. They plunder the global south, are obliterating Palestine, and are all surging to the rightas the empire falls.
According to your UN site there:
Iranian authorities have acknowledged 3,117 deaths and approximately 3,000 arrests, whereas human rights organisations estimate these figures to be in the tens of thousands.
So its IRAN claiming 3100. Not the UN
The “Human Rights Orgs” have provided little to no evidence of there being deaths in the tens of thousands.
Communists are authoritarians because that’s what communism is, like by definition; it’s hard-left but also authoritarian. That’s literally what separates lib-left from auth-left, the same obviously being for lib-right and auth-right (I’m just going off of the standard four-quadrant political compass, which probably has its own deep, foundational issues).
I have friends who are self proclaimed “tankies”, and talking to them a lot about it, my best understanding of the way they put it is basically:
You need an Iron Fist® to fix anything, and an Iron Fist® to keep it that way.
I also think that .ml probably has a percentage of people from those locations, and most people, period, tend to think their way is the best way. Which is also fairly hard to prove because history keeps being altered and destroyed and humans only live for like 60-90 years and we don’t have a very advanced intergenerational memory. Or maybe we do but just don’t know how to learn very well from it when all it seems to scream is “BREED, EAT, SLEEP, STINKY, TRIBE, SCARY, RUN, FIGHT, SAFE, LOVE”. It’s like some people’s own evolutionary biology tells them to prevent others from learning history to establish dominance and power.
Hard to say whether or not we’ll make it. The solution-path definitely has a lot of construction and destruction.
You need an Iron Fist® to fix anything, and an Iron Fist® to keep it that way.
Unfortunately the existence and hegemony of the US in the previous century has de-facto meant that yes, you need an iron Fist to fix things and to maintain such things. The question is who wields this fist. In capitalism, the bourgeois wield it, they exercise this violence everyday (e.g. half a million murders yearly through economic sanctions by the US and EU alone). In socialism, it’s the working class who wield it against capitalists, and you’ll never forgive them for doing so.
I support the system that feeds the children and kills Nazis.
Thats also why old people think the young people’s culture is wrong. Thats not how they grew up, and they were born and made it old/successful enough to reproduce, so its a system that works so why would they change it with their new music and hairstyles? Theyre gonna get us all killed man.
In my experience the attitude of many of the more prolific users there is something like “America and the West are doing evil things, so their enemies must be the good guys”. Atrocities by Western-aligned states are readily accepted as facts, but those committed by countries on “their” side never happened and are merely Western propaganda. They’ll cite North Korea’s constitution to “prove” that it’s a free and democratic country, but when you point out reports showing that the reality on the ground is quite different from what’s written in the constitution, that’s of course just Western propaganda and the people who fled the country are being paid to spread lies. That dismissive attitude makes it impossible to have a serious discussion with them.
That said, I now have a solid blocklist of their “worst offenders” and found that there are plenty of people with way more balanced opinions as well.
Also some people have complete and utter, naive faith in the written law and intent.
Hello, a rational .ml guy reporting in
My political opinions are:
what if we just like were able to eat and stuff like that, that’d be pretty dope
Come over to our server 😘
It’s honestly suspicious that you haven’t been banned yet.
Nah, they fit right in at Lemmy.ml.
Actually after meaning to do it for a while and constantly forgetting about it I’ve decided to make myself go ahead and make a piefed account before I once again fall into the loop of “eh I’ll make it later” and them promptly forgetting it 2 seconds later
That’s implying that this is actually controversial and ot supported by other ideologies.
But that’s just a pet peave of mine.
“America and the West are doing evil things, so their enemies must be the good guys”
It’s illuminating. I used to be a hardcore anarco-capitalist/radical libertarian and that community had exactly the same thought pattern:
- Vietnam/Middle East show how USA lies for domination
- Snowden showed how CIA/NSA lies for control
- Markets showed how the Fed lies for moneyed elites
… and so on, so that it becomes a given truth that everything the government says is a lie, no matter what.
So then COVID comes along and all the libertarians are “FAUCI LIES! COVID IS JUST FLU!”
A few months (and a lot of Russian influence ) later, these people are believing that mRNA vaccines cause heart disease, etc etc etcANYWAY, what’s interesting to me is how these two diametrically opposed ideological communities – Tankies and AnCaps – have almost exactly the same group dynamics pathology.
I can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of “anarcho-capitalists”. Glad it’s past tense for you.
Wait until you read what real anarchists think of AnCaps.
ofc you understand AnCaps feel the same way about AnComs; that they’re fundamentally a contradiction
If one lacks compassion, then of course they won’t understand how someone can choose to support their community even without the government making them do it.
it’s because they want to feel special.
the root of so much of the people that get caught in these delusional thought pattern is simple massive insecurity. and by clinging to a delusion you can mask it with a feeling of superiority because you KNOW THE TRUTH.
same reason people get recruited into cults. the cultists specifically target insecure people they can emotionally exploit and isolate. they are not interested in secure people who are grounded in reality, because there is nothing for their manipulation tactics to work on.
extremist politics also always become quasi-religions, or merge with fundamentalist religious belief.
superiority because you KNOW THE TRUTH
Oh God yes, this this this!!
The Conspiracy folks all really get off on being Smarter Than You because the have Access to the Secret Knowledge. Once you have seen the evidence (eg “Fahrenheit 451”) and started associating yourself with “like-minded people”, then you too will become an Anointed One.
Culty culty cult
It is very seductive for people who feel their intellect and insights are not being seen.
Relevant Contrapoints: https://youtu.be/teqkK0RLNkI
Edit: lol at the .mls downvoting this
Horseshoe theory strikes again
Care to PM this list of offenders, please? I’m also trying to sanitize my feed.
I blocked the entire lemmy.ml. After a few months of paying attention I found that there were no thoughtful or interesting posts or comments from any user there, only glorification of authoritarians.
i blocked the triads, hexbear, lemmygrad, ml. lemmygrad is less of a problem since i dont see thier posts as much anyways, usually its mostly ml or hexbear, and they have taken over some other instances too.
i blocked them because .ml users constantly harass me, telling me what a brainwashed idiot I am for not thinking China is a utopia.
I don’t block them. I just keep pressing them for an explanation of their personal philosophy. Not regurgitated, preconstructed points, actual personal philosophy. It usually goes “accusation of fascism/zionist”, “bad faith/strawman/red herring/I don’t have to explain it to you”, “you’re a nihilistic anarchist”, non-sequitur, list of actions they’ve taken irl but can’t/won’t break anonymity to prove (anybody can claim they’ve done anything in an anonymous forum), and finally inform me they’re blocking me. I mean, that’s great, block me online. I still exist in the real world and you’re going to have to face me someday. Unless of course you empower your own authoritarian regime that will keep my constant demands for your individual opinion and “nihilistic anarchist” viewpoints blocked from society. Which is what I think they want, zero challenge from any source or counter philosophy.
i feel like thier accusation of zionism, is just the same thing as being anti-semetic in a way too.
I see this refrain a ton but have not had the same experience and I fairly regularly get into arguments with them. I’m perma banned from some communities on those instances cause of the PTBs they are. The worst I received was my first ever “kys” message from one member’s alt(but them and their main were handled in pretty short order). But that was one message of harassment, out of the probably hundred or so people I’ve pissed off so far.
To be very clear, I don’t go into their communities looking for fights. But I have 2 big principles I’m not willing to waiver even a tiny bit on. Those being Hasan absolutely shocked his dog, and Harris would in fact have been better than trump.
They just hate me because I have a basic grasp of economics and I don’t think businesses and landlords are inherently evil.
Who is Hasan? Some dumbass tiktoker?
don’t think businesses and landlords are inherently evil.
Literally every capitalist theory, from Adam Smith’s to Mill, from Hayek to Henry George:
Landlords are inherently evil.
Streamer they worship like maga worship trump.
Why did he shock his dog? Not that there is any reasonable justification, I just want context.
right, so an abusive narcissistic POS person they wish they could be.
make sense he’d abuse his dog rather than train it. god forbid you like… have empathy or compassion for another living thing and use that to bond with it… lol
That is a good summary.
Atrocities by Western-aligned states are readily accepted as facts, but those committed by countries on “their” side never happened and are merely Western propaganda
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.
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.
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.
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).
Well I can’t speak for others, but I’m on lemmy.ml because the instance says it’s “A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers”. And in my experience that pretty much checks out, for all the talk I see from others about how it’s a den of authoritarianism and whatnot the actual amount of that I see on the actual instance is minimal. Yeah moderation sucks sometimes, but so it does on most every other instance though. Their approach to defederation seems to be avoiding it, and I don’t have to see any Nazi stuff or shit like that, so I’m good for now. Pick your poison.
The West has many flaws. But our flaws are nothing compared to these guys.
Well if you look a bit closer at the history of the cold war you will find that “the West”, mostly in the form of the CIA, destroyed a lot of nascent communist or even just social democratic governments worldwide through covert means, and sometimes even militarily. In the face of such a threat you are basically forced to become even more authoritarian, if you want your communist government to survive that is. So “the West” instituted a process of selection through political (and military) pressure if you will. Hence why there are no surviving liberal communist states left to discuss.
Anyway, I don’t think there is much of consensus here on lemmy.ml whether these countries are good or bad (or even something more nuanced). What I think often happens is that someone voices “critical support”, as in they say something like “Iran has a right to self-defence” although they don’t agree with everything else Iran does, and someone from another instance comes along to read it and confirmation-biases that into “typical lemmy.ml user, fully supports that theocratic regime”.
I mean just look at the straw man you build in your OP, supposedly I’m supporting the Islamic regime in Iran, and the anti-Islamic regime in China!? Bit of a stretch there mate…
I had my first account on .ml because “hey this is the official instance run by the devs, that sounds like a solid starting point” but after seeing how strong the anti-west, pro-authoritarian nonsense is on there (especially leading up to the 2024 election, the apathetic “both sides” people were out in full force), I decided to move to a different instance.
I’m not denying that there are such people around, but I don’t really think they are in the majority. Most of the specific things you mention I saw coming just as much if not more from other servers.
The Nazi bar example comes to mind.
Certainly the most vocal
A table with an unopposed Nazi is a nazi table.
Same goes for stalinists.
You haven’t been paying attention then. Dessalines, the head admin, regularly instance bans people for speaking about the genocide in China in .ml communities.
I mean I have seen that accusation thrown around a lot, but from what I remember it was a few cases a long time (years?) back. But yeah to be honest I haven’t really been paying attention, so if you have evidence to the contrary feel free to let me know. The goals and rules of the server as stated seem fine to me, and I haven’t seen anything that really deviated too far from that.
Anyway, like I said I may not agree with every moderation decision, but I probably wouldn’t on other instances either. Didn’t your instance just defederate the Germans for their heavy-handed moderation of anything remotely antisemitic? I mean I would get it with any other instance I guess, but your users didn’t get why the Germans would be a bit iffy with this stuff?
You seem way too knowledgeable about lemmy sever bans and federations for being “just some casual ml dude”.
Defending the TERF dessalines too … Bravo
This is part of why ml users get a bad rap. Both of your core statements/assumptions here are false, to a degree that it would be easier to assume bad faith and move on with my life than to type this response up.
So Dessalines’s continued and ongoing banning of any negative talk about China or Russia:
I’m not a particular fan of !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works, but what I see when I look at that community for the past month is mostly a running log of questionable at best bans that lemmy.ml admins, including Dessalines, have handed out.
I picked out some that stand out to me, but please peruse that community and your own instance’s mod logs at your leisure. You should be able to filter the mod logs themselves by action, and I believe by the mod or admin that took the action.
- https://infosec.pub/post/45516756
- https://infosec.pub/post/45465185
- https://infosec.pub/post/45126301
- https://lemmy.cafe/post/33294487
- https://lemmy.cafe/post/32620981
That poster clearly has a bone to pick, and that community does especially, but there is a concerning pattern there as well.
Didn’t your instance just defederate the Germans for their heavy-handed moderation of anything remotely antisemitic?
That is… quite an interpretation of what happened. Anti-semitism is not tolerated on db0. You see it, go report it and tell us what happens. Anti-zionism is not anti-semitism.
From the db0 admin team’s mouths, their take on what happened: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/63525728
Funny enough, they don’t look kindly on Meanwhile on Grad/MoG. And I downvoted that post, voting that I did not want to defed from feddit.
Removed by mod
Whenever I come across a post like OP describes, and I check the instance, it’s ml (with a bit of hex in the mix). It seems fair to me to ask this question.
But then I guess the discrepancy is: “90% of a specific kind of users are on this instance”, which is absolutely not the same as “90% of this instances users are of this kind”
That handful includes the admins though.
Tiny penis syndrome.
Define authoritarian in a way that excludes the US and Europe but includes any country you listed.
No democracy. Single leader with cult following. Vanguard partyism.
I live in Spain. We have a literal monarch and royal family.
In the previous decade, a leftist party called Podemos appeared, and started to poll very high. Because this is unacceptable in Europe, the state came up with a solution:
A far-right wing of the police started to fabricate false evidence of funding of Podemos by Iran and Venezuela (history rhymes huh?), leaked it to capitalist media, and the media, ALL media, ran stories for YEARS about Podemos and Venezuela, about how they wanted to turn Spain into a Bolivarian republic and create hyperinflation… They destroyed a party from the state + media apparatus through an illegal lawfare psyop, and literally nobody has gone to jail for this.
Tell me again in how much of a democracy I live, where far-right parties are free to promote hate and leftist parties are literally destroyed by the state and media apparatus.
Vanguard partyism
Might as well just define it as, “Has socialist in the name” at that point.
The US and Europe aren’t democracies, while many of the listed countries are democracies.
Lol
The USSR had steady and consistent economic growth, and provided free, high quality education and healthcare, full employment, cheap or free housing, and fantastic infrastructure and city planning that still lasts to this day despite capitalism neglecting it. This rapid development resulted in dramatic democratization of society, reduced disparity, doubling of life expectancy, tripling of functional literacy rates to 99.9%, and much more. Living in the 1930s famine would not have been good, but it was the last major famine outside of wartime because the soviets ended famine in their countries.
Literacy rates, societal guarantees in the 1936 constitution, reports on the healthcare system over time, and more are good sources for these claims.
The USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about.
The Kim family does have outsized influence, but the DPRK is not a hereditary monarchy. For example, the position of President, held by Kim Il-Sung, was abolished and split into multiple positions upon his death. This is why he is remembered as the “Eternal President.” As such, both Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong-Un have held different positions. Both have held high positions, for example Kim Jong-Il had the title of General Secretary of the Worker’s Party of Korea, a position held by Kim Jong-Un presently. However, this is not the whole story.
The DPRK has a much more distributed level of power, and the Kim family is both widely supported due to its influence, and yet is not the undisputed top-dog, so to speak. What’s more, the Kim family is so venerated precisely because the legacy of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il is lived memory, imagine if Lenin had survived and raised his children as successors. It would be no wonder that the soviets would have elected his children, but it would not be a monarchy either.
Finally, class. Class is not a level of material wealth, but a relation to production and distribution. The DPRK is overwhelmingly publicly owned and planned, administration is not a distinct class in and of itself but a subset of broader classes, same with intellectuals. What determines class is based on that key aspect, the Kim family does not own capital but instead recieves wages from the state. Kim Jong-Un is largely used as a symbol, one that is democratically elected and directly trained by his father for the position.
This is why it’s important to actually study the real systems at play, rather than coast on pre-formed opinions drilled into us about the DPRK from western media. The Black Panther Party maintained good relations with the DPRK, visiting it and teaching Juche to Americans.
From Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance:
The DPRK’s electoral democracy relates primarily to the people’s assemblies, along with local state organs, assemblies, and committees. Every eligible citizen may stand for election, so much so that independent candidates are regularly elected to the people’s assemblies and may even be elected to be the speaker or chair. The history of the DPRK has many such examples. I think here of Ryu Mi Yong (1921–2016), who moved from south to north in 1986 so as to take up her role as chair of the Chondoist Chongu Party (The Party of the Young Friends of the Heavenly Way, formed in 1946). She was elected to the Supreme People’s Assembly and became a member of the Standing Committee (then called the Presidium). Other examples include Gang Ryang Uk, a Presbyterian minister who was a leader of the Korean Christian Federation (a Protestant organisation) and served as vice president of the DPRK from 1972 until his death in 1982, as well as Kim Chang Jun, who was an ordained Methodist minister and became vice-chair of the Supreme People’s Assembly (Ryu 2006, 673). Both Gang and Kim were buried at the Patriots’ Cemetery.
How do elections to all of the various bodies of governance work? Elections are universal and use secret ballots, and are—notably—direct. To my knowledge, the DPRK is the only socialist country that has implemented direct elections at all levels. Neither the Soviet Union (in its time) nor China have embraced a complete system of direct elections, preferring—and here I speak of China—to have direct elections at the lower levels of the people’s congresses, and indirect elections to the higher levels. As for candidates, it may initially seem as though the DPRK follows the Soviet Union’s approach in having a single candidate for each elected position. This is indeed the case for the final process of voting, but there is also a distinct difference: candidates are selected through a robust process in the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland. As mentioned earlier, the struggle against Japanese imperialism and liberation of the whole peninsula drew together many organisations, and it is these that came to form the later Democratic Front. The Front was formed on 25 July, 1949 (Kim Il Sung 1949), and today includes the three political parties, and a range of mass organisations from the unions, youth, women, children, agricultural workers, journalism, literature and arts, and Koreans in Japan (Chongryon). Notably, it also includes representation from the Korean Christian Federation (Protestant), Korean Catholic Federation, and the Korean Buddhist Federation. All of these mass organisations make up the Democratic Front, and it is this organisation that proposes candidates. In many respects, this is where the multi-candidate dimension of elections comes to the fore. Here candidates are nominated for consideration from all of the mass organisations represented. Their suitability and merit for the potential nomination is debated and discussed at many mass meetings, and only then is the final candidate nominated for elections to the SPA. Now we can see why candidates from the Chondoist movement, as well as from the Christian churches, have been and can be elected to the SPA and indeed the local assemblies.
To sum up the electoral process, we may see it in terms of a dialectical both-and: multi-candidate elections take place in the Democratic Front, which engages in extensive consideration of suitable candidates; single candidate elections take place for the people’s assemblies. It goes without saying that in a non-antagonistic system of class and group interaction, the criterion for election is merit and political suitability
As for the bodies of governance, there is a similar continuity and discontinuity compared with other socialist countries. Unlike the Soviet Union, there is a unicameral Supreme People’s Assembly, which is the highest authority in terms of laws, regulations, the constitution, and all leadership roles. The SPA is also responsible for the national economic plan, the country’s budget, and foreign policy directions (Han 2016, 47–48). At the same time, the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland has an analogous function to a second organ of governance. This is a uniquely Korean approach to the question of a second organ of governance. While not an organ of governance as such, it plays a direct role in electoral democracy (see above), as well as the all-important manifestation of consultative democracy (see below). A further reason for this unique role of the Democratic Front may be adduced: while the Soviet Union and China see the second body or organ as representative of all minority nationalities and relevant groups, the absence of minority nationalities in a much smaller Korea means that such a form of representation is not needed.
The form of democracy and the mode of production in China ensures that there is a connection between the people and the state. Policies like the mass line are in place to ensure this direct connection remains. This is why over 90% of the Chinese population supports the government, and why they have such strong perceptions around democracy:
The Chinese political system is based on whole-process people’s democracy, a form of consultative democracy. The local government is directly elected, and then these governments elect people to higher rungs, meaning any candidate at the top level must have worked their way up from the bottom and directly proved themselves. Combining this consultative, ground-up democracy with top-down economic planning is the key to China’s success.
I highly recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. Socialist democracy has been imperfect, but has gone through a number of changes and adaptations over the years as we’ve learned more from testing theory to practice. Boer goes over the history behind socialist democracy in this textbook.
So you failed given every European country and the US also has that. (as much as China or Cuba at least.)
The mistake you’re making is thinking that criticising other authoritarian regimes means supporting the one you live in.
It’s not a zero sum game.
OP’s post literally says “our flaws are nothing compared to these guys”, it’s not the commenter above who brought the west up.
Also, that’s not what “zero sum game” means, you’re maybe thinking false dichotomy?
No, the mistake I’m making is pretending any person using the word ‘authoritarian’ has thought for two seconds about the word or what it means. Hence why I’m trying to encourage those to think beyond the propaganda and instead actually dive into the philosophy it’s trying to obscure.
Authoritarianism, also known as ‘any two or more humans living together,’ is a meaningless buzzword invented in the 1940s to try to differentiate American and Fascist societies to get Americans on board with fighting their ideological clones across the Atlantic.
It has no static definition that meaningfully separates any society from any other society.
“Authoritarian regimes are actually just regimes, actually!”
What a stupid take to protect the fascists lol.
It is a valid point, though. Some people don’t even realize they’re in it. Like frogs in a pot of water, they’ve been boiled and are unaware.
I think a lot of Americans are under the assumption that post-Trump we just go back to freedomtm. And I hope that’s the case, but I’m skeptical.
In order to get close to freedom we’d at bare minimum have to go back to before Reagan.
I keep hearing equally unrealistic things that hinge on magical one-off situations. “What if he has a stroke?” or “The Dems will win and it will all change.” It won’t. They’re not going to self-regulate any more than they did in the past.
I want to create a world where each person give according to their ability and take according to their need.
It’s pretty cringe that they paint themselves this innocent.
i mean, its been the thesis of leftism for a little while now.
you got a better thesis for a different organisation of the economy?
There cannot be a better thesis because that is literally the best thesis.
It’s also a thesis that would only work properly for a colony of ants. Otherwise, all we get is an authoritarian shithole, which isn’t much of an improvement over our current capitalist shithole.
