I’ve seen several references to some sort of rift between the users of these instances today. What’s happening?
.world is full of apologists and denialists for western imperialism
.ml is full of tankies who think that ALL Americans are fascists (even those of us currently being terrorized by fascists).
FSM help you if you ever try to inject sanity into one of their “debates”
finally a both sides argument I can get behind !
☝️
We don’t think every single statesian is a fascist, but we do recognize that much of the statesian public is fascist along with the state. The US is a settler-colony, after all.
Obviously I’m generalizing and don’t think everyone on either instance is such a simplistic thinker. But I’ve been on the receiving end of plenty of insults from .ml accounts implying that ALL Americans are indistinguishable from Jefferson Davis.
I genuinely have not seen that, perhaps we interpret the same comments different ways?
Perhaps.
Side note - you don’t deserve all this down voting. You’re engaging in good faith and making reasonable statements (more reasonable than my initial comment deserved, frankly). Its unfortunate that attempting to bring nuance to an online discussion usually results in hateful backlash. That’s not a .ml or .world problem. Just an Internet problem.
Thanks, but no worries, I’m used to it. I have some severely dedicated haters. I just wish that they would actually try to respond to what they downvote, rather than silently downvote, as there’s no learning process created by that. Or when they run off to anti-communist drama communities (usually removing vital context), rather than directly addressing what I have to say.
I have some severely dedicated haters
Then you must be doing something right.
I don’t like the line of logic that states “getting hate = correct,” but I do think people should have who their haters are be factored in. Many people are rightly hated, like Netanyahu, but largely by entirely reasonable people.
But thanks for the compliment!
Also, I respect your insistence on using a term other than American to describe people from the US.
Growing up in the US, calling ourselves American is a hard habit to break, but I recognize how dismissive and insulting it is to the rest of the people living in North and South America.
Also, I respect your insistence on using a term other than American to describe people from the US.
Because no one else belongs to a state and so calling ourselves “statesians” is therefore better?
Its not a perfect term. Changing language is difficult and messy.
Do you have suggestions for something better (not meant to be snarky, I genuinely would like to find a good alternative and I bet cowbee would like input as well)?
Usonian is another term I’ve heard, but it sounds even worse.
∞🏳️⚧️Edie [it/it/its/its/itself, she/her/her/hers/herself, fae/faer/faer/faers/faerself, love/love/loves/loves/loveself, des/pair, null/void, none/use name]@lemmy.ml
2·25 minutes agoIt’s not quite as easily understood as statesian or usonian, but I quite like what Erika3sis uses: Seppo
What’s the background in that one?
∞🏳️⚧️Edie [it/it/its/its/itself, she/her/her/hers/herself, fae/faer/faer/faers/faerself, love/love/loves/loves/loveself, des/pair, null/void, none/use name]@lemmy.ml
2·22 minutes agoActually, by this chart, seppos are those materially aligned with the hegemony, and she also uses usonians and americans.
Yep, thanks! I’m a Statesian myself, and see settler-colonialism as the primary contradiction domestically. Calling myself an “American” is, as you said, dismissive and insulting to the rest of the Americas, most of which aren’t settler-colonies.
All of America’s are settler colonies. Or are they not to you because they are not White.
Much of latin and south America are predominantly indigenous, whereas the USA and Canada in particular wiped out the vast majority of the indigenous populations. Mexicans, for example, are largely a mix of Spanish and indigenous, ie mestizo, with around 20% identifying as indigenous. This is in stark contrast to the US and Canada.
me on sh:

Marxist-Leninists have a few takes that draw major friction between liberals who enjoy the idea of socialism/communism but haven’t really engaged with the theory and history of Marxism, such as:
-
MLs strongly oppose the west, including Europe, as the imperial hegemony. Liberals tend to not see Europe as imperialist even if it relies on imperialism, so when an ML calls for abolishing NATO this can cause friction.
-
MLs advocate for completely rejecting the DNC and GOP in the US, and instead running a working class party and organizing outside of the electoral system. Liberals tend to believe in voting for the DNC as “harm reduction,” but MLs look as the system itself and see the DNC as propping up the same imperialist system, necessitating working outside of this.
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Disagreements on Actually Existing Socialism. MLs tend to support existing socialist countries, and liberals tend not to. MLs typically take a non-western viewpoint on socialist countries, and tend to have studied Marxism more in-depth, while liberals tend to take the western viewpoint and not have studied Marxism very much. This causes more friction.
This is why MLs and liberals tend to clash. If you want to learn more about Marxism-Leninism, I made an intro reading list you can check out.
The way you compare the two groups initially gave me the impression you try to give an objective comparison :D
I am trying to be objective, but I’m also a Marxist-Leninist. I’m biased, as everyone is.
-
World users are just mad that the lemmy devs use ML which means they can’t verifiably call them uneducated morons, and ML users are mad that the World users are just smart enough to know the difference between socialism and communism that they won’t just auto buy into it lol.
what is the difference between socialism and communism?
I wish they were smart enough to know the difference between socialism and communism.
Socialism is when public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy and the working classes control the state, communism is when all production and distribution have been collectivized through socialism. Communism is therefore a post-socialist society, and socialism cannot last as a static system without advancing towards communism, because nothing is static.
Centrists on .world periodically pick an instance to their left and designate it the “tankie” instance. They won’t rest until we’re only allowed to say nice things about genocide.
Oooh a honeypot of group-think users to block. Thanks OP!
ML is run by heavily-indoctrinated communists. They’re the type that straight up worship communist leaders.
lemmy.world is kind of run by pussies. They blocked the piracy sublemmy for no real reason other than that.
It doesn’t surprise me they are butting heads. Hopefully the instances that allow interaction with both instances triumph over those that try to restrict access.
Supporting communists is not the same as worship. The devs and mods are certainly ideologically committed, but not out of sheer blind religious adherance.
Right. You guys don’t just “support” communists; you worship them.
No? I’m a communist, and I support communism. Worship has nothing to do with it. Can you explain what you mean by that?
If you’re truly clueless and not just feigning ignorance, then head on over to !worldnews@lemmy.ml and say something critical of a communist leader.
See how quickly you get banned.
You are feigning ignorance though because that’s how indoctrinated you are.
I’ve been critical of communists and communist leaders before, I think you’re confusing disinformation being removed with any and all critique being removed. Critique based on disinformation isn’t valid critique.
Maybe you weren’t banned because you wre from .ml they have banned me on an alt account for expressing my opinion that soviet occupation didn’t help my country.
Sure you did. You’re going to say whatever you think will defend your indoctrination.
That’s how this works.
Anyone with a brain can look at the lemmy.ml modlog to see for themselves that you’re full of shit.
I’ve mentioned that the PRC is lacking in LGBTQIA+ rights (though they are improving), that population transfer in the soviet union was one of its worst crimes, that Stalin’s homophobia was deeply reactionary, that I’d prefer if the PRC was more millitantly anti-imperialist than they are presently, that revisionism and mismanagement began a trend of liberalization in the USSR that contributed to its collapse, that the PRC made a huge error in backing Cambodia against Vietnam, and much more than this.
I’m not “indoctrinated,” and anyond can look at the Lemmy.ml modlog to see for themselves that you’re full of shit.
I just checked the most recent lemmy.ml modlog and it was someone getting their comments removed for calling someone a racist because they said that most white people are racist.
It’s absolutely absurd that westerners consider people with wildly heterodox views to be the “indoctrinated” ones.
ML is run by heavily-indoctrinated communists. They’re the type that straight up worship communist leaders.
It’s run by Russia bots who are pumping out Kremlin talking points whilst deleting anyone who is critical.
I got deleted for pointing out Putin runs a mafia state.
Shit even the Russian communist don’t like Putin.
Great to see straight up McCarthyism come back into fashion. Why consider other views when you can just declare anyone who disagrees with you to be a non-human foreigner.
I got deleted for pointing out Putin runs a mafia state.
From checking the modlog you got a comment removed and a temp ban for insulting someone
Is it an insult against Putin to declare he is running a mafia state?
∞🏳️⚧️Edie [it/it/its/its/itself, she/her/her/hers/herself, fae/faer/faer/faers/faerself, love/love/loves/loves/loveself, des/pair, null/void, none/use name]@lemmy.ml
3·1 hour agoWhere do you dumb fucks get this shit from?
Keep on making shit up you dumb ass.
Modlog strikes again.
Every time.
no, it was calling another poster a dumbass, and a dumb fuck
Where do you dumb fucks get this shit from?) Thirdly Russia had to invade and hold phony referendums in order to somehow prove eastern Ukraine didn’t want to become part of Europe. Keep on making shit up you dumb ass.
insults people
gets moderated
“I AM A FREE SPEECH WARRIOR FIGHTING PUTIN”
They’re the type that straight up worship communist leaders.
I wouldn’t phrase it at that. They’re fans of Russia, China, Iran, and pretty much any other country that’s antagonistic to the US. This regardless of whether said state is communist, especially Russia, which has become fascist under Putin’s rule.
In short, the .ml owners are tankies
MLs aren’t “fans” of Russia or Iran, but value their geopolitical opposition to the west, the imperialist hegemony. MLs do tend to be fans of the PRC, as it’s a socialist country. The idea that a country has to be 100% ideologically aligned in order to get even critical support from a communist just plays into the idea that communists are obsessed with purity testing, but that’s not the case.
If you disagree that .ml are communist and insist that they’re “tankies” instead, it seems to imply that not all communists are “tankies.” However, every single communist I’m aware of is called a tankie. What does a communist who isn’t a tankie look like? Are there examples of such a thing?
Are you saying communism necessarily implies authoritarianism? What about anarchists?
The anarchist conception of communism is more like communalism, while the Marxist conception is more like collectivism. When I say “communalization,” I mean anarchists propose horizontalist, decentralized cells, similar to early humanity’s cooperative production but with more interconnection and modern tech. When I say collectivization, I mean the unification of all of humanity into one system, where production and distribution is planned collectively to satisfy the needs of everyone as best as possible.
For anarchists, collectivized society still seems to retain the state, as some anarchists conflate administration with the state as it represents a hierarchy. For Marxists, this focus on communalism creates inter-cell class distinctions, as each cell only truly owns their own means of production, giving rise to class distinctions and thus states in the future.
For Marxists, socialism must have a state, a state can only wither with respect to how far along it has come in collectivizing production and therefore eliminating class. All states are authoritarian, but we cannot get rid of the state without erasing the foundations of the state: class society, and to do so we must collectivize production and distribution globally. Socialist states, where the working class wields its authority against capitalists and fascists, are the means by which this collectivization can actually happen, and are fully in-line with Marx’s beliefs. Communism as a stateless, classless, moneyless society is only possible post-socialism.
Abolishing the state overnight would not create the kind of society Marxists advocate for advancing towards, and if anything, would result in the resumption of competition and the resurgance of capitalism if Marx and Engels predictions are correct.
None of this was specific to Marxism-Leninism, but Marxism in general. In this sense, Marxist communism does believe in using state authority to oppress the bourgeousie and reactionaries, just like capitalists use the state to oppress the working classes and revolutionaries. The major difference is that socialist states are working class authorities, not owning class, and as such the class interest points to negating class and therefore the basis of the state. This is why dialectical materialism is core to Marxism.
Anarchists are cool, but they’re really only a minority of communists worldwide. Whatever you think “authoritarianism” is (as far as I’m concerned if you believe in having a state at all, then that state will exercise a monopoly on violence and will be repressive) it describes almost every single communist on planet earth. The game of splitting hairs on what does and doesn’t count as a “tankie” achieves nothing but divide a movement that has common cause.
If I’m being forthright, I’ll just go ahead and ask: if anarchists are the only communists, why even have the concept of “tankies” at all? Why not just say you’re pro-anarchist and anti-communist? From my perspective, all that the whole thing of saying that there supposedly are communists who aren’t “tankies” achieves is create two categories:
- Real people who exist in the real world and have actual, flawed political movements
- Imaginary perfect people that only exist in your head
Then because you can find real examples of the first category, you can find the flaws they have, and compare them to the ideal people in the second category. But maybe I’m wrong, maybe there really are a ton of Marxists out there that figured out the secret to having a perfectly consistent anti-authoritarian ideology that is still distinct from anarchism. If you could let me know who they are, that’d be awesome.
We live in a dictatorship of capital, you’re not going to be able to get consent from capitalists to overthrow them.
If you’re intersted in revolutionary change you’re going to be authoritarian to someone. The capitalists not going to be on board for getting their property redistributed.
If you’re not interested in revolution you’re the compatible left
Are you seriously conflating communism with authoritarianism?
It’s like you guys went through the red scare and instead of figuring it was a stupid insane witch hunt without any real foundation, decided that the republican definition of “communism = evil” was actually true, but you wanted in anyway. It’s ridiculous.
I remain at the same place, yet to understand how one can be a communist and not authoritarian. And I feel like you’re failing to interrogate whether your concept of authoritarianism is being used with any amount of consistency or if it’s just a club you wield against people who have positions you disagree with for other reasons.
It’s such an irony to me that people who call us “tankies” and say that we are somehow caricatures of communists, always make such caricatures out of themselves. Like, instead of engaging with any of FunkyStuff’s very reasonable, calmly stated questions, you go off about how we (“tankies”) just decided to be evil, and calling us ridiculous while behaving in such a ridiculous, blatantly and needlessly antagonistic way yourself. It’s over the top.
Paraphrasing:
FunkyStuff: asks a calm, concise series of questions that are meant to help clarify the issue.
lunnrais: “See?! Look how frothing these evil, ridiculous lunatic tankies are!!”And this after correctly recognizing that the red scare was a terrible witch hunt? But it was people like us, people who believe what we believe, that were the “witches” of that particular persecution. We are simply what most communists in the world look like, we believe what most communists in the world believe, people who have very clear and consistent views. But instead of honestly trying to engage or actually understand why “tankies” believe the things they do, you just smear us with lies and pretend that the position of Marxist-Leninist communists is just some bananas, made-up-on-the-fly, contrarian position, rather than one with deep foundations that have been developed over decades of intense thought and practice including by people fighting in the trenches for their own and others liberation. To you, were the Black Panthers “tankies”? Do you know about their mutual support of and with North Korea, or did they just decide to be “evil” to pwn the libs? Was Che Guevara a “tankie”? Is Michael Parenti? Were they all just ridiculous contrarians who liked the picture that reactionaries (“republicans”) painted of them?
edit: removing duplicate comment.
Visit ML before any major Western election and browse by Local (its default) and you will easily see: ML calls for the literal and actual fall of all Western civilization including the deaths of most to nearly all peoples therein.
Whereas LW does not want that, go figure. 🤷♀️
Something something bOtH sIdEs SaMe.

Still coming up to speed on the terminology here, but labels aside, I would hope we can all agree on the fact that society should work for the people first. A society that works for corporations and the rich first (I’d argue that most developed nations show advanced stages of this, regardless of capitalist alignment) will decay internally, like a cancer. I think we’ve seen the global decline of society working for their members since the mid 1900’s.
This has resulted in a broad rightward swing in the US, and to a slightly lesser degree abroad. People feel like they’ve been taken advantage of. And they have been, but mostly by the very rich, and it’s getting exponentially worse by the day.
Argue nuance if you feel so inclined. But my point is: the more that we’re divided by these labels is to our detriment. And when I say “we”, I mean “not the ownership class.”
Do you work? Do you draft a paycheck anywhere on earth? Then you’re getting fucked, because those who don’t draft a paycheck to live basically don’t pay anything to partake in society. We pay for them. We truly live in a welfare state, but it’s not the poor that are the recipients but the rich.
Tankie or not. Western or Eastern. We’re all manipulated into serving the will of the powerful, and constantly at odds with one another when our plight is similar. We all don’t want to get fucked. But the more we’re divided, the easier it is to conquer us.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
You are talking theory.
Now, in practice invite the MAGA over to your side, and see what happens.
Good luck!
Translation: consent needs to matter. Tankies do not care about your consent. They want to advance the cycle through the destruction phase to get to the other side that is all magical rainbows and fairy dust - just exactly like Russia, China, and North Korea are so well-known for, obviously.
And they will not let anything get in the way of achieving their goals. Not even facts.
Please do not allow yourself to become used like a tool by the oligarchy. Like both the (leftist) tankies and the (rightist) MAGAs have. They share in common a love for authoritarianism - and guess who gets to be at the top there? Hint: it ain’t us!
Tankies want me and everyone that I have ever known or even met to literally die.
Something something bOtH sIdEs SaMe.
Tankies want me and everyone that I have ever known or even met to literally die.
Unless you’re Jeffery Epstein I think the odds of that are low.
Openstars attacking straw communists and positions nobody holds again. The living embodiment of brevity being the soul of wit.
.ml users are also just immature weirdos. most of my harassing comments calling me insults come from .ml users.
they don’t discuss and they don’t read. they just shout and quote russian/chinese state propaganda about how people living in those countries are so wealthy and liberated and so much better than americans or europeans. and if you do cite sources, they tell you that those are american propaganda and all lies and ONLY THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT IS TELLING THE TRUTH.
oh, and the .ml opening talk about the power of violence and their violent fantasies of killing everyone who has a modicum of economic security and all claim to be the poorest of the poor, which I highly doubt.
I was a communist when I was 15, but even back then I was into the utopia part, not the mass murder fantasy part.
We actually do read and discuss theory quite a lot, both online and when we are at party meetings (though many times the meetings are for organizing things like protests, or other matters). What you may be noticing is that we don’t tend to “quote farm,” ie find a relevant quote from a Marxist theorist, and use that as an argument. It’s unconvincing and comes across as book worship.
This creates a 2-sided problem: either we worship theory, or we don’t read it at all, in the eyes of liberals. It’s a perfect, thought-terminating bubble where there’s a great excuse ready-made to not take communists seriously, either we don’t know what we are talking about, or we are detached from reality. It’s simply impossible for us to not rely on quote farming while actually knowing what we are talking about. Same with “state propaganda.”
I was a communist when I was 15, but even back then I was into the utopia part, not the mass murder fantasy part.
This more speaks to yourself not knowing what communism is, though. Marx and Engels have railed against utopianism, and were proponents of scientific socialism. Same with the idea of a mass murder fantasy.
they don’t discuss and they don’t read. they just shout and quote russian/chinese state propaganda
I do not understand how you can’t see the irony here.
Actual communists here are on Threadiverse seem quite emotionally capable and are among the more pleasant to chat with. Examples there include slrpnk.net. I used to also say db0 though there always seems pushback nowadays whenever I include it, but I can’t get anyone to give me a solid answer as to why besides unsubstantiated accusations that even on their face looks like pure BS to me. So I guess I’ll keep saying it, just noting that it is a controversial point.:-)
Hexbears on the other hand are trolls, pure and simple, with zero regard for anything other than “the dunk” process of pwning someone - or rather, appearing to, from their own extremely childish POV.
Lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml then are the leftist MAGAs, believing in alternative facts rather than living in reality. e.g. most claim that they would move to the likes of North Korea in a heartbeat, except, you know… I guess they took an arrow to the knee or some such. 🤪
I am so glad that I can block people from an entire instance. If I could, I would make an exception to the devs Nutomic and Dessalines out of respect for having offered the Lemmy sourcecode as FOSS, but other than that, I have not missed a single interaction with anyone on Lemmy.ml since I have done so, every time I’ve checked to see what I might be missing. They are the most batshit insane comments across the entirety of the Threadiverse, after Hexbear obviously.

“the only communists who are actual communists are the ones who cater to my sensibilities as a liberal”
The only person spewing alternative facts is you, you can’t seem to regurgitate a post without making up bullshit.
Now that you’re a grown up who can speak for yourself, what is the Hannibal Directive?
ML calls for the literal and actual fall of all Western civilization
for the record when people say ‘Death to America’ it’s wishing an end to the American government and its settler-colonial state apparatus.
Concern about the ‘fall of Western civilization’ is more often than not a dog whistle signalling reactionary politics.
also this isn’t limited to election seasons, death to america
Death to America
I dunno man, all other things aside (I have no opinion on specific Lemmy instances at all), when you’re quoting Osama Bin Laden as part of your own beliefs or opinion, that’s probably not cool beans, you know?
Then consider my (I assume) original: Burn the Burgerreich
Unless it’s not the wording, but the messege that is problematic to you. But no respectable person would out of their own will be a dog of hitlerikkkan empire
This is some “Hitler was a vegetarian” level shit, but the tribalistic hogs here will upvote it anyway
Osama Bin Laden and I happen to have the same position that the end of the USA as a political entity would be a positive thing. I probably also agree with him that breathing and having meals is necessary for survival.
Are either of those propositions made less true by virtue of Osama also believing them?
Death to America is a saying that goes back much further than Bin Laden, and there have been many good reasons for many people to say it. I’m sure many of the people indigenous to the land (that wasn’t “America” to them) had a probably rather similar phrase and said it probably rather often as that entity commenced with their genocide. And since that time, it’s not as if there hasn’t been a lack of good reasons to call for the destruction of the settler-colonial project responsible for the worst imperialist cruelties since the British Empire (the immediate ancestor). But you might consider questioning why you seem to only associate the phrase with that one particular person.
I dunno man. You have a dog? Hitler had a dog…
I use she/her in case it doesn’t show up in your app.
This isn’t quoting osama bin laden, it’s an Iranian slogan/expression.
America as a settler-colonial state is a world-historic evil, death to America
Visit .world before any major Western election and browse by Local (its default) and you will easily see: .world will sell out as many Palestinians as it takes to buy political time in hopes of a blue wave that is definitely going fix everything and bring America™ back to its wholesome big chungus status.
Whereas ML does not want to carry out genocide to buy time for pointless political waffling, go figure.
I really do love the tagging feature for the boost app, all I see is green tankie tabs everywhere when you guys show up.
Oh hey, I remember you. You’re the one who was equating anti-capitalism with being tankie.
https://lemmy.world/comment/21783242
Not beating the toothless lib allegations…
Lol yea I’m the toothless one…the guy who’s probably been tagged by a lot of people here for being staunchly pro2a and advocating for my LGBTQ+ people to get trained and armed…yea
for being staunchly pro2a
Off topic, but there’s a LiberalGunOwners community if you weren’t aware. Not as active as it could, but still
Yea I’m subscribed to it.
Did you vote for Kamala or did you allow Trump to take power?
Will you be voting for Ted Cruz, or will you allow Mecha Hitler to take power?
Your political narcissism is incurable. Enjoy fucking people over for your feels.
Your daily reminder that BlueMAGA liberals don’t consider Palestinians to be people
he said, stepping over the bodies of 500,000 children
I just want to add to the discussion that I think it’s perfectly healthy if two instances don’t like each other and/or have different outlooks - it’s the beauty of the fediverse and having decentralisation that they don’t have to agree on everything.
ml and other tankie instances are actual cess pits of dangerous misinformation, delusion and abusive cult activity
actually bad for members and the wider world
🚨warning: jimmy is genocide zionist cuck🚨
Funny coming from a straight up pro-genocide Zionist.
But that’s exactly the kind of person .world will coddle to “own the commies”
The point is instances don’t have to federate with them if they’re causing problems for their members but from what I’ve seen I’d say they’re relatively benign, it’s not like they’re fascists.
It’s very entertaining too
Nero thought so as well.
I’m not a fan, though.
squints…ah! Yes. Quite so.
ML is run by people who are not only communist, but also communists can do no wrong, capitalists can do no right. Just being communist most of us could live with, but the second is a problem. When someone cannot agree things like genocides that various communist governments are a bad it is really hard to have productive conversations.
communistsTankies.yes. the openly call for murder, theft, and various form of violence against their ‘enemies’.
and if you suggest maybe that’s not such a great idea, they basically tell you that you should die too.
But on the other hand, perhaps I should smile more, even as I am being murdered? (Dials gaslighting up to 11) Yes, it is surely I who am in the wrong here, rather than them.
(/s in case it is not abundantly clear)
Dials gaslighting up to 11
literally every post you make does this
Yeah but they’re totally sarcastic this time!
The stereotype is that Lemmy.ml wants to play with Stalin’s balls. Lemmy.world wants to play with, I don’t know, Obama’s balls? With Bernie, Bill Clinton, and Reagan watching from the corner?
Something like that, anyway.
World is after ML for being Stalinists and ML is after World for not being Stalinists hah
And Stalin’s out for both of 'm just cuz gulags are fun.
Moral purity beatings will continue until morale improves.
Wouldn’t it be Leninists? Like the ‘l’ in ‘ml’?
No, Leninism is different. Marxism-Leninism specifically was a creation of Stalin.
Marxism–Leninism was developed from Bolshevism by Joseph Stalin in the 1920s based on his understanding and synthesis of classical Marxism and Leninism.
When talking about Stalinism people often means not just that ideology but also the brutal way it was implemented and how the country was ruled
Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist–Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory of socialism in one country (until 1939), forced collectivization of agriculture, intensification of class conflict, a cult of personality,[1][2] and subordination of the interests of foreign communist parties to those of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, deemed by Stalinism to be the leading vanguard party of communist revolution at the time.
Marxism-Leninism was synthesized by Stalin, but like the name suggests, is over 90% Marx and Lenin. Stalinism is typically used coherently to describe the policies of the Stalin-Era of the USSR. Those calling Marxism-Leninism “Stalinism” typically are trying to use Stalin’s name as a way to bash Marx and Lenin’s theories and practice.
Here we go
?
Don’t worry about my guy
HEY ML WHAT POLITICIAN WOULD YOU DESCRIBE US AS SUPPORTING IN VAGUELY HOMOPHOBIC TERMS?
ML: …
only thing I know is the cm002 wierdo guy. did not know it extended beyond him who I dunno could be a wierd cabal for all I know.
Liberals and communists hate each other, that’s pretty much it
It’s not even that. The specific brand of “communist” the ML admins stan is really just redfash, so all other leftists despise them, even as they insist their 100 year old dogma is the only correct philosophy.
It’s also not just that. Dessalines and Nutomic are just basic fucking assholes. Petty and power hungry, and occasionally transphobic, they spend more time banning users and making drama for stupid shit, than they spend writing code, and then have the audacity to guilt people for money.
Dessalines in particular is so fucking cringe, he literally will not post outside of his shitty little fiefdom, because he cannot handle any internet where he doesn’t have his little “I win” ban button.
ML users aren’t really communists though - they are leftist MAGAs who believe in alternative facts, only paying lip service to communist principles but not in a genuine manner. i.e. tankies.

The overwhelming majority of practicing communists are Marxist-Leninists, and genuinely carry out Marxist principles. When this runs counter to liberal narratives, liberals assume communists must be brainwashed.
that’s weird because both you and the right both support genocide and ‘tankies’ are the only ones who don’t
OpenStars spewing bullshit once more, shocker
It’s the authoritarian part LW disagrees with. I think the .world admins would have long defederated ML, but since the lemmy coders are situated on .ML, thats not such an attractive option. Desalines and Nutomic are hardcore tankies and bigots, which crush any dissenting voice on .ml. Even worse, if you want to support lemmy development, the finances of .ml and development budget are intertwined, so every donation for lemmy also supports tankies. It’s the reason i switched to piefed,
If you want examples of how those two run their digital kingdom, take a look at !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works - most posts are about .ml.
MeanwhileOnGrad is run by a Zionist, and the comm itself serves as a bit of a Nazi bar. Many of the posts also erase vital context, or otherwise misframe users.
The “tankies” have the same platform as pretty much every real life communist organisation, lemmy.worlders have the same platform as your generic European social democratic party.
I’d have more respect for people just admitting that they’re anti-communist rather than trying to redefine and obfuscate the meaning of the word.
No they don’t, apart from edgy internet leftists who haven’t studied any political theory outside of their sheltered internet canon. The modern internationale, Jacobin, etc, actively avoid the idiotic campism and autocratic baggage the tankies cling to as they relitigate the cold war. There has been a century of revisionist leftist theory since Lenin’s “theory” about how everything Lenin does is great even if it is transparently hypocritical. Most of the leftist world has moved on, but tankies still live on that mountain.
No? China alone has 100 million CPC members, Marxism-Leninism is still dominant as a leftist ideology globally. Are you referring purely to western leftists?
This absolutely reeks of western exceptionalism. The “leftist world” is far more than what social democrats in Europe and North America think. Communists in the global south aren’t going to be lectured by people from wealthy imperial core countries on what the correct kind of leftism is.
There is still a very deep colonialist mindset here, and one that won’t be found amongst actual communist orgs that are politically active.
The absolute gorgeous irony of MLs saying they don’t want to be lectured about politics.
But hey, I’m not your psychiatrist, so if you want to maintain this delusion that ML orthodoxy represents some singular, uncorrupted ideal which actually holds any relevant influence anywhere in the world, then by no means will I interfere with your monumental significance.
I’m not an ML, but go ahead. You have no point to make either way.
I’m not anti-communist. I’m anti-authoritarian.
Being a communist does not imply supporting Russia, because Russia is not communist in any way, it’s a dictatorship.
Being a communist also does not mean being pro China, because even if China implements parts of communism, communism does not imply eradicating the identity of minorities and censoring whatever the party does not like - i think communism, free speech and a multicultural society do not exclude each other.
Communism is authoritarian, dictatorship of the proletariat. That’s a core part of Marxist theory. How on earth can you ever expect to get political power if you’re not willing to suppress the forces of capital that will try to resist any attempt to build socialism?
There’s also the concept of critical support where you can support something in principle but not support every facet of it, i.e. China. It’s not always black and white.
I’m sure you mean well but your idea of communism does not make any sense to me. What does anti-authoritarian communism look like to you, and can you point to a real life communist org that is anti-China, anti-Russia, and anti-authoritarian?
There is a difference between standing for your core values and defending them vs crushing civil liberties and fucking up minorities. I would be very much china-friendly if they weren’t so heavy on the censorship - both wiping out a lot of local cultures and suppressing critics, at home and especially abroad - and less biased towards the Han-Chinese population, and to be honest, I don’t think the CCP actually needs those points to keep their power., these are self-serving actions to make sure that only themselves and noone else gets a say, like another communistic party that might do things different. Those points are a no-go for me, so i cannot be pro China.
Russia is not communist, not in the slightest. It’s the embodiment of feudalistic hypercapitalism - no worker has had any power in Russia for a long time. Wars of Aggression aren’t in the interest of the populace either - and it’s not their first - especially when it involves staggering losses that are only second to WW2.
I also didn’t say anything about GETTING power. I do not like the thought of violent uprisings, but i acknowledge that it might be needed for a change like that.
The PRC actually has very good ethnic minority protections, both legally and culturally. For example, ethnic minorities were exempt from the One Child Policy, and ethnic minorities at the level of the NPC are better represented than the Han majority by population ratio. The PRC does practice censorship, but this is largely reserved for capitalists and those trying to undermine socialism, a method of self-defense learned by observing western-backed propaganda undermine other socialist countries.
As for the Russian Federation, communist orgs only critically support it in its actions undermining the global hegemony of western imperialism. Nobody really likes the modern Russian Federation, and everyone would rather the soviet union still be here.
I’m not anti-communist. I’m anti-authoritarian.
Part of being a communist is recognizing what it means to even be “authoritarian.” It means (among many other things) that you have examined that word and it’s various meanings and how it holds up to what’s really happening in the material world, and how it relates to the way societies actually work. Not just some nebulous “vibes” regarding what kind of images float around in our heads when the word is spoken. In other words, materialism vs idealism.
Being a communist does not imply supporting Russia, because Russia is not communist in any way, it’s a dictatorship.
I doubt you could find a single communist who believes that modern Russia is communist because it isn’t. We all can agree that it is not. Likewise I think every communist you could find would say that modern Russia is at best a disgusting capitalist disgrace to its Soviet history. But to call it a “dictatorship” especially without also recognizing other capitalist nations similarly as “dictatorships” is just a failure of understanding of what that word means, but I won’t say more on it because ordnance_qf already did. So let’s move on to “support” of Russia. As a communist (Marxist Leninist, aka “tankie”) I do NOT support Russia in its capitalist endeavors. Again, I doubt you can find a communist who does. But I can still look at Russia’s position on the world stage at this time and see that because of its material interests (and not because it’s “the good guy” - it isn’t, and not because it’s current government has noble intentions - they don’t), it is supporting the global south in the latter’s struggle against imperialism. And it is US imperialism that is the boot on the neck of the peoples of the Global South. For liberatory revolutions to be able to survive before being strangled in their nascency, the pressure of that boot must be reduced or better yet removed. What I support is Russia’s undeniable help in facilitating that. Which is what we as communists mean by “critical support.” We highly criticize Russia, but we support it in it’s primary fight against the US, NATO, and Western Imperialism (which are all aspects of essentially the same thing) for the sake of revolutionary movements that would thrive were it not for western suppression.
Being a communist also does not mean being pro China, because even if China implements parts of communism, communism does not imply eradicating the identity of minorities and censoring whatever the party does not like - i think communism, free speech and a multicultural society do not exclude each other.
I would agree with you that support of China is not a prerequisite of being a communist and there are many communists who do not (including many communists who the anticommunists on this instance would still call “tankies”). China doesn’t “implement parts of communism” but China is a Socialist project (where the word “socialism” refers to the transitional stage away from capitalism and towards communism, since unfortunately communism cannot spring fully formed into place). You can be highly critical of China’s socialism as many are, but at the very least capital does not enjoy a dictatorship in China as it does in so-called “liberal democracies.” However, when you go on to say things like China is eradicating the identity of minorities or the implication that it is not a profoundly multicultural society, that is where I just have to firmly disagree and call “BS.” Of course communism and a multicultural society do not exclude each other - they can’t exclude each other, by definition. China is very far away from perfect, but to say it is against multiculturalism or worse that it is “eradicating the identity of minorities” is simply the repetition of lies that you were told, lies originating from a state that considers China its arch nemesis and despises it. It’s propaganda. This can be confirmed even by going there. So by all means, criticize China, call it out for its actual faults, but find out first what they really are and do not perpetuate demonization, literal sinophobic falsehoods.
I went into a lot of detail in this response because I think that you and I (and therefore many “tankies”) are not actually on very dissimilar tracks, and likewise I suspect with a lot of other people reading this thread. But there is just so much bad faith I see in threads like this, it makes it all but impossible to see the similar tracks. And I think that is often by design. Like another comment I responded to (and tons more I didn’t) that just want to smear and demonize without even a hint of a desire to understand, but your comment clearly wasn’t like that, and you expressed honest, valid (though towards the end, I would say gravely misled) concerns. I’d bet there are a lot of people who listen to the “tankies are evil red fash” noise and just assume that must be the case without any actual engagement and never actually take the chance to understand the actual position. Those of us who genuinely want sincere, unselfish human flourishing, should be able to find that common ground to actually suss out our positions and learn. But the smarmy and smug anti-tankie crowd do not want to learn and they do not want others to learn. Fortunately many still will, despite them.
I get more of an impression that people in general do not understand what they believe. There’s a lot of that in the post information era we live; its also an easy excuse to look down my nose at people of course lol.
I think this is pretty insightful. There also is no definitely right answer. Some people may view China as communistic and others may view them as a dictatorship.
Considering they made more billionaires than the US this last year I think the communism thing is a bit of a stretch. At this point they are looking pretty fascist to me. Obviously ML isn’t going to agree to that
Public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy, and the working classes control the state in China, it’s therefore socialist. Socialism isn’t the absence of private property, it’s the gradual transformation of capitalism into communism, and as such the growth of secondary and medium firms creates new billionaires in China. What happens over time though is that these firms, as they grow, are folded into the public sector.
But what they will do is ban you for saying that (if you said it in one of their communities)! 😉
Long-standing political differences and an extremely censorious moderation philosophy on Lemmy.ml means there is always tension. I’m not aware of any specific thing that has happened recently though.
I’m not sure if there’s anything new, just seems to be the standard liberal/leftist beef.
there was a big post yesterday about ‘rent is theft’ that had 100s of comments, that was mostly .world vs .ml users.
the .ml users basically harassed and threatened the .world users who were talking about reasonable reforms on housing prices and the causes for housing price inflation. .ml users think if you talk about facts and reality you are part of the problem and that reality should be re-made such that private property no longer exists and every single person should leave in the same concrete housing blocks like they had in the USSR, or they should be shot.
I mean, if they all want to move to Russia or North Korea or China, go right ahead, I am not stopping anyone from chasing their bliss. Perhaps I should note that they will end up as fodder for a warlord’s lust for conquest, but at the end of the day that is not my call to make as to what to do with your lives.
But damnit I would like to have some tint amount of control about what to do with my own! Including the ability to block them, if I happen to want that. I almost left Lemmy over precisely this issue, preferring instead to simply read books offline than to have to wade through endless immature eternity of September crap. Fortunately, that’s exactly when PieFed started coming up, offering an alternative besides Mbin, and which now offers a heck of a lot more features than either of them.
“you don’t like it, leave”
you sound like pretty much every conservative I’ve interacted with.
Naa we’re just tired of you tankies spewing authoritarian propaganda… you’re just maga’s that wear hammer and sickle patches.
I’m an anarchist, these days ‘tankie’ is just an epithet used by campist liberals towards ‘disloyal’ communists and anarchists at home.
There’s a twisted irony that the so-called’tankies’ are the ones most opposed to america sending in the tanks
No…no it’s not. You tankies are called that because you eat propaganda from authoritarian regimes in the name of communism. You’re just maga with a hammer and sickle logo
You’re just maga with a hammer and sickle logo
Literally a straw person you’ve made up and are attacking.
you eat propaganda from authoritarian regimes
I evaluate all propaganda critically, be it from the authoritarian regime i live in (the US), or some other one
Tbh the closest thing to behaving like MAGA is you, more of a blue MAGA
Pretty sure an anarchist is not thrilled with authoritarianism even if communist
It’s a mid-off















