this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
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Yep. They were claiming that Putin invaded Ukraine to stop fascists. And that they were liberators. I was like, why would one fascist care what other fascists do? In the US, our fascist, wealthy Republicans largely supported Hitler till pearl harbor. But I did agree with them that the Soviet Union absolutely liberated many countries against their will post WWII. And that those countries still hold it against them to this day.
The gulags were mentioned and they were like, but but but America jails more! To which I told them that was bad. But the West doesn't kill millions of prisoners the way they did. And all for political dissent, reminding them of just two weeks ago when Putin had Navalny killed for political dissent.
The absurd thing is, I'm one hundred percent down for Marxism. And largely agree politically with his theory plus some modernization. So technically we would agree on a lot of things there. It's just the Engles and Lenin bullshit I disagree with, and has shown to have failed. Or caused their downfall historically. But they are primarily leninists, dedicated ideologically to authoritarians and strongmen above all reality.
How can you agree with Marx and not with Engels? Engels practically did a large chunk of the philosophical heavy lifting for Marxism.
I know right, it's almost like they're two different people. gasp Wait a minute they are!
Also, I wouldn't call might makes right heavy philosophical lifting. There are less objectionable bits that Engles contributed. But some of the worst bits that led to the authoritarianism and brutality common in Marxist leninist structures is pretty strongly attached to him.
Are there any particular texts from Engels that you disagree with? I would be interested to know where you think the split is. From my reading, Engels was mostly involved in the philosophical and scientific side of the development of dialectical materialism and it's application into Marxism. Eg. "Dialectics of Nature", "The German ideology", "Feuerbach and the end of German classical philosophy","anti-duhring" etc. I'm not sure where the apparent "brutality" is coming from here?
Why does that mean they should be banned? Is speech that we agree with the only permitted speech?
Just because you think they're wrong doesn't mean they should be banned. Banning them makes it look like we're afraid of people reading their points, which gives them power and credibility
I have not commented on whether or not I think they should. Frankly I'm ambivalent. Considering many of the others that have been defederated. I think it's kind of hypocritical that Lemmy.ml hasn't. Personally though I don't have need or desire to defederate them. It's pretty easy, if annoying to poke holes in their arguments where important.
However it's important to remember that each server is answerable to it's community and ownership. If world defederated from lemmy.ml you'd be unaffected. And seeing the disdain lemmy.ml has for many types of speech. I'm not overly motivated to make any case to keep them around either. Offering them what they deny others.
So what? If it was wrong to defederate from those other instances then this can be wrong as well
Or, more accurately, answerable to the appearance of a community and ownership. All of the major instances are heavily astroturfed by various state and corporate entities. Which includes both the United States/West and China/Russia. World is western aligned and ML is not. It's a proxy war in cyberspace, same as occurs on reddit and Twitter and elsewhere. The solution to such a proxy war is not to cede all ground to the West - such action would not promote truth or critical thought
It could be. It's not. But it could have been.
And do you have any proof of that? I've not seen anything of the like. I'm Marxist myself. Just not Leninist. I have no major issues on world. I tend to get downvoted about equally from capitalist to leninist. Up voted too. I've not noticed any anti-left trend. Anti ml? Sure. But they are not left in any meaningful sense beyond nominally. Authoritarians always ape populist political trends. In order to take advantage of society. Hitler did it, Lenin and Stalin did too. Though, unlike Hitler, I believe Lenin actually genuinely wanted a good outcome. Despite his bad ideology.
People should have free speech, governments shouldn't have the ability to degrade our platform with shills and LLMs, especially if they're spreading propaganda for dictatorships.
I agree, but that is exactly what the United States and the West does.
China, Russia, and Iran do it as well, of course.
"The west" has been caught flat-footed in the modern disinformation game, they have nothing comparable.
That may have been true in 2014.
It is no longer true in 2024
Said the anonymous account without citing any source.
Literally everyone on this site is an anonymous account. Why would you possibly think that is a relevant point? Plus your account is less than 30 days old, so if we're going to start questioning users' motives and origins then perhaps we should start with you
And I watch congressional hearings with intelligence agency leaders. They have affirmed that our messaging (propaganda) efforts on the internet have greatly improved since 2016. Which is evident just from comparing Reddit today to reddit in 2015
The most powerful country in the world is just a little guy! It doesn't even know what it's doing, it's just a little guy!!
Are you serious with this shit? If you want to see someone steeped in propaganda, take your head out of the bowl of kool-aid and look in a mirror.
Insulting me because you have no reasonable response?
My response was plenty reasonable given your unreasonable claim that somehow the most powerful country in the word with the most sophisticated media machine got "caught flat-footed" in the modern disinformation game. They were heavily astroturfing reddit as far back as 2013 and have probably been at it for longer: https://web.archive.org/web/20160604042751/http://www.redditblog.com/2013/05/get-ready-for-global-reddit-meetup-day.html
You know, unless you think the eglin air force base were just superfans of reddit. That's just reddit, now imagine more important platforms.
A sophisticated media machine that can't even hide the real location of it's shill accounts? And you're the one mocking me?
Some operations are more careful than others and I'm sure lessons have been learned since 2013. Meanwhile you think somehow China's and Russia's operations are more sophisticated because your media uncovers them?