this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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This is not particularly surprising. Lemmy was started as an anti-corporate project by leftists after /r/chapotraphouse got quarantined and later banned (subreddit for the most popular podcast and most donated patreon at the time), with the explicit goal of preventing corporate control from being able to silence leftists when they're blasting off. CTH was skyrocketing in subscribers at the time it was quarantined on August 8th 2019, and when even quarantining didn't stop its growth or slow down its activity afterwards Reddit pulled the plug under the excuse it promoted violence, but the only particularly edgy thing ever said there was "slave owners should be killed" and support for John Brown. This evolved post-ban into the assessment that Spez banned it because he wants to own slaves.
When that happened there was a massive shift in the leftist parts of reddit as we very quickly realised we'd be targeted if reddit ever deemed us to be too successful, and projects like Lemmy began in reaction. CTH's community in fact moved to Lemmy 3 years ago, and resides on Hexbear.net but has not yet joined the rest of federated lemmy due to technical issues (it used to be a fork with a different front end).
Given lemmy's specific anti-corporate origins seeing Lemmy.ml do this should surprise nobody. It's the correct move anyway.
Always love to hear the deep lore. Lemmy’s early development makes a lot more sense now. Good on them(you) to leave everything open and learn from Reddit’s mistakes.
Still, free and open has a limit. No Facebook and no Nazis. That’s just common sense everyone used to have.
Not leftists, Stalinists; The sort of people who end up killing all the other leftists any chance they think they might be close to taking power.
Mate I do not give a flying fuck what any of these people with zero power are. I care about actually achieving shit. Fortunately I live in the UK where this bizarre sectarianism has absolutely no presence, thank fuck for that.
If you lived in the UK you'd be against the head of the RMT union currently striking the UK railroads, who publicly calls James Connolly his political hero and is an obvious marxist-leninist. You'd be against Jeremy Corbyn, because he defends the Soviet Union and always has, he also promotes the Black Panthers who defended north korea (if you look in the corner of the video around 2:00 there's even a cute little soviet cccp statue). You'd be against Diane Abbott, because she's publicly defended Mao on national television. You'd probably find something to be against John Mcdonnell who has said his job is to overthrow capitalism on the BBC, probably because he's quoted Mao and read his little red book in parliament?
My point here is that you've got to get a grip. We don't do this bizarre shit over in the UK because there's literally no point, there is no communist revolution just around the corner, the conditions do not exist for it. What matters is what we can achieve RIGHT NOW, when a revolution is actually on the cards then we can decide what that revolution should actually fucking look like. In the meantime these people are all mild lukewarm elected MPs as socdems that just want to give people more welfare and improve basic living standards, but you would call them evil tankies for any of these things.
If you don't build at least SOME power now you will have absolutely none when the conditions deteriorate enough for a real revolution, and if that is the case it will be fascism that wins, not any sect of the absolutely non-existent left in your country.
What you're viewing above is how radical you need to be just to establish and maintain lukewarm european welfare and social safety nets. Get that into your head and you might actually stop the aussie government dumping migrants into concentration camps and help improve people's lives for fuck's sake. You should know better than this anyway, half the union leadership of australia are marxist-leninists, and the other half are trots. What union are you in? I'll tell you whether you need to throw your union leader under the bus for some fucking do-nothing liberal because of your sectarianism obsession. Are you even in one?
Are you saying the UK, you don't have leftist factionalism? Fucking get off it mate.
Not really among the actual leftists. There is a conflict between the neoliberal starmerites who fake being left and the actual leftists that he has been purging so hard it puts stalin to shame, there is barely any fighting among the actual UK left because we do not give a fuck. I don't fucking care what the person next to me on the roof of an Israeli weapons factory believes, I care that he's going to have my back when the cops show up. I do not care what the person next to me on the picket line believes, I care that they're fucking there. If you said this shit in person at an event you'd get knocked out or if you're lucky sidelined and ostracised by just about every group in the left for being a wrecker whose goal is clearly not to help but to divide.
Very very rarely there is some extremely cringe jabs between the trots and the MLs, but not particularly often because there's no fucking point. The anarchists are ironically the least sectarian, simply caring that people show up when the hunt sabos need it because there's fuck all people in the countryside as it is to be picky about what kind of leftist someone is. Everyone shows up for everyone's events, because having a left is far more fucking important than arguing over 100 year old cringe while workers lives are being made worse NOW. All you're doing with this shit is helping capitalists by weakening leftists.
And you didn't answer my question about what union you're in?
You know it's a proper leftist you are arguing with when each reply is 10 times the length as the thing they are responding to.
You realize things in the UK aren't that bad, right? Like we have it way better than America. Nobody I know is seriously struggling. We luckily still have free healthcare and a social safety net. I hate to say it but you're screaming over a much better situation than lots of countries are dealing with.
Even those remotely close to struggling don't blame capitalism and are actually right wing or centrists. At least this is what I have seen personally. It's not like these people are transphobic or racist either.
It's people like you guys that scream endlessly that are part of the problem. You're never going to convince anyone who doesn't already support the cause like that.
We also know the shit show that happened in Russia the failed ML revolution there, and basically everywhere else that tried it. Backing ML is getting you nowhere fast. Anarchists have more luck these days.
I think it's also worthwhile to point out that striking in the UK does almost nothing. This is partially because people don't strike at the same time. If they did it would be utter chaos. Things might even change.
It's also true that lots of strikes are not skilled labour. We all know jobs like bus driver are not paid very much, yet people complain anyway, and I can't help but think: you knew exactly what kind of job you were getting into. I sort of know better because bus drivers are an essential function regardless of what you think of them, so they should be paid fairly. Lots of people won't think like this though. It's also dead easy to replace unskilled labourers so scabs are always going to be a problem.
Also even the conservatives come up with schemes to help the people that are public spending heavy. Examples include furlough, eat out to help out, and the £2 bus faires that are happening right now. They aren't neoliberal at all. Schemes like that are not true right wing anymore than labour is true left wing in this country.
You are either taking the piss or you are completely and utterly sheltered in your middle class bubble.
4.2million children live in poverty, out of 12.7million total. This amounts to one third of children in poverty. The NHS is literally falling apart at the seams, my family works in the NHS, it has been strangled to death. A lot of it has been stealthily privatised and the rest is just being intentionally ruined. It's on its last legs and is barely providing essential care.
This is factually incorrect. Low income votes go left while high income votes go right. There was a blip created by brexit where this was not the case because everything became the single issue of brexit. Low income voters were convinced that voting for brexit would improve their conditions (they were lied to successfully) and incorrectly voting against their best interests. This however is now returning to left, although with Starmer at the helm and people outside of the politically engage the vast majority of the country has no idea what a slime he truly is. Backed by the media who want to see the real left fucked over as well, he'll likely do alright.
Where exactly? Show me the successful anarchists?
Unskilled labour is a myth used to suppress wages. I honestly can't believe you're spouting this while claiming to be left wing at all.
Furlough was an economic necessity. Eat out to help out is literally just a business promotion and has fuck all to do with helping the population it's about business owners, literally their target audience.
While much of the world is making buses 100% free.
And once again, this has nothing to do with helping people and is actually about helping businesses.
I agree about the state of the NHS. The fact is though we still have an NHS, America never had one. Lots of countries don't have healthcare either.
How exactly is unskilled labour a myth? Maybe I should use the term less skilled or just easily replaceable since it's not 100% unskilled? Either way the result is the same: some labour takes way more time and training than other forms of labour. I don't think you can complain when a scientist or doctor that spent 7+ years at University while not getting paid gets a higher salary at the end. If you think this is a radical idea I really don't know what to tell you. I don't think anybody should be on poverty wages.
I am reporting what I have seen amoung students rather than the general population. The ones who have already been in work or are having to work hard to support themselves while studying are more centrist or right wing.
By third world country standards they are probably rich. Poverty is very much relative. Some people make less in a day than minimum wage in this country for an hour. It's still not a good thing by any means, but that's sadly the reality. I don't think a socialist revolution is going to guarantee everybody has enough food, clothes, and other resources. A lot of people would inevitably end up poorer than to start with, at least for the foreseeable future.
I agree with a lot of your points about pragmatism but there absolutely is factionalism on the left in the UK, unless (as it looks like you are doing) you say some of them are not actually leftist and therefore the remaining group is small enough that it's not arguing with itself.
The right are also split but in normal times they are better at keeping the worst of it behind closed doors and rallying around the leader when the dust settles. Lack of message discipline is what kills the left at the ballot box. New Labour were good at it and they won; Starmer is trying to do the same - sensible tactic in my opinion.
The neoliberals are not actually leftist. This is a 100% fact, if you are arguing that the capitalists are leftists then you are also not a leftist. They are centre right. The transphobic neoliberals and privatizers trying to destroy the nhs and build a "free and open" energy market for the sake of preventing our attempts at nationalisation can eat my ass, so can their by-association transphobic mysogynistic supporters. You can get to fuck with your "yeah they're actually toooootally leftists dude belieeeeeve me" bullcrap. It is unbelievable that you would mention New Labour under Tony Blair, a party that killed 2 million people and exploited the fuck out of the middle east and continue to pretend that you are left wing, you are not, you are an imperialist, capitalist neoliberal.
It is blatantly clear why you didn't answer the question about what union you're in and did not cite any organising, you don't do any for the left and you've made that abundantly clear to anyone that knows these parties and groups. The only reason you have any votes at all is because the majority of people here are americans and they have absolutely no fucking idea what we're talking about now.
All they need to know is that you support neoliberals. The crowd here definitely knows neoliberalism isn't leftist.
No surprises that this conversation started off with you trying to discredit me by screeching "tankie", you knew that if you made it clear what your actual political affiliations are and made a real political argument it would be unpopular.
I'm a different user to the guy you were originally having a conversation with.
No need to get so personal!