Every time I see an anti-.ml meme I wonder, why are people so worried about people seeing .ml content? If they’re jerks, wouldn’t you want people to stumble into .ml and find out?
My conspiracy is that people are trying to ramp up enough of a campaign to defederate from .ml, not knowing it’s history on Lemmy and how most .ml users are actually quite chill and actually genuine people once you get to know them. I mean Jesus Christ guys, .ml users arent all bots.
Certain people just like echo chambers and can’t see the value of opposing beliefs or arguments, no matter the level of sense that those may or not make.
This doesn’t stand materialist scrutiny. You don’t get an authoritarian state directed by a bunch of egotistic bureaucrats, and simultaneously the lowest wealth inequality in history in the region, guaranteed housing and the elimination of unemployment, the defeat of nazism, global support of anti imperialism such as in Vietnam or essentially all of Africa and Latin America, free education to the highest level, and high quality affordable public transit.
In my point of view calling yourself a socialist and not being able to criticise the blatantly anti-democratic and imperial power the USSR became is weird.
Socialism (in my view of it) necessarily requires democratic structures at work as well as government.
Despite the USSR’s positives (all countries have them) let’s not pretend like they had a good template we should emulate (on governance and voting, that is).
Without democracy, you’re basically hoping the people in charge are benevolent. But then when they’re inevitably not at some point, you have no way to peacefully remove them.
Next minute you’ll be telling me China is a democracy just because they elect people the the National People’s Congress. (Another country, with many positives, which is not a democracy).
And please do not confuse my criticism of notionally socialist states (China is definitely not), with implicit praise of the “democracy” in the United States, what they have is barely democracy.
My statement isn’t that the USSR was perfect, it is that all of the material benefits listed above must come from material reasons. You would not expect a government based on a set of self-serving antidemocratic bureaucrats to result in such benefits, because when that’s the form of governance it ends up more towards things like Saudi Arabia.
What’s more feasible, that Soviet Citizens got lucky with Lenin, then Stalin, then Khruschyov and then Brezhnev, or that there were actually democratic means of exerting popular power other than electoralism?
Why do you call the USSR “imperial” power? It never engaged in colonialism or economic exploitation of the global south, quite the opposite. What was imperialist about it?
Regarding China, I would argue they’re more democratic than the west based on the outcomes of governance and on the satisfaction of citizens with their government.
You would not expect a government based on a set of self-serving antidemocratic bureaucrats to result in such benefits
Sure, there was genuine ideological reasons for the USSRs achievements, but you’re moving the goal-posts a bit. The original claim you were disputing was whether the USSR was authoritarian, which many people agree that it was.
There can be genuine and successful efforts to improve people’s lives under any system, including in the USSR.
What was imperialist about it?
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and occupation of Poland
The Winter War against Finnland
The East German uprising of 1953
are the first to come to my mind.
It would be a lot easier to defend the USSR if they only intervened to allow the proletariat to hold referendums, but we both know this is not what happened on many occasions.
It seems to me that Russia was continuing in the tradition Russian Empire, just under new management, and was definitely the first among “equals” in the USSR and its sphere of influence.
As for Molotov-Ribbentrop and the invasion of “Poland”: I’m gonna please ask you to actually read my comment and to be open to the historical evidence I bring (using Wikipedia as a source, hopefully not suspect of being tankie-biased), because I believe there is a great mistake in the way contemporary western nations interpret history of WW2 and the interwar period. Thank you for actually making the effort, I know it’s a long comment, but please engage with the points I’m making:
The only country who offered to start a collective offensive against the Nazis and to uphold the defense agreement with Czechoslovakia as an alternative to the Munich Betrayal was the USSR. From that Wikipedia article: “The Soviet Union announced its willingness to come to Czechoslovakia’s assistance, provided the Red Army would be able to cross Polish and Romanian territory; both countries refused.” Poland could have literally been saved from Nazi invasion if France and itself had agreed to start a war together against Nazi Germany, but they didn’t want to. By the logic of “invading Poland” being akin to Nazi collaboration, Poland was as imperialist as the Nazis.
As a Spaniard leftist it’s so infuriating when the Soviet Union, the ONLY country in 1936 which actively fought fascism in Europe by sending weapons, tanks and aviation to my homeland in the other side of the continent in the Spanish civil war against fascism, is accused of appeasing the fascists. The Soviets weren’t dumb, they knew the danger and threat of Nazism and worked for the entire decade of the 1930s under the Litvinov Doctrine of Collective Security to enter mutual defense agreements with England, France and Poland, which all refused because they were convinced that the Nazis would honor their own stated purpose of invading the communists in the East. The Soviets went as far as to offer ONE MILLION troops to France (Archive link against paywall) together with tanks, artillery and aviation in 1939 in exchange for a mutual defense agreement, which the French didn’t agree to because of the stated reason. Just from THIS evidence, the Soviets were by far the most antifascist country in Europe throughout the 1930s, you literally won’t find any other country doing any remotely similar efforts to fight Nazism. If you do, please provide evidence.
The invasion of “Poland” is also severely misconstrued. The Soviets didn’t invade what we think of when we say Poland. They invaded overwhelmingly Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian lands that Poland had previously invaded in 1919. Poland in 1938, a year before the invasion:
“Polish” territories invaded by the USSR in 1939:
The Soviets invaded famously Polish cities such as Lviv (sixth most populous city in modern Ukraine), Pinsk (important city in western Belarus) and Vilnius (capital of freaking modern Lithuania). They only invaded a small chunk of what you’d consider Poland nowadays, and the rest of lands were actually liberated from Polish occupation and returned to the Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian socialist republics. Hopefully you understand the importance of giving Ukrainians back their lands and sovereignty?
Additionally, the Soviets didn’t invade Poland together with the Nazis, they invaded a bit more than two weeks after the Nazi invasion, at a time when the Polish government had already exiled itself and there was no Polish administration. The meaning of this, is that all lands not occupied by Soviet troops, would have been occupied by Nazis. There was no alternative. Polish troops did not resist Soviet occupation but they did resist Nazi invasion. The Soviet occupation effectively protected millions of Slavic peoples like Poles, Ukrainians and Belarusians from the stated aim of Nazis of genociding the Slavic peoples all the way to the Urals.
All in all, my conclusion is: the Soviets were fully aware of the dangers of Nazism and fought against it earlier than anyone (Spanish civil war), spent the entire 30s pushing for an anti-Nazi mutual defence agreement which was refused by France, England and Poland, tried to honour the existing mutual defense agreement with Czechoslovakia which France rejected and Poland didn’t allow (Romania neither but they were fascists so that’s a given), and offered to send a million troops to France’s border with Germany to destroy Nazism but weren’t allowed to do so. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was a tool of postponing the war in a period in which the USSR, a very young country with only 10 years of industrialization behind it since the first 5-year plan in 1929, was growing at a 10% GDP per year rate and needed every moment it could get. I can and do criticise decisions such as the invasion of Finland, but ultimately even the western leaders at the time seem to generally agree with my interpretation:
“In those days the Soviet Government had grave reason to fear that they would be left one-on-one to face the Nazi fury. Stalin took measures which no free democracy could regard otherwise than with distaste. Yet I never doubted myself that his cardinal aim had been to hold the German armies off from Russia for as long as might be” (Paraphrased from Churchill’s December 1944 remarks in the House of Commons.)
“It would be unwise to assume Stalin approves of Hitler’s aggression. Probably the Soviet Government has merely sought a delaying tactic, not wanting to be the next victim. They will have a rude awakening, but they think, at least for now, they can keep the wolf from the door” Franklin D. Roosevelt (President of the United States, 1933–1945), from Harold L. Ickes’s diary entries, early September 1939. Ickes’s diaries are published as The Secret Diary of Harold Ickes.
"One must suppose that the Soviet Government, seeing no immediate prospect of real support from outside, decided to make its own arrangements for self‑defence, however unpalatable such an agreement might appear. We in this House cannot be astonished that a government acting solely on grounds of power politics should take that course” Neville Chamberlain House of Commons Statement, August 24, 1939 (one day after pact’s signing)
I don’t think I’m moving the goalposts. My claim isn’t only “great progress happened in the USSR in terms of material conditions of workers”, my claim is “these improvements of material conditions point towards the existence of a more Democratic system than in places where said improvements don’t take place”. I’m using the improvements as a materialist measure of democracy because these improvements are, in my opinion, evidence of democracy.
It would be a lot easier to defend the USSR if they only intervened to allow the proletariat to hold referendums
Well, obviously, but reality isn’t so easy when you’re just one socialist country in a world dominated by capitalism. This was very obvious to the Bolsheviks from the beginning, when during the Russian Civil War, 10+ world powers including the USA, Great Britain or Poland invaded them trying to help the Whites and to reestablish tsarist absolutism. The USSR was an example of what is called “Actually Existing Socialism”. You cannot get a totally socialist country when capitalist relations still dominate the planet and threaten your very existence, as was the case in the Soviet Union. For example, the main drive of rapid industrialization In 1929 together with rapid land collectivization was not ideological, but geopolitical: threat of invasion. When geopolitical, and not purely ideological reasons, are behind a lot of your decisions, it’s hard to do socialism perfectly. I agree we should analyze the problems and failures, but we can also look at the entire experience of the country and, judging by the results, it was very positive and arguably better than any system we’ve had so far.
Roughly in about the timeframe you would remove the pointy tree branch from prostate that’s making you such a condescending cunt. 😢 sorry if I don’t hold my breath
.ml is just the latest designated “tankie” instance. So far it’s the third one. Once .world defederates from .ml, the same people who currently hate .ml will designate another “tankie” instance to hate.
This guide is wrote up for those who have a hard time banning .ml and constantly removed about being able to see our content. It could be used to ban .world if you want i guess.
Welcome to a tutorial on how to block .ml on your personal account.
In the top right corner of the top of the page, there are 3 horizontal white bars. Click it.
This will open up a drop down menu. At the bottom of that menu, you will see your username. Click it.
This will open another drop down menu with 3 options. Click “Settings”.
At the top of your screen you will see 2 tabs. Click the one that says “Blocks”.
Here you will see “Block user” “Block community” and “Block instance”. Click the down arrow below “Block instance”.
This will open up a search bar. Type “lemmy.ml” and click it after it shows up.
That’s it! You’ve blocked .ml and will never see content from the instance. Now you don’t need to make a feud post every day complaining about .ml and other instances you disapprove of. Think of all the time you will save!
But wait, we aren’t done yet in this menu. Click the down arrow under “Block user”. Now type “UltraGiGaGigantic” Make sure you select my .ml account as the other ones I no longer use. Thanks, appreciate it.
That’s it! You’ve blocked .ml and will never see content from the instance. Now you don’t need to make a feud post every day complaining about .ml and other instances you disapprove of. Think of all the time you will save!
That’s not enough for the centrists. They don’t want anyone to be allowed to be exposed to any idea to their left. Under any circumstances.
The amount of effort it seems people who like to call themselves leftists but aren’t remotely interested in any practical means of getting there are astonishing.
I don’t think they ever make good faith arguments and spend 100% of their time online complaining about the practical leftists, doing things like calling them centerists for realizing their 1 day plans for revolution aren’t actually ever coming to fruition, or pointing out that their rhetoric, has, and continues to harm people by pulling power from the practical and pragmatic to the whimsical nonexistent nonsense they call solutions to problems but are actually just dream goals.
Somehow, no matter the damage they cause, they double down on pretending the people who aren’t in dream land but have the closslest to their goals as them, are the real problem worth complaining about and not the people setting things on fire.
I have to feel like these people are Jill Stien esque psyops sent to derail leftist ideas from ever actually seeing the light of day.
When it comes to doing the right thing for the American people, the useless centrists you insist on calling “practical leftists” do nothing and call it incrementalism.
When it comes to selling weapons for genocide, they can’t do it fast enough and will fight to keep doing it no matter what it costs the American people.
The country has slid to the right for decades and “practical” do-nothing-but-genocide centrists are enthusiastically complicit.
You are clearly trying to strawman me again, which seems like your go to move here.
The DNC is currently a center right organization.
Practical leftists support them because they understand that in the American political system it is impossible to make another party, so the only way to avoid what we have here is to support the democrats and change them with local politics and primaries.
The practical leftists aren’t foolish enough to believe that the democrats losing will magically move them left, as what we’ve seen is instead, they’re happy to continue being “at least we aren’t republicans”
Your attempt to call the centrrists do nothing but genocide is an astoundingly ignorant take that shows you truly don’t take politics seriously, as you only go based on vibes and not policy decisions and more than that do not understand how little can be done in a permanent fashion when voters let in the other party every 4 to 8 years and you have no usable senate super majority.
You have yet to say anything that wasn’t repeating your strawman like a broken record. Like your politics don’t have any nuance to them at all or aren’t your honest opinions but just something you where to troll people who are actually angry with the state of USA politics.
Interesting way of reasoning: “They are bad because they block stuff they don’t want to read, so I block them because what they do is stuff I don’t want to read.”
Shouldn’t you be blocking yourself if you follow that way of reasoning?
Your reply comes form there but will probably be the last post I see from there because I’m gonna go ahead and block the instance. Unless that still lets replies come through (fine with me, main feed is more my focus)
People designated .ml as a tankie instance for very good reason: the admins of .ml have repeatedly shown to be pro-authoritarian.
For years now I’ve seen incessant gaslighting from tankies pretending that “tankie” is some catch-all term baselessly thrown around like “woke”. However, I’ve pretty much exclusively seen the term “tankie” used to describe people who support authoritarian regimes/dictatorships.
By any leftist conception, capitalist nations are undeniably authoritarian, yet you never see self described “leftist” who praise welfare capitalist states like the Scandinavian countries getting called a tankie. Clearly the term is not “used to describe people who support authoritarian regimes/dictatorships”.
LOL. Your main instance — lemmy.blahaj.zone —has a blanket ban on all Marxist Leninists, regardless of whether they are “tankie” or not. That is the most authoritarian thing I have seen on Lemmy so far and it’s from a self-proclaimed anarchist instance. The hypocrisy is hilarious. Anarkiddies are so unserious.
In my original comment, I was talking about the term “tankie”, which is a term we’re seeing used a lot on Lemmy (a social media) to refer to people who support authoritarian governments (of countries, such as Russia and China).
In my reply to you, I meant to say that the effects of a Lemmy instance being “authoritarian” aren’t at all as harmful to its users as an authoritarian country is to its residents, since it’s easy to change instances but its not generally easy (and sometimes not reasonably possible) to change countries.
An ‘anarchist’ instance which claims to oppose genocide, yet allows genocide denial if it’s painted red, and where the admins deny UN verified sexual assault.
I don’t support authoritarian regimes, but I get called a tankie plenty by centrists who hate that I don’t support the authoritarian regime that their wing of the party sold weapons to.
“Tankie” is just something the genocide wing calls people who disagree with their only policy.
During the Reddit exodus, there were lots of complaints about left wing extremism. Most of them were landing on ml, grad or hexbear. This isn’t a good thing in the long run, so the bad press is necessary; otherwise this place risks being branded as “tankie HQ” before we can get some real traffic here.
The term “tankie” now has about as much meaning now as “woke” does. It’s just a generalization for people to smear an ideology they don’t understand, and have no intention of trying to understand, because they fear that any perceived interest would cause ostracization from their group. People who use tankie almost certainly have no real historical understanding of Marxist projects beyond what they learned in grade school and what their favorite podcaster is saying.
Yes? Acting like tankies haven’t also killed people… I had tankies stalk me on lemmy because I: was under 30, and did not have a political science degree. You’d think that’s an exaggeration but it’s not.
So you somehow convinced enough mods in a famously defensive community to become a moderator yourself, then you told them you you’re letting in right-wing viewpoints? Or did they make you a mod after you said you wouldn’t censor?
Yeah but that’s what extreme leftists suggest: universal healthcare and education, guaranteed employment and housing, good retirement benefits, good working conditions under collective ownership…
No one “worries” about seeing it. It’s that if you engage with anyone from, or anything posted in, a .ml, about any topic at all, you’ll eventually be hit with “capitalism causes all problems in the universe” or the rest of their standard “I’m 19 and this is deep” tankie talking points like some mandatory checklist of things they have to cram into every post or they get kicked out of the instance. It’s exhausting and pointless. No one runs around elsewhere in Lemmy making it a point to defend capitalism, so it’s just of a constant eye-roll when “I’m an independent thinker! Here’s the same thing we all say!” happens.
Did you know the explaining the thing doesn’t mean one endorses the thing? Did you know that explaining the thing isn’t “whining” about it, but, in fact, is explaining the perspective of another person? It’s important to learn about other perspectives, even if you don’t like them.
I find it mildly annoying, but not bad enough to bother blocking anyone.
It’s that if you engage with anyone from, or anything posted in, a .ml, about any topic at all, you’ll eventually be hit with “capitalism causes all problems in the universe” or the rest of their standard “I’m 19 and this is deep” tankie talking points like some mandatory checklist of things they have to cram into every post or they get kicked out of the instance. It’s exhausting and pointless.
This sure sounds like whining. Because that’s all you’re doing. How dare people to your left not immediately kill themselves for your comfort.
Let’s consider the same text with a different context and see if it sounds like something else.
It’s that if you engage with anyone from, or anything to do with, New York, about any topic at all, you’ll eventually be hit with “New York is the greatest city in the world!” or the rest of their standard “Ayyyy, NYC!” New Yorker talking points like some mandatory checklist of things they have to cram into every post or they get kicked out of the city. It’s exhausting and pointless.
It’s that if you engage with anyone from, or anything posted in the Linus Tech Tips Forum, about any topic at all, you’ll eventually be hit with “Linux is better than Windows” or the rest of their standard “Arch is the only distro worth using” Linux talking points like some mandatory checklist of things they have to cram into every post or they get kicked out of the forum. It’s exhausting and pointless.
I wrote this as essentially the statistics of interactions, and acknowledging that it will end a conversation about any other topic, no matter how much work one puts into keeping the conversation on topic. It’s just very likely to be how interactions go in my experience. Doesn’t actually bother me one bit, but it does seem like a poor way to go through life.
I wrote this as essentially the statistics of interactions,
And the “19 and edgy” thing? Come on. You’re whining because people to your left are allowed to speak and you want permanent silence so you can listen to the fascists on the right.
yeah, it reminds me of college freshmen. You get one idea stuck in your head and lose all sense of nuance or perspective.
are allowed to speak
No, y’all are annoying about HOW you communicate your opinions. Which I’ve repeated several times in this thread and none of you seem able or willing to understand it’s communication style and not the ideas that anyone is talking about here. And it’s just annoying, no one wants to silence you, you can’t even understand that. Y’all are so sensitive that simply calling you out for being abrasive about one thing is some grant attack on your ego and all the “right” ideas in the world and your entire identity. You’re just as bad as any MAGA people can be.
Say anything you want, but I can get “it’s capitalism’s fault!!1!” anywhere. It’s not a unique or special take. That doesn’t 1) make it necessarily true, and 2) convince anyone that maybe it actually is capitalism’s fault. Tell me WHY, in that circumstance, be specific, nuanced, and detailed about why you think capitalism did he bad thing. Maybe listen to Marx about rigidity of thought.
I do not look forward to your response where you make up some BS about me selling stocks to pay for this interaction or something equally untrue and absurd.
And it’s just annoying, no one wants to silence you
Which is why the previous two “tankie” instances have been defederated. And why, once centrists have their way and .ml is defederated, they’re going to pick another instance to designate the “tankie” instance.
You can block the left you don’t want to listen to. Instead, you whine about them because you want them silenced.
Don’t you understand how mypoic a view that it? How dependent it is on you thinking you have an absolute lockdown on ALL ideas there can be, and that anyone who isn’t you is against you? Only a fool would think that everything is split in perfect dualism and that you’re the only one that’s right.
It’s basically the same thing I see from super evangelical family members. If it’s not something they like, it’s “from Satan.” Is that really a behavior you’re trying to emulate? That level of absolutism and rigidity of thought?
FFS, both Lenin and Marx warned you about the dangers of rigid thinking. And here you are, doing exactly that! You’re not even a good Marxist!
You’re taking everything to absurd extremes and assuming I’m something that’s convenient for your weak argument. People posting memes like this are pushing for the lockdown of ideas.
Speaking of taking it to extremes, y’all (or maybe 1 person with 5 accounts, it’s hard to tell) so far in this thread people have reacted to saying “yeah, they’re annoying about how they interact with other people” as: trying to put ideas on lockdown, wanting to silence anyone “left of me,” that I’m actively supporting all existing political structures and capitalism, and then a ton of personal attacks. Because I explained the joke to someone else.
I especially loved that my “hopes are also profoundly stupid.” Ah yes, a response that is classy, high-brow, and I’m fairly sure it’s a direct quote from Lenin at the Zimmerwald Conference (since I have to tell you all, apparently, that was sarcasm).
Seriously, look around here. Y’all are not fun to talk to in general about anything because of this right here. And when someone says it out loud, you happily confirm you’re not fun to talk to and do the thing that the meme is about.
This isn’t about your ideas, it’s about how abrasive and annoying you are to interact with. Look at how many times I’ve had to repeat that, and every time you all immediately jump to “yOu’Re sIlEnCiNg iDeAs!” No, y’all are bad at human-to-human interaction. Without enough self-reflection to even pause and see that’s what was happening from the start.
You clearly haven’t engaged with anything, and lol @ “independent thinker” from someone defending the dominant economic and political system, which fyi is exactly what you’re doing
lmao. Not sure what’s funnier here, that you apparently don’t exist according to your comment, or that it’s basically “Nuh-UH, YOU’RE STUPID!”
lol @ “independent thinker”
Speaking of which, where exactly did I defend anything? Quote the specific text.
Here, I’ll help. I said:
No one runs around elsewhere in Lemmy making it a point to defend capitalism,
Including me.
I explained how someone else might arrive at the place where the original meme was made. People on .ml instances are not some fully complete and perfect opposite pole of the Western world. Y’all have some opinions, and that’s not even the problem. You’re super annoying with how you try and force them on people.
Like how you’re literally lying and angry about the fact that not everyone likes how you communicate. Your ideas aren’t the problem, how you talk about them is the problem.
Fun fact: Explaining the biology of a seagull to someone doesn’t make me a seagull. If I ask you to explain how a microwave works, shall you become a microwave?
So your response to people glazing the usa is glazing an authorization country. And you wonder why people don’t like ML?
No, it’s not about the economic system. Christ knows communists aren’t in short supply on lemmy, if that was true you’d see more support. Don’t kid yourself.
No, people are attacking China with misinformation created and distributed by the US specifically because their economic system represents an existential threat to our own
Every time I see an anti-.ml meme I wonder, why are people so worried about people seeing .ml content? If they’re jerks, wouldn’t you want people to stumble into .ml and find out?
My conspiracy is that people are trying to ramp up enough of a campaign to defederate from .ml, not knowing it’s history on Lemmy and how most .ml users are actually quite chill and actually genuine people once you get to know them. I mean Jesus Christ guys, .ml users arent all bots.
It does seem that way. I think you’re right
Certain people just like echo chambers and can’t see the value of opposing beliefs or arguments, no matter the level of sense that those may or not make.
Libs vs tankies is just an extension of imperial conflict.
Anti-leftism is an all consuming, load-bearing pillar of fascism. Since .ml is tangentially leftist aligned…
litewally im in the anti-bad guy good guys cwub, if you’we not in the anti-bad guy good guy cwub ur litewally a bad guy
Edit: in before the guy who originally made this joke is litewally a bad guy. Ok, I don’t know him, it is just a relevant joke
Authoritarians are not leftists LMAO
“Marx and Engles weren’t leftists” ok.
You’re right. The people who spent all of 2024 demanding unquestioning devotion to genocide supporters are not leftists.
The left/right axis is separate from the libertarian/authoritarian axis.
The USSR was an leftist authoritarian state.
This doesn’t stand materialist scrutiny. You don’t get an authoritarian state directed by a bunch of egotistic bureaucrats, and simultaneously the lowest wealth inequality in history in the region, guaranteed housing and the elimination of unemployment, the defeat of nazism, global support of anti imperialism such as in Vietnam or essentially all of Africa and Latin America, free education to the highest level, and high quality affordable public transit.
In my point of view calling yourself a socialist and not being able to criticise the blatantly anti-democratic and imperial power the USSR became is weird.
Socialism (in my view of it) necessarily requires democratic structures at work as well as government.
Despite the USSR’s positives (all countries have them) let’s not pretend like they had a good template we should emulate (on governance and voting, that is).
Without democracy, you’re basically hoping the people in charge are benevolent. But then when they’re inevitably not at some point, you have no way to peacefully remove them.
Next minute you’ll be telling me China is a democracy just because they elect people the the National People’s Congress. (Another country, with many positives, which is not a democracy).
And please do not confuse my criticism of notionally socialist states (China is definitely not), with implicit praise of the “democracy” in the United States, what they have is barely democracy.
My statement isn’t that the USSR was perfect, it is that all of the material benefits listed above must come from material reasons. You would not expect a government based on a set of self-serving antidemocratic bureaucrats to result in such benefits, because when that’s the form of governance it ends up more towards things like Saudi Arabia.
What’s more feasible, that Soviet Citizens got lucky with Lenin, then Stalin, then Khruschyov and then Brezhnev, or that there were actually democratic means of exerting popular power other than electoralism?
Why do you call the USSR “imperial” power? It never engaged in colonialism or economic exploitation of the global south, quite the opposite. What was imperialist about it?
Regarding China, I would argue they’re more democratic than the west based on the outcomes of governance and on the satisfaction of citizens with their government.
Sure, there was genuine ideological reasons for the USSRs achievements, but you’re moving the goal-posts a bit. The original claim you were disputing was whether the USSR was authoritarian, which many people agree that it was.
There can be genuine and successful efforts to improve people’s lives under any system, including in the USSR.
are the first to come to my mind.
It would be a lot easier to defend the USSR if they only intervened to allow the proletariat to hold referendums, but we both know this is not what happened on many occasions.
It seems to me that Russia was continuing in the tradition Russian Empire, just under new management, and was definitely the first among “equals” in the USSR and its sphere of influence.
As for Molotov-Ribbentrop and the invasion of “Poland”: I’m gonna please ask you to actually read my comment and to be open to the historical evidence I bring (using Wikipedia as a source, hopefully not suspect of being tankie-biased), because I believe there is a great mistake in the way contemporary western nations interpret history of WW2 and the interwar period. Thank you for actually making the effort, I know it’s a long comment, but please engage with the points I’m making:
The only country who offered to start a collective offensive against the Nazis and to uphold the defense agreement with Czechoslovakia as an alternative to the Munich Betrayal was the USSR. From that Wikipedia article: “The Soviet Union announced its willingness to come to Czechoslovakia’s assistance, provided the Red Army would be able to cross Polish and Romanian territory; both countries refused.” Poland could have literally been saved from Nazi invasion if France and itself had agreed to start a war together against Nazi Germany, but they didn’t want to. By the logic of “invading Poland” being akin to Nazi collaboration, Poland was as imperialist as the Nazis.
As a Spaniard leftist it’s so infuriating when the Soviet Union, the ONLY country in 1936 which actively fought fascism in Europe by sending weapons, tanks and aviation to my homeland in the other side of the continent in the Spanish civil war against fascism, is accused of appeasing the fascists. The Soviets weren’t dumb, they knew the danger and threat of Nazism and worked for the entire decade of the 1930s under the Litvinov Doctrine of Collective Security to enter mutual defense agreements with England, France and Poland, which all refused because they were convinced that the Nazis would honor their own stated purpose of invading the communists in the East. The Soviets went as far as to offer ONE MILLION troops to France (Archive link against paywall) together with tanks, artillery and aviation in 1939 in exchange for a mutual defense agreement, which the French didn’t agree to because of the stated reason. Just from THIS evidence, the Soviets were by far the most antifascist country in Europe throughout the 1930s, you literally won’t find any other country doing any remotely similar efforts to fight Nazism. If you do, please provide evidence.
The invasion of “Poland” is also severely misconstrued. The Soviets didn’t invade what we think of when we say Poland. They invaded overwhelmingly Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian lands that Poland had previously invaded in 1919. Poland in 1938, a year before the invasion:
“Polish” territories invaded by the USSR in 1939:
The Soviets invaded famously Polish cities such as Lviv (sixth most populous city in modern Ukraine), Pinsk (important city in western Belarus) and Vilnius (capital of freaking modern Lithuania). They only invaded a small chunk of what you’d consider Poland nowadays, and the rest of lands were actually liberated from Polish occupation and returned to the Ukrainian, Belarusian and Lithuanian socialist republics. Hopefully you understand the importance of giving Ukrainians back their lands and sovereignty?
Additionally, the Soviets didn’t invade Poland together with the Nazis, they invaded a bit more than two weeks after the Nazi invasion, at a time when the Polish government had already exiled itself and there was no Polish administration. The meaning of this, is that all lands not occupied by Soviet troops, would have been occupied by Nazis. There was no alternative. Polish troops did not resist Soviet occupation but they did resist Nazi invasion. The Soviet occupation effectively protected millions of Slavic peoples like Poles, Ukrainians and Belarusians from the stated aim of Nazis of genociding the Slavic peoples all the way to the Urals.
All in all, my conclusion is: the Soviets were fully aware of the dangers of Nazism and fought against it earlier than anyone (Spanish civil war), spent the entire 30s pushing for an anti-Nazi mutual defence agreement which was refused by France, England and Poland, tried to honour the existing mutual defense agreement with Czechoslovakia which France rejected and Poland didn’t allow (Romania neither but they were fascists so that’s a given), and offered to send a million troops to France’s border with Germany to destroy Nazism but weren’t allowed to do so. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was a tool of postponing the war in a period in which the USSR, a very young country with only 10 years of industrialization behind it since the first 5-year plan in 1929, was growing at a 10% GDP per year rate and needed every moment it could get. I can and do criticise decisions such as the invasion of Finland, but ultimately even the western leaders at the time seem to generally agree with my interpretation:
“In those days the Soviet Government had grave reason to fear that they would be left one-on-one to face the Nazi fury. Stalin took measures which no free democracy could regard otherwise than with distaste. Yet I never doubted myself that his cardinal aim had been to hold the German armies off from Russia for as long as might be” (Paraphrased from Churchill’s December 1944 remarks in the House of Commons.)
“It would be unwise to assume Stalin approves of Hitler’s aggression. Probably the Soviet Government has merely sought a delaying tactic, not wanting to be the next victim. They will have a rude awakening, but they think, at least for now, they can keep the wolf from the door” Franklin D. Roosevelt (President of the United States, 1933–1945), from Harold L. Ickes’s diary entries, early September 1939. Ickes’s diaries are published as The Secret Diary of Harold Ickes.
"One must suppose that the Soviet Government, seeing no immediate prospect of real support from outside, decided to make its own arrangements for self‑defence, however unpalatable such an agreement might appear. We in this House cannot be astonished that a government acting solely on grounds of power politics should take that course” Neville Chamberlain House of Commons Statement, August 24, 1939 (one day after pact’s signing)
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this
I don’t think I’m moving the goalposts. My claim isn’t only “great progress happened in the USSR in terms of material conditions of workers”, my claim is “these improvements of material conditions point towards the existence of a more Democratic system than in places where said improvements don’t take place”. I’m using the improvements as a materialist measure of democracy because these improvements are, in my opinion, evidence of democracy.
Well, obviously, but reality isn’t so easy when you’re just one socialist country in a world dominated by capitalism. This was very obvious to the Bolsheviks from the beginning, when during the Russian Civil War, 10+ world powers including the USA, Great Britain or Poland invaded them trying to help the Whites and to reestablish tsarist absolutism. The USSR was an example of what is called “Actually Existing Socialism”. You cannot get a totally socialist country when capitalist relations still dominate the planet and threaten your very existence, as was the case in the Soviet Union. For example, the main drive of rapid industrialization In 1929 together with rapid land collectivization was not ideological, but geopolitical: threat of invasion. When geopolitical, and not purely ideological reasons, are behind a lot of your decisions, it’s hard to do socialism perfectly. I agree we should analyze the problems and failures, but we can also look at the entire experience of the country and, judging by the results, it was very positive and arguably better than any system we’ve had so far.
Before I found out, I would have preferred to find out naturally. After I did stumble in and find out, I wished somebody had warned me.
Oh poor thing, you’ll recover from the trama someday.
Roughly in about the timeframe you would remove the pointy tree branch from prostate that’s making you such a condescending cunt. 😢 sorry if I don’t hold my breath
.ml is just the latest designated “tankie” instance. So far it’s the third one. Once .world defederates from .ml, the same people who currently hate .ml will designate another “tankie” instance to hate.
Some of them have already started with Db0
So .world is extremely anti free speech? Is there an easy way I can block all of .world from my feed then?
This guide is wrote up for those who have a hard time banning .ml and constantly removed about being able to see our content. It could be used to ban .world if you want i guess.
Welcome to a tutorial on how to block .ml on your personal account.
In the top right corner of the top of the page, there are 3 horizontal white bars. Click it.
This will open up a drop down menu. At the bottom of that menu, you will see your username. Click it.
This will open another drop down menu with 3 options. Click “Settings”.
At the top of your screen you will see 2 tabs. Click the one that says “Blocks”.
Here you will see “Block user” “Block community” and “Block instance”. Click the down arrow below “Block instance”.
This will open up a search bar. Type “lemmy.ml” and click it after it shows up.
That’s it! You’ve blocked .ml and will never see content from the instance. Now you don’t need to make a feud post every day complaining about .ml and other instances you disapprove of. Think of all the time you will save!
But wait, we aren’t done yet in this menu. Click the down arrow under “Block user”. Now type “UltraGiGaGigantic” Make sure you select my .ml account as the other ones I no longer use. Thanks, appreciate it.
That’s not enough for the centrists. They don’t want anyone to be allowed to be exposed to any idea to their left. Under any circumstances.
The amount of effort it seems people who like to call themselves leftists but aren’t remotely interested in any practical means of getting there are astonishing.
I don’t think they ever make good faith arguments and spend 100% of their time online complaining about the practical leftists, doing things like calling them centerists for realizing their 1 day plans for revolution aren’t actually ever coming to fruition, or pointing out that their rhetoric, has, and continues to harm people by pulling power from the practical and pragmatic to the whimsical nonexistent nonsense they call solutions to problems but are actually just dream goals.
Somehow, no matter the damage they cause, they double down on pretending the people who aren’t in dream land but have the closslest to their goals as them, are the real problem worth complaining about and not the people setting things on fire.
I have to feel like these people are Jill Stien esque psyops sent to derail leftist ideas from ever actually seeing the light of day.
When it comes to doing the right thing for the American people, the useless centrists you insist on calling “practical leftists” do nothing and call it incrementalism.
When it comes to selling weapons for genocide, they can’t do it fast enough and will fight to keep doing it no matter what it costs the American people.
The country has slid to the right for decades and “practical” do-nothing-but-genocide centrists are enthusiastically complicit.
You are clearly trying to strawman me again, which seems like your go to move here.
The DNC is currently a center right organization.
Practical leftists support them because they understand that in the American political system it is impossible to make another party, so the only way to avoid what we have here is to support the democrats and change them with local politics and primaries.
The practical leftists aren’t foolish enough to believe that the democrats losing will magically move them left, as what we’ve seen is instead, they’re happy to continue being “at least we aren’t republicans”
Your attempt to call the centrrists do nothing but genocide is an astoundingly ignorant take that shows you truly don’t take politics seriously, as you only go based on vibes and not policy decisions and more than that do not understand how little can be done in a permanent fashion when voters let in the other party every 4 to 8 years and you have no usable senate super majority.
You have yet to say anything that wasn’t repeating your strawman like a broken record. Like your politics don’t have any nuance to them at all or aren’t your honest opinions but just something you where to troll people who are actually angry with the state of USA politics.
Stop trying to co-opt the left by branding pro-genocide-and-nothing-else centrists as being to the left.
Yes, you can block it in settings.
Free speech means that you can speak your opinion freely without the state (country…) punishing you for it.
Free speech doesn’t mean I have to listen to/read everything.
And yes, you can block the whole of lemmy.world easily, if you want to.
Didn’t ask what you wish I meant by “free speech” or what you’re glad I don’t mean by it.
Would thank you for answering what I asked if you didn’t waste my time answering (with fucked up wording) those 2 un-asked questions first
I did answer with these statements on your first question. Regarding the second one, sorry I’m not the tech support.
People who rant about “free speech” typically mean “hate speech” but don’t have the balls to just call it that.
Why do you want to block an instance? You don’t like free speech?
Wow you really wasted 5 seconds reading a lemmy reply
Interesting way of reasoning: “They are bad because they block stuff they don’t want to read, so I block them because what they do is stuff I don’t want to read.”
Shouldn’t you be blocking yourself if you follow that way of reasoning?
There’s a lot of users there who would very much prefer that no one to their left (and only their left) should be permitted to speak.
Your reply comes form there but will probably be the last post I see from there because I’m gonna go ahead and block the instance. Unless that still lets replies come through (fine with me, main feed is more my focus)
Oh look, someone else to block.
Do you announce every button you press?
“Hitting the reply button below your comment!”
“Typing my comment!”
“Clicking Reply!”
Yes they do, that’s how they operate. It’s just showing off they don’t like new viewpoints.
Another!
Nobody cares who you block
People designated .ml as a tankie instance for very good reason: the admins of .ml have repeatedly shown to be pro-authoritarian.
For years now I’ve seen incessant gaslighting from tankies pretending that “tankie” is some catch-all term baselessly thrown around like “woke”. However, I’ve pretty much exclusively seen the term “tankie” used to describe people who support authoritarian regimes/dictatorships.
By any leftist conception, capitalist nations are undeniably authoritarian, yet you never see self described “leftist” who praise welfare capitalist states like the Scandinavian countries getting called a tankie. Clearly the term is not “used to describe people who support authoritarian regimes/dictatorships”.
Bedtimes are authoritarian, your parents are tyrannical
LOL. Your main instance — lemmy.blahaj.zone —has a blanket ban on all Marxist Leninists, regardless of whether they are “tankie” or not. That is the most authoritarian thing I have seen on Lemmy so far and it’s from a self-proclaimed anarchist instance. The hypocrisy is hilarious. Anarkiddies are so unserious.
Sure? But Blahaj isn’t a country, it’s a social media.
I’m free to register on multiple instances at once. If I ever became displeased with Blahaj’s admins, I could very easily go elsewhere.
.ml also isn’t a country
Why are you talking about countries? This thread is about social media.
My apologies for the confusion.
In my original comment, I was talking about the term “tankie”, which is a term we’re seeing used a lot on Lemmy (a social media) to refer to people who support authoritarian governments (of countries, such as Russia and China).
In my reply to you, I meant to say that the effects of a Lemmy instance being “authoritarian” aren’t at all as harmful to its users as an authoritarian country is to its residents, since it’s easy to change instances but its not generally easy (and sometimes not reasonably possible) to change countries.
There was a few people calling dbzer0 a tankie instance, when it’s an anarchist instance.
Yeah we’re somehow Tankies for wanting democrats to try harder and saying we need to do more then vote.
An ‘anarchist’ instance which claims to oppose genocide, yet allows genocide denial if it’s painted red, and where the admins deny UN verified sexual assault.
Fantastic.
Anything’s possible when you make shit up kiddo
I don’t support authoritarian regimes, but I get called a tankie plenty by centrists who hate that I don’t support the authoritarian regime that their wing of the party sold weapons to.
“Tankie” is just something the genocide wing calls people who disagree with their only policy.
ah, then my impressions are biased, since I haven’t heard that term outside of Lemmy.
There’s pretty much only one person I know irl that calls themselves a “centrist”.
During the Reddit exodus, there were lots of complaints about left wing extremism. Most of them were landing on ml, grad or hexbear. This isn’t a good thing in the long run, so the bad press is necessary; otherwise this place risks being branded as “tankie HQ” before we can get some real traffic here.
Tbf this place was programmed by volunteer “tankies.”
The term “tankie” now has about as much meaning now as “woke” does. It’s just a generalization for people to smear an ideology they don’t understand, and have no intention of trying to understand, because they fear that any perceived interest would cause ostracization from their group. People who use tankie almost certainly have no real historical understanding of Marxist projects beyond what they learned in grade school and what their favorite podcaster is saying.
Left wing extremists are much better than the right wing variety, yes?
The barrel of the gun we’re left looking down looks the same
We’re getting ever closer to world run by right-leaning authoritarians and you’re worried about getting killed by tankies?
Yes? Acting like tankies haven’t also killed people… I had tankies stalk me on lemmy because I: was under 30, and did not have a political science degree. You’d think that’s an exaggeration but it’s not.
Uh huh, and what’d you say to cause that?
Became a moderator of c/politics saying that we wouldn’t censor based on political view
So you somehow convinced enough mods in a famously defensive community to become a moderator yourself, then you told them you you’re letting in right-wing viewpoints? Or did they make you a mod after you said you wouldn’t censor?
Oh no, the barrel of the gun of universal healthcare!
The question was about extremists
Yeah but that’s what extreme leftists suggest: universal healthcare and education, guaranteed employment and housing, good retirement benefits, good working conditions under collective ownership…
That alone is not what makes someone an extremist, and you know that
So what would you call extremist about the extremist socialists?
They’re the same picture.
You need glasses
Centrists seem to be able to differentiate when they’re deciding who to listen to.
It’s never anyone to their left.
better than landing in fascist, neo-reddit instances like .world.
Fascism is a specific thing actually
No one “worries” about seeing it. It’s that if you engage with anyone from, or anything posted in, a .ml, about any topic at all, you’ll eventually be hit with “capitalism causes all problems in the universe” or the rest of their standard “I’m 19 and this is deep” tankie talking points like some mandatory checklist of things they have to cram into every post or they get kicked out of the instance. It’s exhausting and pointless. No one runs around elsewhere in Lemmy making it a point to defend capitalism, so it’s just of a constant eye-roll when “I’m an independent thinker! Here’s the same thing we all say!” happens.
Edit: OOOh, seems like I struck a nerve, eh?
Then block them and quit whining that people don’t like exploitation as much as you.
Did you know the explaining the thing doesn’t mean one endorses the thing? Did you know that explaining the thing isn’t “whining” about it, but, in fact, is explaining the perspective of another person? It’s important to learn about other perspectives, even if you don’t like them.
I find it mildly annoying, but not bad enough to bother blocking anyone.
This sure sounds like whining. Because that’s all you’re doing. How dare people to your left not immediately kill themselves for your comfort.
Let’s consider the same text with a different context and see if it sounds like something else.
I wrote this as essentially the statistics of interactions, and acknowledging that it will end a conversation about any other topic, no matter how much work one puts into keeping the conversation on topic. It’s just very likely to be how interactions go in my experience. Doesn’t actually bother me one bit, but it does seem like a poor way to go through life.
And the “19 and edgy” thing? Come on. You’re whining because people to your left are allowed to speak and you want permanent silence so you can listen to the fascists on the right.
yeah, it reminds me of college freshmen. You get one idea stuck in your head and lose all sense of nuance or perspective.
No, y’all are annoying about HOW you communicate your opinions. Which I’ve repeated several times in this thread and none of you seem able or willing to understand it’s communication style and not the ideas that anyone is talking about here. And it’s just annoying, no one wants to silence you, you can’t even understand that. Y’all are so sensitive that simply calling you out for being abrasive about one thing is some grant attack on your ego and all the “right” ideas in the world and your entire identity. You’re just as bad as any MAGA people can be.
Say anything you want, but I can get “it’s capitalism’s fault!!1!” anywhere. It’s not a unique or special take. That doesn’t 1) make it necessarily true, and 2) convince anyone that maybe it actually is capitalism’s fault. Tell me WHY, in that circumstance, be specific, nuanced, and detailed about why you think capitalism did he bad thing. Maybe listen to Marx about rigidity of thought.
I do not look forward to your response where you make up some BS about me selling stocks to pay for this interaction or something equally untrue and absurd.
Which is why the previous two “tankie” instances have been defederated. And why, once centrists have their way and .ml is defederated, they’re going to pick another instance to designate the “tankie” instance.
You can block the left you don’t want to listen to. Instead, you whine about them because you want them silenced.
capitalism causes all problems in the universe
It’s well known that black holes use Hawking radiation as a currency and hire quasars to do menial labor.
I’m gonna make this into a poster or smthing, I love it, almost snorted my tea from laughter.
Please do, my words are free to all to use.
Don’t you just love when they tell on themselves?
When people post comments like yours or memes like the above it really comes off as defending capitalism and the status quo…
Don’t you understand how mypoic a view that it? How dependent it is on you thinking you have an absolute lockdown on ALL ideas there can be, and that anyone who isn’t you is against you? Only a fool would think that everything is split in perfect dualism and that you’re the only one that’s right.
It’s basically the same thing I see from super evangelical family members. If it’s not something they like, it’s “from Satan.” Is that really a behavior you’re trying to emulate? That level of absolutism and rigidity of thought?
FFS, both Lenin and Marx warned you about the dangers of rigid thinking. And here you are, doing exactly that! You’re not even a good Marxist!
You’re taking everything to absurd extremes and assuming I’m something that’s convenient for your weak argument. People posting memes like this are pushing for the lockdown of ideas.
Speaking of taking it to extremes, y’all (or maybe 1 person with 5 accounts, it’s hard to tell) so far in this thread people have reacted to saying “yeah, they’re annoying about how they interact with other people” as: trying to put ideas on lockdown, wanting to silence anyone “left of me,” that I’m actively supporting all existing political structures and capitalism, and then a ton of personal attacks. Because I explained the joke to someone else.
I especially loved that my “hopes are also profoundly stupid.” Ah yes, a response that is classy, high-brow, and I’m fairly sure it’s a direct quote from Lenin at the Zimmerwald Conference (since I have to tell you all, apparently, that was sarcasm).
Seriously, look around here. Y’all are not fun to talk to in general about anything because of this right here. And when someone says it out loud, you happily confirm you’re not fun to talk to and do the thing that the meme is about.
This isn’t about your ideas, it’s about how abrasive and annoying you are to interact with. Look at how many times I’ve had to repeat that, and every time you all immediately jump to “yOu’Re sIlEnCiNg iDeAs!” No, y’all are bad at human-to-human interaction. Without enough self-reflection to even pause and see that’s what was happening from the start.
You clearly haven’t engaged with anything, and lol @ “independent thinker” from someone defending the dominant economic and political system, which fyi is exactly what you’re doing
lmao. Not sure what’s funnier here, that you apparently don’t exist according to your comment, or that it’s basically “Nuh-UH, YOU’RE STUPID!”
Speaking of which, where exactly did I defend anything? Quote the specific text.
Here, I’ll help. I said:
Including me.
I explained how someone else might arrive at the place where the original meme was made. People on .ml instances are not some fully complete and perfect opposite pole of the Western world. Y’all have some opinions, and that’s not even the problem. You’re super annoying with how you try and force them on people.
Like how you’re literally lying and angry about the fact that not everyone likes how you communicate. Your ideas aren’t the problem, how you talk about them is the problem.
Fun fact: Explaining the biology of a seagull to someone doesn’t make me a seagull. If I ask you to explain how a microwave works, shall you become a microwave?
Goddamn you’re dumb
That’s the highest form of endorsement I could have hoped for ;)
Your hopes are also profoundly stupid
The dominant economic and political system is mixed and always has been.
Lol no, it’s currently capitalism
What is capitalism?
As we know, socialism is when the government does stuff, and the government does some stuff, that means its a mix of capitalism and socialism.
Everyone paying for the police that protect the institution of capital is an example of socialism.
-libs, probably
capitalism is when rich people exist then?
It’s not about the economic system, it’s the constant china glazing
It absolutely is about the economic system, and the “china glazing” is a direct response to US propaganda
Cringe
So your response to people glazing the usa is glazing an authorization country. And you wonder why people don’t like ML?
No, it’s not about the economic system. Christ knows communists aren’t in short supply on lemmy, if that was true you’d see more support. Don’t kid yourself.
No, people are attacking China with misinformation created and distributed by the US specifically because their economic system represents an existential threat to our own
You can be anti-capitalist without sucking China’s scrotum.
You can also critically support China’s socialist and anti-imperialist position while simultaneously criticizing the mistakes they’ve made.
However, blind critique of China and saying everything they do is authoritarian explicitly helps capitalism and hurts socialism.
I’d say you can be anti-china without being homophobic/misogynistic but I don’t actually believe you’re capable lol, cry about it patriot
ah, classic ml. Genocide deniers
You going to start whining about “white genocide” in South Africa next?
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/17/asia/uyghurs-muslim-countries-china-intl https://www.memri.org/tv/saudi-palestinian-ambassadors-china-clean-bill-health-xinjiang-knows-best-internal-affairs-liberal-democracies-not-for-everyone https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/muslim-countries-joined-china-in-defending-its-cultural-genocide-of-uighurs-arent-they-ashamed/2019/07/20/0a7d62b4-aa3f-11e9-86dd-d7f0e60391e9_story.html https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2021/08/08/2003762216 So the story is that the US and our allies, who have spent decades villifying imprisoning and killing muslims, and who have repeatedly verifiably lied about similar human rights abuses to justify our foreign policy before, are the only ones who can be trusted to tell the truth about the conditions for muslims who just happen to be living in the country which is our single greatest global rival politically and economically, about whom we have an extremely obvious foreign policy motive for lying, but we’re definitely telling the truth this time and everyone else is lying? Every muslim majority nation on earth is apparently only supporting China because they’re either corrupt or too terrified to oppose them, despite the fact that the US has been completely unable to get similar results for Israel with our best efforts? And despite having the most advanced surveillance technology on earth, despite having satellites that can take high resolution pictures of any patch of dirt on earth and an unmatched intelligence network, the US has somehow been unable to obtain any incontrovertible physical evidence of this supposed genocide for years? And you believe that?