edit: GUYS fuck stalin and fuck tankies, period. i understand that this community is more sensitive than most to pro-stalinist vibes, and i apologize for unintentionally twinging that nerve, but you need stop calling each other (and me) slurs
good heavens, happy new year, fuck incarceration and murder in all forms
(mods pls also do your job and help with the slurs thing)
edit2: big thank u 2 da mods for helping with the slurs thing u guys rock 😎 💕
Nah instead Stalin just killed 6 million+ Russians, in Soviet Russia you don’t need gulag when you have bullet.
“any and all of my country’s actions are beyond criticism because at least we didnt kill them”
An important part of critical thinking is the ability to see flaws in comparisons and arguments even when they point towards conclusions you agree with. It’s telling that you interpreted their comment the way you did.
It’s telling, the way you’re talking about this. Unless OP is defending Stalin, something I’ve not seen evidence of. It’s pointing out how hypocritical most criticisms of Stalin are. The whole point of it, whether it’s 100% accurate. Is to bait hypocrites out into “but Stalin” bullshit. If their gulags are wrong. Maybe we should reevaluate our own similarly troubling practices.
Don’t get me wrong, despite being libertarian Marxist. I’m wildly against Lenin, Stalin, Mao, hell Engles for that matter etc. But Americans general hypocrisy make our criticism pointless and largely mute. Making you and the other person ironically, the ones likely failing at critical thinking
You are probably the first libertarian marxist I have seen. It’s an idea I played around with at one point.
my response was sarcasm and an intentional fallacy in the form of an appeal to incredulity for the sake of rhetoric ❤️
if you think that counts as an interpretation thats on u bestie
my response was sarcasm and an intentional fallacy in the form of an appeal to incredulity for the sake of rhetoric
My bullshit-english translator is a bit rusty, but all I’m getting out of this is “I intentionally wrote a wildly incorrect comment just for funsies” in which case fuck off
If you run it through the translator a second time, you get “lulz u got trolled”.
And if you run it through a third time, you get a recipe for an excellent strawberry pie, somehow.
you’re welcome yall 🥰🥧🍓
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You kiss your sistermother with that mouth? 😛
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Hey, hey. Come on, now. The United States doesn’t just lock up brown people. We execute many on the spot, without provocation or probable cause. Credit where credit is due.
The US has killed dozens of times that through social murder.
I’m not saying that Stalin wasn’t an autocratic dickhead, but if you’re gonna compare him unfavorably to present day US, number of own citizens killed is a bad choice of metric 🤷
Are you suggesting the us gov killed at minimum 6*12 million of it’s own citizens? 72 million? At the low end? You said “dozens” plural so 144million or more? Bullshit.
ACAB, injustice is alive and well, and extrajudicial killings are a serious serious issue in America, but your scales are just fantasy
Ok, so maybe not dozens, but regulatory capture and other facets of the US system of laissez-faire for the already rich and powerful coupled with brutal oppression of those already hurting the most directly kills at LEAST a million people a year, maybe double that indirectly or as a major but not sole factor. Multiply that with 29 (the length of Stalin’s reign) and you get a hell of a lot more than 6.
Systemic failings are so fucking far from extrajudicial or even judicial killings.
You’ve ruined your decent concerns with absurd numbers.
People being failed by a system is not a political killing, gulag style. They shouldn’t be compared.
Systemic failings are so fucking far from extrajudicial or even judicial killings.
Are the victims any less dead? Are the politicians that knowingly created and uphold that system any less culpable for their murder just because they were less direct?
People being failed by a system is not a political killing
They are when the people making the rules are aware of the consequences of their actions and choose to cause the premature and preventable death of citizens anyway. Which is the vast majority of the deaths.
gulag style
Gulags were awful, yes, but only a few of them were worse than the worst present day US prisons.
You’re letting red scare propaganda cloud your judgment.
Yawn.
I have serious issues with America, but I’m done comparing it to Stalin’s ussr. It is simply comical to do so, especially on the topics of incarceration, rights, and killings.
You’ve moved the goalpost backwards and forwards multiple times, and are therefore generally without merit.
Cya
I have serious issues with America
As well you should
but I’m done comparing it to Stalin’s ussr
Good idea, since you’re very bad at it
It is simply comical to do so, especially on the topics of incarceration, rights, and killings.
When you’re significantly biased by red scare propaganda exaggerations as well as the paucity of reporting on US atrocities, I can see how you’d think so. You’re not right, but you’re wrong in a somewhat understandable way.
You’ve moved the goalpost backwards and forwards multiple times, and are therefore generally without merit.
I got the multiplicator wrong by mistake once and corrected it when you called me on it. Maybe don’t just blatantly lie when accusing others of arguing in bad faith?
Cya
Yeah, have a good one, I guess 🤷
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Yeah, because pointing out the fact that underregulated capitalism is even worse than the failed communism of the Soviet Union makes me a tankie who loves Stalin. The same Stalin who I called an autocratic dickhead on this very post 🙄
The world isn’t a binary where something stops being awful once something else is even worse. That unfettered capitalism is even worse doesn’t mean that the USSR wasn’t a shitshow in many ways.
While it’s true that “bashing Stalin” (something that I engage in myself) isn’t red scare propaganda, dramatically exaggerating the many faults of the USSR while simultaneously greatly minimizing those of US capitalism very much IS.
So if you can stop foaming at the mouth over me being a communist (I’m not. I vary wildly between a European style Social Democrat and an anarchist depending on the subject matter but never ultra-authoritarian like a tankie) and take off your binary goggles for a second, you might actually learn something rather than having a hissy fit.
Famously no one died in the USSR due to social issues
Fair.
To be even more fair, though, extreme poverty and shortages of (nutritious) food are as severe if not worse in present day US and the richest 1% are hoarding much more than the party fat cats were too.
extreme poverty and shortages of (nutritious) food are as severe if not worse in present day US
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_famine_of_1921–1922
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930–1933
Your comparison is straight-up deranged, I have no softer words.
Multiply how many people die of starvation or malnutrition a year by 29 (the length of Stalin’s reign) and you’ll see that I’m right.
Just because the two Soviet famines were faster and got more press doesn’t mean they killed more people over a 29 year period than the US “food is for profits and poor people are for exploiting” politics.
I find it very, very hard to believe that there could be two catastrophic famines in the SSSR, and yet that there were no deaths or food issues outside of those two periods (there absolutely were). I only used them as examples, not as a list of all food issues in the Union, while you’re implying the latter.
Multiply how many people die of starvation or malnutrition a year by 29 (the length of Stalin’s reign) and you’ll see that I’m right.
I take it you mean in the US? Ok, let’s see.
The same trend occurred nationwide, with malnutrition deaths more than doubling, from about 9,300 deaths in 2018 to roughly 20,500 in 2022, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Let’s take the second, significantly bigger number, for the sake of the argument. If the number of malnutrition deaths is multiplied by Stalin’s reign, it gets us 595k deaths. At the time, SSSR had (very roughly) half the population of current USA, so to keep the numbers proportional and meaningful to compare, we should halve the US deaths: 300k. Stalin did not actually rule during the first famine I linked, only the second one. The second famine killed at least 5.7 million people (again, taking the lower number, in favour of your position).
300k is clearly a smaller number than 5.7 mil. Since the numbers are only relative, we should judge by the ratio: the 1930-1933 famine was 19 times worse death-wise than the current food issues in the USA.
If you have some different, better numbers (though I tried to pick those that are in favour in your claim), or if I miscalculated something, let me know.
TIL Stalin was slightly worse than Biden
This has got to be one of the most stupid memes ever.
The percentage of Soviet citizens that were put into prisons/gulag camps/colonies will have far exceeded the percentage of us citizens currently incarcerated in the usa, and in far more inhumane circumstances.
Unless the op is trying to deflect from the problems of the USA penal system by drawing attention to a far worse system, I don’t get the point of this meme.
Why’s it at +157/-3 after 3hr:
The US stat is so bad you easily believe it when attributed to stereotypical evil regime.
Then you’re reminded that same evil thing is actually something the US is currently doing.
I’m glad we don’t just kill everyone we arrest, I’m glad we’re not ruled by a dictator… still, I wish the average person viewing a meme weren’t able to easily believe something we do was actually done by someone we vaguely recall learning was the worst.
Why’s it at +157/-3 after 3hr:
Because blahaj.zone doesn’t count the downvotes. The -3 downvotes that you see are only those that are counted by the instance you’re viewing from (given out by the users of that instance only). Right now, on lemmy.world it has 28 downvotes, on dbzer0 it has 2.
And -12 here now… interesting!
Is Blahaj unique in that respect? Thus our instances likely sum all downvotes when posts are made to them?
Thanks :)
An interesting find that I didn’t know about, so to Google I went :)
Apparently Lemmy communities can chose to disable downvotes. It’s apparently a simple setting, so Blahaj won’t be the only ones to have done so. Members of such a community are only able to upvote and will only see upvotes from other communities. And since that community server is responsible for syncing it’s own threads to other federated instances, it’s not going to collect the downvotes from the other Lemmy servers just to pass them on, so it only gathers + passes on upvotes. (If I understood it correctly)
It also means that the few downvotes that we are seeing on Blahaj are not representative. Imo it might be better to disable downvoting for all, if the post was made on a server that doesn’t sync downvotes.
Good info, thanks!
Hexbear also does the same.
based
I did some googling out of curiosity, turns out Wikipedia has a whole ass article on it: The US prison rate as of 2021 is 531 per 100000 (peaked in 08 with 755 after a huge spike in the 80s and 90s, I wonder why). In the Soviet Union during the high of the gulag system, according to Wikipedia, it was estimated (by actual historians, not the soviets) to be 714 to 892.
Apartheid South Africa was 851. Saudi Arabia has 200.
You’re counting the percentage of population, in the meme it’s the percentage of all incarcerated people.
I don’t want to search for stats, but it may be so that with a higher incarceration rate the USSR still held less of the total.
I find back about that it peaked at 1.4% or 1.5% in 1950 in a few sources: 2.5m to 2.7m prisoners for about 180m citizens. So significantly higher than what you found.
On Quora a Russian posted a nice graph, but I don’t see a source for the data : https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-Soviet-citizens-were-incarcerated-at-any-given-time-The-US-has-0-7-of-its-population-in-prison-and-I-was-wondering-how-that-compares-to-the-old-USSR
Having read testimonies of the nazino island gulag and a few Russian prisoner novels, the Soviet prison system really shouldn’t be compared to the USA one. Those percentages might not be far off (“only” 2x more at the worst), but numbers don’t tell everything. Stalin’s reign of terror was so much worse than the modern day USA dystopia. Compare the USA to modern day Canada or western Europe and it will highlight much better how bad it is doing.
What’s your source for the gulag numbers? The wiki lists 18M though the system with a population of 180M, with something like 1.5M deaths. That would seem to indicate a number higher than 1%.
The emergent consensus among scholars is that, of the 14 million prisoners who passed through the Gulag camps and the 4 million prisoners who passed through the Gulag colonies from 1930 to 1953, roughly 1.5 to 1.7 million prisoners perished there or they died soon after they were released. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
It’s in the “more comparisons” section of the article I posted. I should’ve specified all those numbers come from that Wikipedia article.
Hexbear is leaking.
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When your gulag population has 50% death rate within a year thats not hard…
We also aren’t counting people in China’s concentration camps because they aren’t officially prisoners and there aren’t any real numbers…
But the justice system in USA is shit yes.
This comment is excellent.
If your average prison sentence is 10 years, you will have 10x more prisoners than annual arrests/sentences.
It’s the same kind of misleading stat as life expectancy being 30 years in medieval time. If you survived childhood you could easily reach your 60s or later, just like how you can live that long without any serious health interventions today.
it’s not a misleading stat it’s a stat with nuance. slavery in the U.S. is legal per the 13th amendment, as are for-profit prisons.
this fiscal motive leads to more sentences for smaller crimes (marijuana possession) for longer times, and it’s obscene.
So a 10 year prison sentence isn’t 10 times worse than a one-year sentence? You think 3 people in prison for a month each is worse than two people with a year each?
My favorite jokes is the “Look how bad it is in North Korea/Russia/China…” Then the ol “sike that’s America”.
My second favorite thing is all the whataboutism replies because butthurt folks don’t like reality. Rather than address the problem, they’d rather go into finger pointing.
I think it’s because the meme itself is the wrong way to try to make that argument. Instead of just saying “the US has 22% of the world’s aggregate prisoner population and that’s a problem”, it’s making that argument by directly comparing it to a MUCH WORSE regime for that exact violation of rights.
The whataboutisms tend to be bristling at the bad comparisons more than a direct refutation of the underlying point being made. I think complaining about the whataboutisms misses the point of those replies, which is valid.
As the other poster said, why not compare with Scandinavian countries that genuinely do have better justice systems rather than comparing with USSR or CCP which have much worse justice systems?
i think sometimes it’s worth critiquing memes for the rhetorical impact rather than raw arguing power
if you wanted a watertight meme that perfectly describes your argument, you’re right, this isn’t it.
but if you want an emotionally jarring meme that encourages debate and spreads awareness of the disturbing nature of american justice, i’d say this has acheived that goal looking at these comments :)
i’m still working this position as a shitposter but i’d say this is at least an A- tier meme in that a) it’s factual (not outright false), and b) it encourages active discussion and awareness of issues in the comments.
This would have been a good point if lemmy wasn’t packed with idiots praising USSR as heaven on Earth.
point taken, you changed my perspective 😅 have a great rest of your day
To be fair, it’s been a lot better lately. Not sure if defederations happened or they just became less brazen when they saw most people don’t care for their bullshit. Probably both.
I hate the US as much as the next person but the meme itself is basically whataboutism.
It’s always “if you don’t like it, go live in Somalia” and never “if you don’t like it, go live in Denmark”. It’s saying “it could be worse” instead of “it could be better”.
Pretty much. “Could be worse” is for when you’re recovering from the flu, not the “There is 1.2 million people in prison right now”.
this is such a beautiful way to put it, thank you
Well the Somalia people actually want a Somalia style government and are free to go there. The Denmark people want a Danish style government but can’t go there.
I just want to know the story behind your username. Did a tuber betray you somehow?
I’m editing over my old comment and deleting my replies bc it was me assuming op was a tankie and being an asshole to them about it. It’s a good meme, I’m just a lot more sensitive to tankie looking stuff on a place like lemmy, and this isn’t an excuse but I’ve been in a pretty shit place mentally and looking for fights where there shouldn’t be any. I’m really sorry op, you didn’t deserve any of the shit I originally said to you, I hope you have a good day :3
There’s something (🤷♂️) I don’t get here.
Are you thinking OP is pro-Stalin?
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It’s a reasonable assumption to make, considering this is basically a hexbear meme
So totally unnecessary. This sort of bait and switch factoid is what brought me left in the first place.
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yo homie just wanted to let you know i see this and i’m sending love and support to you telepathically. we love a good character arc and i definitely could have picked a less inflammatory meme to post on my bi-daily excursion here—my sincere apologies that my post incurred a negative emotional toll on you. have an excellent day :3
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I thought it was a safe assumption as well, but you’re showing strength and good will by changing your comment. Take it easy pal!
lol hexbear is leaking again
I have a full instance block and it still isn’t enough. Every day more braindead tankie takes make it through the filter.
“everything the USSR/CCP/DPRK did wrong is actually capitalist state intelligence propaganda” is so exhausting.
“Capitalism is bad” apparently no longer includes state capitalism or the political capital exploitation of the vanguard class that preceeds it.
ive yet to see anything other than reactionary posting from hb
TFW you attack people for saying “capitalism is bad hurrdurr” but can only offer “capitalism is good durrhurr”
Market socialism is good. Syndicalism is good. Pretty much every form of socialism that starts without “maybe we should build a dictatorship, what’s the worst that could happen” is going to be better than capitalism.
What is this, Facebook forwards from babushka?
Now, I’m all for a Socialist utopia, but that guy did NOT do it right.
Authoritarian state =/= socialism
The US constitution permits slavery as punishment for crimes. So they made a whole set of laws to criminalize black lives and optimize enslaving them.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Reagan by Killer Mike, good song.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
There original SEO
That’s what happens when citizens break the law and retain their rights in the eyes of the state. They don’t disappear or get mulched into the soil to increase yields.
Here’s a fun article on Survivorship bias
That doesn’t change the fact that US prisons are for-profit. And that corporations have huge lobbying powers. It’s why marijuana laws are so harsh and disproportionate to actual heinous crimes. Stoners make a more complacent prisoners to make money off of then psychotic killers.
You’re not wrong, here’s a list of countries that may execute you for possession of canabis;
Bahrain, Brunei Darussalam, Iran, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Qatar, Singapore, Sudan, Taiwan and the USA.
Something tells me the USA has executed far fewer prisoners over this charge, leading back to the point I had originally made.
ugh im so glad that i wasnt killed for owning one (1) weed! i should feel so blessed that:
- i am no longer able to vote
- i will never see my family again
- i will face violence and sexual assault in prison for decades
- i will be released with no education or means, and may even be in debt, charged for my time behind bars
AMERICA IS TRULY THE MOST FREE OF COUNTRIES RAHHHHH 🦅🦅🦅🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
When you get thrown into a mass grave because you smoked a fucking plant you can never again;
- Vote
- See anyone EVER
- Coitus
- Learn anything new
Just because the US isn’t the worst of all countries doesn’t mean it’s good. Execution is not the only other option and I’m sure you know that.
Can you point to where I said America is good?
I tried to understand some statistics, I’m not waving a banner here. Stop being foolish.
That is some fine corinthian leather boot you’re slurping upon there, Commandant!
Lol?
I’m all for a usurpation of power from the current government, I’m not ready to be the first one to die for it. I just break the laws I don’t agree with in peace.
Sorry I don’t like the idea of killing prisoners and if that’s the defining factor as to why “ooga booga the US has a ton of prisoners” so be it. Using reason to understand statistics isn’t licking boots. Sorry the meme backfired I guess.
Only 8 percent of the US prison population is housed in for profit prisons. For profit prisons might be an okay place to start, but the entire US prison system is terrible and absolutely needs reform. There are a myriad of other things that need to be changed, just as much.
I don’t live in the US but don’t prisoners lose their right to vote and get elected for quite a while?
Depends on local laws of their state, but yes in most states you lose the right to vote while in prison and some places, like Florida, make it difficult to get your right to vote back. Not sure if the prison sentence being for a state or federal crime makes a difference or not.
Yea they lose some rights, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not on the list of rights removed. That’s why the USA has larger prisoner populations.
And slave work is explicitly allowed in prisons, right?
Yeah, I think that’s covered in the 13th amendment.
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States…”
Again, my stance is counter to the current establishment. I did not write this amendment nor was I questioned as to my support before it was ratified. This has been the rule of land long before my family came to this hellhole.
What an absolutely ignorant take.
Shall we make a meme about prisoner death/execution counts?
My bad, that doesn’t fit your narrative so it’s a moot point. Lmao y’all are hilarious.
Or just even throw a nod at the well documented systemic racism in our prison “justice” system?
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/international/executions-around-the-world
The thing about being executed is that you have no chance after the fact to litigate and seek justice.
So which system is more just?
An unjust system is still an unjust system whether or not there are worse systems. What a completely ignorant take.
That’s just like, your opinion, man.
W phrasing keep it up chad ❤️
when i see the biggest baddest wolf in the forest i would be a fool to seek comfort in his little brother’s teeth
That’s what happens when citizens break the law and retain their rights in the eyes of the state
Is it? Why don’t European countries have a similarly high incarceration rate then?
Couldn’t tell ya, I don’t know much about European laws. Just shining some light on statistics regarding the country I live in.
In that case, this seems like a learning opportunity for you.
Western European countries have rule of law and don’t disappear or mulch people when they break the law, letting them retain their rights.
This counterexample would seem to completely undermine your claim that America’s incredibly high incarceration rates are just “what happens” when citizens retain rights after breaking the law.
Well it’s a good thing things aren’t black and white and we ALL get to learn something new. This has been a real hoot.
why do people bring up other countries when USA is criticized, just admit you’re in a shithole country
Because tankies love tu-quoque-arguments. That way they don’t have to put all states in question
i’m saYING lmao.
Because, you know, Soviet union (other country) in post himself
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I’m not a tankie, fuck Stalin, but the stat is correct: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate
I don’t know how well we know China’s figures, though.
i also am not a tankie, fuck stalin, and thank you scv for doing my dirty work for me. tbh i didnt realize how bad it was here and i wouldn’t have posted what i thought was a funny little anti-copoganda meme if i had known. sorry yall 🥲
You’re welcome! Tankies are idiotic, I don’t understand the appeal, they think they’re edgy or something.
the United States has the sixth highest incarceration rate in the world, at 531 people per 100,000
That gives 0.5% of America by my math, which would be 0.02% of the world population. I have no idea where the 22% is coming from, it’s off by 3 orders of magnitude.
Edit: I missed that it said prison population, I thought it was taking overall population.
Yeah, this is like how North Korea technically has the world’s highest literacy rate. These statistics specifically exploit the transparency of western democracy on these issues by just lying about their own statistics. Anyone who doesn’t think China has at least 2M people jailed is completely delusional. There’s likely more than that in their Xinjiang work camps alone.
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Correct. The USA still has a substantial slave population via the prison industrial complex. Also I removed your ableist comment further down this point. Prejudice of any kind can lead to a ban.
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National Institute of Corrections: World Prison Population List (2015)
There are more than 10.35 million people incarcerated throughout the world with the most being in the United States–more than 2.2 million.
Oh, is it revisionist fantasy day?
Insert ‘always has been’ meme.
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To me it struck as “hey, America is just as bad as Stalin”. I’d say, message well formed and nicely presented.
For profit prisons need to be abolished for sure But any downplaying of the horrendous gulags is just wrong https://youtu.be/dBjcT0QxSS0?si=jIvtvNe6j7lUiFxy
For profit prisons are a problem, but they only represent 8% of the prison population in the US. They only tell part of the story.
