• axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    us-foreign-policy

    Westerners deciding who’s doing real socialism or not. Westerners expressing their most vile sentiment for foreign countries rather than their own imperialism. Westerners praising the words of their own imperialist intelligence agencies. Westerners unironically praising their own nations for civil liberties like the freedom of fascists to assemble, freedom of racists to express themselves, freedom of parents to own their children, and freedom of school districts to continue racial segregation. Westerners praising imperialist nations like Norway as socialist while using bold language like fascism to describe places under that same exact threat of imperialism, like Cuba and Vietnam.

    Westerners claiming foreign governments are merely pretending to be socialist, while claiming unorganized misinformed chauvinistic westerners are the true heirs to socialism, despite all they do is post online and complain about foreign nations.

    Westerners praising anarchist movements from 100 years ago despite having no common cause with those movements, no connection to the circumstances within them, and probably no actual admiration of them. Westerners praising a bastardized, sectarian, perverse form of anarchism rather than attempting unity with organizations in their areas. Westerners refusing to speak with actual anarchists in their area, who by and large don’t give a shit and just want to hand out food or help at shelters. If Buenaventura Durruti were alive today he’d be regarded with scorn by western chauvinists.

    Westerners continuing to bring up Trotsky of all people, who wasn’t relevant to world affairs for the last 15 years of his life and certainly not the past 80 years. Westerners not reading a single word of Trotsky’s work, westerners focusing entirely on Trotsky’s feud with Stalin, westerners not knowing that Trotsky was a literal military commander. Westerners calling themselves Trotskyists in 2023 for some reason. Westerners deciding they have a feud with Joseph Stalin, a man who died in 1953.

    Westerners attempting to praise their own socialist leadership, who happen to be a scattered group of imperialist-aligned social democrats, Twitch streamers, and actual antisemitic grifters such as in the case of Caleb Maupin.

        • BigNote@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Said no one. Except you. You either know what a Gish gallop is, or you don’t. A long comment is not necessarily a Gish gallop. In this case the charge is entirely accurate.

            • BigNote@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              As if it’s somehow impossible to make a long comment in support of a single argument? As if Gish galloping comments don’t actually exist? Do I follow your logic properly? What part about this do I not understand?

                • BigNote@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  What argument? 20+ arguments were made. Which one am I meant to address?

                  If I focus on one you’ll jump on me for not addressing the 19 others, which is why it’s a bullshit tactic.

          • BigNote@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Yes, because engaging with hexbears is a waste of time. They are not here in good faith. Either that or they don’t know any better, which in practice amounts to the same thing.

              • BigNote@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                That’s a fair question and in all honesty the answer is no, because based on what I can easily see and understand of hexbears, they aren’t intellectually serious people and to the contrary are more akin to a kind of 4-chan trolling community than anything worth actual intellectual engagement.

                I could be wrong, but so far I have yet to see any evidence as such.

      • BigNote@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        That’s precisely the point. These guys have a toolbox of fallacious arguments and techniques that they regularly trot out. The Gish gallop is one of them. Another, that you see being put to wide use in this thread, is redefining words and terms to fit their narrative.

        • PatFusty@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          I dont want to be a victim of hexbear road rage thanks. You guys just vomit out material in hopes that you can string it together to form a cogent argument. Then you come back smug as ever asking why i didnt respond to the 10k talking points as if I was a human encyclopedia.

          • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            How would I distinguish you, based only on your reply, from someone who took one look at two whole paragraphs and decided you weren’t going to read that but had to keep arguing no matter what and spewed out some sour grape nonsense?

              • raven [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                How should we frame our arguments in response to a meme that paints every single prominent socialist and socialist country as fascist without addressing each one?
                Really the burden of proof should be on the one making the claim, shouldn’t it?

                • Apollo@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  People confuse facism and authoritarianism all the time, and people respond to this as if they’ve never figured this out.

                  So instead of anything productive these threads churn out:

                  Omg communist countries are fascist!

                  actually no socialist!

                  lol oppression

                  Vs

                  hey why do so many socialist states end up being super authoritarian?

                  hey yeah thats a huge problem, but lets ignore it because west bad

  • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Very interesting how all those “pretend socialists” only exist in the third world, and all the “real socialists” existin the west. Yet all the successful revolutions have been done in the third world by “pretend socialists”, and the so called “real socialists” in the west have accomplished nothing. Their biggest success of the “real socialists” in the west being capitalist welfare states or social democracies that rely on old school imperial relationships to fund their welfare in a select few areas.

    No Eurocentrism present to this line of thought here at all…

    What do you think of Nelson Mandela OP? He was a very good leader, right? You know that he considered Cuba an ally and supported their revolution as Cuba sent troops to fight against the apartheid government in the border wars, took inspiration from Mao and called the Chinese revolution a miracle, thanked the Soviets for giving unending support in the fight against apartheid while receiving the a Lenin Peace Prize? So is Nelson Mandela now a fascist according to your meme?

    • original_ish_name@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Nelson Mandela was not a great man. At least not great enough to be so admired while F.W De Klerk had his funeral protested (F.W De Klerk helped end Apartheid).

      Nelson Mandela did no more besides be a figurehead and help make a constitution that no one (not even when he was in power) follows. The ANC is corrupt to this day

      • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        I’m South African, I know who F.W de Klerk is. Don’t lie about what he did, there’s a reason he was unanimously booed while receiving his joint noble peace prize. He didn’t help end apartheid, he was forced into a position where it was the only viable option. Pure pragmatism. He was a member of the NP for many years, he willingly joined that organisation at the height of apartheid in 1972. If he was actually interested in ending fighting apartheid, he would have joined a liberation movement, not the apartheid party.

        de Klerk was an apartheid president that was so corrupt he ordered the incineration of evidence of his, and his parties, corruption and crimes against humanity to be carried out by industrial steel smelters. Not to mention what he did with all the “third force” shenanigans towards the end of apartheid that almost caused civil war. It’s been revealed that he knew all about it. Or all the racist things he said later in life that revealed his true character, such as refusing to call apartheid a crime against humanity. Yes, I also used to be a liberal that thought de Klerk was a good guy that helped end apartheid, that was until I actually decided to do some research into the matter. Nelson Mandela said it best when it comes to de Klerk:

        “Despite his seemingly progressive actions, Mr de Klerk was by no means the great emancipator…He did not make any of his reforms with the intention of putting himself out of power. He made them for precisely the opposite reason: to ensure power for the Afrikaner in a new dispensation.”

        Yes the ANC is now extremely corrupt, it was effectively couped by corporate interests in the late 90s and early 2000s. Remember the move from RPD to GEAR? Thabo Mbeki and Trevor Manuel? Ramaphosa running away to make money in McDonalds and mining instead of succeeding Mandela? Leaving the door open for Mbeki to become president, a self described Thacherite who instituted austerity measures, underfund Eskom and give South Africa it’s first bout of load shedding, and denied that HIV causes AIDS, killing hundreds of thousands in the process? This all paved the way for Zuma’s corruption and ineptitude, and for Ramaphosa to come back, even after his shameful involvement in Marikana. Yes the ANC is shamefully corrupt, incompetent and useless, and it’s interesting to look at exactly how it got to that position.

    • Annakah69 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Libs are subconsciously uncomfortable thinking about real politics. Too many contradictions with their world view. Leftists are not. Hence a lot of us engage with these threads, it gets to the top of our all, and more engage.

      • Comment105@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Why the fuck do both authoritarian sides use “liberal” as an insult?

        It’s because they both think the common man should be submissive or forced to submit to their brand of authoritarianism.

    • figaro@lemdro.id
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      As they get banned from more instances, the instances they are not banned at start seeing a higher concentration of them.

      • Annakah69 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Have fun worshipping the machinery of enslavement and death. As it crushes you, I hope it comforts you knowing at least you weren’t a tankie.

      • carl_marks_1312 [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Too bad instances can’t defederate HB.

        Can you please elaborate?

        They seem to not understand that they’re tankies.

        Tankie is a social construct and is used to lazily discredit everyone to the left of bernie. It functions to libs the same way as “woke” functions for chuds. As a term it’s basically meaningless to anyone outside of the internet.

        • BigNote@lemm.ee
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          I love how you guys have decided that your definitions are the only correct ones. It’s your primary weapon here, for obvious reasons.

          • carl_marks_1312 [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            I love how you guys have decided that your definitions are the only correct ones.

            You’re strawmaning hard here, because I never said it’s a definition or that it’s the only one. It’s just my understanding of the term. What part of it is wrong in your opinion? I want to consider it

            It’s your primary weapon here, for obvious reasons.

            Because it’s obvious that when you’re challenged on your understanding of words you have nothing to say?

        • FluffyPotato@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          I have only seen it used in reference to people who support dictatorial regimes with socialist aesthetics, mostly MLs. I have yet to see an anarchist be called a tankie. Also you can hear it IRL, not commonly though since most MLs are on twitter and the like and not IRL.

          • Annakah69 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Based on your answer, I’ve discovered what tankie means: Tankie = Marxist.

            Successful Marxist movement results in a dictatorship of the proletariat. Dictator = tankie.

            Hence tankie is a term used to describe any Marxist.

            Thanks for contributing to this scientific breakthrough!

            • FluffyPotato@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Nah, first premise is false in more than one way. You are conflating the ideology Stalin made with Marxism.

              The second error is that there has never been a dictatorship of the proletariat, every time it has been a political party that seizes power for themselves and not the workers. In doing so they become the ruling class with differing class interests than the workers.

              Marx must be rotating in his grave with the speed to power the whole globe at this point.

              • Annakah69 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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                You didn’t do the reading :(. Dictatorship of the proletariat is a concept Marx and Engles adopted. Stalin didn’t create it.

                I don’t know what you think the proletariat taking control of the state is suppose to look like, but there will always be a communist party involved. The mechanisms of power exist to be ruled by a party.

                Communist parties should be judged by what they do for their poorest citizens. With that in mind, AES countries are doing a decent job. Things get better when they are in power, and get way worse if they are overthrown

              • WideningGyro [any]@hexbear.net
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                Yeah, clearly the Soviet, Chinese and Cuban workers had completely different interests than being raised out of poverty and squalor. Damn those dastardly political parties and their… diligent work towards eradictaing poverty while promoting actual, decentralized democracy.

                • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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                  Well, Cubans still live in pretty close proximity to squalor. They can’t even afford to maintain their own buildings, don’t have a functional transportation system, and people live on what, $20 a month? The one saving grace is out there health care system is decent. And by that, I mean much more equitable than in the United States.

                • FluffyPotato@lemm.ee
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                  Do you believe capitalism is good because it helped some people? The whole point of socialism is to put the means of production into the hands of the workers and not a vanguard party. Yea, the USSR did quite a lot of imperialism which it used to reduce income inequality of the Russian people but it was never socialist.

              • uralsolo [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                the ideology Stalin made

                I would say Lenin was more instrumental in the creation of Marxism-Leninism, Stalin was just the guy who happened to be in charge when they named it. It’s also a tendency that has evolved a lot from what it was in the 40s.

        • oatscoop@midwest.social
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          The term originates from Soviet and aligned regimes sending in tanks to brutally crush protests and rebellions. E.g. The Hungarian Revolution, The Prague Spring Uprising, Tiananmen Square, etc. Some communists were disgusted at their fellows for cheering on said oppression (“Send in the tanks!”) and started calling them Tankies.

          Tankies fellate oppressive regimes and dictators. They’re the smooth-brained “communists” that live in a binary world where anything “their side” does is good and anything the west does is “evil”. They’ll claim any criticism of historically “communist” countries like China and Russia is a CIA talking point … because they’re idiots.

          TL;DR – they’re the MAGAts of the left.

          • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
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            Random observation but I find it kind of interesting how the talking points anti-tankies tend to bring up are things that, even if the worst allegations are accepted, are relatively minor compared to some other events you could bring up. I’ve heard so much about Tienanmen Square under Deng, but much less about the Cultural Revolution under Mao. And the Hungarian Revolution and the Prague Spring happened under Khrushchev and Brezhnev respectively, when there’s much worse stuff you could bring up about Stalin.

            I can’t help but think that this conflicts with the supposed definition of tankie of just knee-jerk defending anything someone does if they wave a red flag. If that were actually true, wouldn’t you focus on the most extreme examples by the most extreme leaders? The fact that there’s so much focus on people like Khrushchev and Deng, who were both more moderate than their predecessors, seems more like the point of the word is specifically to attack people who might have a more favorable view of those more moderate figures, while being critical of their predecessors’ actions.

            Which is to say, tankie isn’t actually meant to be directed towards someone who knee-jerk defends anyone with a red flag, but rather, it’s meant to be directed towards someone who defends anything at all about anyone at all with a red flag, by accusing them of being the former. In other words, it’s a word that demands the exact kind of knee-jerk response it’s supposedly criticizing, just in the other direction.

            In fact, it’s particularly interesting that these accusations of ideological rigidity and blind loyalty are in reference to Khrushchev, who did nothing but criticize Stalin, and Deng who controversially said that Mao was “70% good, 30% bad.” I don’t think it’s even possible for someone to defend everything done by both Stalin and Khrushchev

            • BeamBrain [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              “An actual communist is someone who hates any communist movement that has actually managed to successfully overthrow its country’s ruling class and take power,” I say without a hint of irony

    • randint@lemm.ee
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      You’re the one that tells everyone you don’t agree with to go watch Fox News. Just in case you didn’t know, that is not a compelling argument at all.

      • rjs001@lemmygrad.ml
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        If they just want to hear they are right and the conservatives are correct then I think they ought to go engage with those nuts on that “news”. You lot obviously have fallen for that bullshit so may as well continue to waste your life watching it since it’s obviously true to you. You are just some conservative roll who can fuck right off

        • Comment105@lemm.ee
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          Right, cause commies don’t dream of a better future. They seize the means of production, put you to work, and then creatively fuck with you and forcibly shut your whiny ass up if you try to say something stupid.

            • BigNote@lemm.ee
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              How is this acceptable discourse? Do you even see yourself? Why are you even here?

              • rjs001@lemmygrad.ml
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                If people werent Ukraine defending Nazis then there might not be an issue. If you can’t handle someone having a different opinion then get off the internet

                • BigNote@lemm.ee
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                  That’s not what I said though, is it? I’m talking about you, your anger, and the fact that whatever your position may be, lashing out at people with such vitriol is counterproductive and shows you to be completely un-self-aware.

                  As they say, go touch grass. You are completely off your rocker.

                • Comment105@lemm.ee
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                  I’m not even conservative.

                  I’m pro-tax, pro-welfare, pro-lgbt rights and protections, anti-theistic, pro-environment.

                  I’m liberal, as in I fundamentally think actual freedom is important.

                  Unlike tankies, who think surveillance and persecution of teenagers saying “free hong kong” is fair and good.

    • UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee
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      Uhhh the “National Socialist” Party was fascist, right? Entities posing as socialist CAN lie and actually be fascist, correct? Or is this western propaganda too?

      • arefx@lemmy.ml
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        If it’s from a hexbear user it’s propaganda is good general rule of thumb. Of course they can be, and have been, fascist.

      • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]@hexbear.net
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        The original meme listed communist movements and people, which are what this edited meme is referring to. It’s possible for fascists to pretend to be socialists, but the things and people referenced were not that.

      • very_poggers_gay [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        Uhhh the “National Socialist” Party was fascist, right? Entities posing as socialist CAN lie and actually be fascist, correct? Or is this western propaganda too?

        Wait 'til you learn that urinal cakes aren’t yummy baked treats

  • JamesConeZone [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    The pure (libertarian) socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.

    • mimichuu_@lemm.ee
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      Look, I agree that it’s dumb to call yourself a socialist and have zero respect for most attempts at socialism, especially when your critique doesn’t come from anything serious but just parroting of cold war propaganda. I agree that these countries weren’t literally the devil, nor fascist, not “pretending”, that’s all fine.

      But it’s still so dishonest of MLs to dig for quotes and smugly boastbout how “libertarians never succeed”. Even if we completely ignore all the very explicit and deliberate attempts at sabotage anarchists had to endure from their statist “comrades” (which we shouldn’t but we always casually seem to be forced to do in the name of “unity”), it doesn’t change the fact that vanguardist revolutions have all been incredibly flawed too.

      You all are very often willing to recognize your failures, most of the people like you I have talked to seem to agree that at some point the revolution was “hijacked”, usurped, corrupted, lost aim, usually coinciding with a figure they don’t like taking over the revolutionary government and messing things up.

      The supposed “strong state that crushes all opposition” being taken over by the reformist opposition and then the capitalist one in the case of the USSR and Leninists. The market reforms of Deng in the case of China and Maoists. But you all never seem to ask yourselves the question “Why was that allowed to happen?”. Why am I supposed to put my trust in some authoritarian bullshit solution specifically justified as a means to protect the revolution when it failed at doing so? Why do you have to be so smug and condescending at me for not trusting in things that didn’t work?

      Why do you instead of learning from the mistakes in your methods that most of the time you yourself recognize and trying to come up with new ideas and systems for the current age, insist on still clinging to material analysis of the world of a hundred years ago as the gospel, the sole undying and absolute truth on how to Make Socialism, merely saying “it’ll totally work right this time” instead? Why do you insist on mocking and “”“dunking”“” on anyone who refuses to do that?

      They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted.

      This is all completely false. It genuinely is just lies. You can disagree with the explanations, but to claim there literally aren’t any is just ignorance and a complete lack of good faith. Look, if you’re a socialist in the internet, you probably have dealt with confidently incorrect liberals whining about strawmen that you don’t believe, because they haven’t read anything about it - and it’s probably been incredibly frustrating. So why do you never think twice before doing the same thing with anarchists?

      I’m always told to read Lenin and a ton of authoritarian essays and I always do in good faith, but it’s extremely rare for me to ever be afforded the same honour, and then all the conversations I have end up with people telling me shit like this and me having to explain anarchism 101 to them because they genuinely don’t actually know anything.

      No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.

      I am also always told to be charitable and nuanced about the failures and mistakes of vanguardist revolutions, but no one ever has the same honour with anarchist ones.

    • FluffyPotato@lemm.ee
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      At least it’s something new instead of a method that has failed to bring about socialism time and time again through history. All those transitory government systems just end up being dictatorships that give as much power to the workers as the fucking US, less even.

      You will never achieve socialism if you just prop up a ruling class with vastly different class interests, they will never cede power to the workers.

      • brain_in_a_box [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        It’s very far from new, and it has failed entirely to bring about socialism time and time again through history.

        You will never achieve socialism if you just passively support the status quo while condemning all forms of AES for not being pure enough.

        • FluffyPotato@lemm.ee
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          What I support is workers organising. What I don’t support is Stalinist strongmen oppressing workers. Socialism without power of the workers is meaningless and not worth achieving, that’s literally the current system. If I wanted capitalism with socialist aesthetics I can just move to China, that already exists. What I want is actual power to the workers and nothing else.

          • JamesConeZone [they/them]@hexbear.net
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            Workers had more power and say in democracy in the USSR then they have ever had in a Western capitalist country, and American police are more brutal, more violent, more repressive, and kill more people than any “strong men” under Stalin. You’ve consumed too much anti-communist propaganda.

            • FluffyPotato@lemm.ee
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              No, me and my family lived under Soviet rule in an annexed satellite state. Workers had no power here, people who were friendly to high ranking party members had power and if workers did not comply they got sent to slave camps in siberia where they were not likely to return.

              I really don’t care about the US and it’s quite weird how literally everyone who is trying to paint the USSR in a good light says that with no prompting. Like lung cancer is also bad but bringing that up in every single conversation about anything is weird.