OBJECTION!

I’m willing to discuss it anywhere.

And then I have to wonder, who runs .ml? If this ideology is being promoted so radically that people get banned even attempting to discuss this

You were banned from a community, not the instance. The community is run by Geneva_Convenience (who I have some problems with, but don’t really disagree with in this case).

You don’t even need a tinfoil hat to see that if .ml is indeed russian made, trump is a russian plant (buy russian oil), then it all makes perfect sense.

You do need a tinfoil hat. You’ve constructed a conspiratorial worldview where everyone who disagrees with you, no matter why can be dismissed as secretly working for sinister foreigners. Even if one group disagrees with you from a left-wing perspective and another disagrees with you from the right, even if some are Marxists and some are anarchists, it’s all “RUSSIA! RUSSIA! RUSSIA!”

If you come back down to earth, surely you must understand that not everyone agrees with you on everything. It seems like liberals have this extremely narrow range of what “disagrees with me, but isn’t a foreign asset” looks like and I’m pretty sure it’s just Bush-era neocons. It’s legit crazy. I seriously think y’all just need to read books, like, not even leftist theory, just anything outside of the present day culture war. Just to understand that other perspectives exist, beyond Fox News and CNN.

I understand this viewpoint. I think it’s less an opinion and more a neurological condition: being so embedded in an ideology which is by the power of AIPAC impossible to achieve in today’s political landscape. This is a rather neurodivergent absolutist approach hoping for a utopia any smart person know is not achieved within the parameters of today’s power structure.

“Impossible.” You sure like to throw that word around. What’s really impossible?

Every year, the gap between the rich and the poor increases. Every year, carbon emissions increase and the temperature rises, the weather itself becomes more and more unstable, making it harder to grow food. Every year, there are more refugees displaced, both from climates becoming uninhabitable and from the bombs we drop on innocent people for no good reason.

Nothing that we are doing right now, as a society, is sustainable. Which is to say that it is impossible for the things we’re doing to be sustained. The reasons why they’re unsustainable are not just because of human systems or individual politicians, but because of physical, natural laws.

Now, you say it’s “impossible” to divert course, and physics says that it’s impossible to stay the course, who do you think is gonna win? If we make a law that says we can flap our arms and fly, and the laws of physics say we can’t, who wins? And you say I’m the one with a “neurological condition?”

This mortal, human system can insist that it’s “impossible” to change all it wants. But it will. If it does not bend, it will break. I would prefer it to bend, I am trying to make it bend, and you keep telling me that it’s “impossible” for it to bend. Alright then, it will break. Not because of anything I do or say, not because I want it to, but but because it is physically unsustainable.

Any strategy or plan I present, you’d just pick apart and dismiss, because you don’t grasp that. It doesn’t matter what the system claims is impossible, there won’t be a system if we can’t make things happen. If you understood that, you’d be in the same boat as me, looking for a way to make the necessary changes and dismissing any strategy that just aims to uphold the status quo. But if you believe that you can sustain the unsustainable, or that you can trump physical laws with human laws, there’s no real point in discussing strategy because we’re not viewing the situation the same way.

This election doesn’t offer an off-ramp to genocide

So then it’s not a democracy and it doesn’t matter if people participate in the sham.

On the other hand, if there is some semblance of democracy, then there is always an off-ramp to genocide or anything else, which is getting people to demand it. By giving your vote to a politician who doesn’t offer an off-ramp to genocide, you are choosing not to demand it, you are saying that you find what they’re offering acceptable, genocide included.

If a critical mass of people refuse to vote for a candidate over an issue, then they will change their stance on that issue if they care at all about winning. If all you say is, “Hey, we’d prefer if you did this, but it’s not going to have any impact on how we vote,” then it doesn’t matter how many people say that, they’re not going to change their stance because you’ve given them no reason to.

Stop letting politicians tell you what is and isn’t possible and start telling them instead.

I swear, the kind of trivial shit that will end a politician’s career because people think it’s kinda cringe, shit like the Dean Scream, and you think this is just set in stone because they say it is?

It’s not the Donbas war I’m questioning, there’s a reasoning chain that’s understandable. Both geopolitically, strategically and culturally.

It’s the full scale invasion of 2022 I’m questioning. There’s no chain of thought leading to that invasion, other than greed and lust for blood by Putin and his inner circles.

What are you talking about? The DPR requested Russian military assistance. If the DPR was legitimate and had the right to defend itself, then Russia sending troops in at their request was legitimate.

As long as they do exist, national governments should be able to defend against other nations attempt to gain control over them.

Disagree.

Because if we do assume, at one point we get a global government and abolish the national states. Then it’s whoever carries the most power (that’s war machines), that’ll be able to decide the values of such a government. And by extend shape the culture that’ll impact everyone.

So we have to feed the largest war machine on the planet because otherwise the war machines win?

Yeah, no. It’s not a fight over having war machines or not, it’s a fight over which war machine gets fed certain minerals. I have no real stake in that.

There’s a line.

Do you think Russia is in a right to invade Ukraine?

No. No more than I “supported” Al Qaida and 9/11 by opposing going to war.

It’s miles apart to be against an aggressive occupational force with no clear goals, and not support a country’s right to defend itself.

I don’t believe countries have an inherent right to defend themselves, and if I did then I would say that the DPR had the same right.

Somehow, the extreme anti-war stance of not supporting even “defensive” wars makes me a bloodthirsty warmonger, a “tankie,” while you’re the one arguing that we didn’t build and deploy enough tanks. Exactly as I described: “war is peace.”

I only really saw it for myself when I said, “I’m completely opposed to the genocidal, apartheid state of Israel. I don’t have a problem with Jews existing,” and they responded by accusing me of being a “liberal Zionist” and “supporting genocide” and then blocking me.

I remembered Cowbee saying something about them before, I just looked it up and I gotta give props as always because he was calling them out 9 months ago for not reading theory of doing praxis and just watching Bad Empanada, and for apparently calling Hexbear “transzionist” and accusing them of defending Contrapoints’ stance on Israel, which is just bizarre.

Your argument that lemmy.ml cannot be an echo chamber due to it allowing other machines to store content that it disagrees with is noted.

That’s one way to describe “designed a website where it’s virtually unavoidable to encounter opposing views.” At that point, you could describe me replying to you as me “storing content you disagree with on another machine” which makes your complaint about my reply existing sound just as silly.

Btw nobody ever said that it was for that reason, so once again ridiculous.

Btw, I never said that anyone said it was for that reason, so you are once again being ridiculous.

Your second whataboutism

Whataboutism is when you uphold consistent standards and expect others to do the same, understood.

Once again I reiterate that I really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really wish that I did not have to be subjected to this level of argumentation. But it seems that as long as I continue to use Lemmy, my only option is to block each account individually, over and over again, ad nauseum.

If you hate the fact that the devs structured the platform to force everyone to encounter opposing views and prevent echo chambers so much, I kinda have to wonder what you’re doing on the platform at all. The federated structure is literally in the name, fediverse. It’s like going to Burger King and being outraged at seeing burgers on the menu. Is it really that hard to find an echo chamber somewhere with only mainstream liberal views? That’s not really something the fediverse is designed for.

My opinion is that geneva_convenience has been going off the deep end, getting worse and worse lately, and definitely should be removed as a mod, honestly just banned. He’s an edgelord who’s taking things to unreasonable extremes and trying to pick fights with everyone.

Anyone who opposes any war will always be accused of supporting the other side, and as the other side is always painted as the aggressor no matter the conflict, those most opposed to war will always be painted as the most aggressive warmongers.

It’s no different from when I was labelled a “terrorist sympathizer” or seen as “supporting 9/11” when I opposed war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Opposition to building more tanks is literally the defining characteristic of a “tankie” for that reason, because if you don’t want to build more tanks, it can only be because you want the enemy to win. Meanwhile, those who support building and deploying tanks are seen as “peaceful.”

Real “war is peace” hours.

It’s not really a strawman in that I never claimed anyone said it. It’s just that people talk about “censorship” and “echo chambers” and “they have to remove things to keep their users brainwashed” or whatever nonsense, ignoring the fact that the structure of the fediverse, as designed by the .ml admins, makes that more or less impossible.

For anyone else that is curious, the complaint is about the lack of transparency in describing what content is vs. is not allowed

OK, fair enough, they could afford to clarify the rules somewhat. But I don’t really consider that a huge deal. I’ve been banned from communities on .world for things that aren’t enumerated in the rules too. I don’t see why rules have to cover every possible thing.

Because I disagree with the term. The admins are not “tankies,” they are Marxist-Leninists.

What makes someone a “tankie” is that they “defend” certain states. In practice, “defending” often includes just refuting misinformation, for example, if I refute that “everyone in North Korea gets the same haircut” then I’m “defending” it and therefore a “tankie.” It can also mean acknowledging accomplishments, saying any good thing about any socialist state, like, “Cuba had a very successful literacy program,” which is just an objective historical fact. “Tankie” is supposed to mean someone who blindly supports everything a socialist state has ever done, in practice, it means someone who supports anything a socialist state has ever done.

Before it was “tankie” it was “pinko,” and before that “red.” That kind of red scare bullshit has allowed blatant misinformation to run rampant, because even rational people avoid pushing back on it for fear of being labelled a “tankie.” As stories about how all communists eat babies or whatnot run rampant, it has in turn hurt the reputation of both leftists and liberals, because it literally doesn’t matter how hard you try to distance yourself from the far-left, you’ll still get associated with it. Joe Biden got called a communist for Christ’s sake. To put it another way:

Purging the Left of communists became a longstanding practice, having injurious effects on various progressive causes. For instance, in 1949 some twelve unions were ousted from the CIO because they had Reds in their leadership. The purge reduced CIO membership by some 1.7 million and seriously weakened its recruitment drives and political clout. In the late 1940s, to avoid being “smeared” as Reds, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), a supposedly progressive group, became one of the most vocally anticommunist organizations.

The strategy did not work. ADA and others on the Left were still attacked for being communist or soft on communism by those on the Right. Then and now, many on the Left have failed to realize that those who fight for social change on behalf of the less-privileged elements of society will be Red-baited by conservative elites whether they are communists or not. For ruling interests, it makes little difference whether their wealth and power is challenged by “communist subversives” or “loyal American liberals.” All are lumped together as more or less equally abhorrent.

• Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds

That is why I put “tankie” in quotes.

Well, the map says it’s from realtor.com so the purpose might just be to try to understand and anticipate market trends. It might have relevance to an investor even if it doesn’t tell us much about society or Gen Z. I could see someone spreading it to make it look like people find conservative areas more appealing, but I wouldn’t accuse OP of that without more basis.

The great thing about lemmy’s design is that that’s not really true. I’m seeing this criticism of .ml despite being on .ml, because most of the posts that I see on lemmy are not on my home instance. At least half the time, I’m having discussions outside of my “home turf.”

When you have a space that agrees on certain base assumptions, it becomes easier to have more in depth and thoughtful discussions, because you don’t have to focus on just proving or advocating for those basic assumptions over and over again, and watching every word you say to make sure it can’t be twisted or misinterpreted to paint you in a negative light. By contrast, sharing a space with ideological opponents often means people tend to dig in and just make snipes at each other, everybody’s just grandstanding and trying to get owns in, and the level of discussion is brought down to name-calling and accusations.

At the same time, yes, echo chambers are a concern. If you’re never exposed to opposing viewpoints, obviously that’s not great either. We can see that happen on any number of subreddits. And if we were on different subreddits instead of on different instances, I wouldn’t be seeing this criticism, and you wouldn’t be seeing my response to it.

The way the fediverse is designed inherently addresses both of those concerns. You can have a space where the discussions assume a shared ideology allowing for in depth discussions, but then you’re also federated with other spaces with different shared assumptions. The “tankie” creators of lemmy designed it this way on purpose, for that reason. To allow minority views (including but not limited to their own) to have spaces for discussion, without becoming isolated. To allow for higher level discussions with shared assumptions while also allowing for interactions between groups with different assumptions.

This is why all this hand-wringing over .ml’s censorship is kind of silly. Because people on .ml are constantly seeing content from other instances with completely different policies, and that is not in spite of what the .ml’s admins want, they literally designed it that way on purpose.

The only censorship that really matters on the fediverse is defederation.

Well, these are net changes. If some amount of people moves from New York to California and the same amount moves the other direction, it doesn’t show up.

Which means the map means even more nothing.

I still see it as short-lived. I think there is stuff we can learn from that example but I don’t see a reason to just automatically assume everything they did was the best. There have been leftist movements all over the world with varying degrees of success which we can learn from and look at what examples have produced what results.

Another reason I’m skeptical of short-lived projects is because people tend to project perfect idealized visions of what could’ve been. The result is somewhat backwards where only the projects that fail can serve as models for emulation. It’s important to remember that the stakes of failure can often mean decades of fascist rule. Survival is more important that perfection.

A state does not have the capacity to be trustworthy, to have human relationships, to do good for humans. When we accomplish those things, we do it despite the state.

During COVID, at around the same time that USians were packing into grocery stores to panic-buy toilet paper, the government of Vietnam arranged for groceries to be delivered right to the doorsteps of people in affected areas, completely free of charge, to prevent them from having to leave the house and potentially catch or spread the disease. Later on, Vietnam would actually wind up sending medical aid and supplies to the US to help with the crisis.

Go back 50 years and not a person alive would believe you if you told them that would happen. What has happened in those decades is that Vietnam has recovered from the devastation we inflicted on them and built a functional society, while in the US everything’s been gutted for profit, with emergency supplies being sold off just before the pandemic arrived being only one example.

This assumption that the government will always make people suffer as a condition for helping is not an inherent quality of governments, but of capitalism and the mentalities and philosophies associated with it. It is possible to build a government that actually just helps people and does good things, and I see Vietnam as one example that demonstrates that.

A state is just a tool, and when that tool is in the hands of capitalists it will of course be used in shitty ways. But if the capitalist class can be dealt with and reliably kept out of power, then it’s a question of whether the tool of the state is actually useful to our own ends, and I would argue that it is, that there are many advantages of having a central organ that can collect taxes and fund public works and so on.

Some people actually need help. If everyone’s fending for themselves, then for example people with disabilities will be reliant on charity, which tends to be unreliable, inconsistent, and underfunded. The most generous people would give the most while the greedy would build up their resources to the point of being able to establish a new government.

Could such a system work, if enough people were willing to cooperate? Sure, possibly. But if the government is gone something must have happened to get rid of it, and that probably means there’s some kind of major crisis going on. And in times of chaos, people aren’t always at their best. When things aren’t consistent, when there’s supply chain disruptions and grocery stores aren’t getting food in, when public services aren’t getting funded, people are going to want to make things consistent and reliable again. Which generally means a new government, and fighting that tendency is like trying to fight the waves of the ocean. This is before we even get into the fact that the US is full of fascist paramilitary groups that will see it as an opportunity to go open season.

Also, there are governments that are way more functional than the US government where we already have evidence they can work and make significant improvements to people’s lives. Meanwhile, the proof of concept for societies with no state is what, a small group of guerillas in Mexico, with a low population of farmers in the mountains? The Paris commune that lasted like a week?

Anyway the main problems we’re facing aren’t because of government in general, but because of a specific government. It’s better to just replace that with one that works than to get into this scope creep of trying to create a perfect idealized system.

I can say anecdotally that when I was a teenager and a dumbass privileged libertarian, my sister just said something once like, “Some people actually need help” and it changed my entire worldview because I had literally just never considered it.

I was just going off my own experience of having parents/teachers/the government tell me what I can and can’t do and was like, “government is bullshit, fuck authority.” And then as I grew older and more mature I came to realize that government does have a role and is actually important for the functioning of society. Just not, you know, my actual government in the US which is a dysfunctional fascist clusterfuck that needs to be torn down and replaced, obviously.

Anyway, the thing about privilege is that people often don’t realize that they have it and that it’s shaping their thoughts in ways they aren’t even aware of. It takes sustained effort, and actually wanting to to identify and correct for one’s own bias. Otherwise, it really is a hell of drug which causes your perception to be incredibly warped.

Probably also helps that China makes EVs that are actually affordable, which Americans aren’t allowed to buy.