What I have learned:

  • Russia has already won the Ukraine war
  • Which NATO started
  • A lot of people in the West think that Ukraine should surrender
  • Also Ukraine was the world’s main provider of CSAM
  • Also Ukraine is exploited by the West but if they can unite with Russia then their economy and everything else will finally be alright

It’s literally like a bizarro world and everyone is over there agreeing with it. I’m genuinely confused by, who even are these people (what is the mixture of Russian bots / Russian-aligned ordinary people / confused Westerners / some other explanation.)

  • protist@mander.xyz
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    There is no coherent ideology over there besides “America/the West/capitalism should be destroyed.” Dudes would rather Pol Pot be in charge than Joe Biden.

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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      Last part is true and even more insane/sad because these people are all terminally online gossip mongers that Pol Pot would have immediately executed.

      You own a computer? You don’t work in the fields? You wear glasses?

      Yep, literally executed.

      • mozz@mbin.grits.devOP
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        Yeah, pretty much. I mean, my estimate in the modern day would be that “ACAB I saw a bad video on Youtube, we need communism” would turn into “oh my god what the FUCK they literally came in my house because I said the wrong thing online and SLAMMED ME ON THE GROUND and now they’re NOT LETTING ME OUT OF PRISON this is literally SO BAD LIKE THEY’RE NOT ALLOWED TO DO THIS”.

        But yeah, the general principle that they don’t have any degree of connection to reality with what they’re saying, I’ll agree with you on.

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          Not even remotely satire, and you might notice I never said anyone over there “glorified or likes Pol Pot.” Back in my early Lemmy days I spent way too much time on Hexbear trying to understand, and repeatedly was told that any communist dictator, no matter how heinous, from any time in history would be preferable to any US president. They twisted in knots denying any atrocities by communists while at it. They were clear they don’t particularly like Putin, Xi, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc, but would prefer their leadership in every case over US leadership

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      More than once I have seen the same person express both “America is evil and the whole system needs to be destroyed” and also “Joe Biden is bad for the country and I can’t support him”, and asked the person, well if you think America is bad and Biden is harming the country, doesn’t that mean you should support him being in charge, so he can do more damage to this evil thing?

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    There is no rhyme or reason. Misinformation preys on what it can, it is an opportunist. The beliefs do not have to agree with each other so long as they affirm one’s bias.

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      It’s just so… weird.

      Like it seems like they genuinely believe it. I can’t see that it’s useful to have a whole server of propaganda-bots all just talking to each other; it seems like probably some decent number of them are real actual people.

      I feel like I have a pretty good handle at this point on why people hold weird political opinions on the internet, but the whole “Russia’s the best, Russia’s totally winning the war, anything and everything in the Western media is lies, RT and SCMP are the only things you can trust” viewpoint is still a mystery to me. The best thing that I can come up with is that it’s a sort of little self strengthening propaganda-box like some authoritarian religions – like “every source that doesn’t agree with me is lying, don’t believe them” and a few other key principles that make it hard to break your way out of once you’re in it. But I don’t know. Like I say I can’t figure it out.

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        That’s about the size of it.

        World defederated from them months ago. Save yourself the psychic damage and block the instance if your instance hasn’t defederated.

        Or have fun and ask exactly what NATO’s end game was after they “encircled” Russia and when exactly they planned to invade. Or how if Russia’s goal was to prevent nato expansion, why are there 2 more NATO countries than before the war started. Or ask them to explain how the holodomor was actually not that bad and the millions of people that died deserved it.

        Tankies are a mess.

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          It’s like a sore tooth, I can’t keep from poking at it.

          I also learned just now that the collapse of the USSR and and its former constituent countries in the 1990s is an example of how great communism is, because when the communism went away, everything got worse. It’s flawless logic; I can see no counter argument.

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            Oh the worst part you may have noticed is they’ll use US atrocities to excuse other atrocities. Like they did it so why don’t you care about that instead of tens of millions dead under stalin/Mao etc.? While failing to realize the actual correct position is all of that was bad. Best of luck in your adventures.

            • mozz@mbin.grits.devOP
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              Or “you think CHINA’s justice system is bad, have you heard about the police in AMERICA?”

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          Yeah, the holodomor lol.

          I had a hex person once tell me that actually the holodomor happened because of Nazi agents sabotaging agricultural production in Ukraine.

          You know, in 1932 and 33. When the Nazis were putting all their resources into street fighting, barely eeking out a substantial amount of electoral power, Hitler becoming chancellor due to a compromise… you know largely before they had large numbers of party members or massive control of the state… yep they just secretly managed to sabotage the agricultural system of another state.

          This person’s source was literally ‘I heard that…’.

          I asked them for an actual source and they retreated into “Wow, way to ruin my good faith conversation attempt.”

          Its like they’d never actually been responsible for anything in their life, and just assumed that gossip and hear-say are totally on par with like… an actual idea with any kind of evidence.

      • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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        The utility is that they use hexbear and .ml as intro exercises before they promote the trolls to Facebook or reddit.

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        Take a bunch of citizens, destroy their engagement as voters over generations, keep their political knowledge on both local and international stages at the lowest level possible, then have the internet happen.

        Generally you get two things: a massive increase in knowledge, critical thinking ability and empathy or hexbear.

        • mozz@mbin.grits.devOP
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          Makes sense to me. “I know more than Bill who is a waiter, and Joe who does tree work, and those are my only two friends. Therefore, I guess I am a genius. The world must know my wisdom.”

          The same thing happens when people get to college sometimes.

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        They do genuinely believe it until and unless they are challenged on it in a way they cannot refute and also simultaneously does not anger them.

        If it angers them, they all become screaming sarcastic trolls.

        If you manage to do it politely they will act as if they have an extremely nuanced opinion and well we basically believe the same thing with minor differences.

        In short, they basically have late stage irony poisoning which has legitimately caused many of them to become delusional and extremely aggressive if correctly agitated.

        If you are enough of a leftist to know their more grounded ideas and the lingo / meme culture, you can fit in well until you trigger them with a verboten question or idea.

        You are correct that many of the psychological traits are basically the same seen in other cults of personality. Self reinforcing bubble.

        Also lets be real, a whole lot of these people are also chronic weed smokers. Sure, in moderation that shit is fine, but use it consistently to the point that you need it to cope with reality and … well long term hallucinogen use kind of warps most people’s sense of reality.

        • mozz@mbin.grits.devOP
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          Yeah. There’s this culture of lemmy.ml, too, that’s elevated arguing in bad faith to this sort of “this is the way” status. Like if you’re calmly citing sources and asking questions, that is “sealioning” which is a bad thing to do, but hurling abuse at someone who you don’t agree with is fine. Also, I’ve noticed a common thread of behavior which is telling other people what those people believe and then disagreeing with it. Like hey, you disagreed with some ludicrous thing that I said, so that means you’re a “centrist” and you support establishment Democrats and Israel, and so now I’m gonna go HAM about telling you how wrong you are for supporting the Democrats and Israel even though you never said those things or anything even roughly similar to them. It’s like a little one-man band of internet debate. The other person doesn’t even really need to be involved in the process at all beyond showing up and saying a couple things enough to be branded as the enemy.

          At one point I thought it was bots. Like they’re programmed with this pattern of general hostility pushing a certain viewpoint, that doesn’t even need to have anything to do with what the person they’re talking to is saying, and that’s why it’s so bizarre in the flow of conversation. But now I’m not real sure about that. IDK. Maybe it’s not worth time trying to figure out, but it is a mystery to me that I wish I could know the answer to.

          • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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            Basically just look up EthanIsOnline on youtube or twitter and there’s your average terminally online, drama queen, any slight association to anything I don’t like mandates guilt by massive unfounded leaps, always correct no matter how much of a hypocrite or just factually wrong they are kind of leftist person.

            I have known people like ml and hex tankies in real life. The ones I knew were extremely erratic and manipulative, explosive personalities.

            The sort of weird conversation style that works on comment threads and streams on the net has kind of broken their brains, as when you see a person doing this IRL its basically a 30 minute rant of them either screaming at you, or having a complete suicidal depression breakdown after any particular thing sets off them off.

            If you were an unbiased observer who was just observing most of the interactions these people have it’d be clear that they are emotionally abusive cry bullies.

            My experience was so bad that I’ve given up doing mutual aid and helping those who were at the time less well off than me.

            I can be the person actually doing the thing, spending all my time actually assisting the downtrodden, and none of that means anything because I laugh when my roommate says oh China’s former president just got whisked away during a very public party meeting, surely he’s been put into witness protection to save him from threats on his life!

            A month later I am homeless because roommate was angry and decided to spread a bunch of rumors about me.

            Awesome!

            • mozz@mbin.grits.devOP
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              Basically just look up EthanIsOnline on youtube or twitter

              No no no I don’t want to

              I have known people like ml and hex tankies in real life. The ones I knew were extremely erratic and manipulative, explosive personalities.

              My experience is, honestly, pretty limited, but that makes sense to me. Some of the super-left people I have known IRL have been illogical in this very particular “and of course I am right about everything, that goes without saying” way that largely tracks with what you’re describing.

              It’s a fucking shame, because I am feeling right now that I should be getting involved with some kind of left organization for progress, because without that the US and the world are in mortal danger of some very bad things. IDK. Maybe the way to go is to get involved with unions and electoral politics and leave the harder core of communists to their own devices for the time being.

          • Taleya@aussie.zone
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            Generation grew up on with us or against us, then purity poisoned themselves into insanity

          • cygon@lemmy.world
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            My pet theory/explanation is that, the more people see things go wrong in society (or, rather, believe them to), the more they tend to become contrarians. They look for views and beliefs that are opposite to what people in authority say. It seems to be built into us, like a tribe of stone age people will question their leaders’ methods and decisions after a row of bad hunts and then desire to hunt in a new place, at a different time, using different techniques.

            Modern information warfare appears to use that idea centrally. The far right has been indoctrinated to believe that the “establishment” they rebel against is left wing and that a hard turn towards right wing politics is needed. After Trump won in 2016 and they were officially in power, they splintered a bit until they found a new lore: “actually, we’re still being ruled by the left, they’re the deep state, the cabal, etc.” to rekindle the contrarian / siege mentality and come together again.

            I see all that in tankies, too. Society feels like it’s going wrong, so they sponge up any reason they see to hate the “establishment,” which is where the already running information warfare provides them ample facts to blame liberals and hate western powers, etc.

            Also, on the hostility… yeah. These echo chambers seem to almost intentionally breed a nastiness that shuts down any useful discussion. Try to defuse anger and you’re “whiteknighting,” try to point out that something decent is good and you’re “virtue signaling.” When these communities erupt into other spaces, they quickly drive out anyone discussing in good faith. Survival of the nastiest.

          • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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            A lot of minor social media sites got created by groups unwelcome to larger sites. Lemmy in general has a tankie pedigree. At least tankies aren’t fascist, but they can still be insufferable.

            • barsquid@lemmy.world
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              They’re extremely authoritarian. Like they prefer authoritarianism to leftist economics. What is the practical difference between their brand of authoritarianism and fascism? They want nominally leftist authoritarianism with selectively harsh law enforcement.

              • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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                Yeah, they are extremely authoritarian against people they don’t like. They just don’t punch down.

                I’m just comparing them to fascists.

                • boredtortoise@lemm.ee
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                  Fascists and “red” fascists are so similar in practice that even though they’re adjacent, own ideologies, it just usually doesn’t matter a lot

        • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          Listen, I’m a chronic chronic smoker (lol), don’t blame us for this bullshit I’m in here complaining about them right along with you!

          • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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            Hey fair enough! Plenty of people who are chronically hitting the chronic can handle it and are super nice and chill.

            I’ve known many people like that as well =)

            • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              Lol I was just foolin’ around I didn’t really take it personal! Tbf I’ve known plenty who can’t handle it myself, too!

              • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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                No harm in being polite and cordial.

                Makes me feel like a decent, dare I say good person from time to time haha.

                Also I’m autistic and take most statements extremely literally. =P

        • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
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          chronic weed smokers

          long term hallucinogen use

          What the fuck kind of weed have you been smoking?

          • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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            Weed is mildly hallucinogenic, this has been widely known for a while.

            While CBD has a calming, pain reducing and anti psychotic effect, THC often causes hallucinations in higher doses.

            Do you need me to list the literal hundreds of studies on this?

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        You clearly don’t have a good handle if you can’t even work out the very obvious fact that nobody there thinks “Russia is the best”.

        • mozz@mbin.grits.devOP
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          Would you agree or disagree with the bullet points I listed in the body? Follow-up, would you agree or disagree that those are consensus views in the comments I linked to?

  • Railcar8095@lemm.ee
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    Hexbears can’t answer the question “is it ok to kill civilians” without asking “Palestinian or Ukrainian?”

    Somehow, if you say that killing children is bad regardless of religion, country or skin color, you’re a racist and a Nazi.

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        Had one guy claim the Uyghur concentration camps didn’t exist. He posted a wall of random articles claiming there was a lack of evidence.

        When asked why China is not allowing journalists near these camps and they locked it all down I got no response.

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          Yeah, I have seen mostly claims that the camps don’t exist and there is nothing going on.

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          And then they—the ones who claim to be so socially enlightened—say that the idea of cultural genocide is fake and doesn’t exist and that erasing a culture by forcibly assimilating it is Good Actually.

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      This is just plain not true. Cool strawmanning.

      As with every single time this comes up. “Hexbear would TOTALLY say this” “Oh really, any examples?” “NO BUT THEY WOULD I BET PROBABLY”

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        I have long blocked the instance due to that behavior, didn’t need that toxicity in my life.

        Cool cries though

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    There are some Americans, who upon learning that the US is not the mythological good guy it’s propaganda portrayed it as, are dealt such severe psychic damage that the only way their fractured mind is able to cope is to just assume the opposite worldview must be true.

    The key takeaway is that they’re not capable of thinking for themselves. They require others to tell them what to think, and that’s either going to be US or Russian propaganda.

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      There are loads of people who think that about their own country. There are also loads of people who think that any country at all can be perfectly good or perfectly evil, or that in a conflict, one must always be right and the other wrong.

      People love to shit on the US for it’s aggressive meddling in other countries, but somehow forget that China and Russia do the exact same, you just hear about it less.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      There’s actually a name for that in politics. It’s the rubber band effect and it’s entirely human.

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      The opposite kind of is true. But the enemy of your enemy isn’t necessarily your friend and it’s hard to say if the US and Russia are even truly enemies when they both bend to capital.

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    These people are not socialists. It’s all just right wing agitprop. It’s extremely obvious.

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      The echo chamber they isolated themselves in after chapotraphouse got banned from reddit but before the great migration did not do them any favors. It’s a cesspit of self ratcheting extremism.

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    I would LOVE to find a non deranged communist forum but like I said on another comment, I have yet to encounter one which does not make me vomit all over the screen after I see them celebrating bloodshed in Ukraine and masturbating to the idea of an independent sovereign nation being crushed by brutal, authoritarian, and savage state.

    It’s heartbreaking that people seeking an ideology with genuinely noble intentions turn into such violent loons. On hexbear (and co) I think they are genuinely mostly from the west but try so hard to stick it to US imperialism that they literally end up supporting a significantly more horrifying empire. I sometimes think that they deserve to have been born into Soviet Union or present Russia but I genuinely cannot bring myself to wish such horror on a human being. Their thoroughly typed and carefully cherry picked facts vs what the victims of these regimes went through have the same vibe as Tucker’s recent montage/comments about trip to Russia.

    Most propaganda is grain sized, very subtle and so well masked that most people swallow without noticing it. It is structured so vaguely and discreetly that others who smell it are not able to produce hard enough evidence.

    And with enough time we get the stereotypical tankie communities - gullible teenagers, bitter adults that are so blinded by search of an alternative that by endless reading they somehow achieve ignorance and betray fundamental human values, and some Russians having the time of their life having their disgusting views and evil atrocities welcomed, accepted, and spread for free.

    They do not allow discussions, but the Russian propaganda that gets spread on other servers or social media cost them nothing emotionally while all of us who have to argue back need to resurface feelings that we suffer under Russia’s terrorism, after inheriting the generational trauma from parents born into Soviet Union.

    • Caveman@lemmy.world
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      I agree, they simply put all the blame on the West for the world’s problems no matter what it is and to be fair I often agree with those statements.

      It’s just purely idiotic to support another country going the same thing and denying facts such as Russia invaded Ukraine.

      I’m a socialist, somewhat left of a standard social democrat in the EU, but fuck, these guys are giving the whole ideology a bad name. There are still some recent movements that are good such as solarpunk, degrowth, minimalism, third spaces and tool libraries. I hope the Gen Z and Alpha get in on those so they can vote out our generation of rampant consumerism and privatisation.

    • mozz@mbin.grits.devOP
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      slrpnk.net seems to have some genuine socialist / communist ideology without the tankie flavor. They have a couple of users who I think are pretty effective “and that’s why Emma Goldman would be okay with letting Trump come to power!” shills, but for the most part it’s just the good stuff. IMO.

      • Schmoo@slrpnk.net
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        Slrpnk.net leans anarchist, and historically there has always been a vocal subset of anarchists who advocate abstaining from electoral politics on principle. The upcoming US presidential election is the perfect storm for this stance to thrive and still it is a minority position even among the most anarchist instance on Lemmy, so I’m pretty happy with the diversity of opinion expressed there. I think it’s important we hear those minority voices and a bit unfair to call them shills.

        • mozz@mbin.grits.devOP
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          Oh no, I wasn’t talking about the general “don’t vote” contingent on slrpnk – that seems fine; just like you’re saying, it seems authentically arrived at. I was just saying that there are a couple of users there that seem to have a particular and very specific focus on this exact election and specifically on not voting in this election, and not much interest in anarchism beyond its application to parts that would be generally applicable to someone who was trying to engineer a result for Trump in the election.

          I mean, what the hell, no one needs my permission to say whatever they feel like saying. But to the extent that my opinion on it matters, I don’t think slrpnk overall or its general “fuck the system and yes that includes the voting system” vibe that it has are indicative of anything shill related, no.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            I know we’ve had our run ins about this but it’s really about this election because Biden is doing egregious stuff. It’s not this election for no reason. And the shills that are just trying to make people never want to vote again are getting a ton of ammunition.

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              Have we had run-ins?

              IDK, other than his absolutely war-criminal support for Israel I’m not aware of all that much about Biden that is real ammunition. (Not that that’s a minor issue 😢) Pretty much everything else has crumbled into weird half-truths and propaganda when I’ve been poking at it, I think; what were you thinking of when saying he’s doing egregious stuff?

              I also don’t think that refusing to vote for Biden is going to make anything any better. If someone is doing direct action to change things, or an influence campaign to try to push him to the left, that all sounds frickin fantastic. Just committing to not voting doesn’t really make sense to me though – it’s functionally the same as saying you’ll vote for Biden no matter what; i.e. basically no pressure at all to change his policy (but with the added horrifying danger of maybe electing Trump.)

              • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                Oh you’re not horrible or anything. You’ve just been on the other side of some of those conversations. Also as far egregious stuff he just dropped an EO on immigration that’s sure to get the ACLU fired up. Which doesn’t really spark joy in my life.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Oh then they’re getting that entirely wrong. You’re not supposed to check out of the system and never vote. You’re supposed to withhold your vote, that you normally use. Those are numbers they can see and run polling to figure out how to better represent people, (in a good faith system). If you just never engage then you never get represented. And if you never get represented then you’re just watching the country walk away from you.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      r/antiwork was that at one time. Then it got swallowed by the reddit hivemind.

      On Lemmy the thing I keep running into is they’re either tankies or anarchists, nothing in between. And while anarchy has some great ideas for making our lives better it’s not a state we’re ever going to achieve in a good way.

      • PugJesus@lemmy.worldM
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        5 months ago

        And while anarchy has some great ideas for making our lives better it’s not a state we’re ever going to achieve in a good way.

        And while anarchy has some great ideas for making our lives better

        it’s not a state we’re ever going to achieve

        anarchy

        not a state we’re ever going to achieve

        Sorry, I know you meant state as in “state of being” and not “political state”, but I found it too funny to pass up.

    • cor@slrpnk.net
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      5 months ago

      you will not find a non-deranged communist forum because: 89% of all users will be shills… the remaining 11% will be beaten down, ridiculed, and/or banned for saying anything not deranged….

      i’ve asked in person, lifelong activist/leftists and they all say the same thing: online forums are so infiltrated and fucked it’s not worth the aggravation.

      i don’t think it’s worth giving up on entirely, but even if you make a no-tankies/ direct russian propaganda repeating, they just pivot to FUD, forum sliding, concern trolling…

      even totally sane, reasonable accounts can be fake just so they can get inside the next level or take over moderation…

    • Jayjader@jlai.lu
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      5 months ago

      I came across raddle.me a few months ago and spent a few nights trawling it without finding anything questionable - though I might just be too ignorant of parts of history to pick up where they fail. It’s very anarchist-flavored so while that might not be your preferred brand of communism I think it avoids descending into “deranged”. In any case, their faq/about page should give you a better idea than whatever I could write here.

    • DAMunzy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 months ago

      I’ve heard horror stories about the USSR but I’ve also heard meh stories where life wasn’t the best but their needs were taken care of- not having luxuries but socialized healthcare and housing so don’t live in fear like I do currently in the US of being one medical hiccup from being in a world of hurt or one interaction with a cop and the legal system from destroying my life. Will my kids say they have this generational trauma too?

      • iarigby@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I can imagine why you think that this reasoning makes sense but these are completely unrelated things. Many people in the US live in deeply brutal psychological and economic distress that resulted from decades of worker hostile reforms. People in social democratic European countries live under capitalism and deal with its issues too but the socialist policies limit the severity to the point where it’s not outright traumatic. In all countries people need to thrive for socialist change and a system that treats humans kinder but this does not mean that we need to in any way tolerate people trying to drag brutal and horrific dictatorships into a positive light

      • mozz@mbin.grits.devOP
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        5 months ago

        one interaction with a cop and the legal system from destroying my life

        Uhhhhh

        I have bad news for you about the USSR

        Every system has good and bad, and the US is so bad at so many things that most industrialized countries do for their citizens no problem, that I would never be the one to say it doesn’t need radical improvement. And I really do (truly) get what you mean about living in a non-capitalist society and the wonderful things about the system just taking care of you (which it doesn’t in the US). But at the same time, “needs were taken care of” and “don’t live in fear” are two things that are very very far away from what was the stable reality of living in the Soviet Union.

  • Rusty@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    I assume hexbear is just the russian troll factory.

    I can read Russian and I sometimes read Russian media and it uses almost exactly the same topics for their people. There is a new one that they started to repeat recently and it’s that Zelensky is an illegitimate president, because his term has ened.

      • OpenStars@discuss.online
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        5 months ago

        iirc they don’t allow downvotes, plus dunking on someone is the entire point, and also the icons rendering there is different (significantly smaller) than the giant versions that they render as elsewhere. And yes, the made-up language aspect as well.

  • blackn1ght@feddit.uk
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    5 months ago

    This thread makes me laugh.

    They’re getting their knickers in a twist thinking that Biden is escalating and would be the cause for a nuclear war, conveniently forgetting that:

    • Russia invaded Ukraine
    • Russia has been constantly making threats to use nuclear weapons against western nations since the invasion started
    • Russia attacks Ukraine from within their own borders
    • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Cool, this is one of the most upvoted comments:

      I know right, crazy how that works. Imagine Russia telling Mexico they can fire missiles into Texas.

      Like yeah ok if the US was trying to annex Mexico and Russia started supplying the latter with weapons and discussing the ROE, then yeah

      I’m sure ‘DankZedong’ would like the ‘Mexinazis’ to keep their Russian missiles strictly south of the border in such a scenario

      • mozz@mbin.grits.devOP
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        5 months ago

        I mean I do think that somewhere in the crazy is a valid point on that specific score. There’s actually a moderately close analogy in Nicaragua, which the US was actively attacking, and then they started sourcing fighter jets from Russia purely to try to defend against our air force actively fucking them up inside their borders, and the whole of the US political spectrum freaked the fuck out, took it to the UN, escalated the war, there were all these editorials about what a crisis it was, etc etc, and that was barely even on the same continent as us.

        This was all during the 1980s, when I actually think that US foreign policy was quite a lot closer to Russia’s current foreign policy than not. I think we’ve mellowed somewhat since then, although we’re still fine with killing civilians the world over when it serves our purposes. But yes, the US has a few data points worth of history of freaking out completely over “threats” from foreign alliances that are not even on the same continent (or hemisphere if you want to go back to the 70s) as us. I think the difference is that Russia has been antagonizing its neighbors on the west so thoroughly now that almost 100% of them actively want to gear up for real war with Russia, which I’m sure would make any country nervous regardless of how it got to be that way.

        • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          Yeah so their point sure is valid as long as you think the US was right to attack Nicaragua and they shouldn’t have tried to defend themselves

  • crawancon@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    thank you for succinctly articulating an echo of my experience recently on lemmy.ml

    They are very …passionate… about their ideals I guess.