Note to the haters: if you threaten me like you apparently threatened the poster of the other thread complaining about cm0002’s multiple accounts which caused them to delete their post and their account and leave Lemmy, I will report you and repost screenshots of your threats publicly. If you act too egregiously, I will report you to law enforcement and/or my lawyer. I have legal insurance and am willing to use it. Be civil and let us have a civilized discussion.
I had noticed that cm0002 was a high-volume poster on Lemmy a while ago. After they cross-posted a few of my posts from lemmy.ml communities to other communities on other instances, I asked them about their motivation for doing this. They are open and public about their desire to draw traffic away from lemmy.ml and support away from Lemmy devs because they think that “tankies” are going to destroy the Threadiverse. I was having a decent, amicable discussion with them on direct messages, but as soon as I expressed that I was sympathetic to some of the political views of the so-called “tankies”, I never got a reply.
Then the whole post about them creating accounts on pretty much every Threadiverse instance came up just yesterday (https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/45730651). While some people defended this type of activity as not being ban-evasion because they are not trying to hide being the same user, I feel that if nothing else, this makes it more difficult for moderators to review a user’s posting history to spot a pattern of bad behavior. If someone reports one of the (dozens? hundreds?) of cm0002 accounts, a mod may see only a few posts from the reported account and not get a full picture of this user.
Finally, I started looking into their one-person crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and “tankies”. I started looking at their claims more closely and didn’t like what I saw. To me it seems like they are making many distorted or debatable claims and spamming the Threadiverse with these. I read their “megathread” (https://sh.itjust.works/post/37226752) of supposed evidence that the Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and “tankies” are bad, and think the whole thing is lame, flawed, and dangerous:
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First, notice that the majority of posts that they link contain only what they would like you to see, and not a link to the original thread where one would be able evaluate the context for what was said.
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Second, notice that even where screenshots are provided, what the list item claims was said is most often not what was actually said. In other words, distortions. Specifically, most of the items that are claimed to be direct quotes (based on the quote marks around them) don’t at all appear to be actual quotes. I’m not a lawyer, but I would think that in many jurisdictions this would be grounds for a libel lawsuit.
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Third, most of the items that are not outright distortions are either exaggerations or debatable.
I personally feel that this crusade is more damaging to the Threadiverse than anything that they have complained about. I’ve been tired for a while of all the whining that I see here about “tankies” (Tankie Derangement Syndrome?), but have been holding my tongue. All this stuff from cm0002 is finally driving me to respond. Look, it’s fine to have the beliefs of a liberal, conservative, MAGA, loyal supporter of the United States’ imperial project, or a “tankie”. Live and let live. Learn to accept that people who think differently from you may have legitimate and valid reasons for thinking that way, as much as you may disagree (except fascists). I wish people would learn to agree to disagree after a discussion reaches a certain point where it becomes clear that it’s no longer productive. What’s not fine is to relentlessly target and persecute other people and other instances (again, except fascists). This is why I call this a crusade, because it’s nearly religious in nature. These people and instances haven’t committed any crime. Threadiverse visitors don’t deserve to be bombarded with all the whining and complaining that we often see. For all the complaining that I see about “Russian/Chinese bots”, I sometimes wonder if many of the complainers aren’t either intelligence or corporate agents trying to destabilize the Threadiverse.
My proposal: If nothing else comes out of this, I think that it would be beneficial to the Threadiverse if all instances added rules against disparaging, targeting, and persecuting other instances and users of other instances in general, especially if using false claims that border on libel, if they don’t already have such a rule. If we want to see the Threadiverse be sustainable as a Reddit alternative in the long term, I think that this would be a useful step contributing to that.
Another thing: I think that most instances defederating the so-called “tankie triad” (hexbear.net, lemmygrad.ml and lemmy.ml) is stupid to start with and damaging to the health of Lemmy and the Threadiverse (Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed), considering that at least Lemmy (and I imagine the others too) now allows users to block entire instances and allows admins to make this user-level block the default for new users. My instance, lemmy.zip, takes this default user-level block approach (for hexbear and lemmygrad) and I think that it’s a reasonable way to handle any concerns about the “triad”.
Anyway, I decided to look through cm0002’s “megathread” (https://sh.itjust.works/post/37226752) that they keep spamming and make comments showing how just about every item on the list is flawed, in my opinion. I only looked through the supposed “noteworthy selection” since those have their comments about the item on the main list. I suspect that most people wouldn’t look past that list and take it at face value. Note that most of them seem to indicate either problems with reading comprehension, malicious distortions, or lame complaints about random internet comments. There is no point in debating the items below with me. It’s fine to debate the items above with me. Like I said above, learn to accept that people may think differently than you do and learn to agree to disagree.
Dessalines - Head .ml admin - Head Lemmy Dev
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“Slava Ukraini” is considered a “Fascist slogan” - https://lemmy.world/post/36065538 - Debatable. It has a history of use by fascists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slava_Ukraini
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“NK is actually good, and anything counter to that is Western LIES” - https://lemmy.world/post/31595035 - Distortion. Note the quotes, making this appear to be a direct quote, whereas Dessalines doesn’t appear to have written the quoted text on this linked thread.
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“The BBC is not a credible news source” - https://lemmy.world/post/35824465 - Debatable. First, it’s a partial quote with no link to the original thread to get the context of the comment. Second, not credible is perhaps exaggerating a bit, but BBC news earns plenty of valid criticisms about bias. Here’s a collection of many of the criticisms: https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/BBC Bias Chp 3.pdf
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Showing support for Ukraine on .ml is worthy of a site ban - https://lemmy.world/post/32775563 - Distortion, debatable, and exaggeration. First, the comment used the slogan from item 1. Second, also note that it was a 30 day ban, which the lemmy.ml code of conduct appears to call a “kick” as opposed to a permanent ban.
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Open declaration of support for Russia - https://lemmy.world/post/27352415 - Distortion and debatable. Even though from what I’ve seen in the past I believe that Dessalines possibly supports Russia, that is not what the posted chart shows. The chart is not unconditionally supporting Russia. It’s making the claim that if a person supports Russia (in the Russia-Ukraine conflict) AND Palestine (in the Israel-Palestine conflict), it means they "fully understands the core of international geopolitics, while if they support Russia AND Israel, they believe in “Social Darwinism” (i.e., the discredited idea that stronger countries are always right). In other words, the chart is absolutely not unconditionally supporting Russia.
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"Don’t worry guys, the Uyghur Genocide was REALLY just birth control! - https://lemmy.world/post/30580167 - Distortion. Again a completely fake quote and again no link to original thread for context.
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Censoring criticism of China while allowing fellow “in-crowd” user “concentration camps were just reeducation camps and weren’t that bad” misinfo to remain - https://lemmy.world/post/26985447 - Distortion and Debatable. The first comment that was removed seemed to be criticizing the Soviet Union for having had “concentration camps” and the second post from the user removed for criticizing China for also having “concentration camps”. Did the USSR have concentration camps? The first result that uses that term when I searched was literally the CIA website, and when you read the historical document there, it is clear that they are calling the gulags (prisons) “concentration camps”. Regarding China having those (presumably referring to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang), Wikipedia itself calls them internment camps, similar to the Japanese internment camps in the US during World War II. Meanwhile, cm0002 complains about a comment using the term “shitlib”, which is a criticism of someone’s political philosophy, not being removed. The two are not equivalent.
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Censoring when users call out propaganda - https://lemmy.world/post/32776038 | https://lemmy.world/post/33416433 | https://lemmy.world/post/34051329 | https://lemmy.world/post/35919522 - Debatable. At least some of the removed comments seem to be purely anti-Russia (“Fuck russia!”). The others seem debatable on the basis that other instances’ admins do the same or worse.
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Discussing winnie the pooh and/or the negatives of china is a 30 day ban - https://lemmy.world/post/35374967 - Debatable. This is pretty weaksauce to use as a reason to defederate one of the top Lemmy instances.
Davel - .ml admin
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Spreading anti-ukraine Russian propaganda - https://lemmy.world/post/34655572 - Misinformation. The article they’re complaining about literally links to documents on the CIA’s own website discussing their 1957 plans. Is it “Russian propaganda” to discuss historical facts?
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General negative sentiment to other instances who haven’t “seen the way” yet - https://lemmy.world/post/27426510 - I don’t even understand this one, plus again no link to original thread for context.
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“See! nobody died IN Tiananmen Square, just AROUND it, so it doesn’t count!!” - https://lemmy.world/post/30673342 - Distortion. No link to original thread for context, no evidence that they wrote what is “quoted”.
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Response to a valid report of “NK is actually good” as propaganda/misinfo https://lemmy.world/post/32627834 - Distortion and debatable. Once again, not actual quote and no link to thread for context. The meme itself is obviously shitposting, FFS.
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Removal of a credible article that was on the Uyghur genocide - https://lemmy.world/post/33205310 - Debatable. The mod removed a story that they saw as bigoted, possibly because of xenophobia. No link to original article or the cross-posted thread.
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It’s totally fine when Russia kills woman and children, war is war after all - https://lemmy.world/post/33224299 - Distortion. First, no link to thread for context. Second, they are distorting what was said. The actual quote: “Still not a genocide. There is no war where women, children, and other civilians don’t end up getting killed.”
Nutomic - 2nd in command Lemmy Dev
- Their continued transphobia - https://lemmy.world/post/29222558 - Debatable. No link to thread for context, and they were contrite in the screenshots.
General Tankie user behaviour [note: this is about random users of lemmy.ml]
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“Propaganda is good actually” - https://lemmy.world/post/36162233 - Distortion and debatable. No link to thread for context. Partial quote taking it out of context. The actual full quote in the screenshot: “Anyone pushing their views is propaganda. Propaganda isn’t always a bad thing, propaganda can be good, like antifascist or pro-communist propaganda, or it can be bad, like fascist propaganda.”
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“The China censorship tool isnt actually censorship! And if it is, it’s actually a good thing a state has that much power!” https://lemmy.world/post/30010789 - Distortion. Again no link to thread for context, plus no indication that what they claim to be a direct “quote” was actually written by the person. Besides, this is a random user linking to a YouTube video.
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Rooting for Russia in the Russia-Ukraine war https://lemmy.world/post/29274763 - Distorion. No link to original thread for context, and screenshot does not say what this item claims.
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Spreading Russia talking points like the Ukraine invasion just being a “negotiating tactic” https://lemmy.world/post/27012640 - Distortion. No link to original thread for context. The article in the screenshot claims “Not enough to conquer Ukraine, the invading force was sufficient to persuade Ukraine to the negotiating table.” That is not saying that they invaded only to bring Ukraine to the negotiating table, but that Ukraine came to the negotiating table as a result of the invasion. Different meanings.
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Biden is worse than Trump - https://lemmy.world/post/33631617 - Distortion. No link to original thread for context. What was actually written by a random user on the screenshot: “I’d argue Biden is worse. Trump is honest about being a terrible person. Biden pretends to be good.”
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Uyghur Genocide denialism - https://lemmy.world/post/33873969 - Distortion. No link to original thread for context. Not an accurate summation of what was said.
I reserve the right to edit this post to clarify points and/or add additional thoughts.
I ain’t reading all that. Free Palestine.
Obligatorily
one funny moment i remember was when they wrote an essay “meme” about us being happy that lemmee close down and that we ruined the lemmyverse forever
edit: found it lol, literally only because one user left
For me it was just Tuesday
tl;dr – Someone stating the obvious with a bulletpoint breakdown that there is a user (cm0002) with a grudge against “tankie triad” using self-declared alts and pushing demonstrably untrue smears onto the rest of the lemmyverse to paint us in a bad light. And yeah, it’s true. There is a weird circus of lies out there to discredit us by using the most flimsy, poorly spun dramatics.
This whole project is run by communist devs who earnestly believe in user freedom. A side effect of that the devs won’t actually ban people who are calling them authoritarian tyrants. Ironically, cm0002’s deranged crusade simply proves the moral purity (if not superiority) of their opponents. A pleasant side effect that it has on hexbear is that it filters out the gullible from engaging with us.
Where do people find the time or energy to write any of this
If you don’t like a forum just press the close button on your browser lol
fwiw the user is responding to an ongoing smear campaign across all of the various forums which consists of people throwing walls of text/links with hyperbolic misrepresentation. even if you ignore it, you’ll get people making shitty comments to you in unrelated forums as a result of it
Yeah I remember one of my friends was all on board with Lemmy until they read one of those wall of texts trying to call the lemmy devs red fascists. It worked because they went back to Reddit, but in my 2 years on lemmy I haven’t noticed any sort of fascist behavior compared to fucking Reddit….
your friend is silly and you should clown on them at every opportunity
Big time
Argues with me all the time about how change is slow which is why we just need to keep voting more progressives into the Democratic Party.
what progressives?
You know… the AOCs who fall in line for the sake of the status quo…
But it’s so easy to just not use lemmy is the thing. Who cares what people say here about your old account? Just use another website.
I’m not particularly inclined to respond to peer pressure, especially when it’s coming from cryptofash types. this also isn’t about me- I was more saying that I’ve had people making unprovoked comments just because I say something from a .ml domain, and I’m definitely not the only one.
I pay attention to it because we’re all connected and if it looks like salami tactics and if a space is getting taken over by cryptofash I’m going to comment on it
I mean the general “you”. You (specific) can do whatever you like, of course. I just personally couldn’t care less what those “.ml is red fash” people have to say. It’s been years now and they are still just as foolish and flimsy, and I kind of wish there was a way to cut through it but in the absence of that, it seems like no good comes from giving them attention.
Like, it’s not even about the hostility anymore, it’s just so fucking boring because they completely refuse to engage on anything and never say anything new.
I understand that you’re speaking broadly. Re: giving them attention, I don’t think there’s much value in going into their spaces to try to argue with or correct them, but it does create a pretty shitty environment in other spaces when there’s people being loud and shitty and not getting pushback.
I also just happen to like rolling around in the mud a little bit
No hate from me, comrade
I just meant for the people who have a hard time with this stuff. If you like it, have at it, and I can’t say that there’s no purpose when it’s somewhere they’re directly polluting or something. If I was forced at gunpoint to participate in the linked thread, I’d probably go for trying to talk down the followers (they are making extremely weak points and are more likely imo to be responsive than this person who has been spamming for years) but you probably have a better read from all of your experience.
Sorry, I think I’m just talking in circles here.
I had a very unpleasant encounter with this individual (cm0002) who kept reposting my photography over to lemmy.world without attribution and tried to rope me into whatever perceived slight he had against lemmy.ml at that point in his crusade against the admins. Eventually I got him to stop, but I think that was my first person I ever had to block on lemmy.
Ah. I remember you. That pissed me off too, considering how unapologetic they were.
Did they blame you the entire time for posting it on ml?
At that point I hadn’t really interacted with anything overtly political on lemmy.ml and was only posting my photography in the photography community so I can only assume they thought I was ignorant poster unaware of the “evil tankies” on lemmy.ml. They went into a tirade about the admins and lemmy.ml unprompted. I got a message from one of the admins apologizing I got caught in the middle of some lemmy drama and thanked me for posting photography for everyone to enjoy.
17·2 months agoThank you for your service
ⓘ This user is suspected of being a cat. Please report any suspicious behavior.
My pleasure.
cm0002 or Cricket?
cm0002, sorry I should have made that more clear.
Why is this in /c/slop? This user might be a liberal, but they’re more or less correct in this post.
I think talking about the mwog crusade should basically always go in slop unless it’s directly presenting some sort of administrative referendum or something. It’s all a waste of time we should spare uninterested users from.
That’s fine, but there should be some context added to the post to explain that the intent is not the ridicule the linked user. What they’re doing might be pointless (the lemmitors will embrace hitler before they give up on their red scare nonsense), and it might be driven by liberal reasoning, but they’re not doing anything deserving of mockery.
I guess. To me it just reads as “Here’s an update on silly drama” and the person viewing can figure out their own opinion (also OOP does merit a bit of criticism), but if you think it should be a rule to have what you describe as a type of etiquette, I’m obviously not opposed to such a minimal change.
mwog?
this place: https://sh.itjust.works/c/meanwhileongrad
lol @ the Holodomor post where some lib is all “I studied this in 2011 and there’s no one you can blame except the Soviets.”
Apparently that person studied wrong because we have anti-Soviet, anti-communist sources who say kulaks slaughtered hundreds of thousands of animals and torched grain stockpiles before fleeing the country.
Wow, they’re on an absolute crusade against Dessalines specifically.
And nuttonic, but that one is somewhat reasonable.
Cm just thinks only their world view should be allowed so Dessalines and lemmy must be removed… While 1st being on lw and now on possibly every instance of lemmy. Logic doesn’t make sense but they’re persistent
The replies they’re getting over there definitely fit though lol
I try not to be a liberal, but was also trying to make my argument from a somewhat neutral and calm standpoint to try to get more people to absorb it.
I assumed you were a liberal because your points focused on whether the things he said were based on truthful representations of the arguments of others, and not whether his arguments were incorrect regardless, but I thought it might have also just been you tailoring your argument to a certain audience.
I apologize for getting it wrong!
Salute to your work in the posting trenches, I don’t think I could put that much effort into interacting with these “tankie”-obsessed people.No worries, I’m still baby stepping out of being a liberal. :)
I didn’t argue that their points were wrong (other than label many of their points as “debatable”) because I didn’t want to get mired in a retread of all the long arguments that happen in those discussions. My main point was that they were simply making shit up and causing a shit storm because of made up shit and hardly anyone (no one?) had ever called them out on it. Also, my post was super-long already.
Thanks! I hadn’t previously done anything even remotely like this, but “tankie” derangement syndrome was getting on my nerves, especially cm0002’s incessant expression of that.
The slop trough is more in the responses to them, the topic being anonymous reactionary bullshit I think makes it fit here though
People do this often in /c/slop (just click the cross-post button). If the slop is in the comments, they should explain at the top of the post body and enclose the OOP text in a spoiler.
I think that’s fair; tbh the whole wall of text could kind of do with spoiler tagging too as it results in a lot of scrolling just to read replies
@LemmySlopSkimmer@hexbear.net do you mind putting a line at the top with the context? something like this and spoiler tag the quoted text so there’s less scrolling?
Good idea about the spoiler tags. I considered hiding the point by point rebuttal in a spoiler tag when I was writing it, but ultimately decided against it because I wanted people to see that all the stuff on the original list was bullshit. If you have any suggestions for how to improve the formatting, I would like to hear them.
I thought it was only slop skimmer doing this obsure madness for whatever reason.
Is it “Russian propaganda” to discuss historical facts?
well yes, reality has a well known leftist bias
I bet the biggest detractors to the “Tankie Triad” are reddit employees.
do you think the NSA plants know what a tankie is?
The tomatoes maybe, but the corn is ignorant as heck.
That was exactly one of my points in the wall of text. Either corporate or intelligence plants trying to destroy the Threadiverse.
It was a valiant effort and you have my sympathies.
Thanks!
Why does only Dessalines and Davel get to have “hot take” dossiers, I feel hexbear is being left out.
We have five years worth of admin slop across like three-ish different admin teams, thats at least got to make for interesting reading for these dorks.
Our entire instance is just merged together into a single spectre haunting the fediverse
They seem to be really concerned when it comes to development of Lemmy as well (they are putting their “stock” into it and they cannot trust tankies couse their beloved spez betrayed them and sold their platform). They cannot comprehend that their capitalist pigs would not ever create an open source (socialist) software on which anyone can spread their ideology. They are all like “oh here we go with the go back to Reddit argument” but they are not realizing .ml is an alternative mindset of Reddit. Nothing more, you still get banned and you can still create new accounts… like wtf do these people even want? Why are they so against Reddit since Reddit protects their fragile little opinions.
Access to Lemmy.zip Restricted for UK Users
Due to the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act, users from the UK can no longer access Lemmy.zip.
Fucking losers lmao.
What are you doing lemmy.zip? Do you think this is a big own against the UK government? That you’re encouraging UK users to do something about it by… Complying with the law? By creating a situation where the UK government doesn’t have to spend resources or energy to block you themselves because you willingly and voluntarily block UK users yourself?
Lmao “write to your MP” won’t do JACK FUCKING SHIT for a law that was implemented despite unpopularity you absolute dickheads.
You know what does help? Genuinely demonstrating that it’s pointless. By refusing to be governed. By being ungovernable and demonstrating the futility of the law.
Liberals are so bad at this.
Anyway, the post is good.
I believe that the lemmy.zip admin lives in the UK, and the UK is like fascist central nowadays, as you’re probably aware with all the ridiculous stuff going on with Palestine Action. If I lived in the UK, I would probably do the same.
Thanks, I’m glad you liked the post!
The punishment for non-compliance is just going to be sites getting blocked at the DNS level. There’s absolutely no reason to voluntarily do the block for them, it is EXACTLY the outcome that they wanted from the law. Sites voluntarily policing themselves at no cost or effort from the gov.
Liberals do the most ridiculous mind-bending to contort their brain into the position “If I follow the law I’m totally sticking it to the government!” lol, no, the site is doing exactly what they wanted to happen. There’s so many fucking sites online doing this shit, many not hosted in the UK or by UK people and all of them think they’re being epic rebels by blocking the UK fully and putting up a message like this when it’s the exact opposite.
Oh, is that right? I didn’t realize that the punishment was that mild!
There’s fundamentally fuck all they can do to anyone outside the UK. The law allows them to fine for up to 10% of revenue, which doesn’t matter if you don’t do business in the UK anyway. It allows them to serve enforcement notices compelling a service to shut down its access to UK citizens. If you don’t comply, well then they can hold you criminally liable for non-compliance with a court order. But until you receive that order? Fuck all.
There’s no reason to comply until they spend resources demanding it. Voluntarily doing it just helps normalise the law and allows the gov to achieve its goals at zero resource cost. The best outcome for resistance of anything you don’t like a government doing is to take actions that cost that government resources, if you cost them resources at a large enough scale you can get them to reconsider. Every single small amount of malicious resistance is worth doing no matter how small because it adds up when thousands do it.
Got it, makes sense. I wasn’t sure what would be possible if the person running the site lived in the UK. Thanks for explaining!
Good points about resistance too, thanks.
Become ungovernable
Government’s can maintain their rules mainly because of the voluntary will of the governed.
Haha, nice illustration of your point, thanks!
What even the fuck
I try to read the post and my eyes just slide right off it, like my body is telling me this is some infohazard shit
lol, sorry (from an ADHDer)!
Also reading about this perspn “cm0002” being a complete liar who dedicated whatever free life they have left from working and sleeping to quite literally spinning and weaving whole tapestries of bullshit, speckled with corn, about the spooky scary communists reminds me of the historical precedent of the same playbook of reactionaries fabricating then peddling bald-faced lies about the communists.
I believe it was in John Reed’s journalistic recording of his first hand experience of the October Revolution in Petrograd, later compiled into the book “ten days that shook the world”, where an event occured and what he reported first-hand vs what was reported internationally were two completely different worlds of events. The event was about the Bolshevik red guards capturing a telegraph station and utilizing it to broadcast down the wires across the empire that the Revolution had started and they were winning in Petrograd. When they captured the station, it was one of the rare places women were allowed to work so it was noted in Reed’s journalistic investigation that the red guards felt fairly awkward about holding them captive and moreso just kept to themselves and waited for a Bolshevik partymember to come and sort things out. Eventually someone did show up, and announced that the telegraph station was now under official control of the party and would resume operation under its direction, with any worker that wished to stay to receive additional pay and benefits in exchange for their work in addition to training new workers, and anyone that did not want to stay was free to go. Later some of the women who left for the Whites met with journalists and crafted heinously lurid stories of massacre, barbarism, looting, and sexual exploitation that was visited upon them by Neanderthal-esque savages dressed like factory workers lead by demon-possessed communist brigands. Of course their story went international while the truth would’ve stayed buried if it wasn’t for the fact a brave American communist journalist was there to witness and record it.
Anyways whole point is that reactionary anti-communists will literally lie and fabricate history to fight against the liberation of the human race.
i actually decided to skim some of this, and it just seems a pretty reasonable take. sure it’s not strong on facts and lib asf but i don’t hate this. Seems the overarching point is “they see all the hate of the ‘tankie triad’ as ridiculous, people have different perspectives, and they’re tired of cm0002s crusade.” Refreshing when compared to the dreck i usually find coming from that space.
Unless i missed something?
I read it and it’s just kind of a waste of time. They have no ideological clarity, they are just a rudderless lib and struggle to actually make a good point because they want to stand in epistemic suspense that is scared of making any sort of claim besides “well, the user didn’t literally say that”. The only good thing in their bulletpoints that I noticed was mentioning that it’s reasonable to criticize the BBC.
Because their ideology is incoherent, they say:
Look, it’s fine to have the beliefs of a liberal, conservative, MAGA, loyal supporter of the United States’ imperial project, or a “tankie”. Live and let live. Learn to accept that people who think differently from you may have legitimate and valid reasons for thinking that way, as much as you may disagree (except fascists). I wish people would learn to agree to disagree after a discussion reaches a certain point where it becomes clear that it’s no longer productive. What’s not fine is to relentlessly target and persecute other people and other instances (again, except fascists).
On what basis should fascism be regarded as invalid but not MAGA or support for US imperialism? This literally only makes sense if you regard only westerners as humans. The reason they are saying this is because they don’t have principles, they have social norms on how to be a good lib, the difference being that there aren’t first principles to reason from, just edicts to follow based on what is and isn’t acceptable. Pluralism that includes virulant racists is good because that’s what’s normal, it’s part of The Discourse, but fascists are bad because fascists are bad, and there’s no need to consider why fascists are bad and how that could relate to camps who are within what is popularly considered acceptable discourse, making other groups and ideologies also unacceptable.
This is a thread that will be posted on mwog so let me be extra explicit: I agree fascists are bad, but I’m not reasoning from the premise that fascists are bad, I’m reasoning from the premise that humanity needs to embrace a democracy that has social equality amongst all people, which brings me to the conclusion that fascism is bad, as well as the conclusion that MAGA and US imperialism are blatantly also bad. I fully believe that this person is only repeating conclusions that are also premises in the part I quoted, and if those premises are contradictory then oh well. It’s like a child repeating what their parents say.
Live and let live. Learn to accept that people who think differently from you may have legitimate and valid reasons for thinking that way, as much as you may disagree
I don’t quote Chapo that much, but they have a very good refutation of exactly this rhetoric. Heavily paraphrasing:
What are the diverse interests? You make it sound like some people say “I want us to eat spaghetti for dinner,” while other say “I want us to have hamburgers”. When I think of diverse interests, what I think of is a businessman saying: “I own this copper wire factory and I want to pollute this river. I want to dump this toxic waste into a poor neighborhood.” Another interest might be, “Hey, I live in the poor neighborhood and I don’t want to die, please.” It’s not just “perspectives” . . . This has nothing to do with ideology, with “legitimate reasons” and pseudo-intellectual bullshit, it’s a matter of moneyed interests enacting social murder on the poor.
The poster themselves admit that it’s perfectly fine to exclude people, but they don’t establish why because they themselves cannot tell you, they don’t have any basis for it, and therefore they aren’t able to recognize when groups that the media calls acceptable do not actually have “legitimate and valid reasons.” What fucking reason do MAGA hogs have? None, they are ideologically superior to fascists in literally no manner and would sign on to Hitlerian fascism if they had the power to, but they have news networks and political representation, so the poster needs to pretend MAGA’s “perspective” is valid because they literally only have flimsy and arbitrary social norms to base their judgements on.
They have put themselves in a place where the only wrong is not being pluralist, and there’s no actual truth to the matter of if ruthless racial persecution is a valid political project or not because every side has “legitimate and valid reasons”. It’s bullshit and this person is a spineless enabler.
As an aside, if you have the context of the post, one of the comments is truly hilarious:
Dude, I do recommend you look into yourself asking why so many people are disgusted by your believes and want to isolate you. It’s absolutely not something only 1 or 2 people do, and it’s not some frivolous preconception from people that never got you the benefit of the doubt.
You’ve got a rare opportunity where the bubble your ideas create got temporarily busted. It will form around you again if you don’t take it to reevaluate those ideas.
Such a condescending remark trying to “deradicalize” a “tankie”, when the poster is just a lib and the commenter is acting like liberalism isn’t the monoculture. It’s like Republicans calling Biden a communist combined with the responder believing they are some enlightened person who isn’t in a bubble at all, but also holds the hegemonic ideology and can only point to social consensus while accusing someone else of being in a bubble.
Glorious comment. Pretty much sums up the entire thing.
I wrote the OP. Thanks for your extended comments. I’ll try to respond to some of the points.
They have no ideological clarity, they are just a rudderless lib and struggle to actually make a good point because they want to stand in epistemic suspense that is scared of making any sort of claim besides “well, the user didn’t literally say that”.
Fair enough. I like to believe that I’ve grown out of being a lib (which I freely admit I used to be), but I’m still pretty ignorant when it comes to theory. I think ADHD has kept me from really delving into it. I have listened to Blackshirts vs. Reds and that’s about it so far, unfortunately. I recognize that some of my points and arguments may still seem very lib-inspired.
On what basis should fascism be regarded as invalid but not MAGA or support for US imperialism? This literally only makes sense if you regard only westerners as humans. The reason they are saying this is because they don’t have principles, they have social norms on how to be a good lib, the difference being that there aren’t first principles to reason from, just edicts to follow based on what is and isn’t acceptable. Pluralism that includes virulant racists is good because that’s what’s normal, it’s part of The Discourse, but fascists are bad because fascists are bad, and there’s no need to consider why fascists are bad and how that could relate to camps who are within what is popularly considered acceptable discourse, making other groups and ideologies also unacceptable.
I think I need to clarify. Regarding only westerners as humans is not at all what I believe, and in fact it’s the opposite of what I believe. The basis for me differentiating between fascists and MAGA is that I believe that when someone declares themselves as fascists/nazis, they’ve indicated that they’re almost completely hopeless, lost cases, because that belief is so extreme. On the other hand, I believe that many (some? A sizeable portion of?) people who have declared themselves as MAGA are not completely hopeless. I was thinking more of old MAGA when I wrote that, before the whole ICE crackdown started - if they’re still MAGA after that, they are much further down the pipeline to becoming full-on fascists. In that context, I feel that many MAGA people are (were) only that because they’re misguided. Many of them became MAGA because they were angry at the system that has worsened their lives, but just don’t fully understand yet who the real source of the problem is. They knew that liberals were part of the problem and saw MAGA as the response and they could possibly be made to see who their real enemies are. This is somewhat evidenced by the Trump to Bernie and Trump to Mamdani pipelines.
What are the diverse interests? You make it sound like some people say “I want us to eat spaghetti for dinner,” while other say “I want us to have hamburgers”. When I think of diverse interests, what I think of is a businessman saying: “I own this copper wire factory and I want to pollute this river. I want to dump this toxic waste into a poor neighborhood.” Another interest might be, “Hey, I live in the poor neighborhood and I don’t want to die, please.” It’s not just “perspectives” . . . This has nothing to do with ideology, with “legitimate reasons” and pseudo-intellectual bullshit, it’s a matter of moneyed interests enacting social murder on the poor.
You know what, I agree with that. My point about live and let live was a) in the context of beliefs and discussion (i.e., I don’t believe in thought policing, which to me is strongly a lib thing), not in the context of the class war, and b) meant mostly for the “anti-tankie” audience, to get them to leave “tankies” alone and just agree to disagree.
Edit: just to say that I don’t think that Blackshirts vs. Reds qualifies as theory, lol. It was still educational anyhow.
You know, I accounted for the mwog obsessive coming here but, and this is massive cognitive bias on my part, it never even occurred to me that you would despite it being your post. If I had remembered that that was a realistic possibility, I definitely would have controlled my tone more. Sorry about that.
Fair enough. I like to believe that I’ve grown out of being a lib (which I freely admit I used to be), but I’m still pretty ignorant when it comes to theory. I think ADHD has kept me from really delving into it.
I’m a big fan of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Friedrich Engels, and one of the reasons I like to mention it is that someone made a free audiobook that I like listening to.
I have listened to Blackshirts vs. Reds and that’s about it so far, unfortunately. I recognize that some of my points and arguments may still seem very lib-inspired.
I like Blackshirts and Reds, and one of the reasons that I like it is that Parenti generally does not fuck around. While he is a historian, in those texts he’s just as much a polemicist and he knows it. Besides your point about the BBC, the effort that you put into commenting point-by-point on that dreck was basically wasted because nearly all of it could be summarized “The quotes provided are not real quotes,” which isn’t a very moving argument to most people, and our anticommunist crusader was able to easily brush it off saying he was being “facetious” (he doesn’t know what that word means, “flippant” would be more accurate). Fundamentally, you didn’t challenge the truth around any of the actual issues being discussed in most points.
Alright, I did forget that you said “Is talking about history Russian propaganda?” or something like that, and I appreciate that point too, even if I think universally every single point you made was extremely weak in the sense that you came off as scared of asserting too much, so you just sort of said the “safest” thing that you could even if much stronger statements in several cases were open-and-shut true. Of course, it’s good not to bite off more than you can chew or to speak on things you don’t adequately understand, but it’s also good to pick your battles, which often means focusing on establishing the truth in a smaller number of cases where you are more certain of your argument.
I think I need to clarify. Regarding only westerners as humans is not at all what I believe, and in fact it’s the opposite of what I believe. The basis for me differentiating between fascists and MAGA is that I believe that when someone declares themselves as fascists/nazis, they’ve indicated that they’re almost completely hopeless, lost cases, because that belief is so extreme. On the other hand, I believe that many (some? A sizeable portion of?) people who have declared themselves as MAGA are not completely hopeless. I was thinking more of old MAGA when I wrote that, before the whole ICE crackdown started - if they’re still MAGA after that, they are much further down the pipeline to becoming full-on fascists. In that context, I feel that many MAGA people are (were) only that because they’re misguided. Many of them became MAGA because they were angry at the system that has worsened their lives, but just don’t fully understand yet who the real source of the problem is. They knew that liberals were part of the problem and saw MAGA as the response and they could possibly be made to see who their real enemies are. This is somewhat evidenced by the Trump to Bernie and Trump to Mamdani pipelines.
While it’s perfectly fine to defend that you also view non-westerners as humans, I did say “it only makes sense if” for a reason because my stance, as I explain, is that I don’t think how you were approaching the argument made sense, but rather that it was just a collection of premises (inherited from a society that generally does not view westerners as humans). Granted, there are some meaningful caveats that you make here that you don’t make in the original post.
But here’s the thing: I think many self-described fascists aren’t hopeless either. One of the most important parts of communism is rehabilitative justice, and there are people who it may not be viable to rehabilitate without controlling the government (and therefore being able to have stability and more ability to allocate resources to such initiatives), but that only partially maps on to their professed political ideology. Also, again, many MAGAs since before Trump 1 would obviously sign on to a Fourth Reich.
However, that does not in any manner relate to the original claim of people having “legitimate and valid reasons” for their beliefs. The truth is that the imperialists, MAGAs, and indeed the liberals (but I repeat myself) are not justified, they are just the ones repeating the professed ideas of the ruling class (sometimes in the language of academics in the case of liberals), and it’s counter-productive to talk about “valid disagreement” when most of the real disagreement makes the copper wire factory example look benign.
My point about live and let live was a) in the context of beliefs and discussion (i.e., I don’t believe in thought policing, which to me is strongly a lib thing), not in the context of the class war
Those are beliefs about class conflict (or lies papering over class conflict) and discussions about class conflict (or lies papering over class conflict). It is not thought-policing to act like you actually believe what you say you believe, and if you actually believe in anti-racism (to pick an example), you sure don’t seem to when you let people spread rumors about Haitians eating house pets and advocate for policy that results in brutal violence being enacted on them and others. Now, I’m 80% sure you’ll say that that’s not what you meant by thought-policing, but then I am inclined to believe that the invocation of the concept was pointless.
My point about live and let live was . . . meant mostly for the “anti-tankie” audience, to get them to leave “tankies” alone and just agree to disagree.
Besides apologizing, the main point I wanted to make was this one: No, they shouldn’t. If they earnestly believe that I, for example, am a [“red”] fascist, they should take that belief seriously by investigating it and, if they to the best of their ability can only determine that I am a fascist, it is much more consistent for them to act against me. I have no interest or desire to hide behind pluralistic hand-waving and, while I think it’s fair to say that you need to pick your battles and not fight every fascist you can track down on the internet (maybe go after those in your community), I would literally only be making the world worse by meeting someone challenging me on this by telling them that they “should be chill because it’s actually fine for some people to hold different beliefs, such as supporting genocide [like the US imperialists and MAGA and often liberals also do . . .],” which is what many of them do believe about people like me because they think that’s what communism is.
Frequently though, I think the issue is that they don’t take this belief seriously enough from an epistemic standpoint, however sanctimonious they are otherwise, because they don’t go and investigate it, they just passively absorb anticommunist slop from an obsessed cryptofash power poster. If the idea of le tankies being fascist matters to them (and fascists in their space should be a concerning prospect), they should act on it. We should be encouraging more engagement, not less. This is because we aren’t fascists, and we know many of them will be disabused of the notion that we are if they actually try to be more epistemically serious about it. Teaching them to shrug at people they believe to be fascists only encourages them to both maintain their prejudices and be more tolerant of actual fascists.
Edit: just to say that I don’t think that Blackshirts vs. Reds qualifies as theory, lol. It was still educational anyhow.
I wasn’t going to give you a hard time over this, don’t worry
Hey, I just wanted to let you know that it’s going to take a little while for me to respond. Your reply has a lot for me to think about and write. Thanks!
Wow, you read what I wrote really deeply. I wasn’t expecting that, and don’t think I even thought about what I was writing as deeply as you were when reading it! Sorry that it’s taken me so long to reflect on what you said and try to absorb and understand it better, as there was a lot to unpack. I’m writing a detailed reply but don’t expect you to write a detailed reply to me. I just wanted to account for some of the things you pointed out.
You know, I accounted for the mwog obsessive coming here but, and this is massive cognitive bias on my part, it never even occurred to me that you would despite it being your post. If I had remembered that that was a realistic possibility, I definitely would have controlled my tone more. Sorry about that.
No worries, I didn’t take any offense from it. Thank for saying this anyway.
I’m a big fan of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Friedrich Engels, and one of the reasons I like to mention it is that someone made a free audiobook that I like listening to.
Good to know, thanks. I’ll probably listen to that next.
I like Blackshirts and Reds, and one of the reasons that I like it is that Parenti generally does not fuck around. While he is a historian, in those texts he’s just as much a polemicist and he knows it. Besides your point about the BBC, the effort that you put into commenting point-by-point on that dreck was basically wasted because nearly all of it could be summarized “The quotes provided are not real quotes,” which isn’t a very moving argument to most people, and our anticommunist crusader was able to easily brush it off saying he was being “facetious” (he doesn’t know what that word means, “flippant” would be more accurate). Fundamentally, you didn’t challenge the truth around any of the actual issues being discussed in most points.
You’re probably right that I could have just said that the quotes were not real quotes, but I felt compelled to provide a point by point refutation, especially because I went through the trouble of verifying each one to be sure that I wasn’t missing an actual legitimate complaint. It’s interesting that the person that said cm0002 was being “obviously” “facetious” was someone else. cm0002 themselves have not commented on my thread or written anything to me. As for challenging the truth around the issues, I will address it in one of the points below.
Alright, I did forget that you said “Is talking about history Russian propaganda?” or something like that, and I appreciate that point too, even if I think universally every single point you made was extremely weak in the sense that you came off as scared of asserting too much, so you just sort of said the “safest” thing that you could even if much stronger statements in several cases were open-and-shut true. Of course, it’s good not to bite off more than you can chew or to speak on things you don’t adequately understand, but it’s also good to pick your battles, which often means focusing on establishing the truth in a smaller number of cases where you are more certain of your argument.
That’s fair. I think I did try to moderate my comments in the belief that the audience that I was trying to reach (people who would otherwise believe cm0002’s screeds) would be more likely to read through if I didn’t try to blaze through knocking everything out of the park. If I used stronger arguments and a stronger approach, they might very well dismiss me as a puppet or some such and leave. Maybe it’s in my nature to have a conciliatory tone too.
While it’s perfectly fine to defend that you also view non-westerners as humans, I did say “it only makes sense if” for a reason because my stance, as I explain, is that I don’t think how you were approaching the argument made sense, but rather that it was just a collection of premises (inherited from a society that generally does not view westerners as humans). Granted, there are some meaningful caveats that you make here that you don’t make in the original post.
But here’s the thing: I think many self-described fascists aren’t hopeless either. One of the most important parts of communism is rehabilitative justice, and there are people who it may not be viable to rehabilitate without controlling the government (and therefore being able to have stability and more ability to allocate resources to such initiatives), but that only partially maps on to their professed political ideology. Also, again, many MAGAs since before Trump 1 would obviously sign on to a Fourth Reich.
I agree with all of that. I should have said that from the beginning, but was afraid that it would be misunderstood. Regarding MAGAs, definitely. I try not to dismiss them completely so as not to lose those few who may be open to seeing the error of their ways. The other thing about my OP in general to keep in mind is that I’m a fast typist, slow thinker, and not the most organized writer, in terms of organizing my ideas.
However, that does not in any manner relate to the original claim of people having “legitimate and valid reasons” for their beliefs. The truth is that the imperialists, MAGAs, and indeed the liberals (but I repeat myself) are not justified, they are just the ones repeating the professed ideas of the ruling class (sometimes in the language of academics in the case of liberals), and it’s counter-productive to talk about “valid disagreement” when most of the real disagreement makes the copper wire factory example look benign.
Those are beliefs about class conflict (or lies papering over class conflict) and discussions about class conflict (or lies papering over class conflict). It is not thought-policing to act like you actually believe what you say you believe, and if you actually believe in anti-racism (to pick an example), you sure don’t seem to when you let people spread rumors about Haitians eating house pets and advocate for policy that results in brutal violence being enacted on them and others. Now, I’m 80% sure you’ll say that that’s not what you meant by thought-policing, but then I am inclined to believe that the invocation of the concept was pointless.
The thing about “thought-policing” is that I don’t think anyone could or should try to police what people think inside their minds, but like you said, we can certainly monitor and address what they say and do, to keep their ideas from spreading and becoming popular. We may possibly be in alignment here. As far as “agree to disagree”, I feel that a discussion eventually reaches a point where there is no more benefit to be had from continuing, particularly when it becomes clear after you peel all the layers that they have some fundamental belief that you just can’t get them to change with arguments. Maybe I just don’t have the energy or the skills for it, or maybe again it’s my reconciliatory nature.
Besides apologizing, the main point I wanted to make was this one: No, they shouldn’t. If they earnestly believe that I, for example, am a [“red”] fascist, they should take that belief seriously by investigating it and, if they to the best of their ability can only determine that I am a fascist, it is much more consistent for them to act against me. I have no interest or desire to hide behind pluralistic hand-waving and, while I think it’s fair to say that you need to pick your battles and not fight every fascist you can track down on the internet (maybe go after those in your community), I would literally only be making the world worse by meeting someone challenging me on this by telling them that they “should be chill because it’s actually fine for some people to hold different beliefs, such as supporting genocide [like the US imperialists and MAGA and often liberals also do . . .],” which is what many of them do believe about people like me because they think that’s what communism is.
Those are good points and they get back to some of the other things we discussed above. Like I believe I implied before, at some point trying to change what people think is a waste of energy, at least for me personally and my limited energy. As I’m sure you’re aware, some people won’t accept evidence, regardless of how string it is. At that point, I generally just stop trying to change their minds. I try not to give up early though. I’ve had discussions here where I kept going even though the other person kept debating in circles, until they stopped replying.
Frequently though, I think the issue is that they don’t take this belief seriously enough from an epistemic standpoint, however sanctimonious they are otherwise, because they don’t go and investigate it, they just passively absorb anticommunist slop from an obsessed cryptofash power poster. If the idea of le tankies being fascist matters to them (and fascists in their space should be a concerning prospect), they should act on it. We should be encouraging more engagement, not less. This is because we aren’t fascists, and we know many of them will be disabused of the notion that we are if they actually try to be more epistemically serious about it. Teaching them to shrug at people they believe to be fascists only encourages them to both maintain their prejudices and be more tolerant of actual fascists.
Again, good points that I will have to keep in mind in the future.
I wasn’t going to give you a hard time over this, don’t worry
No problem, thanks for the critique and comments! I hope that some of my reply above helped clarify where I was coming from.
I ain’t reading all that. Free Palestine
I remember my younger days trying to counter cryptofash and libs with facts.
It doesn’t work, I know your heart is in the right place, but they’ll use “facts and logic” against their opponents and completely ignore it for their side. Don’t do an effort post about some lib who has a dozen alts dedicated to hating “tankies”. They don’t care, they just want to be a reactionary.
Don’t do an effort post about some lib who has a dozen alts dedicated to hating “tankies”. They don’t care, they just want to be a reactionary.
I agree that fash and cryptofash don’t relaly care about the “facts and logic” they claim to value, but this post is pretty clearly aimed at the general user base of the site and not the specific anti-tankie user.
Yeah I gave up trying to argue with reactionaries years ago (probably over a decade). They believe in nothing except cynical, nihilistic grabs for power. They will lie, contradict themselves, resort to name-calling/slurs, etc. before they ever engage in good faith.
Libs I’ve mostly given up on, but I don’t get confrontational with them the way I do conservatives. You can sometimes get libs to see how Isreal is bad or pull them away from anti-China rhetoric. Conservatives I will immediately get up in their shit with bullying and concern trolling because that’s the only thing they respond to. The goal being to chase them out of a space before they think they’re welcome and start bringing their friends to turn the place into a nazi bar.
i don’t think oop is trying to convince cm000002 of anything, posts like this are for everyone else to understand just how much of a clown that guy is
Yes, that was pretty much my intent. cm0002 seems to be way too deep into it for someone to get anything out of discussing this with them.
