Hey folks!
I’m writing this because funding for the Lemmy project has dropped to critical levels, which could seriously impact its future development.
Thanks to the generous support of our lemm.ee community, our server infrastructure costs are covered, and we even have a few months of runway. I’m deeply grateful to everyone who has contributed - lemm.ee wouldn’t exist without your help.
However, infrastructure alone isn’t enough. Our servers run Lemmy software, and without ongoing development, the platform cannot grow or even be maintained.
Lemmy is an open-source project with many contributors, but the vast majority of development work has been carried out by a small group of core maintainers. A few maintainers work full-time on the project, relying solely on donations and occasional grants to support themselves.
I’ve seen Lemmy development up close, and the maintainers have consistently gone above and beyond what I consider the standard for small open-source teams - they are constantly writing code, mentoring contributors, and keeping everything running. Their work is essential, and without continued support, it cannot be sustained.
If you value Lemmy, please consider supporting its maintainers directly. Every bit helps.
Please check out this post for more details about how to support the maintainers: https://lemm.ee/post/63034576
Thank you for reading, I hope you have a great weekend!
People are avoiding supporting lemmy monetarily due to the actions of the developers. We do not reward bad behaviors here. If lemmy development ends most of us will just move to kbin or piefed. This is a non-issue.
Just like with Elon Musk, if someone wants people to support them monetarily, they shouldn’t work hard to make themselves objectionable to wide swaths of the population they are trying to extract money from.
This is not wrong
You can argue that, despite their opinions, the lemmy devs provide something of worth.
Elon Musk made electric cars popular. Nazi scientists developed rocket technology. That’s all fine and good, but I’m still not going to give them my money.
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So does nestlé, I still boycott them as our values don’t align.
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I think kitkats taste nice but I haven’t had one in years. Whether you think they are shit or not, the point is that they provide some value for some people. On ethical grounds, I don’t buy them.
For many people, this is the same thing. Lemmy provides value to me. However, it is open source with other forks and the devs don’t run my home instance. If Lemmy required advertising or a fee to use, it would have failed. However users are not under an obligation to donate. Generally, I would advocate donating for foss software. However, there is a difference between supporting software and supporting people.
Kitkats aren’t as nice as they used to be.
The must have heard I was boycotting and stopped trying. Sad, really, when you let yourself go.
What actions of the developers are you talking about? I’m not trying to start a fight, I’m honestly out of the loop or whatever.
See some stories here: !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works
I imagine the biggest point are the censorship, disinformation and tankie allegations. These are all documented in this post. Another point worth bringing up is that they are the admins of lemmy.ml, where most of the allegations happen. Lemmy.ml also has something of a tankie problem and one of the devs has said that the donations will also cover the cost of running the instance. So by donating to the devs you’re also donating to an instance that possibly has no problem with censorship, disinformation and harboring tankies.
I would be willing to turn a blind eye if I could trust the devs to step away from lemmy.ml and focus solely on the development of Lemmy. But I don’t trust the devs enough to actually do that so I personally won’t be supporting Lemmy development until someone else becomes the maintainer of Lemmy.
EDIT: just to cover off the inevitable “what will happen if we stop supporting Lemmy. I don’t want to go back to Reddit” fear. If Lemmy doesn’t work out and it gets abandoned there’s always Mbin. Anyone here from the Reddit exodus knows that it’s annoying to migrate but Mbin can federate with Lemmy which means going from Lemmy to Mbin is going to be less painful than form Reddit to Lemmy.
AND it’s open source software. Nothing is stopping anyone from just forking Lemmy.
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Isn’t that the point? Is t that how main and kbin started?
Mbin is one example, PieFed is another. Both are superb!:-)
lemmy.ml is part of Lemmy development as it is used to test new versions before release, take performance measurements and have first-hand experience with the mod tools. If I stepped away from lemmy.ml it would make Lemmy worse and cause more problems for other instance admins. In any case the costs for lemmy.ml hosting are already covered at a much lower donation level, anything you contribute goes directly to developer salaries.
Then you really shouldn’t be surprised that people don’t want to donate when part of that support goes toward an instance that openly and aggressively supports authoritarian regimes, human rights violations, and genocide denial, and brutally censors any dissenting viewpoints.
The other option, of course, would be to run lemmy.ml in a way that doesn’t actively piss off the majority of Lemmy users, but that doesn’t seem to be a path you’re willing to consider.
Honestly I’m genuinely torn about the situation. I’ve found such a great place here (outside of the tankie triad, of course), that as much as I disagree with your politics I’d probably donate anyway because of how great Lemmy is as a platform, if only you developed behind the scenes and weren’t personally responsible for one of the worst places on said platform. As it is, as long as both a) lemmy.ml continues to be run the way it is and b) you continue to have an active part in that instance’s abhorrent behavior, I can’t in good conscience give you any financial support.
Would you donate to Lemmy if lemmy.ml hosting was funded separately?
At this point, I’m not sure I would trust the truthfulness of that claim. The hard-core refusal to do so up until this point has been both surprising and unsettling, to say the least.
I would consider it, but being completely honest, this whole event has really soured me on it. I probably just start looking outside of lemmy sometime in the coming weeks 🤷♂️
There was no hardcore refusal because this matter wasnt even mentioned as a blocker for donations until a few days ago. In fact lemmy.ml hosting is only funded via Opencollective, so if you donate through any other platform the money goes entirely to developer salaries.
Probably not - for me it’s more that the majority of my negative experiences on Lemmy have come on lemmy.ml, so the sticking point really is your involvement with it.
For a lot of other people in these threads though, it does seem like funding the hosting is the biggest deal. If the server costs for lemmy.ml are as low as you say, splitting off the hosting costs separately in some way (like taking donations directly from lemmy.ml that go into their own account separate from general Lemmy donations, for example) probably would see at least some sort of increase in donations to the overall Lemmy project. Especially if you made an announcement that this is what you were doing and maintained an official “separation of finances” position going forward.
If it wouldn’t be too much extra work, it’s probably worth a shot.
In other words your experience on Lemmy has been mostly positive? Then why dont you want to support the development of this free software? Keep in mind that lemmy.ml is exclusively financed via Opencollective, all other donation platforms go directly to developer salaries.
They should try just using it for development instead of forcing out tankie propaganda, then.
I’ve given it some more thought. There’s no guarantee that money going to the developers won’t be used to for the instance they are financing. If I give you money and the lemmy.ml funds are empty, are you going to let lemmy.ml die? Considering you said it is used to test new versions of lemmy and measure performance and test how effective the mod tools are I don’t think you would let lemmy.ml die. You’d finance it yourself, most likely from the money that is donated for the development of lemmy. So separating lemmy development and lemmy.ml instance costs wouldn’t really change the situation.
But I also no longer think it’s inherently necessary to step away from lemmy.ml. I get the value a real instance would give to development, so what I think needs to happen is a shift in what lemmy.ml is supposed to be. If the purpose of lemmy.ml is to support the development of lemmy then the primary goal of the instance should be that. Clearly the biggest issue people have is politics and how lemmy.ml is used as a vessel to push a certain kind of political agenda, which means if the primary goal is to support development then the instance right now contradicts its primary goal. It’s dissuading people from donating to the development and it’s making the main developers (you in this case) focus on the drama (for the lack of a better word) instead of spending time developing. I think the solution is pretty simple, lemmy.ml should take a hard anti-politics stance. Do a purge and kick all politics off the instance, including instance users who discuss politics on other instances. Have it be memes, technology, privacy and FOSS and gaming and everything else that doesn’t necessarily lead to politics. Users who want to take part in political discourse can find instances that allow political discourse, and that includes you and Dessalines. If you want to be political create an alt account on a different instance. Communities that want to be political can find other instances to be in political. You don’t need politics to run lemmy.ml. And for the sake of clarity also add to the instance about section that the instance exists to support lemmy development because currently that is not written anywhere.
If you think that’s unfair to the current users of lemmy.ml I honestly don’t see how you could resolve this situation without stepping away from lemmy.ml.
So you expect us to make a lot of major changes to the oldest Lemmy instance in existence and disappoint many users. All for the goal of maybe possibly getting a few more donations, without any guarantee. Its more likely that youre a cheapskate looking for any excuse to avoid donating, and keep using Lemmy without contributing at all. If you dont want to donate at least be honest, I would respect that.
I’m simply explaining the grievances people have that is stopping them from donating and what I personally would do in your situation to alleviate those grievances. That grievance is the nature of lemmy.ml which you’ve either voluntarily or involuntarily let slip into promoting a very specific political agenda that most lemmy users don’t agree with. If you’re genuine in your desire to have lemmy.ml as something that helps development then it should be apparent to you how the current state of lemmy.ml contradicts that desire. If you can’t acknowledge that I can only assume you’re using the development of lemmy as an excuse to keep lemmy.ml as it is.
Which segues to the end of my previous comment. If you think that’s unfair to the users of the instance then the only thing that you can do is step away. You can always start a new instance or you can work something out with the existing instance owners to get the data and feedback you need to develop Lemmy. And to be clear those instances can’t be Lemmygrad or Hexbear because those two instances are also not acceptable for most Lemmy users and wouldn’t solve the grievances people have.
At the end of the day it is not my concern if you get funded or not. I have no issue funding the development despite your obviously transphobic stance and Dessalines stance on Uighurs because I am capable of separating your work from who you are. I don’t have to like you to support your work so I’m willing to compromise here. But me tolerating both of you doesn’t mean I’m going to compromise supporting a platform that is actively promoting an agenda I cannot accept. I’ve already compromised on tolerating you, how about you compromise a bit to meet half way? If you’re unwilling to compromise this is my final alternative to supporting lemmy. Remove yourselves from the project, let someone more reasonable than you to take over and I’ll donate to them.
You have to understand that at this point Lemmy is bigger than you and its popularity is growing in spite of you and lemmy.ml. The fact that Lemmy is growing but your donations are shrinking should make that point evident. It’s up to you if you’re going to adjust to the new reality or stick your old ways and run into monetary issues.
They’re communists 😱
Tankies, specifically
Authoritarian commies who have very different-from-reality opinions and word definitions
Oh, and transphobia
It’s so funny to me when I express an even remotely moderate opinion and get called a right-winger. Lol, is lemmy really where right-wingers would go for online discourse?
tankie is just the new scary sounding word for communist derived from when the soviet union helped defeat a CIA backed color-revolution in Hungary
lol
how does this fascism keep getting into my anticommunism?
Ad hominem and appeal to authority at the same time. Impressive.
Yes silly me for not putting up a proper counter-argument to “lol”.
“Tankies” don’t really enjoy communists. It’s not honest dialogue to mix them up with each other
Why would the CIA back a revolution demanding minimum wage and the right to unionise?
To destabilise the soviet union of course. They can still take away those rights later, like they did after the collapse of the soviet union.
https://hexbear.net/post/4475702
the original source from the comments:
https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2025/0318/104-10110-10525.pdf
If the state had agreed to the students’ demands for minimum wage and the right to strike, there wouldn’t have been any instability. Suppressing revolutions with tanks doesn’t make society more stable. Sounds like the USSR sucked just as bad as the USA if they fell for that easy bait.
FTFY
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How like a tankie to decide someone else’s argument for them since you’d rather argue against a strawman than actually be concerned about the facts.
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I wasn’t saying the person you mentioned doesn’t exist or got banned. I’m saying you’re putting words into my mouth I never said, pretty blatantly. Though I feel you focusing on this other dude who got banned that isn’t even a part of this conversation and Gaza which I never mentioned is just more deflection on your part.
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Hmm glad I found this post and the comments. I recently came here from Reddit and joined some random communities just to have something in my feed. I was a bit shocked at hammer and sickle posted non-ironically in the meme group. Noting that communists weren’t better than Nazis got me called an ungrateful shit for existing (which I apparently owe to Stalin) and banned. Moved to the second-biggest meme community the search found, where I’m not banned yet but being educated by Westerners that life in communist coutries was cheerful and Holodomor was an oopsie.
I’m glad to hear that this is not all that Lemmy stands for, but a bit disappointed learning that top developers are a part of the problem. I’m conflicted about donating to say the least, and it does not bode well for lemmy adoption in general. I’ll stick around to see if other servers gain momentum, but I’ll need to keep an eye open for other reddit alternatives I guess
Most of Lemmy is fine - just avoid the tankie triad of lemmygrad, lemmy.ml, and hexbear and you should be good to go.
Edit: And maybe also the instances that haven’t defederated hexbear in particular, since when they show up threads tend to go to shit, as you’re seeing here, unfortunately.
Its supposed to be tankie TROIKA 😤
I can certainly see that Hexbear and the other two are very vocal and toxic here. Engaging in some discussion or getting my views challenged is fine, I’d rather not close myself in a bubble, but it’s sad that they would be so quick to insult and ban you. It does worry that they have some of the biggest communities. I wish I could say “oh well the protocol is neutral” but I think that with most OSS projects it matters tremendously who is at the helm; also, another poster outlined quite well that these instances seem to be the showcase for the system.
They are only big by number because they are some of the oldest instances. So they have a lot of inactive accounts and communities. The number of actually active users is less than .world or .ee.
They only seem more active because they are terminally online and have communities that are specifically designed to brigade threads when they don’t like what’s posted.
And if you want instances where holocaust deniers turn their nose up and avoid, consider joining lemmygrad, lemmy.ml and hexbear!
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The roadmap contains a new feature for extended instance block, which also blocks all posts and comments from that instance’s users. If some feature is not implemented in Lemmy thats not out of malice, but because we really dont have time to work in everything that people ask for.
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/5578
I moved to PieFed before it was fully ready, and I’ve been able to personally defederate from lemmy.ml by blocking all users since I did. No admin approval required. That feature alone was worth it to me to put up with the pain of the platform not being ready yet.
Since then, the platform has greatly improved, and now has many MANY features that Lemmy (and a few that even Reddit) lacks. For example the most recent additions are polls and post flairs. Which tbf Lemmy has plans to add, but features languish in its roadmap for multiple years at a time so I would not expect them anytime “soon”. Tbf Rust is a difficult language to work with, but that’s just all the more reason to love PieFed, written in Python that many more people can contribute to. Which is what has been allowing it to add new features literally weekly as of late.
PieFed is extremely nice - come check it out! Make an account, and by the time you get through the setup wizard you will already have fallen in love with it.:-)
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According to the mod logs the only thing you copped a ban for is being uncivil you lying little shit. And that’s even a temporary one at that.
From the modlog that seems to be a ban without explanation, as is tradition. Since there is no explanation on these “rule 1” bans (temporary or not) I tend to take them in the worst possible light. And since the first two (and only other mod actions) where to remove “I’m going to take a wild guess that posters and downvoters in this thread don’t live in actual communist countries. Endorsing hammer and sickle is just as bad as endorsing swastikas…” and “Yeah great, because what we need now is soviet propaganda. This needs to die” according to the mod logs their story checks out.
You’re more than entitled to believe anything other than the facts.
Facts? What facts? Better be careful with such things, you could be seen as being uncivil.
Also really funny if you read that with some comprehension as “You’re more than entitled to believe anything other than the facts.” implies someone is expected (more then entitled) to believe anything over the facts (so lies). In this context this is chefs kiss amazing.
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Ah there it is, the implication I was on reddit, the attempt to insult my intelligence, and of course the complete disregard to typing anything that has even a passing resemblance to the current discussion. As is tradition.
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Thank you for taking the trouble to fact-check!
Communism and fascism are entirely different, and conflating the two has roots in Double Genocide Theory, a form of Holocaust trivialization and Nazi Apologia. The Nazis industrialized murder and attempted to colonize the world, the Soviets uplifted the Proletariat and supported national liberation movements such as in Cuba, China, Algeria, and Palestine. I recommend reading Blackshirts and Reds.
Person1, since you’re new here, this is Cowbee, our resident tankie apologist/propagandist.
The most reasonable-sounding genocide denier and authoritarian regime supporter this side of the gulags. I highly recommend their alt’s comments on Hexbear if you’re interested in their more “mask off” persona. Also, remember the number one rule when interacting with hexbears: never directly engage them.
Edit: Here are some of Cowbee’s Uyghur genocide denial comments, for example, if anyone’s interested. Note the hardline tankie talking points, but couched in the classic Cowbee “reasonable” rhetorical style.
Quite an introduction, and quite a lot of slander. I’m a Communist, Marxist, Marxist-Leninist, etc, regardless of how you want to call me. I’m certainly not a genocide denier, and I’d say all governments are “authoritarian,” what matters is which class is exerting its authority. My goal is in fact to dispel myths surrounding Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, Communism, etc.
If they check my Hexbear account, they’ll see more conversation surrounding gaming and casual conversation, haha.
Edit: here’s Hakase attacking feminism and here they are defending the arrests of animal rights protestors. Even more, here’s hakase defending transphobes.
You’re not a communist, you’re a state capitalist.
I’m a Communist, specifically a Marxist-Leninist. I’m not an Anarchist, but I’m not a “State Capitalist” either. I advocate for gradually building towards a fully publicly owned and planned global economy along democratic lines, ie Marx’s conception of Communism.
So you’re a revisionist.
drag refers to any Socialist system with a state as “State Capitalist,” which is a misnomer I reject. I support the NEP and I support the PRC’s Socialist Market Economy, I support Cuba, Vietnam, etc, but drag in particular is saying even a fully publicly owned economy is “state capitalist” if it has a government.
You want a “socialist” revolution, and would turn your nose up at a communist revolution creating communism immediately. Drag thinks you have to support the idea of a communist revolution in order to be a communist. Unless you already live in communism.
I wouldn’t turn my nose up if the creation of a fully publicly owned and planned global economy along democratic lines was possible to do immediately. It isn’t, so I don’t “support” that just like I don’t “support” unicorns.
Now, I’m sure you’re actually using Communism to speak of Anarchist-style Communism, but I’m not an Anarchist, I’m a Marxist, I want Marx’s conception of Communism, not the Anarchist conception.
Read this person’s profile and you will find that they are an absolute unhinged psycho who trolls threads like these AND HAS BEEN AT IT FOR LITERAL YEARS https://hexbear.net/comment/4466837
Like with most cases of hexbear derangement syndrome, it usually starts with getting completely humiliated https://hexbear.net/comment/3929613 in an argument
And like with most cases of someone getting humiliated in an argument, they have a lot of white supremacist beliefs https://hexbear.net/comment/3876915
Man, paging through your user history I honestly kinda hope you hate us because you are literal human garbage
Judge us by our haters
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To quote a popular hexbear aphorism present in this very thread, “‘Omg rude online’ like there’s no worse sin”.
Nobody wants to argue with Cowbee
Calling communists as bad as a Nazis is a form of genocide denial. The Soviets certainly have a lot to criticize but Stalin and Hitler are not comparable historical figures except in the broadest “they both lead a country” sense. You deserved your ban and you should learn more about history before you comment on it.
Afaik Stalin is resoposible for more deaths than Hitler. Hitler had concentration camps, Stalin had gulags. Neither was much better than the other.
The Nazis industrialized mass murder, and deliberately killed millions in the Holocaust. The Soviet prison system was in no way comparable to the Nazi concentration camps designed to murder and kill, this is Holocaust trivialization. Communism and fascism are entirely different, and conflating the two has roots in Double Genocide Theory, a form of Holocaust trivialization and Nazi Apologia. The Nazis industrialized murder and attempted to colonize the world, the Soviets uplifted the Proletariat and supported national liberation movements such as in Cuba, China, Algeria, and Palestine. I recommend reading Blackshirts and Reds.
I didn’t quite intend to put gulags and concentration camps on the same level. But there are some similarities, like being used to disappear political or ideological oponents.
Concentration camps were mass execution factories for Jewish people, LGBTQ, Communists, Socialists, disabled people, Slavs, and more.
The prisons in the GULAG system were genuine prisons, and the political prisoners were largely Tsarists, Fascists, Nazi collaborators, war criminals, and more, and political prisoners were a minority of those imprisoned in the USSR.
That’s like saying a fish and a tree have some similarities. It’s true, but at the same time fundamentally tries to draw far more similarities than actually existed.
Further:
This directly states that imprisoning fascists and executing millions of innocents are morally similar actions. This is Holocaust trivialization.
…like Ukrainian Red Army veterans who fought the Nazis, but didn’t like Moscow calling the shots afterwards. I see you’ve drunken that age-old propaganda wholesale.
You could be more specific than that, but when I say Nazi collaborators, I do mean them.
“On the other hand, in the Soviet occupation zone and later East Germany, denazification was considered as a critical element of the transformation into a socialist society, and the country was stricter in opposing Nazism than its counterpart.”
The Soviets took anti-fascism seriously.
Gulag is the russian word for prison. It’s just really easy to make foreign words scary to racists.
The literal uniform wearing german nazis that convinced you of this counted unborn children due to declining birthrates.
According to wikipedia, no, it comes from the abbreviation of “Main Directorate of Correctional Labour Camps”, in Russian: Гла́вное Управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х ЛАГере́й (ГУЛАГ).
If you would consult the chart, you will find “Correctional Labor Camp” under the O.G.P.U (as wikipedia also says). Of course, libs can’t tell the difference between CLC under the O.G.P.U and Colonies under the PC of Justice and will call both gulag.
Gulag = Гла́вное Управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х ЛАГере́й (Main Directorate of Correctional Labour Camps)
Prison = тюрьма
Not a (Russian) native speaker, but still.
Just wow at this whataboutism, defending Stalin of all people.
Gulag is the Russian word for prison, where people die or get sent to the grinder.
There was this opposing candidate to Putin, where did he end up? Gulag.
Until Russia gets humane treatment for prisoners, the word gulag deserves the negative connotations it has.
Ever heard of Holodomor?
Have you?
This is a very mainstream Stalin biography by a Princeton professor.
Have you heard what the French did to Algerians?
Now you’ll say this is whataboutism, but if you always bring up an imaginary genocide like the Holodomor when someone talks about the USSR or Russia, but you never mention this actual mass murder when someone talks about France then you are a giant hypocrite.
The West was worse by their own metrics of bodycount.
The intentionality of Holodomor is debated, but calling an event that killed millions of people and scarred generations “imaginary genocide” or “Nazi propaganda” like the other commenter did is deranged.
The quote you posted is far from final. I won’t pretend to have the answer, but you presented one opinion as if it’s a mainstream and accepted view, when it’s not. Just Wikipedia shows multiple views, and I am sure that academic literature would present even more.
So let’s be realistic and admit that if academic consensus can’t be reached by historians by now, you don’t have the truth in your pocket as nobody else does, and we won’t figure it out in a Lemmy conversation.
The problem here is not that I don’t mention some unrelated atrocities by the western powers, it is you guys denying the ones by Russia and China among others. You just made my point.
I did not deny it; a leading Western Stalin scholar did. You simply chose not to educate yourself and instead spewed ignorant propaganda.
child brain
There are enough links in this thread already showing that this is literally nazi propaganda that I think it’s fair to assume you’re a deliberate nazi instead of an idiot getting strung along
e: lol one page long user history and you can already find nazi apologia in it https://hexbear.net/comment/6022384
Maybe you should practice a big dose of humility, considering that one comment up you were making stuff up about what words mean, and now you are misinterpreting a single quote about a single opinion about the holodomor that focuses purely on whether it was intentional or not.
Calling it “Nazi propaganda” is just complete nonsense.
To reiterate, “enough links in this thread” refers to one out of 16 views listed in a Wikipedia page, which for sure is not an exhaustive list of all scholars’ views. Nowhere is to be found that holodomor is “basically Nazi propaganda” and the fact you think anybody questioning your uninformed opinion is a Nazi apologist is just a mental shortcut you are taking to protect your views from any level of scrutiny.
Maybe deal with the fact that you simply are not equipped to discuss this topic.
So this user thinks Ukraine are Nazis and Putin did right by attacking them.
I am supposedly a nazi apologist by this logic (???).
When in fact, it is you who denies Holodomor and perverts the facts about Ukraine war. You who turns a blind eye to Putin and… Stalin(???).
Looks like troll factory to me so useless to argue.
The Soviet archives having been opened since the fall of the union, you’re an especially fucking stupid person and/or a nazi zealot.
Yeah, their cult’s position on Ukraine is simply atrocious. They cannot deal with the fact that Russia is an imperialistic nation and since Ukraine is supported by US (if we can say that) this makes it easy for them.
This is why if you discuss that in Ukraine 15k civilians died since 2022 only they will tell you that they are all Nazis, or that it’s Ukraine fault, because they use them as shields (same claim Israel does, but guess where they stand on that), or something like this.
This attitude is then completely reinforced by being in a echo chamber with extreme peer pressure and silly moderation, so one’s opinion keeps being constantly entrenched.
As a communist myself, my diagnosis is that that population is mostly 20-something westerners who grew up in the political vacuum post-1991 and adopted uncritically views of the cold war. Most of them probably feel an inherent guilt by living in countries where they benefit from everything they swear against, and the online cosplay as a revolutionary is their way to cope and self-identify as a person living by their own morals.
My suggestion is to block generously.
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While I’m not Russian, bu accusing a Slav of being racist against Slavs sure is hillarious.
Afaik: written abbreviation for as far as I know: used when you believe that something is true, but you are not completely certain. Internet, email and texting conventions.
See the thing is, you don’t know shit
a bunch of off-topic yakking related to your comment but detracts from the overall post.
1, how the West treats the word gulag - as seen by your application equivocating them to nazi death camps - is not reflective of reality of it being applied as a catch-all term for prisons.
2, the highest deaths that occured in the Soviet penal system occured during ww2 with source of deaths primarily stemming from nazi POWs
3, the commonly cited numbers of deaths that occured in the Soviet penal system comes from an openly flawed and biased methodology chosen exclusively to fabricate a false reality that equivocates nazi fascism with Soviet communism, which was further boosted by the CIA during the cold war to smear their ideological opposition’s image. The real numbers have been revealed with the opening of the Soviet archives after the fall of the Soviet Union, allowing actual historians to access primary sources to clear up the cold war era historical revisionism that obscured our understanding of the truth for the past 80 years.
4, this is not to say the system ran in that era is flawless. It in fact had blemishes and flaws that stemmed from the monstrously brutal tsarist regimn that the Soviets overthrew. That said even at its worst during the second world War its own brutality is dwarfed by the American penal system from back then to this very moment.
Here’s an article that discusses “double genocide theory”, which dissects the fact that equivocating the worst excesses that occured under the Soviet Union as being anything remotely near the monstrous crimes against humanity perpetrated by the German Nazi regimn is to commit and engage in Holocaust denialism
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
Here’s an excerpt from a book that lightly delves into the numbers, but there’s plenty of other information floating around as well.
https://hexbear.net/post/136521?scrollToComments=false
Now let’s be clear. I was talking death counts. And I do believe that the Nazis were worse. I saw Auschwitz and Birkenau camps and those are sights that I will never forget. I get chills just remembering it. So please do be cautions who you call holocaust denier.
But we are still comparing two evils here. One is greater, one is lesser. But “lesser” evil doesn’t necessarily mean the evil was small.
optimistically prison reform and eventually abolishment would be the best course of action altogether. There’s really no shades of grey in stating that the penal system as we’ve known it through out history has been and currently is a barbaric institution of vindictive cruelty by man against their fellow man. That said, i’ll return to the comparison you’re making and emphasize again you’re making a false equivocation between the two. It would be more accurate to compare the former Soviet penal system to the American penal system than it would be to compare the former Soviet penal system to the former Nazi German genocide camps. There were no Soviet Auschwitz Concentration Camp, no Soviet Birkenau Concentration Camp, no Soviet Sisak Concentration Camp, no Soviet Salaspils Concentration Camp, no Soviet Vyritsa Children’s Concentration Camp, etcetera and so forth down the list of monstrous acts perpetrated by the nazi regimn. That is what I mean by saying you’re perpetuating the double genocide theory an thusly perpetuating holocaust denialism. When you make a throwaway sentence such as ‘Afaik Stalin is resoposible for more deaths than Hitler. Hitler had concentration camps, Stalin had gulags. Neither was much better than the other.’ you do the footwork of the neo-nazis on their behalf while you yourself may think and believe otherwise. I think you’re an intelligent and a kind person. I just want to ask you to think twice before making such throw-away comments in our increasingly reactionary rightist world that we’re unfortunately existing in.
There seemsn to be a misunderstanding. What I tried to say wasn’t “Hitler is not bad, because Stalin was also bad”. What I tried to say is Hitler was bad and so was Stalin. Each in their own way. And neither of them should be glorified.
You’re still engaging in false equivocation that ultimately lessens the crimes of the fascists. Let’s try putting it in a different manner: Hitler was bad and so was FDR. Each in their own way. And neither of them should be glorified.
A completely ridiculous statement yet both countries engaged in targeted ethnic campaigns that unjustly interred sections of their populations in concentration camps. Sure FDR helped defeat nazi Germany and free people from nazi concentration camps akin to Auschwitz and Birkenau, but glorifying him undermines his own crimes against humanity.
Hitler and FDR both had concentration camps. Hitler and Churchill both stole food and caused mass famines among the ethnic peoples they occupied. Hitler and Mościcki both benefited from the Munich betrayal and partitioned Czechoslovakia amongst the vultures of Central europe. So on and so forth a list of completely ridiculous statements that falsely equivocate the actions of fascists with that of capitalist countries thus ultimately lessening the magnitude of the crimes they perpetuated.
This is exactly what it comes off as whenever someone engages in false equivocation of the crimes of the fascists.
Quoting Thomas Mann,
You’re repeating nazi propaganda deliberately created to be holocaust denial so honestly fuck how you feel about yourself. If someone has a robust and well supported reason to call you a holocaust denier why the fuck would you respond with a hollow ‘how dare you’
Do self crit
You will note I never denied nazi crimes in any of my comments. I just don’t deny communist crimes either.
Fucking moron. YoU WiLl nOtE I didn’t accuse you of denying nazi crimes. I accused you of repeating nazi propaganda and committing blood libel.
You’re not denying nazi crimes. You’re minimizing and justifying them by lying about their enemies. The next step of the logic you’re parroting is that their cause was correct.
You are right, the USA and the UK were the lesser evil compared to the Nazis, but we should never forget their crimes against humanity, just as we should never forget the flaws of the Soviets, still, the USSR was the lesser evil in the Cold War.
Glad we are clear on that, not sure why you brought up Nazi apologist talking points before like:
It’s important that you visit memorials erected to in the memory of the Victims of Communism, sometimes there are hundreds of names there. I once checked a near one, and decided to google some of the names of the people the evil russkies took to the Gulags. It’s so weird how often they were Axis soldiers accused of heinous war crimes! But Axis soldiers could never! Must have been fabricated!
edit:
These real people are on actual Victims of Communism (VoC) websites, and after just 5 minutes of searching, I found the crimes they were tried and found guilty of.
Case 1
In 1942, he was appointed district leader in the Budapest District XII organization of the Arrow Cross Party, and from October 15, 1944, he served in the armed party service. Between November 28, 1944, and January 14, 1945, he participated in the apprehension, robbery, assault, and unlawful execution of several hundred people considered Jewish in District XII of Budapest and on the Buda bank of the Danube.
Case 2
From June 1942 to January 1943, he served as the deputy commander of the 101/5 forced labor company. On the Eastern Front, he treated forced laborers cruelly and ordered his subordinates to do the same. Through his intervention, the so-called “leper section” was created, to which only sick forced laborers were assigned. He was dissatisfied with their work performance, so he denied them food and medical care. As a result of his actions, only 22 out of the company’s 260 personnel survived.
Case 3
Following the Arrow Cross takeover, he became a party serviceman and then deputy to Géza Horváth, the IX district party leader. However, Illés exercised the actual power in the district. He decided the fate of the people brought into the district Arrow Cross house. He interrogated the persecuted under severe abuse and then, under the pretext of transporting them to the ghetto, gave the order for their execution. On December 19, 1944, he conducted a raid on St. Stephen’s Hospital with several party servicemen, from where they abducted 40 people and handed them over to the party servicemen of District II, who executed them on the banks of the Danube. All valuables were taken from the people brought into the Arrow Cross house, of which Illés kept a record. On one occasion, he had a cartload of stolen goods transported from the house at 39 Lónyai Street.
We don’t have such monuments over here. But I know for a fact that communist regime in my country inprisoned or persecuted also members of the nazi resistance movement as well as soldiers fighting the nazis abroad. I have no issues with actual nazis getting punished for what they did.
The point was this: the Victims of Communism numbers people throw around in debates are highly inflated since it contains unborn children and Nazi war criminals as well.
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Yes, I’m aware nazis and communists were not the only ones doing terrible stuff. That doesn’t make it right
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Clearly. And I’m aware these are not on the same level. Not a perfect analogy for sure, but still a place people went to die to.
Nazis camps were also not all the same. Auschwitz was a labor camp for example - which yes, still had gas chambrers and ovens. But then there was the like of Birkenau not far from there and thats where people were actually sent to die. It is clear which of those is more evil, but you can’t say one of them wasn’t evil just because the other was more evil.
Are you saying those that you brought up were fine, because nazi ones are worse?
Drag is an anarchist and banned from lemmy.ml for being left wing, so drag hopes you will listen with an open mind to this:
Karl Marx said that communism is stateless. That means in communism, the government has no authority to coerce people. Authoritarianism isn’t communism. In fact, Joseph Stalin never claimed that the USSR had achieved communism. He said they’d achieved socialism, and he made empty promises that it would be communist at some point in the future.
You know where communism was actually successfully implemented? America and Australia. Karl Marx and his friends were inspired by the Haudenosaunee people of North America. Marx called it “primitive communism”.
You are not banned from lemmy.ml
Huh. Drag misremembered. It was just a community ban performed by the lemmy.ml admins, and it’s expired
Drag will have to unblock that community and post more leftist history until the ban is permanent. Shouldn’t take long.
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Every state burns oil. Therefore every state is oppressing drag. You logic would only work if they weren’t harming everyone. Besides, the Palestinians and the Ukrainians have asked for our help.
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You can support lemm.ee, then, instead?
I might as well since I probably gave Sunaurus a big headache with this thread.
Mbin, not Kbin. Kbin is dead.
There actually is one instance left, a tiny little hold-over in Poland, last I checked, but everyone else that was using Kbin has since switched to Mbin.
Except me personally, who switched to PieFed (which is fantastic btw!:-).
Get off your high wooden horse and stomp your way back to reddit
If not supporting genocide and authoritarianism is a high horse to you, you might want to invest in a step ladder.
They support Israel?
chill, there are arabs settlers in syria and iraq as well and pashtun settlers in afghanistan
you act like only theocratic zionists are settlers
What the fuck are you even talking about? Are you lost?
https://www.rudaw.net/english/middleeast/iraq/08052024
https://iranicaonline.org/articles/arab-iii
Again, are you lost? OP said lemmy devs support genocide, & since the largest genocide today is perpetrated by Israel with US support, I was curious what OP meant
What the fuck does your comment has to do with lemmy or Israel? You seem confused
Amnesty International investigation concludes Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza
The Sassanids ffs? You seem very confused about the relevancy of certain topics
actually the largest apartheid state is afghanistan since it’s gender apartheid
the longest and largest one is actually of minorities in muslim majority countries, but it is undeclared because of less coverage
sudan is currently the biggest and longest ethnic one
You wouldn’t know what a genocidal and authoritarian regime looked like even if you lived in it you reddit-brained hack
Hexbears gonna hexbear.
No lie to detect so the crypto white supremacist pulls a Hillary Clinton “omg rude online” like there’s no worse sin
Have you considered that you don’t deserve unconditional positive regard?
Go back to reddit
Why are you in a lemm.ee specific meta post commenting though? Given the context this comment is so fucking funny.
No u.
Oh wait, you can’t, because even Reddit was smart enough to ban your asses half a decade ago.
…and then they came here, why did you follow?
Because your reddit overlords think saying killing slavers is equal to installing a fascist regime in the United States
Sounds like a perfect “enlightened centrist” right-wing hell for you to jump back into
Go back to the hole that brought you to this world.
Mean thing to say about your dad’s bedroom
😵😵😵
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Freeloading where? They can be donating to the instance they are on.
This is bs, because you - and perhaps almost everyone else here - are supporting monetarily much worse people than the Lemmy developers.
Those places suck and doesnt even have quality apps…
I dont think its a non-issue.
If those issues keep you off them, I’m good with that.
I had them blocked for misogyny, no wonder lol
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showing an unbelievable lack of understanding and your whole ass on the internet huh? you’re entitled to your opinion, like everyone else. but it sure is a stupid one.
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The Olympics have allowed trans women to compete against cis women since the 90s, and yet there’s never been a trans medalist. If there was a genuine advantage to being trans in sport, at least one country in the past three decades would have loaded their team with trans women and cleaned house. However, taking enough hormones to make a masculine body into a feminine one after it’s already grown means you’ve got way less testosterone than a cis woman, so that counters out any initial advantage. Claiming otherwise is misinformation. Spreading misinformation to the detriment of trans people is transphobic.
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Weight classes to take care of body differences? Those are to take care of body differences in the same gender! Lols.
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