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!

  • passenger@lemm.eeEnglish
    55·
    19 hours ago

    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?

    • Kieselguhr [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      125·
      16 hours ago

      Ever heard of Holodomor?

      Have you?

      Just between February and July 1933, [Stalin] signed or countenanced nearly three dozen small allocations of food aid to the countryside, primarily to the North Caucasus and Ukraine, as well as the Kazakh lands (which necessitated sharp reductions in the bread rations for city dwellers, many of whom were put on the brink of starvation). All of these actions were woefully insufficient for avoiding the mass starvation in the countryside caused by his policies, in the face of challenging natural conditions. Still, these actions do not indicate that he was trying to exterminate peasants or ethnic Ukrainians. In the Kazakh autonomous republic, probably between 35 and 40 percent of the titular nation—as compared with 8 to 9 percent of Slavs there—perished from starvation or disease, not because the regime targeted Kazakhs by ethnicity, but because regime policy there consisted of forced denomadization. Similarly, there was no “Ukrainian” famine; the famine was Soviet.

      • Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 by Stephen Kotkin published in October 2017 by Penguin Random House

      This is a very mainstream Stalin biography by a Princeton professor.

      Have you heard what the French did to Algerians?

      Atrocities committed against Algerians by the French army during the war included indiscriminate shootings into civilian crowds (such as during the Paris massacre of 1961), execution of civilians when rebel attacks occurred, bombings of villages suspected of helping the FLN,removed, disembowelment of pregnant women, imprisonment without food in small cells (some of which were small enough to impede lying down), throwing detainees from helicopters and into the sea with concrete on their feet, and burying people alive. Torture methods included beatings, mutilations, burning, hanging by the feet or hands, torture by electroshock, waterboarding, sleep deprivation and sexual assaults.

      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.

      • sudneo@lemm.ee
        4·
        10 hours ago

        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.

      • passenger@lemm.eeEnglish
        43·
        10 hours ago

        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.

          • sudneo@lemm.ee
            2·
            2 hours ago

            Likewise, you chose to ignore the other scholars who don’t support the same thesis.

    • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      127·
      16 hours ago

      Ever heard of Holodomor?

      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

      • sudneo@lemm.ee
        2·
        10 hours ago

        There are enough links in this thread already showing that this is literally nazi propaganda

        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.

      • passenger@lemm.eeEnglish
        32·
        10 hours ago

        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.

        • sudneo@lemm.ee
          3·
          10 hours ago

          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.

          • passenger@lemm.eeEnglish
            2·
            9 hours ago

            Sure.

            Many of them seem to be kids, judging by their posts and tasteless meme / emoji usage.

            But don’t forget that Putin’s troll factories are a proven fact and the employees are spread throughout the internet. I would not be surprised if this is just what some of these guys do for a living.

            • sudneo@lemm.ee
              2·
              9 hours ago

              If they do, they are really bad at it. They are basically a close community and they got isolated even in a tiny community like (the wider) Lemmy.

              I do remember a fun anecdote where a post was shared from a propaganda website, one of those that would appear here. The article was clearly faked, the alleged “Ukrainian Nazi profile” on Instagram didn’t exist, the same news couldn’t be found in Russian (only in English) and the text was the same across 3-4 random websites. They were discussing it seriously of course, but between them, which again, to me suggest more an echo chamber rather than a deliberate effort to push propaganda.

              Either way, I did block generously :)

              Edit: it was easy to find from my modlog, since I was banned for “Nazi apologia” of course. https://lemm.ee/post/37342752