Lead Lemmy Developer, Dessalines, denying the Tiananmen Square Massacre and praising the Uyghur Genocide
https://sh.itjust.works/post/8419342
Dessalines AKA “parentis_shotgun” on Reddit, is the main Lemmy dev, also the admin of lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml.
Their post and discussions on Reddit (archive as the original post must have been removed):
Please join the discussions for Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem:
https://lemmy.world/post/16211417
And the discussions for finding/creating alternative communities on other instances:
https://lemmy.world/post/16235541
What is a tankie?
Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support acts of repression by such regimes or their allies. More specifically, the term has been applied to those who express support for one-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republics, whether contemporary or historical.
Regarding lemmy.ml: yes, you should avoid it. It does not make sense to create politically-neutral communities on a politically-oriented instance.
Regarding Dessalines: The great thing about Lemmy is that I don’t need to give a shit about the lead developer’s politics, because he’s not in control of how Lemmy is used, and if he ever tried some kind of heinous cross-instance power grab, it would get shut down before it got started.
Regarding the cognitive dissonance required to A) value decentralization of power, and also B) support the CCP: 🤦
Regarding the cognitive dissonance required to A) value decentralization of power, and also B) support the CCP: 🤦
One of the tenets of Marxism-Leninism is that a dictatorship is required to guide the proletariat to communist society (which would be completely stateless). So the dissonance is inherent in Leninist dogma 🤷
Dictatorship of the Proletariat. This is used in contrast with Capitalist Liberal Democracy, which Marx called the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie. It doesn’t refer to a literal Dictatorship as we commonly understand it, but instead to whichever class controls the state, Capitalists or Workers.
Lenin didn’t invent the concept of the DotP, that was Marx, and was his way of advocating for violent revolution, which in Engels words is “the most authoritarian action one could take” in his essay On Authourity.
As for Communism being Stateless, yes, technically, but as a long result of elimination of contradictions. Marx didn’t see the state as an “evil” so much as a tool that would eventually just be unnecessary, same as Money, not a temporary sacrifice for something eventually greater. This is outlined in Critique of the Gotha Programme.
All well and good, but the term dictatorship here still refers to a situation where the state apparatus has complete control over the means of production, in other words a total centralisation of power. Indeed in Marxism-Leninism the dictatorship takes the form of a vanguard party forming a single party state. Whichever way you look at it, practical power resides with a very small group of individuals.
The contrast with the eventual stateless communist society, in which power would be completely decentralised, is quite striking. It’s not quite clear to me how Marxist-Leninist theory envisioned the transition from one to the other, although it seems to me there was a general feeling that central economic planning and industrialization would fairly quickly lead to the end of scarcity altogether, which in hindsight seems… very optimistic.
If you ask me, the ideals of communism mostly died around the same time as Lenin. Pretty much all communist states that have existed (and currently exist) are mainly interested in maintaining their own power structures rather than actually working their way towards the idealised communist society. Which pretty much just makes them dictatorships in the classical sense.
Yes, Marx and later Lenin argued for complete centralization of power in the hands of the proletariat, and in Lenin’s case, an additional group of well-read proletarians dedicated to leading the revolution.
A common misconception is that a non-ML revolution wouldn’t have a vanguard, Lenin is literally just referring to whoever is the most advanced and leading the revolution. A vanguard may be a group of Anarchists trying to lead the revolution, even if they don’t use Democratic Centralism like Lenin did and advocates for in State and Revolution.
Marx also didn’t believe there would one day be a state and the next it would collapse, same with Lenin. They believed that over time the Material Conditions would lessen the need for a state until it “whithered away” over time. It wouldn’t be a relinquishing of power, but a shrinking.
Complete statelessness would have the same centralized power as Socialism, just without a state. This centralization becomes a decentralization, in that the Proletariat can democratically operate the Means of Production, which they cannot under Capitalism. If this sounds confusing, Marx makes this clear in Critique of the Gotha Programme. You refer to the state as an “other,” distinct from the workers, when it is an extension of them and made up of them in Socialism, according to Marx. There would still be a government, just no means by which one class oppresses another.
Marx was not an Anarchist, who instead believe in free association and networks of mutual aid.
I don’t believe Communism has died. It may seem that way if you see systems as static, and not as ever-changing and evolving along with humanity and technology.
Dude, this is common fucking knowledge, and nobody cares.
It’s one of those things where the very tankies you’re talking about made it trivial for anyone not wanting to interact with them, their instance, or anyone in specific can just block whatever. And then there’s the instances that defederate from .ml and/or grad, which is a decent amount of them.
They may be assholes (though they tend not to be in interpersonal ways, only in their political views), but they’re assholes nobody has to interact with for very long.
You’re beating a dead horse with this one
Dude, this is common fucking knowledge, and nobody cares
The 730 people who upvoted this post do care.
The problem is that lemmy.ml hosts too many popular communities. There are people who want them gone from their feeds but also don’t want their Lemmy experience to become empty and boring.
Votes mean as much as the shit I just took.
No. The shit that you took is more meaningful than fake Internet points.
Usually I’d agree with this, but on this post, the upvote count is a direct representation of how many people care about this issue (out of the number of users who saw this post). That is meaningful.
I don’t have access to traffic data to make a good argument on this specific post. Without the ability to compare total interactions vs votes, as well as the ratio of up vs down, it’s a matter of general principle in my opinion.
It is also my opinion, having moderated off and on since the nineties on various types of forums that pretty much any post is ignored by a majority of users that come across it. Voting really only shows which people are willing to use the effort to hit a button. If a majority of users don’t engage, I think that it is indeed a direct representation of how many people care. Again, I can’t see those numbers, so it’s kind of a moot point to make at all, but I suspect this post is like most posts anywhere.
But I still maintain that votes are meaningless across the board because they’re a horrible metric for anything at all, especially when they’re the only metric available.
Edit: again, fwiw, in the time it took me to type that up, the number of positive votes went down by 3. And, iirc, at the point where this tangent about the value of votes started, or was over 400, which is still meaningless, but taken in isolation would point to a general trend where there’s significant disagreement with whatever it is about the post drawing votes.
I kind of see your point. The information we have is not sufficient, and we cannot really know how much of the Lemmy userbase cares about this issue.
I have Lemmy.ml blocked and I still see them in other communities all the time.
If that’s the case, then that may be a bug. I advise you to report that.
It’s standard, unfortunately, I’m not the only one
What do you mean by “it’s standard”? As in that is the intended functionality? It shouldn’t be — the whole point of blocking instances is for the user to be able to, well, block an instance, ie content originating from it no longer shows up.
Yeah, the software is set up so that even if you block an instance you still see comments from their accounts on other instances.
Is that stated in the documentation?
.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Maybe political repression and the mass killing of protestors and the internment of ethnic minorities has very little to do with a countries mode of production. Maybe you guys can advocate for an alternative mode of production without defending genocide and using the military to crack down on protests? And maybe liberals can do the same when Western Capitalist Countries do it?
please… :(
You should know /politics and /news ban anyone critical of israel and Lemmy.world is ran by Zionists.
Lemmy.world is ran by Zionists.
Do you mean people in favor of the existence of a state of Israel (original meaning) which is most of the Western world, so unsurprising, or in favor of the colonization after the 1993 “two states solution” agreement?
If it’s the later, do you have proof?I’m from Israel, and no one is using “Zionism” in the second meaning.
Zionism is, by definition, support for Israel as a Jewish state.
There are those who say “real Zionism” is supporting settlements in Gaza and the west bank, but there are also those who say “real Zionism” is an Israeli state existing alongside a Palestinian state. That’s like a US democrat saying a “true patriot” would support supplying a social safety net for the well-being of all citizens, while a US republican would say a “true patriot” would support a small government that doesn’t restrict the will of all citizens.
Personally, I feel that referring to Zionism in general as support for Israeli control over the west bank and Gaza started as a (partially successful) tactic to de-legitimize the existence of Israel. Not saying everyone who uses the term incorrectly is an antisemitic or whatever, but that’s basically where it came from.
while a US republican would say a “true patriot” would support a small government that doesn’t restrict the will of all citizens.
I don’t think they say this much anymore since all Republican policies are explicitly about restricting the will of their fellow citizens.
Personally, I feel that referring to Zionism in general as support for Israeli control over the west bank and Gaza
I never used it this way or considered it this way until the past few months. 🤔 Now you’d have a hard time convincing me that it’s not what it means.
I don’t think they say this much anymore since all Republican policies are explicitly about restricting the will of their fellow citizens.
Thant’s not really the point, though it does kinda feed into a general issue with the way both out countries (assuming you’re from the US) are divided - When was the last time you had an actual talk with a republican in order to understand what he/she thinks?
I never used it this way or considered it this way until the past few months. 🤔 Now you’d have a hard time convincing me that it’s not what it means.
Err… that’s just the definition of the word? You can look it up on any dictionary.
We could talk about the current government, it’s policy or the opinion of Israelis but saying the entire concept of Zionism equals support for Israeli control over the west bank and Gaza is not only factually wrong, it collapses the Israel-Palestine issue into a winner-take-all situation, where both sides are encouraged to beat each other in the hopes one of them will give up before both are dead.
When was the last time you had an actual talk with a republican in order to understand what he/she thinks?
Every day until the Pandemic. My republican friends now work in a different office than I do. It’s not hard to see the policies and politicians they vote for though, and I can read the handwritten signs in their yards explicitly calling me an idiot, moron, or traitor for having different views than they do. (I see those every day BTW.)
it collapses the Israel-Palestine issue into a winner-take-all situation
I’m just looking at what I’ve spent the past several months witnessing via news reporting and video clips. I’m not debating what the dictionary says about it. (And in any case, dictionaries reflect usage not prescribe it.)
Every day until the Pandemic.
Cool, good for you (seriously). Do you honestly think they’ll say they’re against the freedom of the individual, or is it that you think they’re against it? Not saying you’re right or wrong, just asking if you’re describing what you think they’ll say, their own beliefs or the beliefs/consequences of their party. It’s an important distinction, especially when trying to engage in dialogue with them.
I’m just looking at what I’ve spent the past several months witnessing via news reporting and video clips.
Maybe I don’t follow enough news outside of Israel, but I do read quite a bit and there wasn’t anything about Zionism. Could you maybe link to one or two sources?
I’m not debating what the dictionary says about it.
I’m actually not debating at all, right now I’m trying to understand you, and I’m having some difficulties. My best guess is, you seem to have issues against the Israeli army and government (me too, btw), and somehow decided that’s Zionism. Zionism is more than a century old, and there are plenty of people who call themselves Zionists, yet don’t support all the IDF and the Israeli government did during the past few months (you’re talking to one right now, and Biden is another example). Do you think these people are wrong in what their opinions are? That they’re lying? That they’re not using the correct word, even though that’s the same usage as in the dictionary?
Really loving the “What does it matter if they support genocide???” commenters in here. Really showing where their priorities are.
Who gives a fuck
I‘m glad that the fediverse resists excessive moderation and silencing of unwanted political opinions. I‘m not a fan of some of the things said or done on .ml but we wont do anything which is awesome. You can make your own instance and defederate, ban, block whoever you like.
To make my point clear, I made a large donation to the lemmy devs as I think they are doing awesome work. @dessalines@lemmy.ml especially is a tremendous help for the open source community.
But of course you‘re entitled to your opinion. Have a good day.
Yes let’s all just pretend their propaganda is actual opinions held by real people.
This entire thread glows and is extremely consistent with CIA goals.
You’re beyond naive if you think the Marxists are brainwashed, yet you and the “people” in this thread aren’t.
FYI, the second main dev, Nutomic, although he doesn’t write as much, is in the same ideology, his avatar is Fidel Castro, the Cuban dictator.
During their AMA, 10 months ago, I directly asked them:
Since you’re very upfront with your political preferences, how much did it play a role in motivating you to create Lemmy? Was it a tech experiment first and a political project second?
Do you have some kind of core principle to not let your political preferences excessively interfere with your role as founders, main developers and moderators of Lemmy?Thanks for your work, it’s projects like that keep the ideal of the open internets alive. https://lemmy.ml/post/2920188/2385128
They intentionally ignored my questions and answered to other later questions with fewer points.
Eventually, 10 months later, my personal observation is that it seems that they keep their ideology tendencies to their home instance, which is fair enough since people are free to leave and block. And they don’t seem to be developing some centralized International political oppression feature into Lemmy, like their role models may have, so far.
Don’t forget that you can block an instance personally now.
I may not agree with the devs political view, but I think their work developing lemmy is excellent and made me subscribe to monthly donation on opencollective. Lemmy is an open source project where the devs have absolutely no say over how the software being used, as evidenced by so many lemmy instances defederating from lemmygrad and lemmy.ml. Their political belief won’t affect other instance.
the devs have absolutely no say over how the software being used
It seems like they have some strong say when it comes to their own instance. According to some recent posts, ML admins (and maybe even mods?) have the ability to erase any record of mod actions, for example disappearing critique of the CCP’s brutal actions in Tiananmen Square that were posted on ML. That left no record in the public mod logs, and the users were never informed that their contributions had been (completely) deleted.
I’m only a 1yr Lemming myself, but I never saw such a critique aimed at any other instance, hence why I’m skeptical that the devs don’t have influence over how the software is used.
the devs have absolutely no say over how the software being used
According to some recent posts, ML admins (and maybe even mods?) have the ability to erase any record of mod actions, for example disappearing critique of the CCP’s brutal actions in Tiananmen Square that were posted on ML. That left no record in the public mod logs, and the users were never informed that their contributions had been (completely) deleted.
That isn’t an example of them having a say over how people use the software. That’s them using their own property as they wish.
It’s more than just that IMO. It’s breaking the stated aim of open federation by tampering with comments, posts and mod records, which in turn get propagated or de-propagated to connected instances, right?
Yes, you may say that ML is of course free to screw with their own instance, but 1) one instance (particular a significant one like ML) affects other instances, and 2) they’re breaking the spirit of their own software by shamelessly abusing admin powers, in turn helping to normalize that behavior to the Lemmy side of the FV.
What’s the point of leaving oppressive, commercial social media only to run in to the same kinds of abuse of power on a supposedly transparent, user-run, P2P social network?
all instance admins have the ability to do this on their own instance, the functionality was added to deal with doxx info being posted so it wouldnt be visible even in the modlog, and it was used a lot to deal with the CSAM spam attack too - basically whenever this happens the relevant message will still be in the modlog but it will be changed to “Permanently Removed”. Currently there’s no evidence or even accusation that this functionality has been used for anything except the stated purposes though so i wouldnt worry too much.
That’s fine on ‘paper,’ but can you seriously not understand how it’s being shamelessly abused on the Tankie / ML front?
well i havent seen anyone even claiming its been used against them or pointing to their post being permanently removed from the modlogs unjustly, only people saying that maybe it could be used in this way, so no i dont think that the ML tankie front are using it that way. and since i know it has been used for its stated purpose to fully remove actual doxx information and child porn i dont see why it should be removed as a feature, at very least until there’s some evidence of it being used maliciously
Well then, good for you.
Meanwhile, there’s been a legion of solid users here pointing out across the FV that the ML has in fact been abusing its admin powers, or did you think that the whataboutism of CSA would somehow, magically erase that shizzle?
If so, then shame on you.
I didnt say that lemmy.ml mods havent been overbearing with their moderation i said “i havent seen anyone even claiming its been used against them or pointing to their post being permanently removed from the modlogs unjustly”.
if you want me to spell it out slowly i can:
- lemmy.ml mods have abused admin powers at some points
- it is possible that the lemmy.ml people could abuse this admin power
- as far as im aware there is no evidence that anyone has misused this specific admin power
- this specific admin power has been used to remove child porn and dox info
- since this admin power has been used for good reasons and hasnt been used for bad reasons it shouldnt be removed as an admin power
as far as im aware there is no evidence that anyone has misused this specific admin power
In that case, then congrats for living in your own little delirium, apart from the many, many reports people have made reporting those specific abuses.
Most instances are federated with Lemmy.ml, it’s Hexbear and Grad that .world and a few others have defederated from, among the major instances.
Wait what? A communism advocate who also develops Free and Open Source Software, which is literally communist philosphy applied to computers?
I’m blown away
OP isn’t taking issue with that. They’re taking issue with the CPP/USSR apologetics.
A communist who supports communism?? GASP!!
You can be communist without sucking stalins cock or looking massacres and going “we didnt do and if we did it wasnt that bad, and if it was, they probably deserved it.” Its the uncritical idolation of the dictatorial aspects of communist projects that i object to.
Yes, but also they’re tankies. That’s basically Putler’s Russia if it were a Lemmy instance.
Here I am… Joined Lemmy.ml because it was supposed to be a security, privacy and FOSS focused community. Now people are probably going to block seeing my comments.
Joined Lemmy.ml because it was supposed to be a security, privacy and FOSS focused community
Yep that’s the line the developers put up there to lure people in. It’s mildly disingenuous at best. Having to copy a line from a document titled “The Principles of Communism” just to sign up should’ve tipped you off that something was a bit weird.
Join an instance that has more lax federation standards and subscribe to the ml communities you care about, or get comfortable with defederation and people from other instances discarding your opinions. It’s a choice you need to make.
Having to copy a line from a document titled “The Principles of Communism” just to sign up should’ve tipped you off that something was a bit weird.
Uh what? How is it weird to have a mild anti-bot task in a registration process? That’s pretty normal.
If you’re objecting to the content in the text, well that’s just silly. A communist instance referencing communist writings is not “weird”, that’d be entirely within the realm of reasonable expectation.
If you feel so threatened by the mere presence of communism in your bubble, maybe don’t try to join an instance by and for them? How dare the dastardly communists be so happy and welcoming to everyone!
I was trying to point out the hypocrisy of branding your instance to be about privacy and security when tankie-glorified regimes don’t respect that at all, and they’re instead mildly pushing people in that direction. Why not use something from the EFF pages on those topics? Nice strawman, though.
I’m glad to have devs with principals. Go back to reddit lib.
If by “principals” you mean “banning anybody who falls outside of the groupthink”, then sure, more power to ya.
You say that like world or others instances don’t do that
1, that’s whataboutism, form a better argument. 2, that’s still a weak “principal” to have and defending it as though it’s a good thing is pretty cringe.
.world is a zionist and CIA-affiliated shillstorm. It’s just the US version of .ml
Both are equally bad because the US and China are equally bad. Don’t believe me? Check out the death toll of Native American genocide, transatlantic slavery, Latin american imperialism, CIA coups during the Cold War, police repression today, and current prison populations.
Given that I have no idea why anyone would defend the United States. Unless you’re brainwashed or working for the CIA
i’m open to the possibility that you’re right, but my experience is that criticism of the cia or zionism is tolerated to a much greater degree on .world than criticism of china or soviet russia is tolerated on .ml.
can you point to specific instance-wide bannings for talking shit on us foreign policy or zionism?
It’s tolerated in different ways. Ostracization and orchestrated mass downvotes are used rather than bans. .world utilizes methods of control that are more subtle than .ml. Which is consistent with how the CIA/West exerts control compared to China.
Our propaganda techniques and mechanisms of control are more multifaceted and less brutish and obvious - which isn’t a good thing. It means that we create a veil and drape it over the eyes of our people so that they don’t even realize that they are being controlled. This is the ideological state apparatus of the West that is drastically more effective than anything a socialist state has managed to create. Of course, we both have repressive state apparatuses as well, and our police are arguably more brutal than theirs (especially if you aren’t white and female), but there is less need to use that when you are able to brainwash your public so effectively with subtle acts of ideological correction. And convincing them that hundreds of strangers are mad at them is a good way to minimize dissent from being articulated in the first place, as well as distractions such as typical liberal rage bait and “red team bad” distractions
Imagine trying to insult someone by calling them a liberal lmfao.
Who remembers when China was doing live organ farming on people?
Pepperidge farm fucking remembers.
Just FYI, the organ farming thing comes from Falun Gong, who are a weird cult that have been (perhaps overly) oppressed by the Chinese government. They have quite a strong media presence and some weird beliefs about organs.
Really? Because I remember reading from the UN that this was taking place in the uyghur camps?
Edit: actually it’s both. So…
I think it’s worth considering that your evidence comes directly from a country that considers China an adversary, and they seem to take the Falun Gong organ harvesting as fact.
True, however that doesn’t necessarily constitute falsehood in what they’re claiming.
The UN also did work on this, as did Canada and some investigative reporters in Europe.
China has lots of adversaries. Mainly anybody in the west, and they dominate any of their other Allies which makes them a de facto leader and would make criticism from anyone else pretty tough.
Edit: oh and in 2015 China announced that they wouldn’t do forced organ transplants on prisoners anymore - so they were most definitely participating in this disgusting practice.
True, however that doesn’t necessarily constitute falsehood in what they’re claiming.
I appreciate that, I just think it was worth pointing out that its worth being sceptical about a source like that, as you would be about one coming from the Chinese government.
100%
I’m critical of every ruling body, regardless of where I reside. There’s something to be said about having power over millions of people and how humans deal with that.
I’m especially critical of governments that are known to run PsyOps, disinformation campaigns, and known histories of abuse (US, China, Russia, Israel, Iran, North Korea, etc). Ultimately, the devil you know is better than the others, but we’re still working with devils
