I fucking love that he chose to call them stalinists. In addition to it being true, it send a fuck you to the alt-right and the alt-left (who love to talk up stalin as of late)
Bluesky
People skeeting stuff.
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Who in the alt left is talking about Stalin lol maybe some whackos online
Mostly the tankies on .ml
maybe some whackos online
Checks out.
Who, you know, MIGHT be real people but probably aren’t for the most part..
I just assume any .ml account is a propaganda bot. Because even if they are real people.. they are propaganda bots.
Lemmy is far too small to bot.
lemmy.ml is just friendly to those people, so it attracts them.
lemmy.ml was built by those people, sometimes it feels for the express purpose of spreading their bullshit.
Yeah, that's plausible.
Lemmy.ml only has ~2100 monthly active users. I would guess that likely at least half of them are randos who just joined what they thought was the default instance.
That leaves about 1000 or so (likely even less) active tankies. That's not a lot of people. I'm pretty sure you could find more than that amount of tankies in pretty much every single metropolis worldwide.
From someone who has gone to more than a few political protests and rallies in Boston:
Every fucking time Socialist Alternative shows up, it’s fine until some edgelord dipshit unfurls the fucking huge Soviet flag with Stalin and Mao silk screened on it. It’s like they’re trying to alienate reasonable people as well as historically-informed people. I consider myself a staunch socialist. I also outright detest Stalin and Mao because they were fucking authoritarian despots who wrapped their regimes in “communism” banners.
Sure, some of the systems at lower levels were socialistic, but at the end of the day, it was all in service to the cult of personality in charge of the whole gig. And yes, that’s what the US has devolved into (and arguably had done so quite a while ago, just not so overtly), but that doesn’t excuse Stalin or Mao, nor does it justify being an apologist for them.
From that perspective, any thoughts on Ho Chi Minh?
Of all the leaders good, bad, and, ugly over the last century, he doesn't seem to be brought up as much by propaganda machines.
Why is it always Mao or Stalin? Can't they at least go with folks who shed the blood of fascists like Tito or Castro? They werent particularly good either but at least they were doing the best with their dealt decks. Mind you I fucking loathe elevating folks to positions of respect unless they were my ancestors or damned well earned it via death and glory.
Oh man, a thousand times this, fucking tankies are a pain and a ball and chain on the leg of progress.
Stalin took the Russian state from an agricultural backwater to a Space Age superpower in a matter of twenty years.
If he'd started out a Virginia plantation owner instead of a Georgian bank robber, capitalists would have loved him. He'd be bigger than Churchill.
American liberals love (the whitewashed version of) FDR because they see the quasi-socialism of the mid-20th century as the morally correct path. Eastern Europeans - who came through two world wars and repeated genocides on every front - have a lot more of an appetite for Iron Fisted Dictator[Communist] after enduring generations of Iron Fisted Dictator[Monarchist]
stalin also evetuanlly purged his own loyalists after becoming paranoid.
I mean a less harsh version of that has been going on. Trump has ejected many people that used to be in his inner circle, and has, or has tried, to fire almost the whole federal government, too many people who got there without him to trust
Oh don't worry, he's still trying to get feds to quit, and they're drooling at adding sycophantic bullshit to the hiring process. All while eroding union protections, benefits, and pay.
All while the Democrats vote down attempts to combat Trump, but have all the time in the world to sabotage the primary resultant nominee in NYC. Why have a primary if you're not going to go with the results? That's not a primary - that's just bullshit.
This country is a fucking joke.
Why have a primary if you’re not going to go with the results? That’s not a primary - that’s just bullshit.
Welcome to the DNC. Their primaries (at least the bigger ones) have been bullshit for a long time. Like, they're notorious for bullshit regarding primaries. I like to point to my own state in 2016 as an example, where Clinton won the primary despite getting around 35% of the vote while Sanders won in every county and Clinton didn't even manage second in every county.
The main difference is that this time the "wrong" candidate won despite the bullshit, so now he needs to lose the general, whatever that requires. Again, welcome to the DNC.
Too many people here just blindly hating on Bernie and nitpicking how "Stalinism is technically incorrect". Where's the Trump hate? Bring some of that shit out. I'll start.
Fuck Trump, MAGA, and their entire cult of personality.
It turns out the Red Scare was about the wrong Reds the whole time.
Been saying it for a while, better dead than red.
The Democrats should OFFICIALLY declare the Republican Party dead, and only refer to the MAGA Party from now on. Do an actual press conference, and make an official announcement - the Republican Party no longer exists, and has been replaced by the MAGA Party. That will make the traditional Republicans absolutely crazy, and the Dems should keep it up.
Never use the word Republican ever again, refer only to the MAGA, or MAGA Nazi Party. On talk shows, interviews, sound bites, fundraising texts, etc., use the term MAGA Party exclusively. When asked about it, simply say casually and matter-of-factly "The Republican Party is dead, they are the MAGA Party from now on," and leave it at that. Make the MAGAs cry.
The Party Formerly Known as Republican
use the term MAGA Party exclusively
MAGA - Morons And Genuine Assholes.
The Republicans tried doing a similar thing to the Democratic Party by calling it the "Democrat Party", but members of the Democratic Party basically just ignored this and treated those who used it as stupid, or offered "helpful corrections" to the user's "inadvertent mistake". Eventually, it lost currency because it failed in its goal of upsetting people.
I voted for him in the primary, then in the general as a write in and I would fucking do it again. Bern the billionaire's faces off.
I'd argue it's a satanist party as well. They're doing all the shit that was prophesized that the devil would make dumb people do, worshipping false idols, worshipping money, getting the mark of the beast, that sort of shit
This is coming from an staunch atheist who just notices the irony
I was confused on what was Satanic until I realized you were talking about the Christian version on Satanic and not the Church of Satan.
I was super surprised by the irony after I saw all those golden idols of trump. If I was a Christian I would be highly offended at these people trying to align with me. Those are $100 bills with trumps face on it, that they covered the goat idol. 2 separate events. 1 was a CPAC and 1 was at Mara Lago. 🙄
Satanists are cooler than these assholes.
I cannot imagine being enough of a sycophant to wear a hat that says "Trump was right about everything". Nobody's right about everything, and Trump is less right about things than most people because he's incredibly stupid.
So much of the last 30 years of Republicanism (maybe 60 years, if you're a Nixonian) boils down to Owning The Libs.
The guy with the "Trump was right..." hat will happily bitch about all the things Trump is doing wrong. He just won't do it in earshot of anyone he thinks is to his Left.
Trump is less right about things than most people
Trump is turning the rhetoric of the Reagan Era into reality. He's taking the orthodoxy of the party seriously, rather than using it as bait to gull the rubes into another round of tax cuts and privatizations.
It's this commitment to orthodoxy that his base loves. Also what makes him look stupid.
I agree that the party orthodoxy is stupid and contradictory. But he's also profoundly stupid which is why he's such a perfect fit as its mascot.
Hah use their communist rhetoric back at them
The GOP has become a Stalinist Party
They haven't killed remotely enough fascists to earn this distinction.
I'm over here waiting to see whether the apocalypse is more Matrix, Terminator, or idiocracy. I'm leaning idiocracy, but I'm not giving up on the others.
Whatever it is, expect there to be a healthy mix of "The Stepford Wives" and "The Handmaid's Tale" thrown in there as well.
We're legit too dumb to even build the Terminator or Matrix apocalypses IMO. They both rely on creating genuine artificial life.
Devastatingly, we might even be too dumb to get to an Idiocracy future. It's set in ~2500 and the earth is still pretty well habitable.
I think short term it's more Handsmaid's Tale in the US, and globally heading for perhaps Elysium.
Good times, good times.
Cyberpunk is a possibility as well
Spot fucking on
On a similar note, I'm going to start calling republicans red coats.
Whoa man, Canadians don't want anything to do with that tangerine tyrant.
And I doubt Brits or Germans would either.