• olbaidiablo @lemmy.ca
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    While I think this is far too simplistic of a comparison. I will agree that the US is like nazi Germany if it was entirely run by barely functional idiots. The turd reich.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      They aren’t, though. China is a rising socialist state, and the US is a dying, brutal empire run be pedophiles and fascists.

        • freagle@lemmy.ml
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          What kind of global imperial superpower doesn’t drop bombs for 35 years in a row? That doesn’t sound like any global imperial superpower I have ever heard of in the last 600 years. If China is a global imperial superpower without doing the whole war crimes thing, I’m almost inclined to say you’ve sold me on global imperialist superpowers being redeemable!

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          Public ownership is the principal aspect of China’s economy, and capitalists are held on a tight leash to focus on developing the productive forces. The large firms and key industries in China are publicly owned, it’s only the small and medium firms that are private.

          The form of democracy and the mode of production in China ensures that there is a connection between the people and the state. Policies like the mass line are in place to ensure this direct connection remains. This is why over 90% of the Chinese population supports the government, and why they have such strong perceptions around democracy:

          The Chinese political system is based on whole-process people’s democracy, a form of consultative democracy. The local government is directly elected, and then these governments elect people to higher rungs, meaning any candidate at the top level must have worked their way up from the bottom and directly proved themselves. Moreover, the economy in the PRC is socialist, with public ownership as the principle aspect of the economy. Combining this consultative, ground-up democracy with top-down economic planning is the key to China’s success.

          I highly recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. Socialist democracy has been imperfect, but has gone through a number of changes and adaptations over the years as we’ve learned more from testing theory to practice. Boer goes over the history behind socialist democracy in this textbook.

          China does have billionaires, as you might then protest. China is in the developing stages of socialism. Between capitalism, which is characterized by private ownership being the principle aspect of the economy and the capitalists in control of the state, and communism, characterized by full collectivization of production and distribution devoid of classes, is socialism, where public ownership is principle and the working classes in control. China in particular is working its way out of the initial stages of socialism:

          The reason China has billionaires is because China has private property, and the reason it has private property is because of 2 major factors: the world economy is still dominated by the US empire, and because you cannot simply abolish private property at the stroke of a pen. China tried that already. The Gang of Four tried to dogmatically force a publicly owned and planned economy when the infrastructure best suited to that hadn’t been laid out by markets, and as a consequence growth was positive but highly unstable.

          Why does it matter that the US Empire controls the world economy? Because as capitalism monopolizes, it is compelled to expand outward in order to fight falling rates of profit by raising absolute profits. The merging of bank and industrial capital into finance capital leads to export of capital, ie outsourcing. This process allows super-exploitation for super-profits, and is known as imperialism.

          In the People’s Republic of China, under Mao and later the Gang of Four, growth was overall positive but was unstable. The centrally planned economy had brought great benefits in many areas, but because the productive forces themselves were underdeveloped, economic growth wasn’t steady. There began to be discussion and division in the party, until Deng Xiapoing’s faction pushing for Reform and Opening Up won out, and growth was stabilized:

          Deng’s plan was to introduce market reforms, localized around Special Economic Zones, while maintaining full control over the principle aspects of the economy. Limited private capital would be introduced, especially by luring in foreign investors, such as the US, pivoting from more isolationist positions into one fully immersed in the global marketplace. As the small and medium firms grow into large firms, the state exerts more control and subsumes them more into the public sector. This was a gamble, but unlike what happened to the USSR, this was done in a controlled manner that ended up not undermining the socialist system overall.

          China’s rapidly improving productive forces and cheap labor ended up being an irresistable match for US financial capital, even though the CPC maintained full sovereignty. This is in stark contrast to how the global north traditionally acts imperialistically, because it relies on financial and millitant dominance of the global south. This is why there is a “love/hate” relationship between the US Empire and PRC, the US wants more freedom for capital movement while the CPC is maintaining dominance.

          Fast-forward to today, and the benefits of the CPC’s gamble are paying off. The US Empire is de-industrializing, while China is a productive super-power. The CPC has managed to maintain full control, and while there are neoliberals in China pushing for more liberalization now, the path to exerting more socialization is also open, and the economy is still socialist. It is the job of the CPC to continue building up the productive forces, while gradually winning back more of the benefits the working class enjoyed under the previous era, developing to higher and higher stages of socialism.

          In doing this, China has presented itself to the global south as an alternative to the unequal exchange the global north does with the global south, which is accelerating the development of the global south. China is taking a more indirect method of undermining global imperialism than, say, the USSR, but its been remarkably effective at uplifting the global working classes, especially in China but also in the global south.

          To call China “imperialist” or “capitalist” is to either invent a fantasy of China or to not understand imperialism, capitalism, or socialism. China isn’t a utopia, it’s a real socialist country.

        • QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml
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          In short China is what it has always been a land empire in east Asia who forces homogenity in their culture and doesn’t like dissent, but promotes education for at least the ruling class and usually becomes too top heavy and collapses in on itself into civil war that kills millions.

          Holy Orientalism.

          You are a racist.

          I hope you get a chance to look in the mirror and better yourself.

        • freagle@lemmy.ml
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          Wow. Just wow. You can’t possibly be this wrong, can you?

          Let’s start with naming things. Han. The predominant Chinese culture you refer to is Han Chinese.

          Let’s look at one law that everyone loves to talk about - the One Child Policy.

          Did you know that the One Child Policy only applied to Han Chinese? That’s right. The Chinese government explicitly and openly promoted heterogeneity by limiting Han birth rates explicitly. Some other minorities were also restricted, that’s true, but they were restricted to two children - double the birthrate of the Han. All the other minorities were unrestricted.

          That’s just one example of how wrong you are. Shall we do others?

          Tibet and Xinjiang educate their children in their native language, in their native cultural traditions, and the governments of those regions run those regions in accordance with their best interpretation of the confluence between their own traditions and the Chinese system of government.

          Let’s compare that to the US or Canada, shall we? No? You don’t want me to explain how Indian boarding schools literally beat children for speaking their native tongue, forcibly cut their traditional hair styles, and trained the children to hate their own families? You don’t want to hear about how such boarding schools existed into the 80s? Should we talk about US eugenics programs and the forced sterilization of a full third of the women on Puerto Rico or the forced sterilization of black and Indian women on the mainland? Is that too much for you?

          How much more wrong can you possibly be?

          China officially recognizes 11 languages that can be used to conduct official business. Eleven. Most American politicians couldn’t even name 11 languages.

          Do you still think China enforces homogeneity? Are you so committed to your position that evidence cannot do anything to your Yellow Peril brain?

            • freagle@lemmy.ml
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              Yeah… so, recognizing that population competition is one of the ways that dominance can be exerted, China choosing to limit birth rates of the most populous ethnicity, which happens to be the dominant one, would be the opposite of eugenics used for reinforcing dominance. It’s actually an incredible defense of China because it shows that not only are they nothing like the West, the West can’t even conceive of what would motivate the dominant people to restrict their own privileges to reverse historical trends caused by dominance of their forebears.

              You’ve got to be kidding comparing the One Child Policy of the dominant ethnic group, which the government itself was predominately composed of, and literal genocide and cultural genocide of white supremacists against the people they violently colonized.

              • AlexanderTheDead@lemmy.world
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                That doesn’t make it not definitionally eugenics. It is definitionally eugenics. I have trouble dancing around this topic because I CAN understand the benefits of limiting population growth, and I even understand what you’re saying about “dominant ethnic groups”.

                But at the end of the day, eugenics is eugenics is eugenics. Feel free to make an argument about how this is morally acceptable eugenics. It’s still eugenics.

                Edit: and no, you don’t get to decide what is an “incredible defense of China”. I do. The neutral party leftist who hates America and is interested in Chinese policies but is also not stupid enough to fall into a new propaganda sinkhole to cope with the fact that I was propagandized my whole life. This is a bad defense of China.

            • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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              You people are determined to reduce every single word used to describe a crime against humanity to meaninglessness, aren’t you? You did it first with genocide (genocide is now when you implement jobs training programs and enshrine cultural protections into law, but you do it while being Asian and not capitalist) and it seems like you’re hellbent on doing it with eugenics too

              • AlexanderTheDead@lemmy.world
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                Lmfao “it’s not eugenics to have specific breeding programs which specifically limit specific ethnic backgrounds” 😭 yeah dude I’m totally being reductive and you’re not just defending literal eugenics by using mental gymnastics.

                You are the one being reductive.

                edit: “i love licking boots and believe all the propaganda of other governments because america government is the only bad one!!! I have no ability to read between lines and critically analyze when human rights violations are taking place!! But none of that matters because what about America??? What about America??”

                • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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                  breeding programs

                  Yup, there you go doing it again. War is peace, ignorance is strength, not breeding is a breeding program

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          This is nonsense gish gallop.

          Xinjiang

          Uyghurs are not being tortured and killed.

          The best and most comprehensive resource I have seen so far is Qiao Collective’s Xinjiang: A Resource and Report Compilation. Qiao Collective is explicitly pro-PRC, but this is an extremely comprehensive write-up of the entire background of the events, the timeline of reports, and real and fake claims.

          I also recommend reading the UN report and China’s response to it. These are the most relevant accusations and responses without delving into straight up fantasy like Adrian Zenz, professional propagandist for the Victims of Communism Foundation, does.

          Tourists do go to Xinjiang all the time, yes. You can watch videos like this one on YouTube, though it obviously isn’t going to be a comprehensive view of a complex situation like this.

          Tibet

          Tibet was a feudal slave society backed by the CIA. The PLA liberated Tibet. Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth:

          Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries rested in the hands of small numbers of high-ranking lamas. Most ordinary monks lived modestly and had no direct access to great wealth. The Dalai Lama himself “lived richly in the 1000-room, 14-story Potala Palace.” [12]

          Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, a member of the Dalai Lama’s lay Cabinet, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. [13] Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some Western admirers as “a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma.” [14] In fact it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served mainly as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order, protect their property, and hunt down runaway serfs.

          Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their peasant families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they were bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeatedremoved, beginning at age nine. [15] The monastic estates also conscripted children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.

          In old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the “middle-class” families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. There also were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. [16] The majority of the rural population were serfs. Treated little better than slaves, the serfs went without schooling or medical care. They were under a lifetime bond to work the lord’s land — or the monastery’s land — without pay, to repair the lord’s houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand. [17] Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners lease them out to work in a distant location. [18]

          As in a free labor system and unlike slavery, the overlords had no responsibility for the serf’s maintenance and no direct interest in his or her survival as an expensive piece of property. The serfs had to support themselves. Yet as in a slave system, they were bound to their masters, guaranteeing a fixed and permanent workforce that could neither organize nor strike nor freely depart as might laborers in a market context. The overlords had the best of both worlds.

          One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: “Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished”; they “were just slaves without rights.” [19] Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a “liberation.” He testified that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord’s men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain, he claimed. [20]

          The serfs were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. They were taxed for religious festivals and for public dancing and drumming, for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being cast into slavery. [21]

          The theocracy’s religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve in their next lifetime. The rich and powerful treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.

          -Dr. Michael Parenti

          Tian’anmen

          Of the few hundred people that died in the riots and fighting, the square was dispersed peacefully. The truth about Tian’anmen is that hundreds of protestors and PLA officers were killed in Beijing that day as the PLA advanced towards the square, but that the square itself was evacuated peacefully, which matches leaked US cables and the CPC’s official stance on what it calls the “June 4th incident”. This is a rejection of the commonly reported story of 10,000 people being killed on the square itself, which originated from a British diplomat’s cable. Said diplomat was later confirmed to have evacuated well before.

          Western nations intentionally sensationalize the quantity of deaths and the character of the events. This is also why Western Nations don’t frequently report on the South Korean Gwang-Ju massacre that occured around the same era, where the South Korean millitary murdered thousands of High School and College students protesting against Chun Do-Hwan’s dictatorship. All of what I said is backed up by the Wikipedia page for Tian’anmen Square Protests and Massacre, such as Alan Donald revising his estimate from 10,000 to the low thousands yet BBC continuing to report the 10,000 figure:

          In a disputed cable sent in the aftermath of the events at Tiananmen, British Ambassador Alan Donald initially claimed, based on information from a “good friend” in the State Council of China, that a minimum of 10,000 civilians died,[237] claims which were repeated in a speech by Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke,[238] but which is an estimated number much higher than other sources provided.[239][240] After the declassification, former student protest leader Feng Congde pointed out that Donald later revised his estimate to 2,700–3,400 deaths.

          Democracy

          The form of democracy and the mode of production in China ensures that there is a connection between the people and the state. Policies like the mass line are in place to ensure this direct connection remains. This is why over 90% of the Chinese population supports the government, and why they have such strong perceptions around democracy.

          The Chinese political system is based on whole-process people’s democracy, a form of consultative democracy. The local government is directly elected, and then these governments elect people to higher rungs, meaning any candidate at the top level must have worked their way up from the bottom and directly proved themselves. Moreover, the economy in the PRC is socialist, with public ownership as the principle aspect of the economy. Combining this consultative, ground-up democracy with top-down economic planning is the key to China’s success.

          I highly recommend Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance. Socialist democracy has been imperfect, but has gone through a number of changes and adaptations over the years as we’ve learned more from testing theory to practice. Boer goes over the history behind socialist democracy in this textbook.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              You’re arguing against numbers published by Harvard. None of what I said is “Kool-Aid.” Secondly, using publicly funded information is not an “appeal to authority,” saying someone knows xyz because they are a specialist in something is an appeal to authority (and that isn’t a fallacy).

  • Log in | Sign up@lemmy.world
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    I’m neither American nor a liberal, but I suspect that American liberals agree wholeheartedly about your assessment about America.

  • AlexanderTheDead@lemmy.world
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    lol hong kong

    Edit: if your best meme and viral defense of china is “america bad”, then it’s not good enough lmao

    Edit: downvoting but not refuting? 😔 shocker

    • Riverside@reddthat.com
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      Everything you consume is propaganda and has an agenda, you just see this as propaganda because it counters the propaganda that’s already internalized and invisible to you

        • freagle@lemmy.ml
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          Literally anything that causes an idea to spread is propaganda. Advertising, calls for help, gossip, commentary, analysis, storytelling, hell public art or theater or even just public conflict. That’s what the word means, the means of idea propagation.

        • Dearth@lemmy.world
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          China executes pedophiles and America elects them and worships at their churches. It’s really not a complicated comparison. There is no gotcha here

          • DaGreenGobbo@feddit.uk
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            Maybe both countries should stop executing people given that a non-negligible number of them are entirely innocent. Maybe capital punishment should have been abandoned long before the 21st Century and any country that continues it be a pariah state.

          • SmoothOperator@lemmy.world
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            Fair, though I’m not sure it’s as simple as that. I’m no fan of the US, but what do you think is the biggest issue plaguing China right now from a humanist perspective?

            • freagle@lemmy.ml
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              1. Poverty (which they’re alleviating), and the trappings of poverty (like poor labor conditions, corruption, and abuse).
              2. Environmental degradation (which they are alleviating) and all the trappings that come with it (like greater impact on the poor, bad health outcomes, corruption).
              3. Threats from state actors (which they are alleviating) and the trappings that come it (like selective repression of dissent, organizing, and collaboration, surveillance and chilling effects, etc)
        • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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          Again, there is no cultural artifact that does not serve a propaganda purpose or espouse a worldview

            • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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              It’s not propaganda as we’ve been made to understand it in the west, because that’s a meaningless vibes based category

              • SmoothOperator@lemmy.world
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                Hmm, maybe I misunderstood you.

                If all cultural artifacts serve a propaganda purpose, but this post is not propaganda, does that mean that this post is not a cultural artifact?

                • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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                  I’m saying we’ve been taught that “propaganda” is just another word for “lies” when the reality is that it covers basically any piece of art, culture or commentary. It’s just any art or information that advances a specific view of the world. As a category it’s hopelessly broad, so it’s better to understand it as a function rather than a thing.

        • AntiOutsideAktion@lemmy.ml
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          lmao the fuck you do

          Once I stop reading “two things can be true at once” whenever your nazi pedophile rulers tell you something bad about the next country they want to destroy maybe I’ll believe you

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          Leftists have regularly been advocating for organizing:

          The problem with liberals is that they still think the democrats are a path to progress, rather than slow death.

          • postcapitalism@lemmy.today
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            Cowbee I like the chart, but respectfully a lot of the rhetoric on ML instances reads closer to trolling than engaging to build a “sympathetic base” , just my 2 cents not worth much more than that ;-)

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              Lemmy.ml isn’t an org, I’m not trying to suggest that it is. Leftists make memes and shitposts here, but when it comes to actual action, organizing in real life is always recommended.

              • postcapitalism@lemmy.today
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                Yes. Agree. And I would suggest it is counterproductive to the point of being counter-revolutionary.

                A simulacrum mocking the landscape it seeks to map

            • EldritchFemininity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              Every time I see Cowbee in a thread like this, it’s like I walked into a restaurant to see someone trying to explain to somebody else why their friend who just spat in their food is actually a cool dude doing great solidarity because the owners of the restaurant treat their employees poorly.

              ML in my experience has very little to do with engaging with leftists and more to do with bashing the “decadent West.” Anytime I see memes.ml pop up in my feed, it’s a 50/50 shot between me finding something funny or something that makes me debate blocking the instance as much as I can at an account level.

              • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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                The decadent west

                Lol you have not seen a single person say this, you’re just reaching into a grab bag of dialogue tropes you’ve heard in old movies or maybe a Red Alert game. Fucking nobody says “the decadent west” outside of Bond movies from 50 years ago. Quit lying.

                • EldritchFemininity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                  I didn’t mean that as a literal quote but as sarcastic air quotes to evoke the exact imagery that you came up with. Although, I have actually seen a Hexbear or (what’s the other one, Beehaw?) user use that phrase. Of course, they also said that only capitalist pigs die in China, so it’s hard to tell if they were serious or if it was full commitment to the bit. That part of Lemmy is fairly indistinguishable from a leftist version of 4chan.

                  Like I said in another comment, ML has an issue common to many leftist communities in that old saying of “nobody hates leftists more than other leftists.” And that can manifest as behaving like more moderate leftists (not liberals - actual leftists) may as well be centrists or conservatives, or treating Europe as being just as bad as Trump’s regime. Purity tests and trolling rather than the mutual cooperation that Cowbee posted.

              • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                I think what you’re describing is the difference between leftists shitposting online and actual real-life practice.

              • Nemo's public admirer@lemmy.sdf.org
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                ML in my experience has very little to do with engaging with leftists and more to do with bashing the “decadent West.” Anytime I see memes.ml pop up in my feed, it’s a 50/50 shot between me finding something funny or something that makes me debate blocking the instance as much as I can at an account level.

                Meme communities will be like that, right?

                Why not block this community and engage with other communities in the instance?

                • EldritchFemininity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                  I guess? I don’t think I’ve ever really stayed in a memes community where that’s the case, though on Reddit I was largely in places like egg_irl and traaa, where everything was focused around a shared experience of a minority group.

                  Besides, it’s not just the memes community, the memes is just where it appears the most blatantly and loudly. As the person above me said, it’s an instance wide thing. ML is nowhere near as bad as Hexbear (or I have yet to see any targeted harassment campaigns against an instance for failing a purity vibe check come from ML, at least) but, as they say, “nobody hates leftists more than other leftists.” Leftist spaces tend to have a bit of an undercurrent of only being welcoming to the “right kind of leftist.” I used “decadent West” up there very purposefully. There’s a bit of a vibe to ML that’s less “uniting various leftist groups” and more “preaching The Good Word to those poor ignorants” proselytizing.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              Your entire argument is based on the idea that shitposting online is the primary means by which leftists organize. I organize with a communist party in real life, online memes and shitposting are by no means what people advocate as “practice,” it’s just a thing to do in free time. Take a step back and rethink what you believe is going on.

                • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                  What on Earth are you talking about? All real communist orgs use online agitation, newsletters, social media, and more. I’m not saying that shitposting is valuable, I’m saying it’s not what I mean by practice. You’re deeply confused.