- cross-posted to:
- communism@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- communism@lemmy.ml
Crossposted from https://lemmy.world/post/40642280
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Once upon a time, this “political extremism“ used to just simply be called “being a decent human being“. How far we’ve fallen.
used to just simply be called “being a decent human being“. How far we’ve fallen.
What specific moment in the past are you idolizing here?
When in human history years has it been more acceptable to be any random marginalized group than it is today?
Did you read the post?
Where is the past being misrepresented, or even just being represented?
“How far we’ve fallen” implies it was once much much better.
Red Scare propaganda, and its fundamental essence now entrenched across society, is largely to blame for decency and empathy becoming demonized as extremist.
Simply acknowledging historical antecedents is not whitewashing or idealizing the past.
i see the far left terrorists didn’t make the list
surprising
You forgot “unconditionally supports russian imperialism and repeats its propaganda incessently” … wait, this isn’t lemmy.ml 🫠
That prompts an interesting question: Is there a symbol for international communism that’s recognizable to the general public?
I don’t think there is a single one, but there are definitely styles that make you think it. Red themes, tools and machinery, fists in the air, etc.
This one of my favorites for Fully Automated Luxury Gay/Queer Space Communism. I doubt how widely it’s known, though.
Wow, what a… memorable flag. Are these scythes with other scythes as a handle ? doubling as Saturn and its moons ?
Yeah, it’s definitely a reference to the hammer and sickle symbol. I think it’s either the Earth, the Moon and Mars or else non-specific planets and/or moons. I had to zoom in to take a closer look:
Oh, now I see it bigger… Is that Bezos’s cock rocket?
I’m sure some commenters on the .ml crosspost will have pointed that out 😉
(Just took a gander. Of course people who say that Stalinism was bad will get downvoted.)
I’ve literally never seen someone from lemmy.ml unconditionally support Russia. Stop making things up.
Hiya Flying. It’s a joke with a grain of truth. Some vocal (and often well spoken) voices there see russia as a lesser evil than the US and its allies, but imho they go overboard and would rather see and forgive/justify/support russian aggression and its deadly consequences than seek peaceful paths to a more just world.
Also because Russia is now a semi-fascist far right state, as much as the US, if not worse. No idea how it happened that both self proclaimed communists and far right governments will fight and die for Putin.
Maybe the extremists are not those who support human rights, but those who support authoritarianism, from both sides of the spectrum.
You just might be right there. The road to hell and all that.
Otoh, we are living in a world where the rich and powerful have extraordinary influence over our lives through asymmetric application of power, technology and knowledge… we are just pawns/players in systems, and if a system fails us, we might not have any recourse. It’s one reason I value the ability to “vote with my feet” (thanks to international agreements and norms, plus my extraordinary good luck of having a strong passport, decent education and supportive family). If you are stuck in a shitty system, your options might be limited and your readiness to accept extremism and its risks will likely be higher.
Nobody should be lectured on propaganda by North American and European social democrats who infest Lemmy and spread propaganda to a much higher degree across most instances and communities.
It is clear that russian propaganda is the best propaganda. pats you on the head
Calling out hypocrisy is not the same as supporting the alternative. Two things can be wrong at the same time.
To put it in simple terms: Russian Imperial propaganda is bad but American Imperial neoliberal propaganda isn’t any better just because they are at odds.
The whole “stones thrown from glass houses” thing.
Correct, you understood my point perfectly.
As an anti-imperialist, I get that kind of rebuttal A LOT. People cannot stand it when you bring light that all empires of the modern day got to their heights by being the most politically and socially manipulative parasites this world has ever seen.
Name today’s empires please
US, UK, France, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Russia, China, etc… any and all nations which exert extensive global influence through economic, military, or political power.
Are you just ignorant of how the global north has, for the last centuries, been exploiting the global south? Are you ignorant of neocolonial economic dynamics that Nordic countries exploit to fuel their capitalist social democracy? Are you just ignorant of the fact many African nations still have to pay colonial taxes to France? Just because they stopped officially attributing the label of “empire” to themselves doesn’t mean they stopped being Imperialist nations. They still all heavily benefit from their colonial past, the only thing that changed was the labels and structures to be less direct so they can claim the benefit of the doubt.
social democrats
They have a better claim to leftism & socialism than the illiberal leftists & left-wing authoritarians who manifest inherently unequal, oppressive concentrations of authority & political power.
who manifest inherently unequal, oppressive concentrations of authority & political power.
Capitalism! (Which socdems completely support)
European Social Democrats spreading propaganda? I’ve seen a lot of europeans talking about how life in central / northern europe differs from what happens in other parts of the world, but i wouldn’t call that propaganda, just sharing experience. And it’s only that you read more of us because the .ml instances and hexbear are the most defederated sites outside of instances with illegal content.
Oh, in your history books the Soviet Union does still exist. Tell me more!
You missed the joke, I guess.
edit: No need to downvote the guy
It looks like it still exists for Lavrov too
Oh noes!
Every item on the list, I have.
I must be one of those dangerous violent extremists the TV warns us about! :O
The woke mind virus claims another victim. Truly tragic to see so much empathy.
Since they put hammer and sickle (the symbol of communism ) I would argue the acceptance of sexual orientations, religions, genders, races etc was also a problem there. It is liberalism that accepts it.
The claim about everyone being treated equally is also not completely true. I mean, in theory, yes, in practice whenever communism (especialy the one exported from USSR) was implemented some people were “more equal” than others.
Yeah. I supposed that is the joke of it. The image is actually describing is someone a tad left of center.
Actual leftism extremists have nothing but excuses for the human right violations.
It’s an essential requirement for being an extremist. The moment one recognizes they’re doing it and voices the concern, they are violently ejected from the movement.
You are describing a small minority of self-styled leftists who largely are terminally online.
Those doing the real work, such as practicing mutual aid or organizing tenants unions, are not generally defending historic atrocities.
The point of the post is that the window of mainstream discourse has shifted so far right that even basic human empathy has become controversial.
There’s a reason why they are referred as tankies. They supported using tanks on people during Hungarian uprising.
Ironically MAGA fascists are very similar, because the real goal they are after is authoritarianism.
But what you’re describing isn’t an extremist, just an activist.
I am describing actual leftists.
Yes but not actual extremists.
Leftists are derided as extremist.
What do you understand as the meaning of the post?
Arguably the USSR’s hammer and sickle has been appropriated to represent communism in general and even socialism sometimes
Yeah, and those who use that symbol don’t understand the pain and suffering, because they never lived under such regime or they support them, because they are really after authoritarianism.
I recommend book Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by prof. Timothy Snyder to give clue how many victims both Communism and Nazism claimed.
I would argue the acceptance of sexual orientations, religions, genders, races etc was also a problem there
Cuba reformed its constitution in 2019 to boost queer rights, and in July approved that people can change their gender legally just by personal request.
Sure, some socialist states of the last century were backwards in that regard, like the USSR, but you gotta keep in mind that in 1930 80% of the country were literally uneducated peasants who worked the land with their own hands.
It only took a century and the death of the supreme leader.
The reality is that communist countries have historically been very conservative in their social policies, and most of them are still today. Even former communist countries are, generally speaking, more conservative as a whole than their more democratic neighbors.
Being a leftist is antithetical to being accepting of all religions.
accepting of all religions
I’m not if said religion involves “removal of rights to others” and “dismantling democracy”. And no, I don’t care if they’re “not real christians”.
“Ive no problem with the spiritual beliefs of all these fuckers while those beliefs dont impact the on happiness of others” - Tim Minchin (the pope song)
None of these things is the reason why communism is extremist and horrible. But you probably knew that.
When have workers ever controlled production, with such control being horrible for workers?
I cannot know about “horrible”, but at least many control-seizing attempts ended up bickering about who actually gets to control things. Anarchists vs Communists in Catalania for instance.
I’m guessing you’re not defining large-scale attempts at Communism like early Communist China and Soviet Union as worker paradises. Those experiments clearly led to worker suffering though.
Devil is in the details, a lot of seemingly conflicting things can work badly or they can work well depending on how well things are run day-to-day. And then there’s the problem that even if you start with a good system, you also have to maintain that system every day to the future or things will slowly (or sometimes rapidly) start going to shit. Some worker-controlled workplaces are good places to work, I’m sure, and some privately owned enterprises are as well.
Regardless, communist society would be one in which production is controlled directly by workers.
Well…the people the right call leftist extremists are generally not leftists are have a tenuous leftist label.
Like…(modern) anarchists are generally apolitical or nihilists…and don’t come from the left at the rates they think they do. The Charlie Kirk shooter is a decent example of what somebody will say is this monolith of leftist extremism that exist in large numbers and is a cohesive group.
Short story long: those who use the label “leftist extremist” (without irony) are basically making a boogy man out of random crazies who they don’t have to ignore because they’re not clearly right wingers.
This isn’t the 70s…they don’t have The Weather Underground and The Black Panthers to scapegoat…so they just make shit up.
anarchists are nearly absolutely leftist. i dont know what youre on about.
I agree…and It’s why I put modern in brackets…then defined my terms. Don’t stop reading after the thing you disagree with.
Actual anarchists are rare. The people we call anarchists aren’t anarchists….they’re a mishmash of hoodlums, nihilists, anti-fascists, Nazi agitators, etc.
Are you talking about the definition of no rules and pure chaos associated with misfits and punks? Back in the 80s there was a whole genre of anarchist music that exemplified actual anarchistic political ideology. There was always a vein of actual anarchists around if looked around a bit.
I was there…I’ve always “caucused” with anarchists.
I’m not talking about actual anarchists…I’m talking about the people who the right label as anarchists…ie the people who don’t know what anarchy is and think it’s chaos and destruction and nihilism.
Ah, I find that most people I encounter can’t define socialism or communism. That’s a problem. We need a robust education system to encourage curiosity on subjects we aren’t familiar with.
The best way to recruit conservatives is to cut education.
OP fails at leftism with inaccessible content that disadvantages the disabled.
Images of text break much that text alternatives do not. Losses due to image of text lacking alternative:
- usability
- we can’t quote the text without pointless bullshit like retyping it or OCR
- text search is unavailable
- the system can’t
- reflow text to varied screen sizes
- vary presentation (size, contrast)
- vary modality (audio, braille)
- accessibility
- lacks semantic structure (tags for titles, heading levels, sections, paragraphs, lists, emphasis, code, links, accessibility features, etc)
- some users can’t read the image due to lack of alt text
- users can’t adapt the text for dyslexia or vision impairments
- systems can’t read the text to them or send it to braille devices
- searchability: the “text” isn’t indexable by search engine in a meaningful way
- fault tolerance: no text fallback if
- image breaks
- image host is geoblocked due to insane regulations.
Contrary to age & humble appearance, text is an advanced technology that provides all these capabilities absent from images.
They’ll need to relinquish their leftist cred.
- usability
- Expresses concern over the treatment of marginalized groups
- Accepting of all sexualities, religions, genders, races, etc.
No I don’t want to be brigaded by tankies going “akshually…” with how much worse capitalism is followed by links and excerpts from Trotsky or whatever. Just accept my message that communism can also suck under a tyrannical government (like the one the US has), give me your downvote and move on.
contrarian red scare comments are rarely easy to follow
Love how the ‘warning signs’ are basically: empathy, equality, and reading books. If that’s ‘extremism,’ we’re in trouble.
thatsthejoke
How can you be concerned with fascism accept all genres and sexualities but accept Islam?
By understanding that the backwards views in most Islamic countries regarding sexuality and gender are caused by western meddling. Had Iran been allowed to thrive under Mosaddeq’s secular leftist government instead of being violently couped by the US + UK, things would look very different there in LGBTQ rights and women’s rights. The same can be said about Egypt under Nasser, about the People’s Liberation Front for Palestine, and is currently said by women from traditionally Islamic countries such as Alexandra Elbakyan from Kazakhstan (founder of SciHub).
Stop blaming on Islam what is caused by western meddling, invasion and coups.
Islam is as backwards as anything can be and it’s whole existence is basically imperialism / authoritarianism, or do you think the universal caliphate is going to be a democracy?
Stop blaming the west for everyone’s fault, other societies are responsible for themselves.
No Muslim-majority state ever colonized the West.
In historical fact, the relation has occurred only in one direction.
Characterizing Islam as imperialist sidesteps the actual argument being presented.
I guess you have never heard about the Umayyad Caliphate or the Ottoman Empire.
Historical fact: slavery is still alive in islamic countries.
Nice pivot.
Western corporations benefit from slave labor. Islam is not exceptional.
We are talking about history facts, you didn’t know or worse, you ignored two of the biggest colonizing and conquest forces in the history of mankind and now you blame the west for something Islam is the king at.
Here is another history fact: there is no Spanish Empire without the Umayyad or the Ottoman Empire.
The worst thing about this conversation it that you aren’t even Muslim because they are proud of the Umayyad (not so much the Ottomans since they aren’t arabs)
We are talking about the current geopolitical configuration.
The argument presented is that in many Muslim-majority regions and states, the current political configuration is fundamentally a reaction to the imperialism and colonialism of the West.
Your examples are too deep in the past to be strongly relevant as antecedents to the current configuration, and also, fail in their attempt to paint Islam as exceptional.
Username checks out. Facha. Spaniard being islamophobic, no surprises here, fucking cursed national myth of reconquista. You can just be open about being a racist Spanish nationalist.
Okay, have a nice day. inshallah
The symbol has nothing to do with what’s on the list.
It’s a symbol of hate, suffering and oppression.
(crossposted from lemmy.ml, btw)
Disagree. Also pointing out it came from lemmy.ml - it’s getting tiring.
It’s also very appropriate for the meme given it speaks to the red scare propaganda peddled in the US.
I’m sorry you’re tired, but a lot of newer users aren’t aware.
I don’t think it’s appropriate anywhere, aside from historical contexts. Especially next to “positive” things that have little to no relation to it.
Sorry I didn’t see you’re an anti-communist. Your view makes perfect sense now. Thanks for the honesty!
Mainly, anti-USSR and USSR-adjacent.
You’re very welcome!
the symbol has nothing to do with anything on the list
Meanwhile USSR:
“Expresses concern for the poor” lowers inequality to the lowest levels in the region
“Expresses concern for the treatment of marginalized groups” women suffrage since 1917, massive literacy campaigns regardless of ethnicity or gender
“Expresses concern over the rise of fascism” defeats Nazism in Europe saving tens of millions of lives
“Takes an interest in history and philosophy” makes education free to the highest level for everyone, including maintenance wages to university students, and promotes education among adult workers with night programs and in-factory volunteers and after-work programs
“Wishes for a world where all are treated equally” collaborates with the decolonization of Africa, South America and Asia without engaging in colonialism
Oh wow, even a graph? Amazing. Lmao.
Thanks, you’re tagged.
Not sure what you mean by tagged, but you’re welcome for the graph.
Not far from sad, sad reality. Almost indistinguishable.
Accepting of all sexualities, genders , and races with a dumb fuck hammer and sickle. What alternate reality do you live in where the USSR was accepting of these?
The symbolism is more a visual bait for people like you. I don’t think it means all lefties are stalinists. Many flags have stars and stripes, for example, the most meaningless crap anybody ever cared to put on a rag. So chill.
So, to be clear, marxist-leninists/stalinists aren’t far-left?
It’s making fun of people who see hammer and sickle and think only of left-authoritarians, whose methods are the same as those of any other authoritarian, regardless of their goals.
This is more taking the piss out of people who say anyone left of centre is “radical left”.
Whoosh
That’s NOT about URSS anymore, that symbol is the most famous symbol of communism, so it’s used that, but it’s NOT indicating the URSS
the joke is that any person nowadays who is being civil and decent is being called socialist
No but Jugoslavia was very accepting and till it fell apart it was pretty good at being socialist.
