Just blocked lemmy.ml from my Lemmy account, and I swear to god it's one of the best things I've ever done on this platform. My homepage feels actually clean now.
For the past few months I'd been seeing a lot of tankie posting and pretty much far-left propaganda on my feed. It got tiring enough that I finally checked my blocked-user list, and realized pretty much everyone I'd blocked was from lemmy.ml. So I just blocked the whole instance instead.
Saying this as someone who considers themselves a leftist: I used to think Lemmy itself was an echo chamber. Turns out lemmy.ml was the problem the entire time. Probably the reason I tolerated it for so long is that I agreed with a lot of what they posted, but like an oversaturated meme, I'd had enough. Browsing the platform was starting to feel way too tiring instead of fun, which defeats the point of being here in the first place.
The breaking point was seeing some dude post a "meme" implying North Korea and China are basically communist utopias and that the West sucks. I mean, the West does suck, but come on - you're saying North Korea is the ideal the West should strive for? What the hell...
Could someone give some examples of these leftist propaganda posts? I just browse all top day, maybe they get diluted enough for me to overlook these.. i've seen this argument pass by so many times.
Try commenting that maybe, just maybe, Stalin wasn't the greatest benefactor of humanity, ever.
Trotsky would have been no better than Stalin.
Then watch the fireworks.
I think it's a pretty common take that Trotsky's idea of Permanent Revolution would have been suicidal for the fledgling socialist state, so yea, I think running the Soviet Union directly into a broader, protracted war and losing the entire Soviet Union would have been worse than Stalin.
YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND HE HAD TO MURDER MILLIONS SO THAT 10s OF MILLIONS COULD BE MISERABLE AND LIVE IN A CORRUPT OLIGARCHY REGIME, WHERE THE QUALITY OF LIFE WAS DECADES BEHIND THE WEST.
and don't forget how glorious and prefect and FREE life is in China and North Korea.
When you have no argument, just fall back on lazy strawmen
If you criticism the Chinese government on a .ml instance, you will quickly get banned for "rule 2: xenophobia".
Go to basically any comment section of a politics-related popular post on a .ml instance. I can almost guarantee that there will be some china/Russia/north Korea brainless take.
I got banned from memes in Lemmy.ml over whether genocide in China is real. All the supporting evidence provided to me was from the Chinese government.
Not saying US propaganda is trustworthy either blindly believing propaganda from any government is wild.
I was also told that no one died at Tienanmen Square in that same thread.
Well now you're just factually, unambiguously lying. Which kind of goes you show how bad your position is; that you have to knowingly lie to defend it.
A claim that even Wikipedia agrees with.
"The massacre wasn't at Tienanmen Square, it was just all around it so it doesn't count!!!!1!"
is a very typical .ml take.
So they were right and you're pissed about it
I checked the thread you were talking about, that's not what happened. The supporting evidence came from a huge number of different sources, including many western sources. You also equated Chinese diaspora with the Chinese government itself, which reeks of chauvanism.
As for the bit on Tian'anmen Square, it's correct, even Wikipedia says so:
The square was evacuated bloodlessly, all of the deaths that day occurred in areas scattered around Beijing during riot suppression. A few hundred people died, which is a tragedy, but not 10,000 people being executed on the square like the west initially reported. Substantial evidence to the contrary since then has come out, and Wikipedia has accordingly responded and added this context.
I don't think Wikipedia is a CPC front group.
Also from that Wikipedia article:
Tap for quotes
The actual numbers of deaths seems to be heavily disputed. In a country where the government heavily censors even discussion of the event and redacts all mention of it online, I'm hesitant to take the "official" numbers at face value. The truth is we'll never know the true death count, we only have unreliable information; but I wouldn't be surprised if the event was as bad, or worse, than what we know.
Peak party truth is arguing akshully against a massacre occurring because it 'really happened a few meters outside of the square'.
The killings weren't "a few meters outside the square." Riots happened in disparate places all over Beijing, with PLA members lynched. The PLA responded with force, and in the end a few hundred rioters and a few dozen PLA members were killed. The west reported on an entirely fabricated story of the PLA running their tanks over 10,000 students on Tian'anmen Square itself, which has remained in pop culture as the understanding of the events. It isn't about trying to play semantics, but to highlight that the west quite literally invented an entirely different history and reported on it as fact against a geopolitical enemy, one of many such examples.
That's not remotely what was said.
Why would you lie about something anyone can see just above the lie?
As opposed to the peak truth of just outright saying false things and getting mad that people point out they aren't true?
Keep your your eyes open for new posts on !memes@lemmy.ml
My post history.