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.
Are there people that don’t know that Lemmy is developed by Marxists, and their instance is run by Marxists? Thought that was common knowledge, that’s why Lemmy exists in the first place, it was developed along Communist principles.
If you’re new to Lemmy then it won’t be common knowledge at all.
Could be, but again, Lemmy was made along Communist principles, it’s safe to assume people interested in Communist principles are going to be here.
But they may not know the history of it or why it was made before joining. I certainly didn’t, it was more about a decentralised alternative to Reddit, I just joined and explored.
Perhaps the point is that those principles predate Communism by quite some time, and Communism added a lot of its own baggage on them.
Because Lemmy is usually marketed as the Fediverse alternative to Reddit, not as a communist platform.
Plenty of people try Lemmy then promptly leave when they realize it’s run by “Marxists” (i.e. people pretending to Marxists as a facade for spreading CCP propaganda).
Lemmy isn’t run by any one entity. Lemmy is essentially just the protocol that the Lemmyverse is built off of, which itself is an extension of ActivityPub.
You’re right, I knew better but still conflated the Lemmyverse and Lemmy.ml.
Great. now we have fediverse Stalin :D
The way comments and users are purged from ml would make Stalin proud!
Are you referring to me? Or Dessalines?
That’s not quite correct, they are Marxists Leninists, who are the more Authoritarian and reactionary counterparts.
All Marxist-Leninists are Marxists, not all Marxists are Marxist-Leninists.
It’s accurate to describe them as Marxists still.
technically accurate sure, but it implies that all marxists are tankies, which is absolutely not true.
what precisely would be the problem with referring to them by the specific term for what they are?
What separates Marxists from Tankies? I’ve seen dozens of definitions of tankie.
It’s important to recognize that Marxist-Leninists far, far outweigh the number of anti-Lenin Marxists. You don’t have to agree with Lenin to acknowledge that at this point he is almost as relevant to Marxism in a geopolitical context as Marx himself.
I’m sorry but wasn’t Marxism-Leninism developed by Stalin? You’re agreeing with Stalin, not Lenin, aren’t you? Partly with Lenin as well, sure, but you’re forgetting Stalin here. Or is that a marketing thing?
Stalin used Lenin’s ideas, because he was pretty much carrying them over. Stalin was merely the one to coin the term, not really the ideas behind it.
Lenin was a Marxist, he didn’t consider himself a “Leninist.” It’s like how Jesus was Jewish, not Christian, though please don’t take that metaphor any further, comparing Lenin to Jesus is not the intent.
Lmao
I can be funny from time to time, haha
I thought Lenin used his interpretation of the communist manifesto to develop Leninism (even if he didn’t call it that). Then Stalin “improved” on that and developed Marxism-Leninism and then Mao “improved” it further and made Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. They’re all Marxism, but like… Super Saiyan 1,2,3 etc versions of them.
Kinda? Lenin’s ideas aren’t a morphing or changing of Marxism, and it certainly wasn’t just the Manifesto, but Marx’s actually important works. Lenin looked at Marxism, studied it, and applied Marxist analysis to his conditions in Tsarist Russia. Notably adding his analysis of Imperialism and Revolution.
Mao did the same thing, applied Marxism (and took inspiration from Lenin) with respect to China’s conditions.
The reason why Marxism-Leninism is by far the most common is because we are still clearly in the age of Imperialism as described by Lenin, and his analysis is still valid. Rejecting Lenin is very unusual for Marxists, because Lenin basically applied Marxism to the contemporary era where Revolution has been delayed due to super-exploitation of the third world in exchange for super-profits.
oh i see now you’re on lemmy.ml lol, good thing i avoided that endless bad faith argument
What part of that was bad-faith?
Some folk identify the .ml (or the pronouns of hexbear users) and work backwards from there.
Simply: the bad faith was having .ml there in the name. I’ll take him for his word and bet that’s what was meant.
*edit And it isn’t like I haven’t seen wingnuts go “.world eh? More like .nazi!” as well. It is just that whole general vibe with the people who all up and comment about blocking shit.
Unfortunate, but probably correct.
I’ve had enough bad faith interactions with lemmy.ml accounts that it’s become helpful to expect it from them.
Sure there are some actual people over there who are willing to engage in a fair way, but its not worth rolling the dice.
your accusation of bad faith is, itself, bad faith.
Kind of but not really. They’re state capitalists.
How so? Where along Lenin’s analysis of Marxism does there become a jump away?
Uh the fact that the workers didn’t own the means of production but the state did. Spare me all the philosophical pretzels about how the state WAS the people haha.
Since when does Marx say that a Worker-State isn’t Socialist? You may wish to revisit Critique of the Gotha Programme. No need to read Lenin there! Marx was no anarchist.
I’m not an anarchist. But pretty sure “Capitalism but the booj is the government”. Isn’t Communism
That was Nazi Germany, not the USSR.
Exactly. They’re the left sect of fascism, and have “purged” communists in the past
Bruh, Lemmy is a federated clone of Reddit. And tankies did not come up with the Fediverse or Reddit. If anything Lemmy is closer to a classic capitalist structure with the communities being owned by the admin (boss). Users have no control of any community no matter how much they contribute. I guess since tankies are state capitalists anyway they feel right at home.
No, Marxists did not create the fediverse, but Marxists did create Lemmy.
Explain how Free and Open Source, federation-based communities are more Capitalist than Marxist. Having managers does not make something Capitalist, lol.
The ability to choose what platform to use seems closer to the principle of voluntary exchange than to authoritatianism.
And Stallman was the person that invented FOSS, and he’s stated over and over he was not following any type of Communist principles. In fact FOSS programmers explicitly retain private property rights of software. It’s how they enforce the share alike clauses. If FOSS was built on some type of Communist principles it wouldn’t allow the bourgeois to build billion dollar enterprises on software they pay the writers nothing for.
Marxists did not create FOSS, but they did create Lemmy.
I will add though that FOSS principles do tend to align more closely with the principles of non-commodification, collaboration, voluntary contribution, community-ownership, and free access to knowledge, which “can be” associated with socialist or Marxist ideals.
Lemmy is not based Communist principles is what I’m arguing please read. It’s not based on Communist principals because Reddit nor FOSS were which is the architecture Lemmy copied.
Lemmy is based on Communist principles, the devs have stated as much. The fact that others use similar underlying principles does not change why Lemmy was developed in the manner it has been.
It does EL-0-L when the managers do not answer to users who create the actual value. And surprise surprise you have widespread complaints about heavy handed censorship on tankie run instances on anything that hurts their feelings.
When the users can create their own instances or even fork the entire project for free, the dynamic is different. Plus, calling discussion “value” is kinda goofy.
Lemmy.world has censorship too, just see return2ozma’s recent ban for criticizing Biden and not posting pro-Biden content as well, literally admitted by the admin in an official post.
This is such a typical liberal answer. The value isn’t just created by the users’ post but by the collective network effect of all the users being in one place. That is not replicated when a new instance is created. Tankies know this which is why they’re acting like old Reddit mods with retaliatory style moderation.
You’re referring to discussion and posting as though it’s a commodity. Please read Marx, lol
I have read Marx, unlike you who’s just learned about Lenin through memes.
The network effect is a commodity. That’s why X and Facebook fight for users and put them in walled gardens.
Their valuations are based engagement. The most powerful and successful capitalist enterprises in history are all social media companies but okay discussion isn’t a commodity. How myopic can you be.
The network effect is not a commodity. Lemmy is not produced for profit, it has no Value. Reread Capital, Volume 1, Chapter 1. It has a Use-Value, but no Exchange-Value and is not produced for profit. Capitalism necessitates profit and an M-C-M’ circuit by which Capitalists accumulate, which is absent from Lemmy entirely.
You’re deeply unserious.
Personally, I like to think of instances as countries, where federation and defederation is akin to trade policies across the borders, and communities are like regional/state governments.