• randint@lemm.ee
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      Yeah, the Chinese government is totally very democratic and is receptive to the criticism of its citizens! They never censor words and topics they don’t like on their social media platforms!

    • BigNote@lemm.ee
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      You know, that actually makes sense. 14-year-olds. It would explain a lot about hexbears.

    • Someonelol@lemmy.ml
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      Just got banned from Hexbear for saying something negative about China and the US at the same time. They have no tolerance of any discussion that challenges their preconceptions.

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    Very interesting how all those “pretend socialists” only exist in the third world, and all the “real socialists” existin the west. Yet all the successful revolutions have been done in the third world by “pretend socialists”, and the so called “real socialists” in the west have accomplished nothing. Their biggest success of the “real socialists” in the west being capitalist welfare states or social democracies that rely on old school imperial relationships to fund their welfare in a select few areas.

    No Eurocentrism present to this line of thought here at all…

    What do you think of Nelson Mandela OP? He was a very good leader, right? You know that he considered Cuba an ally and supported their revolution as Cuba sent troops to fight against the apartheid government in the border wars, took inspiration from Mao and called the Chinese revolution a miracle, thanked the Soviets for giving unending support in the fight against apartheid while receiving the a Lenin Peace Prize? So is Nelson Mandela now a fascist according to your meme?

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    us-foreign-policy

    Westerners deciding who’s doing real socialism or not. Westerners expressing their most vile sentiment for foreign countries rather than their own imperialism. Westerners praising the words of their own imperialist intelligence agencies. Westerners unironically praising their own nations for civil liberties like the freedom of fascists to assemble, freedom of racists to express themselves, freedom of parents to own their children, and freedom of school districts to continue racial segregation. Westerners praising imperialist nations like Norway as socialist while using bold language like fascism to describe places under that same exact threat of imperialism, like Cuba and Vietnam.

    Westerners claiming foreign governments are merely pretending to be socialist, while claiming unorganized misinformed chauvinistic westerners are the true heirs to socialism, despite all they do is post online and complain about foreign nations.

    Westerners praising anarchist movements from 100 years ago despite having no common cause with those movements, no connection to the circumstances within them, and probably no actual admiration of them. Westerners praising a bastardized, sectarian, perverse form of anarchism rather than attempting unity with organizations in their areas. Westerners refusing to speak with actual anarchists in their area, who by and large don’t give a shit and just want to hand out food or help at shelters. If Buenaventura Durruti were alive today he’d be regarded with scorn by western chauvinists.

    Westerners continuing to bring up Trotsky of all people, who wasn’t relevant to world affairs for the last 15 years of his life and certainly not the past 80 years. Westerners not reading a single word of Trotsky’s work, westerners focusing entirely on Trotsky’s feud with Stalin, westerners not knowing that Trotsky was a literal military commander. Westerners calling themselves Trotskyists in 2023 for some reason. Westerners deciding they have a feud with Joseph Stalin, a man who died in 1953.

    Westerners attempting to praise their own socialist leadership, who happen to be a scattered group of imperialist-aligned social democrats, Twitch streamers, and actual antisemitic grifters such as in the case of Caleb Maupin.

        • PatFusty@lemm.ee
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          I dont want to be a victim of hexbear road rage thanks. You guys just vomit out material in hopes that you can string it together to form a cogent argument. Then you come back smug as ever asking why i didnt respond to the 10k talking points as if I was a human encyclopedia.

          • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            How would I distinguish you, based only on your reply, from someone who took one look at two whole paragraphs and decided you weren’t going to read that but had to keep arguing no matter what and spewed out some sour grape nonsense?

              • raven [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                How should we frame our arguments in response to a meme that paints every single prominent socialist and socialist country as fascist without addressing each one?
                Really the burden of proof should be on the one making the claim, shouldn’t it?

                • Apollo@sh.itjust.works
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                  People confuse facism and authoritarianism all the time, and people respond to this as if they’ve never figured this out.

                  So instead of anything productive these threads churn out:

                  Omg communist countries are fascist!

                  actually no socialist!

                  lol oppression

                  Vs

                  hey why do so many socialist states end up being super authoritarian?

                  hey yeah thats a huge problem, but lets ignore it because west bad

        • BigNote@lemm.ee
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          Said no one. Except you. You either know what a Gish gallop is, or you don’t. A long comment is not necessarily a Gish gallop. In this case the charge is entirely accurate.

            • BigNote@lemm.ee
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              As if it’s somehow impossible to make a long comment in support of a single argument? As if Gish galloping comments don’t actually exist? Do I follow your logic properly? What part about this do I not understand?

                • BigNote@lemm.ee
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                  What argument? 20+ arguments were made. Which one am I meant to address?

                  If I focus on one you’ll jump on me for not addressing the 19 others, which is why it’s a bullshit tactic.

      • BigNote@lemm.ee
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        That’s precisely the point. These guys have a toolbox of fallacious arguments and techniques that they regularly trot out. The Gish gallop is one of them. Another, that you see being put to wide use in this thread, is redefining words and terms to fit their narrative.

  • Annakah69 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    You have a lifetime of anti communist propaganda to overcome. You’re close, take the last step and realize you’ve been lied to about AES countries. No place is a utopia, but those countries are lights in the dark.

        • mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          The initial meme included basically all communist countries

          This meme is against the initial meme.

          Also which communist countries had dictators again?

          China, North Korea

            • mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              1 year ago

              When?

              Always has been. Government taking control of every action of citizens is dictatorship. Theese people have total power of the country

              …Ergo…

              What??

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                Always has been. Government taking control of every action of citizens is dictatorship. Theese people have total power of the country

                The DPRK and China both don’t have parties that are in any way capable of controlling every action of their citizenry. They both have massive grassroots democratic institutions. Hell, look up whole process peoples democracy and the taean work system.

                what

                The initial meme made fun of being against those countries as a socialist. This meme is against that idea. Ergo… the meme is against all those socialist countries.

                • xor@infosec.pub
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                  no way you’re trying to pretend like dprk is a free country…

                  go ask some refugees what it’s like

      • Flinch [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_

        First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist

        Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist

        Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist

        Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew

        Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me

      • ThereRisesARedStar [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        Do you mean the german ones thrown in the camps or the soviet leadership who were the last of the eventual allied powers to do any sort of appeasement with Hitler (after exhausting all attempts to form an alliance with Britain and France) because communism is less aligned with fascist goals than liberalism is aligned with fascist goals, massive underexageration mine? Do you mean the communist low level officials who helped in a massive ethnic relocation program to move vulnerable minorities out of the way of the eventual german invasion? Or do you mean the population of the only communist nation which lost 26 million people, around 1/6th of their population, stopping the holocaust?

        Or were you referring to the joke about racism? If so, you gotta look up how the population of the USSR was not considered white at the time. Emma Goldman for example basically called Stalin a slanty eyed conniving Asian, for example. Nowadays slavs are still called orcs and shit by westerners.

  • somename [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    Cuba is a beacon of progress and humanity in the Americas. Fidel Castro was a hero. Also a pro at dodging the CIA’s kill squads.

    • Asuka@sh.itjust.works
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      Cuba did some good things - in education, in medicine - but if it’s such a wonderful country, why is everything there a decaying flashback to the 1950s where everything is falling apart?

      • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        Lmao, that’s a testament to communist Cuba’s success. No other form of government could withstand a US embargo for a year and not collapse. Cuba has withstood for DECADES and has surpassed the US in life expectancy. The buildings are kinda shabby, but homelessness, infant mortality, illiteracy are all LOWER than the US, the richest country in the history of the world.

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        Because the US has been embargoing it for 50 years to prevent it from getting everything it needs.

        The UN regularly votes on the US embargo of Cuba, and only the US and its lapdog Israel support it.

  • Cyclohexane@lemmy.mlM
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    I agree. Fascist countries like Denmark, Germany and Canada often get called “socialist” and they have been disastrous for the reputation of socialism.

      • carl_marks_1312 [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        Too bad instances can’t defederate HB.

        Can you please elaborate?

        They seem to not understand that they’re tankies.

        Tankie is a social construct and is used to lazily discredit everyone to the left of bernie. It functions to libs the same way as “woke” functions for chuds. As a term it’s basically meaningless to anyone outside of the internet.

        • FluffyPotato@lemm.ee
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          I have only seen it used in reference to people who support dictatorial regimes with socialist aesthetics, mostly MLs. I have yet to see an anarchist be called a tankie. Also you can hear it IRL, not commonly though since most MLs are on twitter and the like and not IRL.

          • Annakah69 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Based on your answer, I’ve discovered what tankie means: Tankie = Marxist.

            Successful Marxist movement results in a dictatorship of the proletariat. Dictator = tankie.

            Hence tankie is a term used to describe any Marxist.

            Thanks for contributing to this scientific breakthrough!

            • FluffyPotato@lemm.ee
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              Nah, first premise is false in more than one way. You are conflating the ideology Stalin made with Marxism.

              The second error is that there has never been a dictatorship of the proletariat, every time it has been a political party that seizes power for themselves and not the workers. In doing so they become the ruling class with differing class interests than the workers.

              Marx must be rotating in his grave with the speed to power the whole globe at this point.

              • Annakah69 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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                You didn’t do the reading :(. Dictatorship of the proletariat is a concept Marx and Engles adopted. Stalin didn’t create it.

                I don’t know what you think the proletariat taking control of the state is suppose to look like, but there will always be a communist party involved. The mechanisms of power exist to be ruled by a party.

                Communist parties should be judged by what they do for their poorest citizens. With that in mind, AES countries are doing a decent job. Things get better when they are in power, and get way worse if they are overthrown

              • uralsolo [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                the ideology Stalin made

                I would say Lenin was more instrumental in the creation of Marxism-Leninism, Stalin was just the guy who happened to be in charge when they named it. It’s also a tendency that has evolved a lot from what it was in the 40s.

                • FluffyPotato@lemm.ee
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                  Do you believe capitalism is good because it helped some people? The whole point of socialism is to put the means of production into the hands of the workers and not a vanguard party. Yea, the USSR did quite a lot of imperialism which it used to reduce income inequality of the Russian people but it was never socialist.

              • WideningGyro [any]@hexbear.net
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                Yeah, clearly the Soviet, Chinese and Cuban workers had completely different interests than being raised out of poverty and squalor. Damn those dastardly political parties and their… diligent work towards eradictaing poverty while promoting actual, decentralized democracy.

                • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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                  Well, Cubans still live in pretty close proximity to squalor. They can’t even afford to maintain their own buildings, don’t have a functional transportation system, and people live on what, $20 a month? The one saving grace is out there health care system is decent. And by that, I mean much more equitable than in the United States.

    • Plibbert@lemmy.ml
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      I’m confused, are you saying he’s using it wrong?

      Here’s a copy paste from Webster.

      often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

      Replace the word race with party and you’ve got an incomplete yes, but not necessarily inaccurate description of Stalins USSR.

      Seriously not trying to just be a troll or shill here, so if you feel I’m wrong please let me know how and why. I am legitimately, in good faith, curious about the perspectives of some communist here. It is an ideology I am somewhat interested in.

      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        Personally I like the definition that the historian Robert O. Paxton uses. Now, he’s a liberal, but he does have good insight into fascism and he doesn’t fall into that trap of deciding that communists and fascists must be the same thing. His definition isn’t materialist, but it’s a good start.

        To paraphrase, his definition is “a suppression of the left among popular sentiment.” By left he means things like socialists, labor organizations, communists, etc. Fascism is a situation where a country has found its theater of democracy has failed and the capitalists need anything at all to keep themselves in power, even if it means cannibalizing another sector of capitalists. The fascists are the ideological contingent of this, who put forward a policy of class collaboration between working class and capitalist, instead of what socialists propose, which is working class dominance in the economy. Fascists exalt nationality or race because that extends through class sentiments. It brushes aside concerns like internal economic contradictions. I once had a comrade say something like “Fascism is capitalists hitting the emergency button until their hand starts bleeding.”

        Communists using a vanguard party is to defend their own interests against capitalists or outside invaders. The praise of the CPSU in Stalin’s era was precisely because it acted as a development and protection tool for the working class. It did its job and people were wary of any return to the previous Tsarist or liberal governments. Women began going to school, women were given the vote for the first time. Pogroms ceased. In less than one lifetime of the CPSU administrating the country, people went from poor farmers to living in apartments with plumbing, heating, and clean medical care. That’s why there was such praise of the party, because they actually did things people liked, and they didn’t want anything to threaten them.

        Also, what does it matter if there’s one party or two? The working class have a singular, uniting interest to overthrow capitalism. Why are multiple parties needed? Anything the working class needs to negotiate for can be handled within a socialist, democratic structure, not two or three competing structures against one another. Take a look at Cuba, which has one party, but doesn’t use their party to endorse candidates. Everyone’s officially an independent in the National Assembly.

            • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml
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              If i remember his book correctly, at start he explicitly denies marxist definition of fascism, and then in course of the book his research lead straight to it being correct on at least two separate occasions, them makes full stop and end the topic when he realise what would he have to write next.

              I don’t know if thats merely ritually exorcising communism in order to have his book accepted by liberal academia (like in case of Geza Alfoldy for example) or he really is this intellectually dishonest, because he clearly did realised. Anyway it was funny as hell and the book isn’t even bad.

              • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                Possibly because of the way he’s found his career. Paxton is very popular in France and was very instrumental in introducing liberal historiography into French WW2 history. For him to throw a bone to Marxists would be undermining how he earned a name for himself in the first place.

                • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml
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                  Yeah i see that in polish social sciences too, especially by older authors, it’s hard here to keep position in the academia without paying at least lip service to anticommunist witchhunt. Unfortunately even those people are already dead and the new ones are not even shy about being opportunists, most books publish nowadays are almost worthless since it’s either anticommunist propaganda, pophistory or bland compilations from older ones.

            • Dr_Gabriel_Aby [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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              I do think it was an attempt. They just didn’t even know that a coup attempt involved more than walking in the door and demanding Trump be president. The next one in America will involve mass killing, and it will be from a similar demographic.

              • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                Yeah we’re still in a position where American fascism doesn’t even recognize itself in the mirror. It doesn’t realize it’s a movement that needs coherent aims. It’s still stuck in the American paradigm of politics as consumerism. A comrade the other day here said the explicit kind of American fascism is having a hard time getting off the ground because they refuse to adopt socialist rhetoric, like European fascist movements in the past.

                • Dr_Gabriel_Aby [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                  Yea that’s well said, also American fascists luckily have no history to look back to that’s before the US state formation. So instead of wanting a new system, they just want their guy to play President as they sit on the couch.

        • Plibbert@lemmy.ml
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          This was an enlightening comment and I appreciate it. I may not agree with all of it but it definitely shows there are some perspectives I haven’t considered. A parliamentary or council type system could definitely provide enough representation of different working class communities within a single party. I wonder if they had term limits, or if their representatives would fall into the same hole as the US Congress.

          • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            The common socialist position is that term limits are anti-democratic not just because they keep people from voting for who they want to but, more significantly, it tilts the scales in favor of structures that do not have term limits. In the US, for example, elections are essentially completely controlled by private companies from the media to the National Conventions, and term limits check the power of popular candidates (and therefore popular sentiment) versus capital, which does not expire in 8 years.

  • JamesConeZone [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    The pure (libertarian) socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.

    • mimichuu_@lemm.ee
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      Look, I agree that it’s dumb to call yourself a socialist and have zero respect for most attempts at socialism, especially when your critique doesn’t come from anything serious but just parroting of cold war propaganda. I agree that these countries weren’t literally the devil, nor fascist, not “pretending”, that’s all fine.

      But it’s still so dishonest of MLs to dig for quotes and smugly boastbout how “libertarians never succeed”. Even if we completely ignore all the very explicit and deliberate attempts at sabotage anarchists had to endure from their statist “comrades” (which we shouldn’t but we always casually seem to be forced to do in the name of “unity”), it doesn’t change the fact that vanguardist revolutions have all been incredibly flawed too.

      You all are very often willing to recognize your failures, most of the people like you I have talked to seem to agree that at some point the revolution was “hijacked”, usurped, corrupted, lost aim, usually coinciding with a figure they don’t like taking over the revolutionary government and messing things up.

      The supposed “strong state that crushes all opposition” being taken over by the reformist opposition and then the capitalist one in the case of the USSR and Leninists. The market reforms of Deng in the case of China and Maoists. But you all never seem to ask yourselves the question “Why was that allowed to happen?”. Why am I supposed to put my trust in some authoritarian bullshit solution specifically justified as a means to protect the revolution when it failed at doing so? Why do you have to be so smug and condescending at me for not trusting in things that didn’t work?

      Why do you instead of learning from the mistakes in your methods that most of the time you yourself recognize and trying to come up with new ideas and systems for the current age, insist on still clinging to material analysis of the world of a hundred years ago as the gospel, the sole undying and absolute truth on how to Make Socialism, merely saying “it’ll totally work right this time” instead? Why do you insist on mocking and “”“dunking”“” on anyone who refuses to do that?

      They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted.

      This is all completely false. It genuinely is just lies. You can disagree with the explanations, but to claim there literally aren’t any is just ignorance and a complete lack of good faith. Look, if you’re a socialist in the internet, you probably have dealt with confidently incorrect liberals whining about strawmen that you don’t believe, because they haven’t read anything about it - and it’s probably been incredibly frustrating. So why do you never think twice before doing the same thing with anarchists?

      I’m always told to read Lenin and a ton of authoritarian essays and I always do in good faith, but it’s extremely rare for me to ever be afforded the same honour, and then all the conversations I have end up with people telling me shit like this and me having to explain anarchism 101 to them because they genuinely don’t actually know anything.

      No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.

      I am also always told to be charitable and nuanced about the failures and mistakes of vanguardist revolutions, but no one ever has the same honour with anarchist ones.