• spirit@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    On another topic, there are rumors circulating that we are fascists or supported genocide. These claims are completely false, and like most viral twitter threads, are coming from a single Mastodon user on a personal vendetta who didn’t provide any sources. Such slander doesn’t deserve any response and is best left ignored.

    • SilentStorms@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I don’t agree with these views at all, but I don’t agree with the view that no one should use lemmy because of the opinions of the developers. Its an open-source project, just don’t use anything hosted by them. Like I don’t support the US military, but that doesn’t stop me from using the internet.

      • barsoap@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        One sore point there is that the code comes by default with a donation link (the heart at the top) to join-lemmy.org. Even without the tankie issue it should rather go to a page local to the instance explaining donation options, and the default should be “The admin didn’t set this up, if you urgently need to get rid of money here’s a link to Doctors without Borders”.

        OTOH there’s now a huge influx of people including tons of developers so I expect tankie influence to be drowned out sooner than later.

        • SilentStorms@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Yeah, developers of new instances should probably edit that out.

          I don’t think its a huge issue though, looking at that page the number of people who have donated more than $10 is like… a dozen.

      • 0xtero@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        This is just it. Software is software. You can spin your own instance and moderate it as you wish. It’s open source, so you can change and modify it.
        But right now they’re asking for donations to run their instance and help with their code.

        So before you donate money and your time/expertise/code - it’s probably a good idea to know who is asking for it. It’s not entirely clear, to be honest.

        • barsoap@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          It’s the tankie “It’s not a genocide, no I’m not denying that people are getting murdered I’m saying that they had it coming for reasons other than being of a particular group” kind of genocide denial-support.

          About the only thing that makes tankies not technically fascist is that they come up with elaborate rationalisations of why everything they do serves the common good. They manage to rationalise any and all human rights abuses and atrocities as “necessary evil”.

          Once upon a time a German lyricist/composer wrote a song satirising that kind of attitude. The GDR’s ruling party adopted is as their hymn, unironically. Do watch it it’s glorious in its insanity.

            • barsoap@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Click on the three dots next to reply, click on the star.

              …wait you’re using kbin. No idea.

          • cnnrduncan@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            Most far-right fascists also make up excuses for the genocides they support - the Nazis said that Jewish people were responsible for the collapse of the Weimar economy (and a lot of other bullshit) for example.

            • barsoap@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Yeah but fascists don’t believe it, or even put much effort in those arguments. It’s merely a signal to their supporters saying “Yep we hate Jews”.

              And I do grant tankies the point that they don’t inherently hate Uyghurs – what they hate is there being cultural aspects not under their control as that means a current of mass psychology outside of party control. The most they will countenance is “Socialism with Uyghur characteristics” next to “Socialism with Chinese characteristics”, under the condition that it’s about weave patterns of traditional hats or something, not loyalty to the party’s prerogative of interpretation: If Bejing thinks a particular weave pattern is counter-revolutionary then it is, Uyghurs don’t get a say.

          • ThisIsMyNewAccount@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            By what definition of fascism are tankies the same?

            I’ve seen the term tankie more here in my last week in the fediverse than at any other time in my life so forgive me if I don’t fully understand. From what I’ve gathered, it’s extreme auth-left. Though being authoritarian does not automatically mean fascist.

            • barsoap@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              They’re not the same but the more you ignore motive and rationale the more similar they look. As such, they’re the same by the “definition” of shallow analysis, or over-subscribing to “the purpose of a system is what it does” which I tend to be guilty of.

        • polygon@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Not sure what I make of that. He quoted a guy, rather than giving his own opinion. We can make a lot of assumptions about why he quoted the guy, but without stating an opinion it can only ever be speculation. In a massive list of essays, which I admittedly haven’t read all of, one quote seems to be the big uproar about fascists running Lemmy?

          And then being like “Hey maybe don’t delete posts just because they’re about China? That doesn’t break any rules,” suddenly makes them in love with the CCP? I don’t have any context to judge the quote and posts regarding China literally do not break any rule. “Orientalism” is a ridiculous reason to delete a post.

          This all seems completely blown out of proportion like typical Twitter drama.

          • barsoap@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Calling something orientalism, in a Neo-Marxist context, is, roughly, calling Marx’s Eurocentrism problematic, which is 110% fucking fair. Used by a tankie it means “You can’t criticise China because you’re not Chinese”.

      • 0xtero@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        There’s also these:
        https://raddle.me/f/lobby/96713/heads-up-the-tankie-behind-lemmy-ml-got-banned-from-r
        https://raddle.me/f/TankiesGonnaTank/89852/the-lemmy-ml-admin-is-banning-anyone-that-mentions-stalin-or
        (google cache since the site is down) https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KNky1TdNscwJ:https://lemmy.pineapplemachine.com/post/5781&cd=13&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=se&client=firefox-b-d

        And I believe there’s some allegations of them hosting the lemmygrad.ml instance, which is basically full on tankie home.

        Basically, they don’t think Uyghur genocide happened, they don’t think Stalin did anything wrong and they love Xi.

        And now they’re asking for your money