this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2023
206 points (100.0% liked)
Chat
7498 readers
10 users here now
Relaxed section for discussion and debate that doesn't fit anywhere else. Whether it's advice, how your week is going, a link that's at the back of your mind, or something like that, it can likely go here.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Socialism is not the same as what's going on here. Socialism means you believe in good for the common citizen, not denying reality and wishing death and destruction on peaceful people.
Minor correction, socialism has one definition and one definition only: worker ownership of the means of production
I support that definition, but it's false, unconstructive and arrogant to declare it's the only one. It never has been. It's not even Marx's definition, which is undoubtedly an extremely influential one throughout history. This is the kind of dogmatism I'd expect from a tankie.
Socialism is a widespread global phenomenon with hundreds of variants and competing theories from a range of historical underpinnings. There never has been one definition, not even back in the 1800s.
Eh, agree to disagree
While I have to admit that I've been frustrated by the tankies during my short stay on lemmy.ml, I don't think that's a fair representation of their views.
Most I believe seem frustrated by a western world that seem entirely too content in accepting a narrative heavily biased in favor of laissez-faire capitalism and right wing narratives, to the extent that it has blinded them to the cruelty of regimes in China and Russia.
I think that in order to foster a fruitful discussion here and avoid the trenches that often form between differing political views on the web, trying first to understand and empathise with an opposing view is crucial. It's been a good heuristic for me at least, except in those cases where there is zero intention of even trying to understand each other (where just ignoring works well).
I think it is a huge culture shock for redditors who are used to the idea of extremists being the alt right, and the ones that they are used to mainly associating with hate speech and being in agreement they are an unsavory group.
Particularly with a lot of redditors who joined lemmy just looking for a reddit alternative for their hobbies. Usually in reddit when you hear someone say they don't want politics the image that comes to mind is some alt right fascist who get hung up on how other people live their personal life and complain about not being able to use hate speech.
So encountering supposed liberals who are very reminiscent of the alt right is incredibly jarring. It's leading to some going wait...what?...
quick plug for /c/leftistinfighting