I’m not certain that the huge expenditure on the arms race could have been avoided but it certainly didn’t help the USSR economically.

I liked Asimov’s critique of 1984. http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm It’s as much criticism of Orwell the person as it is 1984 the book.

lmao

No, I just think you guys are here to discredit any actual communist movement by being so goddamn cringe.

Tankies projection?

Best way I found was to block the top three lemmygrad sublemmies, which filters out a great deal of them.

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Yes, but you’re arguing with people that already know about both sets of crimes. So by pointing out that “But the US did racism” doesn’t win you any moral high ground or make any point, it just is you trying to deflect from admitting that, yeah, sometimes countries do shitty things.

That’s funny. I mostly see it when: Person 1: Russia is bad because they invaded their neighbor.

Person 2: The US did racism. OR P erson 2: Ukraine is Nazis.

In this case, neither thing person 2 says addresses that invading your neighbor in order to take control of to for territory is kind of a bad, imperialist thing to do.

The problem with this argument is that there aren’t really any sides, and these arguments you’re pointing to as examples aren’t math equations. Two sides can both be wrong at the same time, without it being a point-scoring game. It really doesn’t matter who is worst, most of the time.

To use your example, “and you’re lynching negroes” is whataboutism, because it’s not a defense of imprisoning dissidents, nor a response to it. It’s just an attempt to avoid having to defend the actions of the side you identify with by pointing out that your opponent’s side has also done indefensible things.

It’s not that you have to be perfect all the time, but when your side is accused of a crime, the correct response isn’t to deny responsibility and point fingers. At least, I believe the correct response is to A.) Actually defend your actions. Maybe you had good reasons, or maybe the exigencies of the situation required it. OR B.) Admit wrongdoing, promise to do better and actually try to keep that promise.

Saying “Well, actually I don’t have to address this because racism.” is so incredibly pathetic, and doesn’t really inspire respect. I admit it is a little difficult to argue with people predisposed to think that all communists are evil and wrong, America is the greatest USA, etc. But, to be honest I don’t really think there’s much point in arguing with those people anyway, because it’s not really going to convince them and is generally a waste of time. I do think it’s useful and important to recognize whataboutism, because it’s frequently used by the unscrupulous to shift criticism away from themselves. I think a good example of this in modern politics is Trump using Hunter Biden benefiting from nepotism to distract audiences during debates from his own failings. Instead of addressing those failings, he would throw out accusations that his opponent was also corrupt. This wasn’t untrue, but it also wasn’t relevant and saved him from having to respond to accusations of wrongdoing while allowing him to establish a false equivalency between nepotism and his many, many crimes.

None of the articles that came up from that link specified stillbirth.

Damn. I used to really enjoy League, but I had to give it up because of stuff like this. What absolute cretins.

I’m a little curious what this user was banned for as well. I don’t have any vested interest, but I scrolled through Julianus’ comments and didn’t see anything approaching bad taste. Maybe I missed it, or it was scrubbed.

I know the Azov battalion exist, that doesn’t mean I should be okay with some random civilian getting his house blown up. And obviously Ukraine, soon.

Up until about a month ago, I thought lemmy.ml was plenty welcoming to people on the left that weren’t tankies. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that’s changed. The anarkiddie jokes get old really, really fast.

This would be a lot easier to take at face value if I didn’t see so much blatant Putin apologia on lemmy. It’s totally possible to condemn both the US and Russia for being warmongering, bloated empires, but it feels like in a lot of cases criticism of the US is brought up to downplay Putin’s warcrimes. No war but class war.

Jerboa is faster for me than the reddit app, although its missing features. I haven’t had any difficulty logging into Lemmy.ml with either Jerboa or Lemmur.

Is this a joke? I honestly can’t tell.

I didn’t even realize it existed. I’m really excited.

Some pretty questionable alt-right links in there.