There's definitely a lot more radical ideas here than usual, but outside of lemmy.ml/lemmygrad and hexbear you will generally find a mix of normal people with progressive policies instead of CCP supporters.
A mod on Lemmy.ml likes deleting my comments because I said people have suffered under communism. His mod log response was a broke a fake news rule because there is literally no evidence of anyone suffering under communism. I’m working on my masters in history and just wrote a paper about Sergei Korolev….
Russia and Putin are not communist.
I suspect most Lemmy users in that thread are democratic socialists, and not full blown communists.
I made a silly comment in that thread that suggested that I'm a communist when I'm more of a democratic socialist.
Some support communism but no true communist also supports the fascist regimes of Putin or Xi.
I could use some more communism in my life, but I don't consider myself a communist.
I don't think anyone has polls. There is a much higher far-left proportion than on Reddit, as things stand.
Note that Reddit is one unified world, albeit with division by subreddit.
The Threadiverse is not. Some instances have very different communities -- some only permit certain types of users. And not all instances federate with each other, and if your instance doesn't federate with another, you won't see content from those instances.
So, for example, lemmygrad.ml and to a lesser degree lemmy.ml has a bunch of people -- including the lead Lemmy dev -- who are enthusiastic about Stalin and the Soviet Union, pro-authoritarian-left. Hexbear.net is kinda out there too.
Then you've got exploding-heads.com, which I believe is far-right.
Lemmy.world is more-mainstream, but I'd certainly place it left of Reddit on average. It doesn't federate with lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net or exploding-heads.com.
Beehaw.org is what I'd call far-left, but less in the authoritarian camp, but they've defederated from lemmy.world.
You can see defederations on an instance under "Blocked instances" at /instances. So for example:
Most instances also say something about their policies in the right-hand sidebar.
I think that some of it is also that some people are very vocal about their political views, and I think that some of those are disproportionately in the far-left camp. Like, if someone wants to vent that they think that society would be better off as an anarchy or that private ownership of industry or money or whatever shouldn't exist, I think that those people are gonna be more likely to have strong feelings about and repeatedly post about their point of disagreement than someone saying "I think that things are going pretty well, but I'd like Tweak X and Y".
I think you've got most of it pretty well outlined here. A couple minor additions/thoughts:
Lemmys communist leanings are probably self reinforcing. If you're a moderate/mainstream leftie but think communism is a but silly, well noting so will get you "yelled at" by those disproportionately loud voices. It gets tiring, so I imagine the mainstream/moderates learn to avoid communism adjacent threads/questions etc.
There also may be an age thing. I have less time and inclination to argue with randoms online than when I was younger. And when I was younger I had much more extreme (and in retrospect some embarrassing) views.
To put it another way, when I first joined, it was to kbin.social. Kbin has a feature to help people discover new communities where it will suggest random comments. This leads to...rather dramatic cross-pollination. So, for example, I remember looking at a technology community on pawb.social. Some other random kbin.social user also showed up there, I'm sure via random comment, and was complaining that everyone in the forum was a furry. I mean...yeah, you just hopped right into the middle of their den. Same thing with yiffit.net and probably a number of other instances. Does that mean that the Threadiverse is all furries? Well, no. I'd say that it's disproportionately so compared to Reddit, but it's more that it's got special-interest instances.
Or transexual users on lemmy.blahaj.zone.
Or porn enthusiasts on lemmynsfw.com.
Or underage anime porn fans on burggit.moe.
Or science enthusiasts on mander.xyz.
Or Star Trek fans on startrek.website.
Hop onto any of those or communities on those, and you're likely to find a lot of content of the sort that the instance focuses on. But if your instance doesn't federate with them, you may not see that material at all, nor the users on those instances.
Wait... do you mean to tell me... that we are not all furries!?!?!?!?!?!?!
gif
Lemmy taught me what furries are.
We are edukashunal:-)
I wouldn't say so, in fact I would suggest maybe it's disgustingly neoliberal at times.
Also Putin in his own words is not looking to return to Communism he's looking for a return to Russian imperialism.
Another question. Why does this post have so many down votes? I have some ideas but I am not sure which is the real reason:
The lemmy.ml/lemmygrad instances LOVE to downvote anything against their ideas. Wouldn't be surprised if someone saw your post and told them to come down vote you for whatever reason.
Is that possible? With lemmygrad.ml being defederated from Lemmy.World I mean, where this community is located. They could always use alts ofc, e.g. from lemmy.ml.
It's the way you opened your post. You felt that perhaps Lemmy is largely communist, and some of us just don't see that trend at all. That means either you're ignoring many users, or you haven't spent a reasonable amount of time browsing, which in turn makes it a waste of time for us to answer your question.
That being said, I can only speak to my motivation. Presumably some other people downvoted for similar reasons.
Thank you for your opinion :) I will be more careful how I write my posts.
Questions/comments about communism that aren't positive get a lot of downvotes here.
Tankies brigade commonly
There are some places on the Fediverse where intellectual discourse - and honest questions - are outright welcomed. Sadly, whenever communism is brought up in such a prominent community, it summons the trolls. "They" have decided that it is to be thus, and with their numbers they enforce their will upon the rest of us.
It was this way on Reddit too, towards the end, and even more so now. Also X - these latter two more from far-right than far-left but whatever they claim to believe, their attitudes seem to be the same: the consent of others matters little to them (edit: actually that is probably not true - it seems to only embolden them further to think about overriding those; if you go into their spaces and read their chatter you will see this for yourself).
I have some high hopes for platform alternatives to Lemmy - including Piefed, Mbin, and Sublinks - that will allow for some larger-scale changes to facilitate further separation from at least that particular source. But for now, if you do a Lemmy search for the keyword "tankie" (yes it's a pejorative but... this is a search, and it's what people use), you will find many, Many, MANY posts on this topic.
It is probably the single biggest division in all of Lemmy - and imho at least (+ that of MANY others, including Reddit mods of major subs as you will read) it is the single thing that prevented Lemmy from going mainstream, back during the Rexodus. "They" don't want to hear "Western propaganda" on "their" platform, and vice versa, except almost every admin across the entirety of the Fediverse has refused to defederate from all of the "tankie" instances (notably, lemmy.cafe is the only one that blocks from all 3 - lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, and lemmy.ml - though the much milder midwest.social is still federated).
From what I've seen, they're more democratic socialist than communist. Besides, Russia and China may claim to be communist, but they really are not.
I'm not sure what I consider myself to be, but all I know is that US capitalism has been running rampant and dooming us all, and my current situation involves censorship and oppression under a Chinese dictatorship. Europe is nice, especially Germany and Sweden; I like that, whatever they are.
No...t entirely.
There is a lot of extremist propaganda here - e.g. advocating for literal murder (just search for the word "guillotine" to quickly get an idea of what I mean). Also, if you criticize Russia or China on lemmy.ml, or try to claim that e.g. genocidal practices happen (even share your second-hand accounting of Uyghur family members) you will get banned from communities that you've never even heard of across the entire instance, with no prior warning.
The "funny" part there is that both Russia and China are capitalist nations, not communist. It helps to think about children talking about what they think (or rather wish) communism is, rather than the real world. So they'll tell you to read certain books, while studiously ignoring e.g. that the Tiananmen Square massacre actually did take place, i.e. they cherry pick and only talk as if they care about it, rather than actually doing so. Think Truth Social, but claiming to be leftist rather than right.
But e.g. there's also Star Trek memes, and... well I am sure there are other things too, somewhere!?:-D More seriously, each instance has its own focus, none of which (anymore) is "conservative", all of which is left leaning, but the vast majority of which is not extremist. Mander.xyz for instance has some fantastic scientific content.
Check out !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca - I refer back to it often, e.g. to remember how to do things like use links to communities from different Fediverse instances. I wish it, or something like it at least, would be shared with everyone, but Lemmy is extremely primitive when it comes to such things (case in point, if you go to lemmy.ml, visit their sidebar, and click "What is lemmy.ml", it takes you to a post that does not exist).
I have been advocating for labeling such communities and instances - that way, like porn, people can enjoy it all they like while also being friendly enough to let others know what's present therein, and that way we can get along better. However extremists famously resist labeling themselves as such, treating their own views as the sole correct one and rather it is everyone else - yes literally the entire rest of the fucking world - that is "different". So instead, each person has to find out mostly on their own what these subjects are all about. Kudos for sticking around long enough to do so.
The majority? No. But the instances that are, are very loud. Block Lemmy.ml, hexbear.net, and Lemmygrad. That alone will massively improve your experience. BTW, they’re not just communist supporters. They’re tankies, extreme fascists who support militant oppression.
Notorious genocide deniers also... Can't go two comments with out doing some apologia
The main dev of Lemmy is a communist. That doesn't make everyone here communist. This is an edge community where oversimplified political ideological labels are not applicable. This is a pro community place with a focus on the community without exploitation. That is a community-ist thing. If you'd like to be exploited through stalkerware and data mining to manipulate you for profit, there are plenty of proprietary social platforms out there without any community-ist focus.
Actually read Marx writings before making labels or judgements. You will find that his arguments in the past were much the same as the problems of today. Marx was very much an advocate for democracy. Communism does not mean backwards Russian Bolshevism, and certainly has nothing to do with Putin.
Personally, I'm not for any state involvement in the market. I'm also not a fool. Capitalism is hated by anyone with a tenth of a working brain. The reason for capitalism is that is is the least worst evil. The theoretical separation of governance from the open market enables a mechanism to oust bad actors. The USA is absolutely failing at capitalism. You can not participate in your local market economy, and the market's consolidated pool of bad actors are directly influencing and manipulating governance. The USA is failing at democracy and capitalism, so maybe have a deep think about idealist principals like Marxism to better understand and reflect upon your own ideals.
I think it's more complex and not easy to sort. Mostly your instance managed what you can see. But not every user is directly sorted to what their instance is called to be.
I for example never heard about ml stands for Marxists-Leninist. It is the instance of the devs and is the first getting new versions. And I registered here long time ago. There wasn't too much instances in the past. Am I a tankie? Noo.
This question calls for a jokey response but I'm struggling to think of one. Of course, it's true that communists tend to have no sense of humor.
I respect its supporters (do they respect me, that is the real question) but must admit I am not one. It places prestige on characteristics that aren't equal opportunity in such a way that I cannot reconcile my view of humanity with it.
This is essentially why I'm an anarchist, it literally puts everyone on the same level and people who are put in places of responsibility report to everyone below them, and that responsibility can be recalled at any time.
I find people become communists over time and with some persuasion, but after learning about anarchy I found I already believed in every facet of it. If you have basic human decency, then you'll likely be surprised how much you believe in it too.
What is it called where you believe in the validity of authority but only on a conditional level?
I'm really not sure, I'm not the biggest theory person tbh. Depending on what you're thinking of, that could just be anarchy.
I don't want to assume what you mean, but if you're perhaps talking about something along the lines of following and listening to experts, then that's understood to be a positive thing to us anarchists. To use a painfully fresh example, following scientists/medical professionals on public health decisions, rather than conspiracy theorists
Like... to start off, I've heard of what is referred to as Minarchy, which etymologically means a minimal government (or one run by "voluntarism"), but that doesn't sound like what I convey. "Relationship anarchy" (one would say a principle of mine, and I look to that here) for one has often been placed under the umbrella of libertarian thought but it's closer to a conditional thing. If there are things I'd refer to as a creator (my parents, the sun if it were sentient, maybe God, etc.), I would obey them and not be "anarchist" towards them, as I also may towards peers and contemporaries on a basis of agreement, or towards people who create a club/service so as long as it's within the bounds of what they made (think back to relationship anarchy), even bypassing my own sense of voluntarism/liberty in the process, but a ruler (whether or not elected) that says "[from the moment you're born] I am automatically your authority because that's just how it works", that's not (unless agreed to in hindsight by an individual) valid if you ask me. Note good and bad derivatives/foundations, which also explains my comments surrounding subsidiarism and localism; at least in a town context, there is some increased level of regard to what I'm saying.
Obviously not. The users are just people, so the stats are likely to be in line with global reality.
And, are you seriously seeing support for Putin or CCP? Maybe on some instance, but most of Lemmy is bound to be sane and not trolling.
Lemmy.world = centrist democrat, it seems to me. It is against the TOS here to talk about the wrong kind of cat food (there was a big drama about that last month) and it tries to be a safe space by blocking everything outside its window (the most informative covid-19 community is on hexbear but you can't read it here). Lemmy.ml = left wing, "ML" sometimes stands for Marx-Lenin. Lemmygrad is more of a joke(?) but it pretends(??) to be Stalinist.
The .ml is short for Marxist-Leninist, so yes.
They made it mean it but it is a Mali national TLD
I wouldn't say that majority of lemmy is communism supporters. But I would say lemmy if (far) left-wing biased. If you express valid, supported by science and statistic, opinion that's not liberal enough you will still be called fascist, xeno/trans/homo/etc phobe. My advice, don't a single f*** about it and keep open mind.
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