Honest question, I thought hexbear had a mandate against “lionizing Luigi Mangione,” but I have been seeing more hexbear users like u/QuietCupcake even in this thread posting emojis that I thought would have gotten them removed or worse last December. Is that why OP is posting it here with an .ml account even though (forgive and correct me if I’m wrong comrade) you’re mostly a hexbear user? Did the mods there ever acknowledge the absurdity of that rule and roll it back, was it just quietly forgotten, or is it still selectively enforced? Don’t get me wrong, I think hexbear is mostly a great instance that I often comment in solidarity with, but I was surprised to see what seemed like an extremely uncharacteristic liberal position they took on that.

Russia is much more democratic than Ukraine. While Russia is unfortunately still capitalist and therefore ruled by a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, it is no less democratic than the western countries - countries that are also bourgeois dictatorships - that call Russia autocratic as a convenient way to demonize their enemy. Meanwhile Ukraine is ruled by a fascist coup regime installed by NATO, a regime that has indefinitely suspended elections and regularly kidnaps members of its population off the street in unmarked vans to be sent off to the front lines of the war as cannon fodder. It is the most openly neo-Nazi country on the planet, much to the consternation of western journos and politicians who have to keep making excuses and trying to redirect everyone’s attention away from the swastikas and cult-like deference to a dead Nazi nationalist.

So if you’re disregarding the previous comment because you think its sources are dubious all because they report on topics you find distasteful, it’s time you started questioning the sources that you have mistakenly trusted, the ones that are telling you the lies about Ukraine that you seem to have swallowed without any critical thought or questioning.

Hopefully we can all agree at least that yes, China is far more democratic than any of the above in that its people can and do effect change in the system that governs them, and they are almost universally happy with their government.

The “tankie” instances are the least likely to have bots. They’re the most vehemently anti-AI and the moderators most active in banning any kind of bot-like activity. Hexbear, the one that all the dronies clutch their pearls about most and accuse of brigading the most doesn’t even have downvotes - they are incapable of mass downvoting.

Diseases did not conquer hundreds of tribes.

Disease played a major role in the European’s ability to conquer those tribes. It’s not an either/or situation. It is true that the “Americas” that the English started colonizing had already been devastated by the contagions brought by the Spanish. The English undoubtedly would have found it far more difficult and maybe even impossible to conquer those hundreds of tribes had they not first been so severely depopulated by pandemic. Acknowledging this does not absolve or even lessen the atrocities committed by the English.

Voters should vote for those who represent their interests. If any candidate is endorsing (let alone committing) genocide, and that is a violation of a given voter’s interests (and it damn well better be), then that voter should not vote for that candidate, period. If there are only 2 options and both are genocidal, then neither should be rewarded with a vote. You want “harm reduction”? Then vote for PSL - if your liberal obsession with voting has convinced you that voting has any power whatsoever, then don’t use it to reward genocide, use that power to say no to it entirely. If your position is that “we live under a system where we are getting genocide no matter what” then rather than going “well, there’s a chance this one might be one iota less genocide” maybe start coming to the correct conclusion that the system is indeed irredeemably rotten and rigged FOR genocide, that it is designed to be this way which makes all of that system your enemy, not just the orange team that says the quiet part out loud too much, but also the one that smiles politely and gives the right lip service while literally, not figuratively, but very much actually mass murdering children. Yep, that blue team is your enemy too. So now it’s time to get down to the hard work of building alternative power structures through organization in direct defiance of the genocidal machine, having done away with your petty red(orange)/blue team false dichotomy. Join us in actually working for a better world rather than tossing up your hands and voting for the genocidaires that cry crocodile tears and pretend it’s such a sad state of affairs as they massacre little kids for power and profit. You aren’t actually beholden to support them. They aren’t the “lesser” evil, they’re just another piece of the entire evil machine!

You seem to lack the reasoning capacity of most toddlers. The US war machine is committing genocide. Both the democrats and the republicans fully and unreservedly support and represent that US war machine. The genocide was started under one genocidal maniac (Biden) and continues under another (Trump). You weren’t getting “genocide-lite” when Biden, the one who ensured the genocide began and commenced without impedance, was in office and you aren’t getting “genocide-plus” now that the other genocidal maniac is in power. You are being played for a fool by a good-cop/bad-cop routine that is so plainly obvious it makes me literally wince to see fools be taken in by it. But of course they are, because it’s easier to pretend you made some difference by voting rather than actually doing anything to help the people literally being genocided right now. (Those of us who would never vote for fascists as the commit genocide are the ones sending aid directly to Palestinians while you whine about your team of blue fascists not being the ones in the big boy chair while the genocide commences and wagging your finger pathetically at the people who actually fight for justice. You aren’t fucking helping “lessen” the genocide by voting for the people who started it and ensured it continued on into the next term. People like you disgust me.

It’s a shame you’re unable to see which flags are swastikas while you go on supporting them.

should apply to China, seeing how most of their bad shit happend internally with the notable exceptions of Taiwan and Hong Kong

Those are still internal to China. I can understand that people are ignorant of the fact that Taiwan is part of China given the rhetoric around it and the fact that it is still provisionally ruled by the ousted rump-state nationalist government that still thinks it’s the legitimate ruler of Mongolia too. Taiwan IS part of China, but there IS something being actually being contested there. But Hong Kong? Hong Kong unambiguously is in China, it’s just one of the Special Autonomous Regions, but even they themselves consider themselves part of China, not “external” to it.

Also, it’s not “bad shit,” it’s treating reactionaries with relatively kid gloves.

There is a distinctive difference between Russia and China, despite both belonging to same political alliance and both have a dictatorial leaderships.

China does not have a “dictorial” leadership. As for Russia, well it’s leadership is no more “dictorial” than that of any western “democracy” leadership. Their “political alliance” is still relatively loose, and the only way in which they could be considered part of the same “axis” (not a word you used, but still kind of implied) is because the US’s belligerence against them both has driven them closer together.

Hating west/USA and loving either of them would make one a campist,

Hating the west/USA is just a matter of simultaneously knowing history and being a compassionate, empathetic human being. And I would bet that most of the people you would say “love” either Russia or China rather just support their actions and goals, probably very critically in the case of Russia, and do so for rational reasons based on the true behavior of those countries. That is not campism. Campism is when you support (or “love”) a country not because its actions genuinely align with your own ideals or ideology but purely because you identify with it. Interestingly, it largely stems from a failure of self-awareness. There absolutely are campists for Russia and for China, I am not denying that at all. But despite what the libs here say, you won’t find very many of them on lemmy. Most of the people on lemmy support these countries for very rational reasons regarding ideology and their geopolitical conduct.

but I’m not sure about that qualifyng as tankie.

I always understood it to be a derogatory term for the general authoritarian communist/pseudo-communist block more so than applying to all national supermacists.

This is more or less correct. Most campists on lemmy support the US/NATO and they certainly aren’t tankies by anyone’s standards. You’re right about it always having been solely a derogatory term for certain radical leftists, nowadays usually those who support countries whose governments are fighting western imperialism. But like many others have said in this thread, it is becoming so diluted that merely not supporting the fascist DNC has been enough to get a person labeled a tankie. The silly “authoritarian” part mostly came into play once liberals started using the term and (as usual) completely not understanding its origins (origins that have to do with a specific uprising in Hungary in the 1950s).

Eastern Ukrain was genocide, then what is happening to the Uygurs is definitely also genocide.

Except in Ukraine people did die and their heritage and language were being actively suppressed, etc. We know this because it is documented all over, even in pictures on the net. These specific things are readily confirmable. It was even a large impetus for a broader war, as hopefully you’re aware. There is zero question that Ukrainian nazis were shelling Russian-speaking civilians in the Donbas and that Ukraine as a state was passing laws detrimental to Russian speakers.

In Xinjiang, no such evidence exists because nothing of the sort happened. It’s based on a lie dreamed up by one Christian fundamentalist Adrian Zenz. Every source on this “genocide” traces back to him, and none of the claims are confirmable. Even to the UN! In fact you, yes, even you if you have the means to travel, can go there today and see for yourself that the Uyghur population is thriving and they will laugh if you tell them they’re being genocided. I’ll leave the academic discussion for exactly where to draw the line for the definition of the term genocide to others for now. But based on how you were defining it, Ukraine was committing genocide, but no, China was doing quite the opposite by encouraging ethnic diversity. Again, go see for yourself like this person did: Oh yeah, just look at all that genociding going on!

Behold, fellow lemmy browsers: here^ we see the scratched liberal as their mask starts to slip. Not unlike the “UHMUHRICA! Love it er LEAVE it!” style of chud. They have a similar simplistic and deeply uncurious faulty view of the world, a view desperately clung to even when they are shown it is undeniably false, for self reflection is too frightening a concept for them even to consider.

Russia entered a conflict that was already in progress, a civil war where the Ukrainian coup government was attempting to ethnically cleanse the Russian speaking population in the east. This coup was orchestrated by the US (this was obvious, admitted to in recorded phone calls, and was rife with high US politicians (John McCaine for example) going there to celebrate. The US/NATO also funded the training and arming of openly neo-nazi militias like Azov Battalion, (and others) many of whom were the ones shelling the people in the East long before Russia intervened. All of this was done by the US to exert pressure on Russia. And this is just scratching the surface. So no, Russia did not “do this to itself” and your framing of it is naive and simplistic and just plain false.

I am genuinely glad to see you reognize the villainization of China, but please also apply those same critical thinking skills to what you have been told about Russia in the Ukraine conflict and do some digging into the history that doesn’t rely on western propaganda.

I cannot take you seriously if you willfully swallow the firehose of US propaganda about how cHiNa BAD ebil aUthOrItArIaN when it’s a country whose government has the enthusiastic approval of over 90% of the population, the country that lifted 850 million people out of abject poverty, the only large country doing anything significant about the mass extinction event that is climate change, the country that… well, I could go on. But no, keep believing those lies like a good lil western capitalism enjoyer.

This one isn’t just staying ignorant, they’re loudly proclaiming their ignorance as if they’re proud of it. Yikes.

Not believing in blatant right-wing propaganda is a leftist position. Parroting right-wing propaganda is a right-wing position. You are parroting right-wing propaganda. Please stop doing that, especially if you consider yourself on the left.

Oh, you mean like what the Ukrainian coup government was doing to the people in the east (Donbas) for years before Russia even entered the conflict? Yes, there is a strong argument to be made that genocide is the term we should use with regard to what Ukraine was attempting to do to the Russian-speaking population in their country.

Summary of this comment: “Do you recognize reality and not believe the ocean of NATO propaganda we’re all awash in? Then you’re a tankie. Do you reject a bunch of bullshit I made up using fascist-invented terms like “red fash” and “totalitarian”? Then you’re a tankie.”

Ok, I’m a definitely tankie then. It must suck not to be one and be stuck in these pitiful, childish delusions, and labeling people “orks” and ascribing people who value truth with what you think is an epithet. Some grade A fuckin’ cringe right here.

Holy fucking shit what a coward you are. This person @TheOubliette@lemmy.ml has done more in good faith to actually educate you about things no leftist should be ignorant about than you deserve. You have this tremendous opportunity to genuinely learn from someone with a wealth of knowledge and actually deepen your understanding of the world and even the ideology you claim to subscribe to, but instead you plug your ears and pretend there’s nothing to be gleaned from this generous education you’re being offered all because it conflicts with your preconceptions, your misconceptions which is cognitively uncomfortable. But that really does just come down to cowardice. I hope one day you can recognize this, recognize the importance of and necessity for self crit. If not, you’ll forever be stuck as you are, the proverbial useful idiot for the same empire you claim to wish to see an end to.

“Now is not the time to oppose genocide.”

Your reprehensibility is confirmed. History will look upon people like you as on those who supported Nazis but pretended the concentration camps were just a bit much.

you: “Yes you absolutely should tacitly support genocide. If you don’t tacitly support genocide then you’re an accelerationist.”

There are other candidates you can vote for that are vastly lesser evils than both the fascist democrats and fascist republicans; candidates who are not actively funding and perpetrating genocide but actually, get this, opposing it. If instead of voting for one of those, you still choose to support a party committing genocide, you aren’t just an accelerationist and wrong, you’re fucking despicable, evil.

Oh yeah, just look at all that genociding going on!

No, it’s people like you refusing to accept reality but rather willfully hiding in your racist propagandized little bubble who can’t be taken seriously.