Lead Lemmy Developer, Dessalines, denying the Tiananmen Square Massacre and praising the Uyghur Genocide

https://sh.itjust.works/post/8419342

Dessalines AKA “parentis_shotgun” on Reddit, is the main Lemmy dev, also the admin of lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml.

Their post and discussions on Reddit (archive as the original post must have been removed):

https://web.archive.org/web/20230626055233/https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/cqgztr/fuck_the_white_supremacist_reddit_admins_want_me/

Please join the discussions for Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem:

https://lemmy.world/post/16211417

And the discussions for finding/creating alternative communities on other instances:

https://lemmy.world/post/16235541

What is a tankie?

Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support acts of repression by such regimes or their allies. More specifically, the term has been applied to those who express support for one-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republics, whether contemporary or historical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

  • NuXCOM_90Percent
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    22
    arrow-down
    11
    ·
    edit-2
    23 days ago

    Please don’t conflate tankies with leftist thought. They are not leftists. They are fascists with strong ties toward fascist regimes that are “known” to actively usurp elections around the globe.

    A good metric is: a very hardline Communist might have an argument for why effectively slavery is ethical because social and economic planning requires people to engage in jobs they actively do not want to do. I personally consider that the reason that Communism can never work at scale but that is a discussion that needs to be had.

    A tankie will just justify anything that China or Russia do. Usually with an attempt to deflect by pointing out something the US or, increasingly, certain EU countries did.

    But, regardless: There is another issue with your “just let everyone taolk it out” nonsense. Because the ml moderation team(s) and admin staff have increasingly been using mass bans and false claims of xenophiobia to shut down anything that is not tankie bullshit. So there is no discussion. Just one sided propaganda in some of the largest communities on lemmy.


    To expand on the moderation strategy a bit. A LOT of people who aren’t increasingly of one nationality and ethnicity have a lot of problems with ResetEra’s moderation strategy. The mods and admins are known for using a heavy hand and outright mockery against anyone who they disagree with and the remaining community stumble over each other to be part of the “cool crowd”.

    But you can also very easily see why the vast majority of leftists and PC gamers and… Asian people left. Because they have a policy to only edit user posts when they contain actively dangerous/illegal statements. So you can see when someone catches a permaban because they dsiagreed with an admin or joked about the corporate interests behind brexit. And you can see the discussion of the remaining users on why that was so fucked… up until the thread gets permanently locked.

    With the model ml (and certain other more "world"ly instances…) use… you don’t. You just see comment branches disappear the moment anyone pushes back on some propaganda. And if a user pisses off the admins, they get banned straight up. Often with some comment about how they are racist or xenophobic in the modlog with all of their comments removed but NOT in the modlog. And that is a problem because, unless you were actively following along with that discussion, you never see anything other than MAYBE “wow, a lot of really racist people disagree with this very smart discussion on why Chinese Taipei was always a part of China and is totally not a sovereign-ish nation called Taiwan”

    • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      23 days ago

      Hey thank you for this, I will read it again in more detail, but appreciate the perspective, both broadly and with regard to this specific post.

      This is the only reply I received which has caused me to second guess my stance in the slightest. 🙂

      Edit: If I’m going to care about such things at all, is there a left leaning instance you’d recommend? I considered blahaj, but not sure if they welcome allies there or only the queer community.

    • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      22 days ago

      This often comes up in these threads, but the point of using the term tankie is for its association with leftism.

      The traditional term people otherwise use when referring to such abuse by mods and admin is ‘fascist’ or ‘nazi’, hyperbolic or not as you demonstrated. The conflation is the point.

    • PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      23 days ago

      I’m more of a libertarian communist, communist economic theory I think is excellent. That doesn’t mean that communist regimes of the past make any sense, because of their authoritarian bend.

      Turns out political opinions arent black and white.

      • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        23 days ago

        It sounds like you are a Democratic Socialist from this tidbit.

        I kind of feel the same way. I think the economic theory behind communism/socialism sounds much more beneficial towards our progress as a species and towards a more sustainable existence. I just don’t agree with the authoritarian methods of implementation. I think that if socialism is going to succeed, it will need to come about in a gradual democratic way.

        • PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          23 days ago

          No, I’m a communist. I don’t believe in monitary commerce. But I’m absolutely with you, with communism also only being able to succeed if it’s democratic.