GrammarPolice @ GrammarPolice @lemmy.world

A slogan is not a position

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Hell yeah! I'm with you on this one. Maybe I should start intentionally brigading communities and start spewing fascist bullshit just so they can see how dumb this rule is

Based

It's my neverending desire to present fairness to both sides of an argument. Something something broken clocks...

Ok, then i think we've landed on somewhat the same page then. Maybe I'll read that Blackshirt and Reds book next so you can stop badgering me with it.

Eh, I think it's kind of a stretch to say thinkers like Parenti and Losurdo are ‘erased’ Their works are widely accessible online and they have dedicated followings. I think it's less about suppression and more about a general lack of interest in radical critiques among the broader public which is why thinkers like Chomsky and Orwell are held to such a high standard as they present a sort of more close-to-home type of dissent. This can also be applied to your assumption about the dominance of a narrative. While funding plays a role, the public’s demand for certain types of stories—like conflict and sensationalism—also influences what becomes dominant. Dissenting narratives can also gain traction even if they're not beneficial to the capitalist class and resonate with the people's lived experiences - the whole Luigi Mangione saga is evidence of this.

All in all, this still doesn't address the fact that China also doesn't hesitate to tweak the narrative to suit their own agenda. Evidenced by the Uyghur pogroms in Xinjiang where the state censors reports of forced internment, reeducation camps, and cultural erasure, labeling them instead as ‘vocational training’ or ‘anti-terrorism efforts'. Also by efforts to control the narratives surrounding Xinjiang by enlisting the help of Chinese influencers to show Uyghurs 'thriving'. Yes, i don't doubt that Western media over-exaggerates some aspects of the situation but the Chinese government is also culpable in that they deny any wrongdoing when this isn't so.

This is why i think it is sensible to conclude that both the West and China engage in rhetoric twisting and why we should be skeptical of all governments and not just Western ones.

These narratives get passed along uncritically today, even if they directly contradict the Soviet Archives opened in the 90s.

That's why we often don't just take the words of the CIA for instance, but we back it up with accounts from people that lived under these governments. There's a lot of interviews out there of people sharing their experiences. Sure their memory of events might not be completely accurate, but you can't just dismiss it as entirely false either.

Also your Tiananmen Square example strikes me as being a bit nitpicky. Yes, it's important to question dominant narratives, but the focus on whether deaths happened on the square itself seems overly semantic. Even if most deaths occurred outside the square, it still feels like you're/they're trying to downplay the broader violence against unarmed protesters and the suppression of their dissent. Similarly, wouldn’t state-controlled narratives in China have an interest in minimizing the scale and nature of the violence to preserve legitimacy?

Further, you’re right that Wikipedia and YouTube shouldn’t be treated as definitive sources, but isn’t that why they include citations to trace information back to its origins? Let's accept that Robert Conquest’s work is controversial; dismissing all scholarship on the USSR from Western historians because of bias that may or may not be there seems like overcorrection.

Also the point you made about how all media echoes the biases of the bourgeois is kinda reductive. I agree that dominant Western narratives often align with elite interests, but doesn’t the diversity of perspectives in democratic societies complicate that? Investigative journalism, academia, and even dissenting voices within the West often challenge these narratives. Wouldn’t it be more constructive to identify when elite biases appear rather than assume all narratives are controlled?

Well it also matters to specify what type of liberalism we're referring to right? If we're talking about classical liberalism (a k.a American libertarianism) which was the pervasive thought at the time, then that is obviously right wing. Progressivism (a.k.a American Liberalism) is more centre-left and developed more recently. Neo-liberalism is probably more right leaning than classical liberalism.

Although it probably won't matter to you because they all operate under capitalism.

how much research have you done? Have you only looked at anticommunist sources, or also pro-communist sources? Does the revelation that the riots were led by Nazis change your opinion of the actual character of the events, or not?

As with most of my knowledge about history, it comes from Wikipedia pages and YouTube videos. Concerning whether the revelation that the riots were fascist-led has changed my opinion on the character of the events. I would say maybe a little bit. It doesn't change the fact that there were clear grievances with the system and there were many dissidents in the revolution, and maybe Nazi support was a way out for them? I don't know. However that's for me to do more research on.

On your point about misinformation, i can agree that there is some level of bias when it comes to Western reporting on AES states, but it's not so easy to recognize where the misinformation is coming from: especially when it is well known China has a habit of suppressing negative news about them. Evidenced by the Tiananmen square protests being a taboo topic there, so it's also not clear to me where I'm supposed to be getting accurate information from if leftist sources are taking China's every word for things like the Ughyur pogroms, Tiananmen square protest, etc etc.

Are you calling me a fascist?

As for the Warsaw pact countries, not sure what you mean by "not being allowed to pursue independent policies." They had local governments and their own jurisdictions.

Warsaw Pact countries had local governments yes, but these governments were heavily subordinated to Moscow's interests. Policies were vetoed by the USSR, and attempts at independence were met with military intervention.

I also know you refused to read more than a couple sentences of "Tankies" out of some objection to the monstrosity of Churchill,

Fwiw, i did end up reading Tankies, and i came out more unconvinced than when i went in. I'm not denying that Churchill was racist and that his colonialist and imperialist actions were harmful, but it feels like you're trying to downplay the horridness of what the Soviets did when you bring up this stuff. This just runs into whataboutism and bad faith arguments.

Yes, the accomplishments of AES are indeed worth defending, but dismissing all criticisms as CIA propaganda (particularly when it comes to the CCP and Xi Jinping) or Trotskyist exaggerations oversimplifies history. Yes, the USSR’s role in aiding decolonization is admirable, but they still suppressed worker uprisings in its own sphere of influence. You can't just ask me to ignore this.

Not sure why you are defending a US-supported fascist counterrevolution where literal Nazis were released from prison by pro-Nazi Hungarians

And it's this kind of one-dimensional analysis of events that keeps me from taking you guys seriously. Like ok, i guess the main goal of all those university students and workers was to put into place a pro-Nazi government rather than advocacy for political reforms and economic autonomy. Yeah bud.

The Cold War is a war of existence for Socialism, and destruction of Socialism for Capitalists.

And yet Warsaw Pact countries were not allowed to pursue independent policies, even when those policies might have strengthened socialism locally. Hmm, what was that about internationalist solidarity again?

lack of research and an intentional desire to not research for fear of becoming sympathetic to Socialists.

Again with this ad hominem. You are well aware of my willingness to acquiesce to defeat when i have been bested in a debate and of my willingness to research upon what i know not of. Your points aren't convincing enough and only serve to spread your propaganda in the hopes that you net some unaware working class individuals who don't know any better.

Genuine question, have you ever changed your stance on something on this platform?

I'm not going to address your first claim, because I'm not aware of the context surrounding how reformist socialism is "a failure".

I'll skip to your last point and just say i disagree with your framing of the way things happened under the Soviet Union and you are once again defending the Soviet Union's failed practices to protect ideological purity. Imperialism isn't only done for profit y'know.

What about cases where resource transfers or forced economic realignments harmed satellite states? For instance, East Germany was heavily exploited post-WWII to pay reparations, which stifled its recovery for years. Wouldn’t the imposition of Soviet control and extraction of resources qualify as imperialist, even if it wasn’t driven by capitalist profit motives?

What about the Hungarian Revolution in 1956? The Soviets responded with military intervention killing thousands. This doesn't seem any different from what Putin's doing with Ukraine today.

These same satellite towns were also used as buffer zones to protect against Western aggression. The result? They were dragged into Cold War conflicts they had nothing to do with.

You can provide sources or that try to explain how these actions only served to contribute to development, but that doesn't take away the practical implications of these actions. I haven't even mentioned COMECON yet. The USSR was largely imperialist.

I very much agree with your last point about picking and choosing bad examples to discredit whole theories. Thanks for taking the time to compile all this. I'll check em all out.

Ok, so essentially a social democracy can be considered leftist if it seeks to overthrow bourgeois hegemony and shift power dynamics in favour of the working class over time is what I'm getting from this? Everything is relative.

On your second point, i agree that bourgeois institutions remain largely intact in social democracies, but what about historical examples like Sweden in the mid-20th century, where labor movements and socialist parties significantly shifted power dynamics in favor of the working class? Couldn’t social democracy, under certain conditions, be seen as a stepping stone toward proletarian control ergo making it leftist? At least if we're going by Politzer's view that there are no pure systems.

I also agree that the Nordic model has benefited from imperialism, but this same critique could be applied to the USSR as well who engaged in exploitative practices in its satellite states. Doesn’t this suggest that imperialism isn’t exclusive to capitalist systems, but rather a feature of powerful states under various ideologies?

Yes, i will admit I'm still an amateur when it comes to this stuff. The numerous terminologies and jargon don't do much to make the process easier. Can you recommend any resources that helped you wrap your head around this stuff?

This was a good conversation. I'm glad we could agree on something!

So what is an acceptable level of socialism required for a government or ideology to be considered leftist in your view?

Also, don't you think the emphasis on public control over resources or greater economic equality in social democracies reflects some socialist principles, even if it’s not socialism in the Marxist sense?

Finally, even if social democracies don’t meet the Marxist criteria for socialism, wouldn’t you say that they represent a critique of capitalism and an attempt to address its contradictions, even if they don’t go far enough?

Oh i think i understand what you're getting at now and i think we might end up being on the same page. I also prefer to use the political compass model. I was using the typical left-right spectrum as only a matter of simplicity, which is why i said left wing extremism can also be authoritarianism and not is always authoritarianism.

This isn't to say that communism is always authoritarian, but it depends on the ideology of the individual and how it's implemented.

I guess it would be better to say some authoritarian extreme left-wing ideologies are Stalinism and Maoism.

You just said leftists support some form of socialism. According to the Wikipedia page, a social democracy is a social, economic, and political philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy and a gradualist, reformist and democratic approach toward achieving limited socialism.

So social democrats have to be leftists then