this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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It’s already a hexbear fest in here. There is zero point posting anything about China or Russia - every comment is trounced on by hexbears.
Yes yes, if I didn’t want your opinion I should have stayed on Reddit.
Yes, yes, you got here first.
Yes, yes, I’m a brainwashed liberal.
Yes, yes, you’re actually one of the oldest Lemmy communities but you’ve only recently started federating.
Yes, yes, you’re seeing the light and can see through the western media’s bias and the rest of us are just mindless sheep.
Yes, yes, China is great, Russia is fantastic, Ukraine should pursue for peace and roll over.
Yes, yes, you never allowed downvoting so you’re used to just comment and that’s why there’s so many hexbears in here. And you’re definitely not Russian or CCP farmed trolls.
Yes, yes, all those things are true.
I’m sure I’m missing a few, but I’m pretty close to a hexbear “Bingo!” I think.
We used to allow downvoting, we just got rid of it to stop trolls from making multiple accounts to downvote every comment from people they disliked (specifically trans users were getting their comments brigaded like this) and it turned out to be a great choice because it encouraged discussion if you disagreed with someone.
Also we're definitely not "Russian or CCP farmed trolls" why would they have paid people to talk amongst themselves for three years? I mean I could really use the supplemental income so I wish, been putting off car repairs for months due to finances.
I mean people are invited every time to argue we aren't right about this but they never do for some reason, idk why that is.
Are you trying to imply that all those things aren't 100% true?
Well, Russia isn't fantastic
It is a modern liberal democracy. Of course it is awful
It's closer to a nationalist oligarcy with the trappings a formal, liberal democracy. Ofc, at the end of the day the U$A is no more democratic in any deepy, normative or radical sense. But the state itself is ideologically more nationalist and has been pushing back against liberal social and economic views. You can see this in the conflicts recently between the executive and the central bank, as the latter has been one of the last convinced bastions of neoliberal economic orthodoxy.
This also has to do with the fact that Russia's ruling bourgeois class's interests are more national in nature, as a result of their economic development since 1991, aggressive geopolitics from NATO, and the fact that they were forced by the state into emphasizing national interests once the Putin era began.
Ofc it remains a capitalist shithole.
That is what modern liberal democratic governments become. You analysis is good, I think you are just giving all parties involved too much of the benefit of thr doubt here
Sure. As a matter of historicaly development, we know, as Marxists, that liberal capitalist societies, whether they have the formal institutions of representative democracy or not, tend to develop due to the tendencies of economic development the social consequences of the later and the political conjunctures, into fascistic or fascist political regimes and societies. But these are tendencies, they aren't metaphysical or mathematical necessities. Even if we always saw every liberal democracy transform into outright into fascism, this doesn't make them the same thing. If you were actually under a fascist government you would quickly realise the difference.
Fascism is partly characterized by it's ideological and other superstructural features, but this is only a partial understanding. A fuller understanding notes that such states have only emerged in contexts of capitalist decay and crisis and act as a safety valve through which the capitalist class reestablishes political supremacy over the workings classes. However, I would point out that while capitalists are generally key parts of an any fascist state, the relationship between a powerful fascist state and individual enterprises (such as in Nazi Germany) does tip more and more towards the arbitrary power of the central executive government, to the point where they are more eager than capitalists to jeopardize profits for political objectives.
I'm obviously not saying that liberals have not engaged in extreme racism, colonialism, and genocide. Actually, from a historical point of view, they have been the best at it. It also isn't wrong to say that in many respects fascism is also charaterized by the turning inward, the domestic usage, of the coercive, violent means of political repression which are innovated and developed in colonies. As Aimé Cesaire pointed out, fascism is like imperialism turned inwards. Modern America often treats many people internally in a fascistic way, embodied by the prison-industrial complex, especially if you are a very active, radical activist, or were or are in the past or present a member of a revolutionary group like the Black Panthers, or more generally a poor immigrant, a racial minority interacting with cops, or many other scenarios. The American state, like the British and French states, their political and economic elites, have already partly fascicized, are undergoing the process. But I really don't think we're passed the point of the nature of the political regime changing sufficiently to call them all fully fascist states. After Ukraine, the USA is the closest.
This is also why it is so weird and unnecessary to me when people just say that liberal democracy is the same thing as fascism. The fact that two things are linked or that one has tendencies that lead it to transform into, produce, be replaced by the other does not mean that they're the same. Actually it implies the opposite, otherwise there would be no transformation to begin with. Take the Italian government. It is filled with realy, ideologically convinced fascists. But it does not find itself in a situation where, even as a unified coalition of Mussolini fans, they cannot actually find any means to exert fully fascist politics in defiance of the EU's neoliberal economic agenda, nor NATO's political agenda. Meloni does actually use the classic fascist technique of appealing to leftist sounding points. She recently went on Italian television and shit all over Macron and the French for enganging in neocolonialism against Françafrique, explaining the monetary system on tv and how most gold a child will mine in the period will end up in the French central bank. The difference with the Ukrainian government is that the material conditions of Ukraine allow, actually force, the government to fascicize beyond the confines of it's own ideology and extend this to society more broadly and more radically. There is not even the pretence of liberal democracy in Ukraine amongst actual Ukrainians, let alone the Russophone Ukrainians or Russians of the east.
We have different words for a reason: to refer to different things. In this case, different types of political regimes. A liberal political regime is different to fascist political regime. The transition might be gradual or appear relatively continuous, but so was the emergence of feudalism and capitalism.
Would you prefer "liberal democracy nearly inevitably leads to fascism"? Stage 1 cancer and stage 4 cancer are both cancer.
True
I don't think any state qualifies as "great," or "fantastic", however aside from that zero lies detected and Ukraine should have accepted peace terms a year ago instead of listening to :loser:
Now you have some idea of how we feel on Reddit. The difference here is that karma doesn't matter. And hexbearers can't even downvote your comments anyway. You're just complaining that you have to listen to another point of view.
Get off your cross
Hey, I don’t have anything new to say, just want to join the pile-on. Sorry you can’t have your liberal echo chamber, and sorry that most of the world actually prefers China to the great satan and its western demons. If you didn’t want to be ridiculed for your insane opinions though you really shouldn’t be federated with the real world though
Simultaneously a bot farm and separated from any wider instances until very recently.
Do you honestly believe that?
Does it really make sense to you that China sets up self contained bot farms interacting with no one?
Lmaooo go cry about it I guess
i disagree since they'll court anyone, even americans and nato