What I have learned:
- Russia has already won the Ukraine war
- Which NATO started
- A lot of people in the West think that Ukraine should surrender
- Also Ukraine was the world’s main provider of CSAM
- Also Ukraine is exploited by the West but if they can unite with Russia then their economy and everything else will finally be alright
It’s literally like a bizarro world and everyone is over there agreeing with it. I’m genuinely confused by, who even are these people (what is the mixture of Russian bots / Russian-aligned ordinary people / confused Westerners / some other explanation.)
I would LOVE to find a non deranged communist forum but like I said on another comment, I have yet to encounter one which does not make me vomit all over the screen after I see them celebrating bloodshed in Ukraine and masturbating to the idea of an independent sovereign nation being crushed by brutal, authoritarian, and savage state.
It’s heartbreaking that people seeking an ideology with genuinely noble intentions turn into such violent loons. On hexbear (and co) I think they are genuinely mostly from the west but try so hard to stick it to US imperialism that they literally end up supporting a significantly more horrifying empire. I sometimes think that they deserve to have been born into Soviet Union or present Russia but I genuinely cannot bring myself to wish such horror on a human being. Their thoroughly typed and carefully cherry picked facts vs what the victims of these regimes went through have the same vibe as Tucker’s recent montage/comments about trip to Russia.
Most propaganda is grain sized, very subtle and so well masked that most people swallow without noticing it. It is structured so vaguely and discreetly that others who smell it are not able to produce hard enough evidence.
And with enough time we get the stereotypical tankie communities - gullible teenagers, bitter adults that are so blinded by search of an alternative that by endless reading they somehow achieve ignorance and betray fundamental human values, and some Russians having the time of their life having their disgusting views and evil atrocities welcomed, accepted, and spread for free.
They do not allow discussions, but the Russian propaganda that gets spread on other servers or social media cost them nothing emotionally while all of us who have to argue back need to resurface feelings that we suffer under Russia’s terrorism, after inheriting the generational trauma from parents born into Soviet Union.
slrpnk.net seems to have some genuine socialist / communist ideology without the tankie flavor. They have a couple of users who I think are pretty effective “and that’s why Emma Goldman would be okay with letting Trump come to power!” shills, but for the most part it’s just the good stuff. IMO.
Slrpnk.net leans anarchist, and historically there has always been a vocal subset of anarchists who advocate abstaining from electoral politics on principle. The upcoming US presidential election is the perfect storm for this stance to thrive and still it is a minority position even among the most anarchist instance on Lemmy, so I’m pretty happy with the diversity of opinion expressed there. I think it’s important we hear those minority voices and a bit unfair to call them shills.
Oh no, I wasn’t talking about the general “don’t vote” contingent on slrpnk – that seems fine; just like you’re saying, it seems authentically arrived at. I was just saying that there are a couple of users there that seem to have a particular and very specific focus on this exact election and specifically on not voting in this election, and not much interest in anarchism beyond its application to parts that would be generally applicable to someone who was trying to engineer a result for Trump in the election.
I mean, what the hell, no one needs my permission to say whatever they feel like saying. But to the extent that my opinion on it matters, I don’t think slrpnk overall or its general “fuck the system and yes that includes the voting system” vibe that it has are indicative of anything shill related, no.
you will not find a non-deranged communist forum because: 89% of all users will be shills… the remaining 11% will be beaten down, ridiculed, and/or banned for saying anything not deranged….
i’ve asked in person, lifelong activist/leftists and they all say the same thing: online forums are so infiltrated and fucked it’s not worth the aggravation.
i don’t think it’s worth giving up on entirely, but even if you make a no-tankies/ direct russian propaganda repeating, they just pivot to FUD, forum sliding, concern trolling…
even totally sane, reasonable accounts can be fake just so they can get inside the next level or take over moderation…
I’ve heard horror stories about the USSR but I’ve also heard meh stories where life wasn’t the best but their needs were taken care of- not having luxuries but socialized healthcare and housing so don’t live in fear like I do currently in the US of being one medical hiccup from being in a world of hurt or one interaction with a cop and the legal system from destroying my life. Will my kids say they have this generational trauma too?
I can imagine why you think that this reasoning makes sense but these are completely unrelated things. Many people in the US live in deeply brutal psychological and economic distress that resulted from decades of worker hostile reforms. People in social democratic European countries live under capitalism and deal with its issues too but the socialist policies limit the severity to the point where it’s not outright traumatic. In all countries people need to thrive for socialist change and a system that treats humans kinder but this does not mean that we need to in any way tolerate people trying to drag brutal and horrific dictatorships into a positive light