Look, even if I’d accept all of those explanations as given - at the end of the day close to a million people still were executed.

The death penalty is morally incorrect, at the very least because we know any justice system makes mistakes and you’ll execute innocent. And when killing people en-masse like in the purge, there will be a lot of innocents. It might have been deemed unavoidable in 1940, but from today’s perspective it is unacceptable, inexcusable, despicable, disgusting.

So - do you *really *think you can convince any emotionally stable person outside your little ivory tower with this Stalin rehabilitation thing? Do you think it makes people more or less likely to want to join a communist revolution were Stalin has been rehabilitated?

And even if you are utterly convinced of being in the absolute right here - you must see how incredibly easy you make it for neoliberals to utterly destroy you on this. Easy and total victory. What a monumental task and waste of propaganda resources it would be to convince people of “rehabilitating Stalin”. A right wing think tank could not find a better issue to push into communist communities! A perfect own goal! Is this really the hill you want the hope for a new revolution to die on?

Honestly…

Just FYI: It’s not the network provide we have to worry about in my country. That is specific to the USA I believe.

Here they have “headhunters” that make a contract with a rights holder, torrent a file, write down the IP of someone who uploads a video to them, then legally request the name to the IP and send an invoice for about $2000. No three warnings or anything. And they are very good at sending legal officials to impound any of your valuable stuff in case you don’t pay.

Even other “illegal” activity like calling Israel an apartheid regime or supporting palestine or insulting your head of state might get you flagged by a three letter agency, but they won’t use official legal channels. There is a protection of the herd with VPN.

I wonder if renowned professors and academics are on average more ethical or the same as then.

You hear things like OP and think “Yeah there is a good reason why we stopped treating professors as authorities to consult on anything”. Just how many people must have known and just silently accepted this atrocity.

Speech has been turned into a commodity, and thus easily controlled.

Signal requires to use phone number, which in many countries is legally required to be tied to your personal identity. Like the SMS provider must have a copy of your id card. You’re basically naked to the CIA when using Signal. Even if not like in the US they presumably mass collect SIM and location correlations for ID. For the life of me I do not understand how anyone can promote that shit.

So the “honeypot” of Signal is that the mainstream promotes it as IF it was a privacy focused app when it’s very glaringly obviously is not. So the effect is that it prevents market space and attention for other apps actually focused on privacy without requiring ID to sign up. It’s a bit like introducing sterile insects to prevent the spread of unwanted pests (= actually secure communication).

They are perfect for torrenting though. The kind of activity 3 letter agencies don’t want their spying to be disturbed for.

Who is the third from the left?

PS: Sorry that was politically incorrect, let me rephrase my question: Who is the second from the far right?

Wikipedia since I haven’t read history about this. I know it’s not a reliable source but without doing a deep dive, what is lol. And sending people to the gulag wasn’t much better than death, so counting the deaths there too you get 3.3 mil. But the precise number hardly matters. Not even the most favorable view matters outside of academia. It happened, it’s a mountain of bodies. It simply cannot be excused or rehabilitated. You must say “this was very bad, it must never happen again”.

And I’m sure you all would, but then how can you in the same breath rehabilitate the man at the head of the government that did it?

If you want to promote the (undoubtedly many) good things about Stalinism you’ll need to repackage, rebrand, rebrand it. Call it early Sovjietism or something.

But part of it is that we as humanity still lacks a good answer about what to do about how the “calculus of power” can subvert anything. There will always be sociopaths, narcissist and schemers that pay lip service while min-maxing their own gain, no matter the ideology or religion. There is no doubt that the worst people did the best during the purges. It must have been an easy promotion bonanza. Denounce, report, promote, repeat. Easy soviet-style rank-maxxing lol. The theory of communism is incomplete without an good answer to this.

Anyway that thread shocked me and gave me a new (worse) perspective on the whole “Liberals vs Tankies” culture war. Maybe the fundamental crisis is that we lack any theory or ideology that can lead us out of the current mess. All existing ideologies have demonstrably failed, and maybe we’ve reached the limit of what an average person can reasonably learn and understand and execute. People subconsciously know this so as things get more desperate, there is rising intellectual pain or tension and desire that “but something has to work!” and I just want to believe in something!! So people make themselves believe and ignore or rationalize the glaring problems and increasingly shut the door to discordant noises.

There are too many forks already lol. And none of the forks have the features I want anyway. It’s also expensive.

Thanks, yeah seems it was a mistake. The CEO / founder is I believe a libertarian, but at least he believes in something, like privacy.

Butlerian Jihad? I’m skeptical.

The “technology” to mentally manipulate and control populations improves as well. PR, advertisment, propaganda, whatever you wanna call it, is getting stronger and stronger. Social media has trained people to act in very predictable patters that are easily exploited.

Is there an article about this?

Tbh there is little evidence. There is a lot of shitposting people socialists are pissed off being called “tankie” or communist as a slur. I mean this shit is old. McCarthy would love this “oh you’re a tankie!” shit.

The worst I’ve seen is a communist community discussing that Stalin needs to be rehabilitated for his role in building up the USSR despite his “mistakes” (The big oopsie of 3.3 million dead in the great purge). I mean that is just stupid.

The larger issue is the laser focus the liberal community has on tankies, it’s not the fascists that are currently rising or already ruling, noooo it’s the “authoritarian tankies” that are at the lowest of their power ever. Whoever has been putting money into this tankie meme is brilliant. Just amplify that shit and stoke that hatred. Fascism bad, but oh please don’t be too radical lol.

So basically lemmy failed as a platform precisely because the neoliberal have managed to already cut out the socialist heart of lemmy.

It’s kinda shocking, an article written by a scholar with a PhD in history without geopolitical slant. Reading an article without intellectual pain? Woah! Not that journalism ever was that great, but it kinda feels like a lost art today.

“Slavic Adventure”

Maybe support for Ukraine lol. Zelensky just honored Andrey Melnik, a twentieth-century Ukrainian fascist leader and Nazi collaborator who fought with the Nazi’s against the Red Army (NYTimes)

EDIT: I do believe this could be connected. Here is recent article by a Ukrainian Scholar without pro-Russian slant that looks at the proliferation of Nazi symbolism in Ukraine’s military, in official channels, insignia, names and merchandise.

The use of Nazi symbols in Ukraine’s military is not merely an aesthetic problem. It is moral, political, historical, and legal.

First, it represents a form of historical revisionism and the gradual rehabilitation of Nazism itself — a direct challenge to the postwar Western consensus built on the memory of World War II. Within far-right military culture, Nazi imagery is often wrapped in romanticized narratives about anti-Soviet struggle. In practice this trivializes the sacrifice of the seven million Ukrainians who fought Nazism in the ranks of the Red Army alongside the Western allies (in contrast to the 300,000 who served in various military formations and police units on the side of Nazi Germany).

This might actually explain how ignorant people might come to think this is acceptable or just a bit edgy. Partly because speaking about this gets you branded a traitor.This might actually explain how ignorant people might come to think this is acceptable or just a bit edgy. Because there is no pushback or scandal and it just gets swept under the rug it must be ok right? Unconditional support for Ukraine - but at what cost?

Of course, but many socialists here use the classic definition of a liberal. Which is annoying. Basically you have to translate into “neoliberal” when they say it. And yeah it’s pretty stupid, but they don’t want to accept the “rebranding” the neoliberals have managed to pull off.

Neoliberalism can be defined as the sincere moral belief in inequality based on money or wealth or class. Like if you are poor, your children should get worse food and education. Neoliberals believe this is morally correct. Neoliberals are not on the left, but are right wing. There are many who identify as leftists or liberals who accept neoliberal ideology because they simply can’t imagine radical change. There are many thought terminating brainworms in their heads.

This also explains why it’s so easy for neoliberals to transition to fascism. Fascism can be defined as the sincere moral belief in inequality - based on identity like ethnicity or gender. It’s just a small hop. And the US foreign policy has been outright fascist for many decades anyway. Biden is a fascist. Hillary is a fascist. Obama is “just” a neoliberal, but fuck him too.

I have found communists here who want to rehabilitate Stalin for some insane reason. I haven’t found a single “Tankie” who thinks Russia is still socialist or who are particularly happy with the human right issues or corruption in China, but still support them because they understand realpolitik. To me it seems the divide and hate overwhelmingly comes from the (non neo) liberals. Like OP is pure hatewagoning propaganda. Nobody “likes” seeing protesters shot.

Simon the Petrifier. A key acolyte of who’s sorcerers talent Jesus planned to use to devastate the roman Legions.

I really wish there was more badass fantasy stories based on the Bible lol

Only that fuck from nvidia cares, if US wins they sell more chips. If they loose they have competition. Fortunately China just announced a new chip technology “projected to deliver capabilities comparable to 1.4-nanometer process technology by 2031” so we’ll eventually have competition to bring down prices.

I’m not against sensible gun control laws like background checks. And if you want to shoot guns for fun keep them at your local shooting range, or for hunting at your local hunting club. In an “armory”. That works just fine in most of the world.

Manufacturing a gun requires serious effort and it’s not just clicking a button. But it is impossible to completely prevent, and it’s braindead to try. Not a single gun death will be prevented by this law, unlike gun control laws which do work - at least outside the US.

PS: Well according to Rossman in the video Bloomberg is just an idiotic control freak. He was also the guy who forced police to have stop and frisk quotas. There is no reason, it’s just genuine Kakistocracy lol.

Just fucking why lol? How braindead do you have to be? It’s just fundamentally impossible to prevent actual criminals or terrorists from simply ignoring this and making guns.

Is this to permanently prevent individuals to build their own stuff? Like the next manufacturing revolution has to be kept out of the hands of the proletariat?