Full disclosure, I live in Africa and don’t have a dog in this fight. I like proper discourse and it’s alright if I and another person disagree on something, what is important is that we communicate and understand where the other is coming from. The ultimate goal is the satiation of needless and avoidable suffering for all minds.
I’ve only been on Lemmy for a few days but across any sub I’ve noticed any criticism of China or the CCP is met with immediate downvotes and anything remotely positive of the US or really any western country whatsoever meets a similar fate.
Anything pro-African is mostly neutral but in essence ignored, no upvotes, no downvotes, no comments.
Has anyone else noticed this? Am I completely off base here? And is there anything else here that seemingly gets downvoted automatically. It would be sad to see the fediverse and Lemmy be nothing more than just another echo chamber on the web.
Finally, I am posting this assuming it will also be downvoted to hell based on the title alone and that itself will be some monochrome of truth of the situation here.
Lemmy was created by communists, for communists. It’s gonna have communists in it.
Yea but not the cool kind of communists, the lame kind of Communists.
All the cool communists are out in the real world, robbing banks or something.
I though they were running food banks and offering legal aid to poor folks.
Anarchists. Those are anarchists your thinking of.
The communists are doing the thing they do best. Enjoying comfortable positions in western democracies.
.ml has a lot of cool users.
Lemmy was made by communists, seeking to build an alternative to Reddit where communists will not be able to be fully censored. Federation also is similar to how the USSR was federated, and FOSS attracts the left. As such, many areas on Lemmy are going to be pro-CPC (and supportive of socialist states in general).
This isn’t the case on every instance, though. Each instance has its own political leanings, some very anti-China and anti-communist in general. It depends on the moderation, federation practices, and focus of the instance itself.
Communists tend to be pro-African, especially the Alliance of Sahel States.
The bit about censorship is cute given .ml and honestly .world as well, are both ban happy for any dissent.
But since lemmy is federated, those two communities cannot censor the whole website
Valid point.
Also, you can block the whole instance.
Yup. One of the first things I did.
There are absolutely pro-authoritarian agitators here who feel the need to inject their venomous or smug anti-west rhetoric at any opportunity, just looking to start an argument or push propaganda.
As far as posts about African nations being ignored I’d say that’s par for the course for the West. We’re wildly ignorant about the continent, so much so that we say that someone is “from Africa” while ignoring the 50+ countries that exist there. Our news doesn’t cover it unless we can bomb it or exploit it.
Have you seen how much bullshit “The West” has been responsible for lately?
I dont think it’s strange at all for there to be a strong undercurrent of anti-western sentiment.
Being angry at “the west” is easy, as it’s an open book.
Let’s investigate other societies and see how transparent their imperial actions are.
Ehhh, not so easy to do…
Whatever.
yeah, but we suffered communism and capitalism already. time to build something good this time.
Thank you for bringing a new voice to the conversation.
What do you consider pro African content? How do you view various parts of Africa? How do you see US and Chinese actions from an African perspective? How do you tend to get information about them? How do you personally view the presence of the US or China in Africa?
It’s probably because Americans are wanting a revolution to overthrow the pedophile Zionist class that has highjacked our country ✊🏼🇦🇱
Less Anti-West, more like Anti-US. And the China drones are another thing entirely.
That would be understandable, the US is a shame, particularly these days. There are few places with that much wasted potential to make the world a better place.
Putting all patriotism aside, I don’t think there’s any reality in which the US uses its potential to make the world a better place.
The big difference nowadays is that it’s become patently clear that the US government isn’t even trying to make the US a better place.
As the self proclaimed leader of the free world there was a time where there was an attempt but behind it was always those with anterior motives. As for today I wonder what their goal is. Their leader only seems to care for himself alone and anyone following him will likely be left eating dust. That’s not to say the leaders here aren’t exactly the same. In fact I see a lot of similarities between the US and here these days.
…As for today I wonder what their goal is…
There is no goal other than wealth accumulation. It’s a barefaced embrace of the “Gilded Age” corruption and excesses that existed before the bottom fell out in the early 20th century. On a high speed setting.
The underlying vibe is that there is an economic collapse coming (this is why we are in the “Late Stage Capitalism” phase where the middle class is now being eaten alive) and the power brokers and wealthy are grabbing as much as they can before it all falls apart.
Fun times ahead.
America is falling, and this should be an object lesson for the world in what happens when the billionaire classes are allowed to do what they want.
It is okay to set a maximum level of wealth for the ultra wealthy in your country. If not, do everything in your power to limit their policical power.
Protect yourselves.
Ha ha, no. The US never has, and never will, make the world a better place, in our lifetimes.
The US spent a lot of money on soft power, essentially bribing countries to go along with their agenda. Much of that money did actually improve people’s lives, whether it was food aid, vaccinations, or AIDS care. Sure, it was to further their own objectives. Sure, it’s mostly because it’s cheaper to buy compliance than to bomb people into compliance. Humanitarian aid with strings attached is still humanitarian aid, though, or the collapse of USAID wouldn’t be such a problem.
Yet at the same time we were couping foreign countries’ democratically elected leaders to put genocidal strong men in power, sponsoring death squads in countries with leftist insurgencies in latin america and elsewhere, and making sure western corporations can get in and take their resources to no benefit and real harm to those countries, paying off and corrupting the aforementioned politicians we helped install because they are corrupt.
To say nothing of how we use sanctions, punishing entire countries to ostensibly create regime change, even though that has NEVER worked, and instead cements those regimes in power as people rally around the flag when attacked from without.
The US hasn’t been the good guy, since maybe world war II, and that was a one off.
I get your point, but the balance of US foreign policy is overwhelmingly bad.
That’s probably the best way to put it. We used to have a sense of hope here in the US. We could have made things better, raising the global standard. Instead we allowed corporations to poison everything to the point that our leaders are openly evil.
If you had hope in the US, you weren’t paying attention.
Yeah - the whole tankie thing is another matter entirely
Fuck America!
Because you have to get your friends to move to Lemmy too so the USSR/PRC loving weirdos become a lower % of total user base. Not kidding.
The internet has been largely anti-west since as long as I can remember, but the pro-CCP thing is newer.
Part of it is because they’re one of the only “flag carriers” of socialism, so to speak, and that blinds some really desperate socialists who can’t see they are about as far from socialism as America.
Anyone else get a suspicious anti-genocide vibe from this place? 😳
Yeah what’s happening to the Uyghur people should probably stop and the suspicious surplus of human organs over the years has been more than interesting.
As you can see from the above example, the users pushing the whole “America is the only bad country! China is amazing and never does anything wrong!” rhetoric are overwhelmingly from a single instance; lemmy.ml.
No matter the topic of conversation, an .ml user just can’t help themselves from virtue signaling in the comments about how much they hate imperialism and how they know that anything bad about China/Russia/NK is literally all Western propaganda.
Yeah it’s a good microcosm for what initiated my post. No matter where I am here I face a lot of this. Me criticizing China doesn’t mean I love the US. Me criticizing the US doesn’t mean I love China. Every nation has skeletons in their closet and we don’t need to act like that isn’t the case.
This is exactly the difference between kids and adults.
You’re reading a lot of posts from kids that wear their hearts on their sleeves and advocate for what they think is the “good” side.
There is a way to block the .ml instance, I did so within the first week I joined.
It winnows out the kids.
There has been a major uptick in people supporting socialism under the guise of social programs. Many will claim to support socialism because they favor things like universal healthcare, fair wages, unions, and similar policies. In reality, however, these things have nothing to do with socialism itself. They are social welfare programs that can be implemented under virtually any form of government.
What many of these people are actually advocating for is social democracy, not socialism. The fact that both terms contain the word “social” does not make them the same thing. Socialism, traditionally defined, involves some form of collective or public ownership of the means of production. Universal healthcare, labor protections, welfare programs, and unions do not inherently require that.
The most frustrating part is that many people simply redefine words to fit their preferred narrative. They make declarative statements that are objectively incorrect, then dismiss the actual definitions when challenged. At that point, it becomes nearly impossible to have a productive conversation because you’re no longer debating ideas, you’re debating the meanings of the words themselves.
I agree that this is generally the case, but it isnt the case here on Lemmy. Lemmy has a disproportionately large number of people across the left side of the political spectrum, from people who are as you describe, to actual semi-reasonable socialists, to tankies.
I encourage you to read through my common history.
Socialism, traditionally defined, involves some form of collective or public ownership of the means of production. Universal healthcare, labor protections, welfare programs, and unions do not inherently require that.
Universal healthcare and other social programs are, in a democracy, an example of the public owning the means of producing healthcare or other industries.
Socialism, traditionally defined, involves some form of collective or public ownership of the means of production.
Weird to complain about people calling social democracy (a path to socialism) socialism, socialism but redefine socialism to include state ownership of the means of production, in the same post.
Like if you’re being strict about what socialism is China and Sweden are equally not-socialist.
I support a multipolar world order, in a large part because I believe that’s what’s best for developing/non-aligned countries. Since the US has been the sole superpower and has sought to establish itself as the sole global hegemon, using military aggression to expand its influence and power, it seems pretty natural to oppose it and support competition.
If the US and China are both major powers, then non-aligned countries have the freedom to choose who they do business with, which means they have some ability to bargain for a better deal. If the US or the West were the only game in town, then you’d have to accept whatever they offer, or be shut out of the global marketplace. Furthermore, many of the natural resources of poor countries remain in the hands of the Western powers that seized them through force during colonialism (Haiti is still paying reparations to France for freeing the slaves, for example). Ending this system of neocolonialism is a priority, and that requires an alternative economic bloc.
I don’t believe that China invests abroad just out of the kindness of their hearts, however, China has expanded its power through peaceful economic development and trade. China has not been at war with anyone for decades, in contrast to the US which has waged (and is waging) multiple wars of aggression, for the sake of seizing resources. Furthermore, the West will sometimes just decide to steal the assets of poor countries that are invested in their banks, as the did with Venezuela. When has China done this?
Even if you dislike the Chinese system, I see it as a necessity that enabled other systems to survive. The West has a specific system that they want to impose on the entire world, and if you’re the only country not doing that system, you’re screwed. But China is a lot more flexible, and imposes fewer conditions on domestic policy. This in turn limits the ability of the West to impose their policies, because a country can always choose to walk.
I don’t think the platform is like that, as a whole.
But there are two groups that have created communities devoted entirely to making up strawman attacks against the other and they circlejerk over how much better they are than the other.
If they find a post outside their bubbles, you can guarantee it will have weird votes and comments.
All of the fun communities are free from this though.
I have noticed this around Lemmy and see some of these comments. As a left leaning redditor it is a similar turn off as the Digg beta.
Keep blocking noisemakers untill it’s bearable. Sublemmy and users alike.
