Yeah it’s pretty weird how they use emojis like that for voting and all of the same character at that with different expressions. And I completely agree it’s biasing and something the mods can manipulate a bit because one of them is literally a character frowning, another a character grinning and those have influences I’m sure. Very unserious if I have to be honest and part of why I’m glad we have lemmygrad because it’s kind of a never-ending festival of leftist trolling/memeing over there a lot of the time and that gets draining. There are times it feels a little nice of course, I’m not saying there’s no room for it as it can be a good thing after a long day or week but it reaches its limits at times.

The west will in the near term likely descend into barbarism, open reaction, what fascism was in the 20th century Europe. (That or it’ll pull off some sort of miraculous crushing of the global south and buying capitalism breathing room for another 40 years)

So I think we could see a revolution the next 20 years, I just don’t think it’ll be a socialist one.

I also don’t discount the real possibility that the bourgeoisie in the west try to take their ball and go home, try and do dark enlightenment, neo-feudalism, and just build a high fence around it. What that actually ends up looking like in practice I wouldn’t know but I think it’s truly possible they find a way to keep the situation miserable but stable for another hundred years with the current power structure mostly the same. Climate change is certainly set to come in on the side of the US. Technology like AI and more specifically robotics dangles the promise of automation that’s good enough to serve as a control mechanism on the population, total information control, total surveillance, etc from which the ultimate breaking free would likely only come about from the decay of such systems out of neglect and greed.

I certainly HOPE there is a revolution, a Marxist one in the global north in the next 60 years. I’d like to see that before I die, I’d like for it to come sooner than that as in 60 years I have a pretty good chance of being dead of natural causes.

But we must remember how hard it is to predict history. Asked 100 years ago socialists in our place would have said Germany or Britain, etc would probably experience a revolution in their lifetime and they were wrong. Lenin thought he’d never live to see the revolution and he was wrong about that. We must however take from the past century how adaptable capitalism is. They have our playbook, they have experience correcting for, adjusting to many of their problems that give rise to revolutionary potential and they have a century of anti-communism propaganda messaging as well as 30 years of end of history messaging.

It seems unknowable, too many variables. It really hinges on can China become a communist super-power, avoid being crushed by the west, avoid being nuked by the west, avoid being strangled and can it exert power including trade and friendship better than the west can extend neo-colonialism, color revolutions, fomented extremism and terrorism/separatism to the rest of the world? If it can, if the west’s grasp on the rest of the world slips then short of the west deciding to use nuclear weapons and destroy human civilization then sooner or later I think we’ll have won. I think we’ll know the results of this within 10 years by 2035 we’ll see the fruits of the west’s plans or China’s plans.

The west is trying delaying actions because climate change is coming in on their side so that’s a big unknown, that could really hit China hard regardless of all their efforts and become a real drain while the US is almost certain to weather that new reality among the best of all nations.

Counterpoint: As the victor of the Ukraine conflict Russia can afford to be magnanimous towards its defeated enemies. Some leadership in Russia may even foolishly believe they’ve already survived the worst the west can throw at them so they can re-integrate from a position of strength. I think there are very strong ties between Russia and China but I also think the nature of Russia as a capitalist nation that desires to integrate with and ultimately influence to its benefit (and profit) the capitalist EU should not be overlooked.

They are anti-imperialists by circumstances alone. If Putin died next week (quite possible, he’s not that young) there could be power struggles that could lead to a faction that favors this gaining power. If the US is willing to throw EU under the bus, if the US pushes through reactionary parties winning across the board in the EU, parties friendly to Russia who say turn on the Russian gas again, who come to Russia offering deals and money, and opportunities for profit, and who allow Russian influence penetration, I wouldn’t be so sure.

Never say never. After all within living memory of those who currently rule were people who sold out the USSR, sold out a flawed but more equitable state for Pizza Hut, Coco-Cola, etc and the siren song of the west.

I don’t think Russia will have a Sino-Soviet split moment where they turn antagonistic towards China but I think if the US plays its cards right, if things align, and if the Russian leadership are greedy as well as realpolitik embracers who don’t want to be the junior partner in a BRICS relationship instead of the “big man of Europe” in a partnership with the west that Russia might be swayed into a more west friendly position as the west antagonizes China. Not directly aiding the assault of the west but not aiding China, slinking away when the time comes for China to count its friends in a vote at the UN. That type of thing.

Never trust capitalists who were after all foolish enough to allow all that has happened to happen. They were fooled for many years by the west and though they may have learned on matters of their border security and NATO encroachment not to take suspicious vague promises from the west but only solid agreements. Doesn’t mean they can’t be fooled on other things when profit, the greed of their eyes would have them believe otherwise and point to say some change in their power over Europe as evidence that a Ukraine situation will never happen again and that they can profit from the west and act “neutral” towards China. Neutral in secretly selling the west advanced military tech (not production, knowledge) for example.

I think if they had data and it was stored in the US they would respect lawful US orders so if the data was with a US entity of WeChat they’d hand it over to the police after getting a warrant and otherwise cooperate.

Most likely the US would already know what they need to however, their big brother spying programs are focused strongly on metadata and networks of people and they’d already know who’s in the groups based on those intercepts.

I think it’s telling if they don’t get rid of the Asia one but do get rid of Europe. It speaks not of empire pulling inward entirely but refocusing everything on China and on war and containment many have long predicted would come before 2030.

I just saw an article. The chief negotiator for the US with Russia intends to make part of their demands that Russia break its alliances and security pacts with the DPRK and China. This could very well just be an attempt to make peace with Russia to totally focus on destroying China. And I don’t trust Russia or Putin enough that I’m convinced they couldn’t be bribed with reintegration with Europe to look the other way and whistle while the US attacks the DPRK/China.

I’m glad to have both.

There are certain times I just need to be with other ML’s but lemmygrad is admittedly small and therefore limited in the amount of discussion a post gets as well as how many topics are posted and it’s nice to have a bigger community even if it’s less laser-aligned with my philosophy on all aspects and at times has a culture I need a breather from for a few minutes despite overall liking it. I enjoy community events like movie nights that you have over there a great deal and I think it’s a very good thing.

The admins as a whole I cannot say. The head admin, the owner is a main lemmy dev and I also know them from reddit where they were consistently a poster with principled, quality effort years before I ever heard of this place or lemmy was really even publicly known at all. So I trust the top admin here quite a bit, if they dipped out the whole lemmyverse would notice and ideologically I trust them to an incredible amount.

TL;DR: Tell me how re-education goes in communist societies.

People are detained, kept under guard 24/7 or at least for much of the day and attend classes. Introspection, journaling, confession of crimes, critical re-examination of actions and thinking are done. This takes time (months) and an inability for the subjects to just brush it off as a few hours of unpleasant challenging of their views but a determined repeated challenging in a group setting over time that encourages introspection, self-examination, self-criticism, and forced exposure to alternative views.

What are the qualities of their history classes?

I can’t say for certain, most people in communist party ruled nations are not subject to re-education but to proper Marxist influenced education in the first place. Re-education is like deprogramming. I would assume historical materialism influences the curriculum.

How did they approach people “transitioning into communist ideals” coming out from capitalist ideals?

Varies by nation. China had a cultural revolution though to be fair most people did not hold necessarily capitalist or liberal ideals but a mix of feudal and somewhat capitalist inspired. It was the same in the USSR, most of the people were not transitioning from a liberal capitalist mindset but from a feudal one. Those who were already of that mindset I suggest were mostly sidelined rather than deliberately subjected to attempts to change their views and make them into communists.

China did the same thing though they did have the experience of rehabilitating/re-educating their war criminals. You can see a little of this in The Last Emperor which has a number of scenes in the re-education camp though beware that was a movie made by a western non-communist though it’s content was approved by the CPC as it was filmed in China (during the opening up of the 90s admittedly so it’s false to say it’s 100% CPC approved so much as doesn’t have a bunch of horribly egregious 100 million dead propaganda inserted which they might have objected to but may have minor problems despite being a much fairer look than most western media would give such subjects).

Could I also add some components that makes the “lesson” enjoyable to listen to so that information is digested into their mind?

You are not going to be able to “re-educate” people in a single presentation, not even if you had them captive for 12 hours each for two days could you do this. Instead you might seek at most to plant seeds, to challenge them a little. When dealing with potentially hostile audiences it can help to use techniques such as “acknowledgement AND” where you acknowledge something not too controversial for your audience, then pivot to add something a little controversial. Some people will be changed by an inflammatory presentation that strongly challenges their beliefs if those beliefs are not strongly held or supported by evidence, some people will dig in their heels or ignore it as much as possible. So there are many approaches that have some merit but the approaches with the most merit tend to aim towards planting seeds and doubts, to guiding the audience towards a conclusion but not stating it too explicitly for them and allowing them to arrive at it on their own in light of the facts given.

Welcome, hope you enjoy your stay .

Perhaps I think American food is far worse than British food.

Now THAT is a hot take. ;)

Good thread! This is the kind of thing one saves to smack into the face of doubting liberals. It’ll reach a few and help them break free of the cycle. Sadly plenty of others will learn the lesson from this specific example but fall for it the next time (just as we’re taught only to learn from the specific genocide of Jews, not to apply that to all genocides like those zionists commit against Palestinians).

Thread on where they go from here:

https://chapo.chat/post/4470321

Right now the registrar stands to make over $2000 from auctioning this site. That’s a lot more than whatever renewal HB were going to pay and once it sells for that whoever buys it then has a much higher renewal fee thereafter (hundreds of dollars a year probably) as a result of that valuation which they can in theory reap year after year. Even should the person buying it drop it immediately their hosting company stands to reap more from this one auction and year than if they’d continued to host with them for 10 years.

This was entirely a self-own on HexBear’s part. A list:

1. Their admins did not press strongly enough to get access they needed to the domain name account.

2. Admins knowing the person having these details was flaky did not monitor things like domain renewal and such, if they had they would have noticed while the grace period was still active and could (apparently) have quickly reached the person with access within the 30 days required and fixed it. The person with access was able to be reached we see now within 2-3 days. That’s not a difficult person to reach or they got damn lucky with timing.

3. Person who had access almost certainly got some sort of notice. This either went to an unmonitored email 🙄 or was ignored.

4. Their post on it here is made by an anonymous admin. Once again their admins are obfuscating, not being transparent with the userbase and acting a too much like bad actor groups like MAC on reddit in thinking themselves some appointed council of ideology and ethics in charge of their userbase and guiding them to preferred conclusions established by discussions within this secret group.

(To be fair to 4 their userbase does need guidance given how many left-libs and people who haven’t read theory are there, they have let in a lot of liberalism but too often these struggles and edicts are not on principled meaningful matters like addressing the misogyny issue but on pet causes, minor tiffs, arguments over phrasing, etc)

The one possible upside of this is that with the site management being the way it is, I’d say that possibility of the site being some fed honeypot has definitely gone down a few notches.

Does it really though? Right after USAID funds are frozen along with all kinds of other ops and funding through third parties?

We don’t know anyone would bother to make a malicious clone. Most likely some anarchist or liberal (heh) will buy it and do something silly like put an anti-ML screed or some NATO propaganda or something else simple there to “troll the tankies” so all this talk is a bit premature.

Also I wouldn’t count on all lemmy apps to necessarily cooperate. There have been other instances that have gone offline permanently for instance, is there any precedent to banning closed instances to prevent re-use? If not that would need to be discussed as an official suggested lemmy best practice. Otherwise the app devs, most of whom are probably not that sympathetic to places like that if not potentially outright hostile are unlikely to comply.

Personally I think you’re begging to open a whole can of worms proposing app-side site-bans. What’s to stop a liberal dev of a big lemmy mobile client from just adding “tankie” domains to prevent tankies from using their app? Once you plant the idea that it’s necessary to maintain a ban-list and do so, the temptation to abuse it is immediately there whereas right now it would be at least a little hassle.

They waited a month. They gave a month grace period and kept it working. It expired on the 12th of January.

Wow the admin drama there is truly spectacular as this isn’t by any means the first big thing. The fact they couldn’t get contact with this person and just merrily let the timer tick down on website expiration without putting plans into place within a week of the expiry or at least saying something to the community 24 hours before it happened is not a good look.

That domain is GONE. If the reactionaries from other instances or channers or youtubers don’t spot this and drop a ton of money on it to “own” the commies, still have to contend with some reseller grabbing it because of its connection to a memecoin or because of previous website rankings and wanting to squat it to attempt to turn a profit. The only thing that can be said is at least right now USAID and all the other ghouls are having their bank accounts frozen and in full panic mode so I don’t think any of them or their think tank friends are likely to dump 10k on it.

Edit: Just checked and it actually expired on the 12th of January. Their registrar even gave them a 1 month grace period to re-up and during that time no one noticed, no one put plans into place. So it wasn’t like “oh they’ll renew on time”, it was a month of the person failing to renew on time or even in the grace period and either no one noticing or everyone assuming this was fine that they’d missed their re-registration deadline and were on borrowed time.

Once the war is over and Russia doesn’t do that, what will European leaders do? How will they justify everything they’ve done?

Easy. Say slashing social benefits and increasing defense spending as well as supporting Ukraine worked. That Ukraine weakened Russia enough and NATO increased their defense enough that they’ve successfully dissuaded them from attacking …for now. Which is why even more money must be given to the war machine and suspicion and hatred of Russians must continue because it’s only a momentary reprieve.

How many people believe this at the end when all is said and done is a big question mark but that’s how they’d spin it and there are a kind of liberal who will nod along and absolutely believe this.

Interesting in that he’s being allowed to essentially completely abandon the post WW2 international law order and institutions the west has used to get their way under the guise of impartiality. He’s instead just saying why pay all this money, just use sanctions, and threats of invasion and violence and our hegemony over the international finance system to get our way instead directly without the pretenses and annoying mediating layers.

And it is paying some results. Panama has bowed, left the belt and road, is going to be subject to further pressure probably to annul or modify their agreements with China on ownership of the two ports and the overpass they’re constructing (wouldn’t be surprised the US forces them to seize such property in future and deny China any benefit from it, theft is their MO).

These are dangerous times filled with opportunity and risk.

How have they allowed archive dot org to remain up for so long is my thinking. One of these days soon they’re going to kill it for enabling stuff like this.

Good article. Shame about the bad faith liberal in the comments.

Question though. Why are all their links obfuscated through some weird tracking service instead of just being direct links? They all redirect through: media.us12.list-manage [dot] com/track/click?

Looks like something from email marketing. Very unprofessional and ugly looking. Also very bad practice as links like that probably won’t still be valid in 5 years. Also as communists it brings up questions about opsec, being tracked for every single source link you click.

He specifically said that the Russians are sitting on top of the minerals so the US or NATO needs to come in and push the Russians out and then they’ll belong to them. Not a great selling point. More of trying to coax WW3 out of the west.

What may very well be happening right now is a soft coup that will place Trump as dictator for life, for lack of a better word. Remember that Nazi Germany was funded by capitalists (much like the Musks of the time) and gained power through the limits of liberal ideals. Hitler didn’t seize power with a rifle; he was invited to rule by the elected chancellor. Before that, he was also considered to be a joke and a clown.

Increasingly feeling this way myself. Especially the whole clown thing ringing a little too close for comfort. I suppose the one thing that makes me question it is Trump’s age. He is not in the best of shape though with the healthcare he receives I suppose he could easily live another 10 years even with the stressors of office. Though it also strikes me with the Greenland stuff, incorporating Mexico, beyond being part of a potential wider plan and move by the bourgeoisie may be vain attempts as well to secure his legacy, that he desperately wants some lasting thing that confers greatness to his name in historic terms.

Certainly the naming of harmful, deranged sycophants like RFK who just cleared committee and wants to add to trans people, also people with ADHD, probably others non-neurotypical people who take drugs to help their conditions by setting up camps for them and setting them up as another enemy or at least victim to brutalize while claiming to “help”.

It’d be hilarious how easy it is for them to just stop environmental laws and good health practices purely via executive department actions because none of this was even a little codified by Democrats in congress if it wasn’t so vicious and I wasn’t so increasingly worried about whether in 2 years buying prepared food has a 5% chance of just killing you with some illness or heavy metals or whatever because those regulations have all been destroyed along with any consequences and the bourgeoisie have received the loud and clear signal to grab as much profit as they can. And the Democratic party apparatchiks nod approvingly at this “disciplining” of their base for daring not to vote for them for genocide in Gaza (Trump just announced plans to clear Gaza, maybe use the US military but approval of displacing all the Palestinian people there and building a luxury resort city).

Very, very bleak stuff. Obviously long-term this does point to a decent chance the empire falls for good but those stuck in it like myself are in for some dangerous and interesting times.