Has anyone else noticed the strong pro CCP and anti-west vibes here?

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Imperious_melange@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

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.

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red_bull_of_juarez@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Some core developers of Lemmy are hardcore tankies and that attracts others.

Also, for someone from Africa it’s weird to claim they are not involved in this. China is strategically investing in African countries. If your country has any mineral or other strategic resources, China is no doubt already there.

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- Imperious_melange@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Africa as a whole, much like India is waiting for the main players win/lose to pick sides officially or otherwise take each other out and clear the field. Aka its nothing but silence here on most things. As for china’s investments. Its a mixed bag. Its good to get more honest investments than USAid but simultaneously China is making much more than they are giving. It’s a parasitic loan, not a loan of good faith. Not to include the extreme racism of Chinese influencers coming here and making videos of children saying in Mandarin how they are dumb monkeys and need Chinese enslavement.
  
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  - homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    cripes.
    
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- kernelle@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Has the political stance of the devs ever impacted lemmy in any way? From what I can tell they do a pretty good job isolating their views to their instance. Honestly apart from a few comments I rarely see any tankies.
  
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  - DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Yes. As per OP, tankies are everywhere in Lemmy. More so than other platforms, it’s hard to miss. OP isn’t wrong about that.
    
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  - RobotToaster@mander.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Very early on there was a hard-coded slur censor list that was eventually changed to be settable by the instance admin, that’s about it.
    
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  - TAG@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    From what I understand, the devs are not injecting their political views into the Lemmy code. That does not mean they have not had a pro-tankie influence on the Lemmy community. As the original developers, they also set up the first major instance, lemmy.ml and they moderate that instance to have a tankie lean. Since it was the first instance, many people created their first account for it and it was the de facto standard place to start communities. As far as I know, it is still one of the most active instances.
    
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  - Yliaster@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Lemmy.ml is tankie breeding grounds.
    
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- frisbird@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I love that you think Africa’s dog in the fight is because China is strategically investing in Africa and chasing mineral and strategic resources when nearly every single African country’s borders were defined by the West, when entire countries were created and colonized by the West, when the US is actively bombing multiple countries in Africa and has been for decades, when the West was literally torturing, raping, kidnapping, murdering, and mass murdering Africans all over the content for centuries, when many African countries are economically subjugated by Western countries to this day by control over currency, predatory loans and structural adjustment programs designed to create dependencies, etc.
  
  Africa’s dog in the fight between the West and Asia comes primarily from the West’s total subjugation of the continent.
  
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  - red_bull_of_juarez@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    And there’s the tankie whataboutism I have been expecting. Everything you said is true, but my point is that China is strategically investing and they don’t care about Africa, only China. African countries very much need to be aware of that.
    
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  - devolution@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Found the tankie!
    
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  - DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    This is irrelevant to OP’s point about Lemmy being pro-CCP.
    
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  - homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    We have a winner
    
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  - Yliaster@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    The west decimating Africa shouldn’t mean China gets to, too.
    
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mech@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
On one hand, lemmy used to be a safe-space for communists (including those that wish for the USSR back) before Redditors moved in. The developers of lemmy are politically pro-China and anti-USA.
On the other hand, the USA have stopped being the shining beacon of freedom and democracy they used to be seen as by many people in the west. So anti-USA posts will get lots of upvotes even from people in the west or the USA itself.
And thirdly, the western countries’ refusal to do speak out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Jordan and Lebanon has turned most of lemmy against their governments.

China just looks less bad in comparison than it used to be.
When western governments don’t give a fuck about human rights anymore, they have no standing to criticize China over it. And when western media refuse to even address the genocide, trust in them is lost and people start to doubt whether the stories they tell about the evil adversary China are true after all.

So it’s a mix of Lemmy’s original board culture, and a major shift in public perception in general.

P.S.: I’d love to read more news and stories from African countries on Lemmy!

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- Imperious_melange@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I agree with your analysis. I do still find it disturbing how silent people are about genocides in other locations such as Sudan, Nigeria, or even Myanmar. Not to speak of the Uyghur people of China. I find most this location to be of people mostly repeating what they were told by someone else and not aware of the world as it is. I wouldn’t say the CCP today had much to do with communism and is at its core selective towards that which benefits it and against anything that is not, that is they could not care less about political philosophy, religion, economic systems or any other stories crafted by man. If it is against them it is bad, if it is in worship of them it is good.
  
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  - devolution@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    no one cares because they’re fucking brown. That’s the honest truth. Sad to say.
    
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  - tunetardis@piefed.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I’m interested in your take on the USAid funding cuts. It only made the news briefly where I am amid a long list of disruptions that have wreaked havoc closer to home, but I can’t help thinking this has to be one of the worst things that happened on a global scale?
    
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- psycho_driver@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  
  China just looks less bad in comparison than it used to be. When western governments don’t give a fuck about human rights anymore, they have no standing to criticize China over it. And when western media refuse to even address an ongoing genocide carried out with western weapons and money, trust in them is lost and people start to doubt whether the stories they tell about the evil adversary China are true after all.
  
  In my opinion, of the two shitty governments in question, I believe China actually has the well-being of its citizens more in mind than do the oligarchs controlling the USA. China’s quality of life for its people has been rising by leaps and bounds in the past fifty years. Meanwhile over here the best people who aren’t in the 1% can hope for is stagnation, while for the majority things are just getting continually worse.
  
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  - mech@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Yes, that was always the Chinese government’s deal with its citizens: We make your life better, as long as you don’t rebel, resist or demand “freedom”.
    And the western model was “we give you personal freedom, consumer goods and some participation in government, so you don’t demand an actual redistribution of wealth and power”.
    
    But in many western countries, especially in the US, the rich and powerful have stopped honoring their part of the bargain.
    
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  - yucandu@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    
    China’s quality of life for its people has been rising by leaps and bounds in the past fifty years.
    
    You have a long way to leap when you start out so far behind.
    
    Don’t forget the main reason western countries moved all their manufacturing there is because of their lack of labour rights.
    
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- richieadler@lemmy.myserv.one ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  
  the USA have stopped being the shining beacon of freedom and democracy they used to be seen as by many people in the west
  
  Only blind people ever saw it like that. In Latin-America we’ve known for a long time that USian foreign policy consists mostly in destroying inconvenient countries with resources for profit.
  
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  - mech@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    
    Only blind people ever saw it like that.
    
    Maybe it was wrong to generalize. I grew up in West Germany, so my perception is naturally biased.
    The contrast between how the USA used to be seen in West Germany before the W. Bush presidency and now is very, very strong.
    
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- frisbird@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  China looks less bad in comparison because it hasn’t dropped a bomb in a conflict since 1989. It hasn’t fired on boat since 1988. The US criminal justice system manages 10x more people than the Chinese criminal justice system with more than double the recidivism of China China doesn’t engage in structural adjustment programs like the IMF does and they forgive billions in loans unlike the West. There are grandparents alive today who were subsistence farming when they were 5 and are now experiencing consumer robotics and self-driving cars. China looks good because of reality, not just because the US is recently doing bad things.
  
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  - yucandu@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    So can non-Chinese reporters and journalists come in and check and make sure that reality is true?
    
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- k0e3@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  
  On the other hand, the USA have stopped being the shining beacon of freedom and democracy they used to be seen as by many ~~people in the west~~ of its own citizens.
  
  Are we talking about recent developments here? Because, honestly, I don’t think they’ve been a beacon in a looong time for those of us outside the US.
  
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  - 4am@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Yeah a lot of people in the USA thought we’d still had a chance to come back after 9/11, even if the before-times where also a farce.
    
    2016 the mask came off at home and 2024 they’re not even trying to hide anymore
    
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- yucandu@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  
  And thirdly, the western countries’ refusal to speak out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Jordan and Lebanon has turned most of lemmy against their governments.
  
  You’re lumping in a whole lot of countries with America and England there.
  
  Almost like that’s the whole point of the anti “West” thing.
  
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  - mech@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    This is the official stance of the EU on the matter:
    …europa.eu/…/eu-position-situation-middle-east/
    
    The European Council strongly condemns Iran’s indiscriminate military strikes against countries in the region and expresses its solidarity with countries affected.
    
    The European Council discussed the deteriorating situation in Gaza and the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem, which is of grave concern.
    
    The word genocide doesn’t appear anywhere in the document.
    
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- schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  
  When western governments don’t give a fuck about human rights anymore, they have no standing to criticize China over it.
  
  I would expand this idea further… since all governments occasionally violate human rights, they shouldn’t be very much in the business of calling out human rights violations by other governments. That should mainly be the role of citizens or private organizations, not governments.
  
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- ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I agree. I don’t see things overly pro China, but me being from the US, the US deservedly gets shit on. The rich and the crazy have been allowed to completely ruin it. Then, so many countries sucking the Israeli cock is just insane to me. Seems most countries are ran by terrible people. China included.
  
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ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Lemmy was created by communists, for communists. It’s gonna have communists in it.

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- JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Yea but not the cool kind of communists, the lame kind of Communists.
  
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  - draco_aeneus@mander.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    All the cool communists are out in the real world, robbing banks or something.
    
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  - teyrnon@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    .ml has a lot of cool users.
    
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- Imperious_melange@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Is China actually communist though? Like is their government or economics actually communist? Also I don’t think communism and China are one and the same. Finally all things should be open to fair criticism and discussion. There’s no need to turn politics into religion2.0
  
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  - Thrawn@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    First thing this is all purely personal opinion viewing stuff from outside and as a general interest in world history.
    
    I am an American but I have lived outside the USA for a couple years and no it wasn’t on a military base.
    
    So with that said my personal interpretation is that China is still largely the same China as in ancient times and has decided to take several large chunks of both Communism and Capitalism and add those to the far far larger just continuing to do/be the same as they have for thousands of years.
    
    To put it a different way, it is a case of fix what they feel was/is broken and keep doing all the things that work and from their point of view China has kept itself as one of the largest Nations in history for one of the longest times of any country.
    
    So on the bad side you have things like them being willing to be extremely repressive is terms of censorship. Or the oppression of minorities they don’t fall in line enough to the central control of the government. Or minimizing stories that damage their reputation like mining issues.
    
    On the good side they seem to be able to at least partially consider long term large scale society value. At least from the point of view of engineering. The USA by comparison seems to exclusively only consider short term value. Often in terms of weeks or a financial quarter and occasionally the few year duration of a presidential or Senate term.
    
    China also seems to care about improving the average life of it’s citizens. This is a big deal and probably the most “Communist” thing. However that also goes along with them seemingly not just allowing but being perfectly happy to have some people have truly horrific lives as long as the baseline average is improving.
    
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Cowbee@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
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.

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- JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  The bit about censorship is cute given .ml and honestly .world as well, are both ban happy for any dissent.
  
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  - plutopos@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    But since lemmy is federated, those two communities cannot censor the whole website
    
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Grail@multiverse.soulism.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
That’s happening because you’re on lemmy.world, which is connected to lemmy.ml. if you look at those pro-ccp threads, they’ll be coming from lemmy.ml, the authoritarian socialist website.

My website isn’t connected to .ml, so I don’t see any of that nonsense.

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- qevlarr@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Also, you can block the whole instance.
  
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  - foodandart@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Yup. One of the first things I did.
    
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  - Trilogy3452@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    As an end user?
    
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LuigiMaoFrance@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Anyone else get a suspicious anti-genocide vibe from this place? 😳

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- I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - Imperious_melange@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    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.
    
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- Imperious_melange@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  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.
  
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Treczoks@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Less Anti-West, more like Anti-US. And the China drones are another thing entirely.

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- Imperious_melange@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - Apepollo11@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    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.
    
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  - gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Yeah - the whole tankie thing is another matter entirely
    
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  - TrickDacy@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    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.
    
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  - teyrnon@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Ha ha, no. The US never has, and never will, make the world a better place, in our lifetimes.
    
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TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Yeah, there are certain “tankie” instances (such as hexbear.net, lemmygrad.ml) that are like that, and most sane people block them to protect their sanity, so no one counters them

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- Imperious_melange@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I’m speaking of Lemmy.world
  
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  - Successful_Try543@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    The votes are federated. A CCP critic post by a LW user in an LW community can be up/downvoted by users on any instance that LW is federating with, including tankie-heavy flagship instance lemmy.ml.
    
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  - Quacksalber@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I don’t know of you’re aware yet, but the fediverse discerns between two different types of content: local and federated. Local content is hosted on your instance, lemmy.world. Federated content is hosted on another instance and federated with your server. You can distinguish between the two (on the web client) by checking if the community/thread/user has an @[instance] behind it. My guess would be that you stumbled into a @lemmy.ml community. There you’ll find a rigorously enforced “alternative” world view, as you decribed.
    
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prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

Full disclosure, I live in Africa and don’t have a dog in this fight

This upset China

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- Imperious_melange@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Lol there is actually a pretty strong pro CCP contingent at least in east Africa. I personally think they are idiots to assume people in China care about them more than their own government which honestly doesn’t care about them in the slightest.
  
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umbrella@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
if you are african you definitely have a dog in this fight.

africa has been ravaged by western colonialism not unlike we were.

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- ladnerlad@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  China is currently doing soft-colonialism in huge parts if Africa. Both the west and China are still huge on colonialism, just in a modern form.
  
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- Imperious_melange@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  The west isn’t doing much here now. We can concern ourselves with the past and not pay attention to what’s happening right now but I wouldn’t suggest it. China, India, Saudi Arabia are having a pretty active role in the day to day currently. It’s not all bad, and it’s not all good. I will say that our politicians are extremely cheap and will sell billions of dollars of value here for only a few million deposited directly into their accounts to whoever is willing to pay.
  
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RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
There are absolutely agitators here who feel the need to inject their venomous or smug anti-west rhetoric at any opportunity, just looking to start an argument.

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.

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Yliaster@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
The founders of the platform are tankies. Dessalines, for example, is a tankie that banned me for criticizing china.

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- plant@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  lmao gottem
  
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brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

Anything pro-African is mostly neutral but in essence ignored.

This is sad.

I’m American, and I want the Fediverse to be Euro, Africa, South America heavy. Basically anyone but the usual suspects that dominate news. I want to see stuff from other countries.

I was fortunate enough to even visit Tanzania, and it was great. It’d be nice if you guys took over the world. Please…

Anyway, be aware that many of the authoritarian shills actually live in the US, Western Europe or wherever. Some do not, but the bulk seem to.

They’re just terminally online.

They don’t know squat about what’s actually going on in North Korea or Iran or China because lemmy.ml is banned there.

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- ButtermilkBiscuit@feddit.nl ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Wild seeing it here in .world and other instances all the time. People are entitled to their opinions, but so many comments praising xi or putin are detached from reality. It’s like those people don’t realize that in those countries just speaking your mind against the regime is enough to get you and your family disappeared in an instant. Wow China has great cities this is true - if you say the wrong thing online they’ll put you in a prison labor camp for decades. Ah yes pyongyang is a very clean city - 3 million people died of starvation there in the 90s, they’re experiencing another famine RIGHT NOW. Do people not realize the reality or is it turfing?
  
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Objection@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
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.

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- frisbird@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I don’t think Haiti is paying reparations to France any more. I believe Citi purchased the debt from France, and Haiti was paying Citi the reparations until 1947.
  
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PlzGibHugs@piefed.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Lemmy’s core developers are Tankies (radical supporters of the CCP and anyone else claiming to carry on second world ideology, such as Putin) as are many of those running older instances. This includes older instances such as Lemmygrad and lemmy.ml, which makes them very entrenched. Still, they seem to be a very vocal minority, since larger instances like Lemmy.world lean away from that, and PieFed (an alternative but still intercompatible Lemmy alternative) is popular in part from those wishing to move away from Lemmy’s tankie developers.

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mrmaplebar@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Although I'd say it generally skews to the political left, it's a mistake to think of the fediverse as a monoculture. Lemmy as an open source technology is politically neutral, as is ActivityPub as a federation protocol.

At the same time, there are a few hard left communist "tankie" servers, and the creators of Lemmy identify as Leninists, and these types of people tend to be blindly pro-China and pro-Russia.

Personally I do not view either China or Russia in a favorable light... Having said that, I'm not sure I view any country in a favorable light right now, aside from I guess Canada and I guess New Zealand.

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- birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Why should we restrict ourselves to countries? Let us take inspiration from societies such as the Rojava (which do need help, in staving off the new repressive Syrian regimes), the Zapatistas, and Christiana. Those are great.
  
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- Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Hungary has taken some big positive steps lately, which made me very happy for my european neighbors! It’s not all doom and gloom. Armenia also kept their distance from the russians, much to my delight.
  
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anarchiddy@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
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.

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- foodandart@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  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.
  
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- kepix@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  yeah, but we suffered communism and capitalism already. time to build something good this time.
  
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Waterpumpee@lemmus.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
What is “the west” meaning nowadays anyway? US threatens to invade Europe and is closer to russia than NATO. They are barely allies anymore.

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- Imperious_melange@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  You are correct. Although the only outlier now is the US of which I imagine they will settle down with the next presidency into a more so familiar behavior. That said they could double down on their solo adventure.
  
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PotatoPie@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I’m also African. I used to be fairly biased towards west, as in letting them get away with foreign intervention with just minor scrutiny while being strongly against china russia and islam for their downfalls(misogyny, oppression ect). up until the whole files release and that took me down a rabbit hole of learning about reality of 9/11 the magnitude of bias in mainstream media and finally reading about history of socialism and eventually communism starting from Che Guevara

That alone already made me have severe criticism of US as is but what sent me over the edge is how complacent americans are, if these things happened in any other country the entire economy would be shut down by the people, but they’re just trying to avoid talking or bringing up this subject, or saying it’s out of their power, then the next moment starting a topic about their latest high end keyboard and travel plans, then switching to the difficulties of living end to end

I do my best to try and be kind i swear i do, but things like this actually drive me insane not cause they happen but because of how often it does. I kid you not i’m completely sold that if anyone will stop the west’s imperialism and foreign intervention it’s going to be another African American or LGBTQ or some minority as usual, because only suffering can bring about change and i do not see suffering from the lifestyles of the americans i talk with, it’s always only on paper

The way i see it is they feel unmotivated to reign their government in due to their lifestyle no longer being at the top of charts or better than europe? How does that fix anything in their situation though, and what do i say living off only 2 meals a day to save money? The only thing that got majority of west sphere to hate genocidal regime wasn’t their tax money being spent on it but the raising of gas price? Please someone make me central again i’m so sad now

No i’m not paid off i’m just waiting for the American people to pull their weight in all of this or not silencing and smearing people that are trying to pull in their behalf before i can feel the brotherhood bond with them as i do with soviets(not current russia) and china fighting back against RAM cartel and fossil fuels, please

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- frisbird@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  This exactly. Once you start actually engaging with history in earnest, and breaking down the narratives we’ve been fed our whole lives, it becomes impossible to see the world in the same way.
  
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DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
For those of you picking at OP “not having a dog in the fight”, because they’re in Africa, that is irrelevant to OP’s point.

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silentjohn@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
That’s why I came to Lemmy. Sure open source and decentralized and all that too. But somebody on reddit described Lemmy as “Leftist Reddit” and I said count me in!

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freebee@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
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.

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mechoman444@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
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.

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Krusty@quokk.au ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Yeah you can’t even talk about how Mao killed tens of millions of Chinese without getting downvoted. That’s present… But less prevalent than the general America-badism.

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Formfiller@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
It’s probably because Americans are wanting a revolution to overthrow the pedophile Zionist class that has highjacked our country ✊🏼🇦🇱

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_aj@piefed.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Not really on topic - but a shoutout to https://baraza.africa/ one of the older pre reddit exodus instances.

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nednobbins@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
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?

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tacosanonymous@mander.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
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.

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ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
It’s because USA sucks and China rulez. Nothing suspicious here.

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jaybone@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Welcome to Lemmy.

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