this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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Mao and Stalin (though to a noticably lesser extent) actually had insightful things to say though. Mao's essays on epistemology are genuinely really fantastic. And that can be true alongside all of the show trials and sparrow murder which was genuinely really fucking bad.
Pol Pot meanwhile admitted to never having really ever read Marx, and his faction of the Communist Party of Cambodia was more concerned about Khmer ultranationalism and anti-Vietmamese sentiment that had been brewing over the course of French colonialism, then with anything to do with building socialism.
So, I guess what I'm saying is that we ought to take a nuanced, grounded view of historic socialisms that accounts for their success and failures, and doesn't fall into either mindless exoneration of awful shit, nor reflexively screeching "TANKIE TANKIE!!!" Every time anything vaguely socialist oriented comes up in discussion.
Stalin botched Marxism into an authoritarian system that suited him. It was successful and he sponsored other authoritarians that liked his ideas. Those are all about the concentration of power and have fuck all to do with Marxs ideas.
And Hitler was a Vegetarian. Does that mean vegitarians should simp for Hitler because "he had at least one good idea?" I should hope not! Furthermore if they do, even if they only simped for his vegetarianism and not his "political career," it is gonna come off a bit different than they intend to most people.
By all means, keep those subs dedicated to defending all those atrocities and simping for despots, but people likely won't be fooled into thinking they only care about epistemology while they say nothing happened in Tienanman Square without a shred of irony.
LOL I see I struck a nerve. Keep downvoting, the salt seasons my post.
Hitler being a vegetarian had nothing to do with his fascism. Mao's Epistemology was built on Stalin's synthesizing of Marxism-Leninism from the works of Lenin and the experiences of the Russian Civil War, etc.
There's actual political philosophy here that we can think through, debate, apply, update, and revise. Mistakes or outright malicious behavior can be learned from or discarded as necessary, because Marxism has within it mechanisms for self criticism and recitification.
You can ascribe to that philosophy or not, I don't care. But this kind of kneejerk reaction isn't in line with the way these discussions actually happen within Marxism.
Do dogmatic Marxists who blindly defend bad shit exist? Yes. But they're commonly denounced and criticized for their garbage analysis.
You're taking a small subset of, mostly online weirdos, and stawmanning my position, and an entire branch of political philosophy.
Buddy, I'm not trying to pull wool over your eyes or be sneaky. I literally said to not do this shit. I'm trying to get people to engage with these topics with nuance and critical thinking skills. Not blindly screech uniformed praise or condemnation based on kneejerk, emotional, preconceptions.
It's difficult for people. When Mao/Lenin/Stalin or even Marx are discussed they all go to the "takie" slur. Their brains turn off and all they can think about is their propaganda.
Everyone is so quick to write off the atrocities of the USA and Europe. Japanese internment camps, destruction of democracies and creation of fascists dictatorships. The funding of terrorists (before and after we called them terrorists), the destruction of the environment in pursuit of profits, child labor and slave labor also in pursuit of profits.
But damn, because communists took businesses away from their oppressors, they are just as bad as fascists. /Shrugs
People gotta read more books.
@SpookyBogMonster @ArcaneSlime, I'm a left commonsensist in my ideology, and I only can say, that any system which lacks of the sovereignty of the people, based only on a leader or a small elite, be it from the right or the left, necessarily becomes a fascist and corrupt dictatorship. It is irrelevant if it is called Stalin or the fat boy of North Korea on the left or banks and multinationals in capitalism that make the rules, the result for the people is the same. Fascism
This I can get behind.
Ok so the analogy isn't the best, but the point still stands that simply because they did a good, that doesn't mean that simping for them and ignoring the bad is a good idea, nor does it mean that those simping for "the guy" will be taken as simping only for "the good" and not also "the bad" he did. Those subs/instances I mention and the people that populate them are literal genocide denialists, they aren't posting on "c/epistemology" and they aren't talking specifically about epistemology, they are denying the holodomor, the armenian genocide, and the tienanman square massacre, among other things they support like China's current Uyghur genocide because "America did an Iraq, and while we said that was bad, China is good for doing the same thing, because America did the bad" which is among the dumbest circular logic available to be found on lemmygrad.
Yes yes, but the people I'm complaining about aren't doing that, they're simply doomposting about late stage capitalism and denying genocides, simping for their preferred cults of personality. In essence to use my bad analogy, it'd be like if an instance of nazis doomposted about communism and denied the holocaust, but it was fine because they could sometimes also discuss his vegetarianism if they so chose, they just happen to not do that very often.
In "marxism," or on lemmygrad, "internet marxism?" If you suggest these things are different, maybe, but if you're suggesting that I'm wrong about the specific people I'm talking about, I'll have to disagree having seen it for myself.
Again, on lemmygrad or somewhere else? Because I'm complaining about the Tankies on lemmygrad specifically and all who think as they do, and they certainly do not denounce and criticize that garbage analasys, rather they encourage and fester it.
Again, do you mean a small subset of lemmygrad, or do you mean marxists as a whole? In any case, I'm actually inclined to believe the subset isn't quite as small as you believe, or would like others to believe. I run into those people all the time and rarely your camp, suggesting either they are more numerous, or they are more loud, in which case I'd suggest your camp attempt to be louder to drown those crazies out, because they're doing a pretty good job at convincing people they're the bigger camp.
That's great that you're trying to do that, but the people on lemmygrad still exist, and hand waving my complaints about them away as simply nuance saying they're just discussing epistemology is patently false. You're basically just saying "not all communists" here, like "not all men." Well, as the "not all men" camp was told, "it's enough that it's a problem, and you need to teach ~~men~~ communists not to ~~rape~~ deny genocides."