all of the people who were part of Anonymous who were worth a damn at hacking back in the day work for the state department now. The movement could very likely have been a psyop, given how many high-level hackers from that era there are on government payroll.

I stand in solidarity with the gay furry hackers.

genuinely my favourite thing about 1st thought. The headline will be like “NATO plans to destroy the world, South Korea develops child killing drug, and 100 good boys getting much-deserved headpats” as an extremely exaggerated example.

This time on: Loser can’t use google, claims community is alienating users.

I honestly have no idea, I’m just aware that the current term limits have allowed Putin’s government to get Russia out of the post-USSR depression, and have kept the country out of the grips of the Western imperialists.

Maybe if someone comes into power after Putin leaves who leans towards Western interests, and if they’re not replaced by someone better, it could be bad. But at least at the moment, the current system is not the worst thing in the world.

They aren’t “permanent” leaders. For instance, Stalin, Castro, and the Kims all retained power because they continued to be democratically elected into their positions. Notoriously Stalin asked to leave his position multiple times, and was turned down.

The need for long terms without term limits can be explained by it being very hard to get anything done when you can easily be replaced by disagreeing factions. Building Socialism requires long projects that generally have high costs, such as industrialization, refitting of industries, rebuilding wartorn portions of the country, etc. Projects like these can take 10+ years, and then require more time afterwards to ensure that the project was a success. Stalin’s industrialization of the USSR wouldn’t have been possible if the anti-leninist factions acquired power before they were finished, for example.

Having one leader stay in power over a long period also helps to keep capitalist bandits from leading a colour revolution in your country. For instance, if Russia had term limits - thus meaning Putin couldn’t’ve stayed in power for 20 years - the country likely would’ve become a Western colony. The same is true of a Socialist example, like Cuba. It’s hard to depose a leader who’s beloved by their people. Even harder when it’s the only leader those people have ever known.

I’ve added the medal to the emoji, feel free to award fellow comrades with the Hero of Lemmygrad medal.

It’s a shame we can’t pin comments on posts, because this one would get a pin from me.

so instead, have this Farmer_Heck seal of approval

in the elections they claimed they’d end the camps, it was one of their major lines against Trump.

All they did was keep kids from being separated from parents, then suppressed the whole thing.

Voting in and of itself does nothing. At least as far as the presidential vote matters. Comrades should still be actively engaged in workers’ parties, and should still vote in local elections to ensure that the best candidates get elected.

But voting for a communist in the presidential election is nothing more than a moral victory, they’d never let a communist win. They won’t normally even put a communist on the ballot. If you want to go to your local voting booth in 2024 and write in Cornel West (or what have you) you’re more than empowered to do so. But the two-headed party will still win.

The only way we’re exacting any kind of meaningful change under the current system is through strikes and the whatnot. Otherwise, it’s a waste of time. Not to come across as pessimistic, of course. If a communist was to get enough votes that MSM was forced to mention them, that would go a long way in bringing attention to our stances and bring some legitimacy to our parties. Of course, that would come with a lot of slander, and if McCarthy-era rhetoric ramps up, anyone who voted for the communist would be at risk of arrest. But the average liberal would be more aware of far-left parties, which I guess is a good thing.

generally “no.”

but if it’s someone I actually like, and want to help come to better stances, I’ll explain that it’s useless to care who the president is. The Senate and the supreme court matter more in terms of policy, and every single “left” leaning president has still been behind some vile shit.

When they were telling us to “vote blue no matter who” back in 2019, I would calmly explain that Biden’s politics aren’t far off from Republican ones, and that his career spits in the face of what his supporters think of him.

as it seems to me, the lines like “you’re just letting the conservatives win” and “if you don’t participate in the system you’re against the progress” are ultimately just things they tell themselves so they feel like they’re in some way useful. I would posit that most of them know, on some level, that voting doesn’t do anything of note. I would further posit that most of them know that they’re wasting their time caring about who the president is, but do it out of fear for the future. they lack the theory and the understanding to know that the existing system doesn’t include our voices, so like a person blinded by a dark room, they’re swinging around wildly in the hopes that they’ll hit something. A lot of them just need to be sat down and talked to in human terms, person to person. Enough of that and they’ll come around on their stances.

I thought it took far too long to give me a reason to care, and it generally bored me.

the prison arc definitely hooked me, and I’m excited for the next season. But I couldn’t come anywhere close to calling it the “best” thing personally.

if the rest of the show going forwards is as good as the last few episodes of the first season, then it could get into my top 5. but as it stands, I wouldn’t want to rewatch it any time soon.

I have argued this for years, but a lot of people don’t like to hear it.

at its most basic, all the separatists wanted was freedom from the imperialistic core, which stole their resources and pushed for legislation that made their worlds more dangerous. If we were to bring this into the real world, the separatists could represent the third world, and the core could represent the western first world.

Like, sure, the CIS was heavily funded by banks. but the politics of the star wars galaxy don’t pair 1:1 with our politics, and they were quite literally waging an anti-imperialist war against a deeply corrupted political elite who used a cult of space wizards to carry out their bidding, then utilized the equivalent of a child slave army for crushing resistance.

Yes, Palpatine manipulated the situation, but the CIS would’ve happened without him. Palpy simply abused a long-rooted problem of the republic to make the inevitable war happen the way he wanted it to. Without him it still would’ve happened, and there are good odds the CIS could’ve won. They’re only the “bad guys” because Palpatine needed them to appear that way, so republic citizens would support the rise of the empire and the dawn of space fascism. Remove Palpatine, and the outcome for the galaxy would’ve likely have looked a lot more like a decentralized confederation that allows the rim worlds to flourish, while levelling the playing field between the core and the rim.

(also the added actual lore of the only race that came anywhere near communism was in the CIS)

maybe now’s a good time to share that Reddit has always had rampant Russophobia. Back in 2016 when the Enough Trump Spam subreddit was made, they added “no xenophobia” to their rules. but every other post was xenophobic towards either Russia, China, or the DPRK. Hell, I got like a thousand downvotes on a comment where I corrected the OP on the reach of DPRK’s missiles (it was one of those “oh no, the north koreans are going to nuke us next week” posts), and nearly all of the thousands of comments were calling me a Russian bot, or using slurs to insult me.

Russophobia was a big part of the Democrat’s strategy against Trump in that election, claiming that Russia helped Trump win and whatnot. Russophobia is at this point, perhaps, the oldest propagandist tool used by the American state. Ever since the revolution in Russia, and honestly even before it, they scaremongered supporters into supporting whatever it was the politicians or the media wanted them to support, using Russia, the Soviet Union, or Communism (which was tied to the Soviets for them) as the leverage. Black people want rights? can’t do that, that’s communism, and look at what’s going on in the evil USSR. Workers want rights? can’t do that, the evil USSR. so on, so forth. It’s very disheartening that they still use this tactic today, but it’s even more disheartening that in the information age, where anyone can simply look the information up and disprove the propaganda, people still eat the tactic up like day-old fries.

You should probably find some active users to appoint as moderators, to reduce your workload.

If you explain why the source isn’t trustable, that’ll work for some people. But the people who wanna shout “but china bad” at the mear mention of it will just ignore that. So, ultimately - and unfortunate as it may be - this is one of the things that a hard stance must be taken on, and will likely be disrupting to your community. I.E. you’re gonna have to remove any and all posts with these sources, and possibly ban users who repeatedly try to use these sources.

we decided against doing IP bans because it could keep users who use VPNs from logging in, since VPN IPs aren’t always unique. I just banned this person for being a troll, but I’m not entirely sure if they’re banned from the main branch or just Lemmygrad. I banned this person before for commenting a death threat on a main branch post. I don’t remember how to do @s, but it might be worth getting the attention of one of the main branch admins for this.