I have seen many comments saying that lemmy.world sucks, and sh.itjust.works is good. I have seen that lemmy.world apparently has a very poor reputation among other instances. Why? After a quick look, sh.itjust.works doesn’t look much different to me. Can anyone explain?
Edit: many good replies. the conclusion I’m drawing is that for my purposes it doesn’t really matter. I appreciate everyone who responded
Make it a stickie, because barely anyone observes this definition.
I am regularly slurred as Russian bot or a tANkiE when calling for peace and de-escalation of war.
Daily .
Have you stopped to consider that maybe you’re just an asshole?
No, seriously, you’re whining about being called a tankie when… like dude, you’re a tankie. Half your comments are just bringing up how EU/UK support for Ukraine’s defense is a frivolous waste or similar. I doubt you think of yourself like this but to an outside observer you’re deeply toxic.
From my position warmongering is deeply toxic.
No matter how much organizing you do with other anarchists offline, to the .world crowd if you’re to the left of Joe Biden you’re a tankie.
From my position, the jedi are evil!
Man, they weren’t kidding about those federation issues. Just now got the notification here. Listen, you’re not wrong that people are reactionaries, this is the internet. Many people need to either figure out they aren’t welcome, or figure out a less confrontational way to present their ideas (me included, often).
But all that said: there’s a difference between “I think anarchists are largely naive at best” and “This person is a tankie”. I can (and frequently do) disagree with all manner of left-slash political opinions, and I’m perfectly happy to coexist with them since they often have perfectly good ideas that come from a position I disagree with, but can accept.
What I can’t abide, and what the above asshole espouses, is the brainless regurgitation of pro-russian propaganda. Ideas like “enabling the AFU’s continued defense of Ukraine is unconscionable and the guilt for all the innocent deaths lay at the feet of NATO for enabling this war to continue” are what makes someone a tankie, and are what that person keeps saying. That’s the shit they get pushback on (and which they fail to understand the negative reactions to), because they’re too self-centered to realize that Ukranians aren’t some innocent babes in the wood lead astray by a wolf. They are a people who have fought and died, for hundreds of years, to secure their fucking right to choose the fates they make for themselves. The choice to lay down one’s life for a cause they believe in, that they dictate, is one every culture holds absolutely sacred. How many martyred anarchists are there, who’s names live on in the creed of those who come after them? I’m not even an anarchist and I can think of dozens.
A situation has arisen which has lead so, so many to make that choice, and while every life lost here is a tragedy I grieve over every day, infantilizing the people who’s lives are freely given? The people who’s lives are being stolen from them? The ones who’ve been found with their hands still bound, dumped in mass graves? The busses full of stolen children, who will never be seen again?
THAT is what makes this jackass a fucking tankie.
statist cops who routinely perform extrajudicial executions, have largely unchecked mind control powers and freedom to recruit child slaves from pod racing without any sort of oversight
Next you’ll probably need me to explain why the imperium of man is evil
You seem very emotionally invested in war with Russia, I don’t think opposing that makes people tankies, nor do I see how opposition to war infantalizes the people getting killed by it.
Ukranians aren’t a monolith and there were plenty of Ukranians getting killed by their government prior to '22.
Of everything you could choose to criticize the jedi for, of all the many things you could choose, Thought Crimes and Qui-Gon emancipating Anikan is what you go with? I mean, christ, I just said that to point out how cliché your response was, I did not think you’d actually roll with the idea I was comparing you to Darth Fucking Vader.
Honestly there’s not much more for me to say to this. Between that and you revealing that you think the imperium is evil (which… uhm… buddy you’ve missed the entire joke) I think you’ve made your grasp of political nuance pretty explicit. I won’t even try to figure out what you mean by saying ukranians aren’t a monolith, or that there have been ukranians dying in wars prior to 2022. Obviously this is true? You do know about the annexation of crimea, right? Or… essentially the entire history of Ukraine? Or every other country? And the active genocide Russia is carrying out on the Ukranian people, you know about that?
Sheesh. Opposition to war with russia does not infantalize Ukrainians, nor does it make one a tankie. War is bad. If I had a magic wand, I’d end the war in a second. I’ve been to wars, I know exactly how awful they really are. But, opposing war with russia because you think Ukraine are the aggressors, or that any violence is to be opposed even self defence, or because one is deluded enough to think that ukranians are somehow being tricked into fighting this war by evil nato arms companies, is what makes someone a tankie. The Ukrainian people have had a war forced on them by russia, and none of them wanted this.
idk where you got the Vader comparison, but the system that the Jedi were upholding had slavery, freeing the one who happens to be valuable doesn’t make them good.
They are the reactionary enforcers/janissaries for that particular empire.
also ‘thought crimes’ is like when you’re getting prosecuted for having bad opinions, my issue is that they let these psychic cops just run around manipulating people’s minds
what’s joke then?
I think the causes America chooses to support are the ones which benefit it geopolitically, regardless of how “worthy” their cause. Palestinians are defending themselves against aggression where’s their shipment of Abrams and air defenses?
(It’s a wall of text so I broke it down into sections)
(My apologies if you’re on mobile and the spoilers don’t work)
Alright, I’m super game to talk about media to illustrate my point:
Old Republic
Okay, this is a pretty critical set of plot points:
First: the jedi supported the Old Republic, which was a republic. Not an empire. The Empire’s first act was to slaughter the Jedi wholesale. And, the Jedi and the Old Republic together outlawed slavery and emancipated the slaves, often quite violently, ages before the events of the prequels.
Second: Tatooine, that inexplicably plot critical dirtball on the outer rim, was not a Republic world. Thats why Obi-Wan hid Luke and himself there after Palpatine founded the empire (Tatooine remained separate from the empire too), why Jabba runs his crime empire from there and why Qui-Gon had to put his ship up as collateral in his pod racing bet to free Anikan - Watto wouldn’t accept republic credits, the only currency Qui-Gon had, because they were near enough valueless on Tatooine, and they had no jurisdiction or other resources being that they were on an independent planet.
Thought Crimes
If the risk of self-regulated psychic cops is not “getting prosecuted for having bad opinions”, or other variations on thinking thoughts that should not be thunk, than I’m not really sure what the problem is. But, if you’re at all serious about what hypothetically happens when telepathy is regulated by the state, the Psi-Corps from Babylon 5 is an incredibly well thought out example. If you haven’t ever seen the show, I highly recommend it. It’s the only piece of media I’ve found that has managed to make scenes of several people sitting around trying to not have a war feel as intense as the countless franchises that use a generic galactic war as a backdrop. Plus, Vir is my spirit animal (or it’s a peterbilt 389, it’s possible I’m really bad at being religious).
40K
This one is actually really important here (this is the only time in my life I’m ever going to say those words about Warhammer 40,000): The Imperium Of Man isn’t evil. Nothing in 40k is evil. Nothing in 40k is good, either, but explicitly nothing is evil. Classically: Khorne is the god of honor, family, faith and self determination. Nurgle is the god of life. Slaneesh is the god of love. Tznetch is the final boss of dyslexia. In 30k, the chaos space marines had a point when they launched the heresy - the Emperor really was hiding critical truths from them in his genocidal purge. And at the same time, the Emperor was right to hide those truths (except from magnus) because the knowledge of what he was really attempting would have itself stirred rebellion (unless he’d just fucking told magnus).
In M.41, the Imperium is a totalitarian dictator state which is so brutal, corrupt and repressive that it defies description. But they’re not, you know, wrong to be that way. Knowledge of Chaos literally corrupts. A single witch left to their own devices has, time and time again, brought about the torturous deaths or total annihilation of trillions of otherwise innocent souls. The imperial cult isn’t like real world state religions because there is real, tangible proof of what they preach. Every voidship relies on the burning pyre of His will, manifested. Every sanctioned psyker draws their control and resolve from His light. The faith of Ministorum preachers truly can drive back the forces of chaos, and as each lowly preacher or confessor’s faith is bolstered by the faith of their flock, so too does that faith bolster His own might, and allow Him on Earth to act - through the subtle workings of the Tarot to the martial prowess of the Adepta Sororitas or the might of an awakened Living Saint. And if humans turn their souls from His light, it bolsters His enemies tenfold. Losing faith in the emperor truly might bring about the extermination of humanity.
Boy, that's sure a lot of words I don't want to read - what's your point?
Okay yeah, fair enough:
The whole of the 40k universe exists in shades of grimdark. This is the point of the entire setting. No faction is good, no faction is evil, they just exist. There’s no hope, that’s the joke. Fundamentally, the Imperium would collapse into ruin and death without the supporting bonds that are crushing the life from it’s bloated carcass. It’s a dark satire. There’s no good guys. And while the Jedi were characterized by a man who’s literary skill is best expressed with crayons, they’re still a more complicated faction than you’re giving them credit for.
So critically, if you can’t understand the motivations behind the two protagonist factions in two of the largest pieces of media in the whole of human history, media written not for it’s depth of political complexity but for it’s ease of digestion by (lets be honest) the lowest common nerd denominator, why do you think your understanding of the situation in Ukraine is going to be more reasonably concluded?
No, seriously. “Because it’s a real world event and I don’t care about fantasy” just doesn’t cut it here. The political machinations of starwars are entwined within every weft of the west’s social tapestry. Wookiepedia is the largest repository of meta-narrative lore that exists. The UA war is the most heavily propagandized hot conflict in history. You can’t just go out and binge a .wikia about it and think that your conclusion is correct.
And lets be extra clear here, I don’t disagree with this statement:
I totally agree. In fact I’d even go even further and say that’s true of literally every country in the world. In this case though, the continuation of the conflict is being supported materially by every European country, NATO, The United States and a comedically overwhelming percentage of the Ukrainian population themselves. You’d be hard pressed to find someone more critical of the US government’s foreign policy than I am, and even I think that opposing a coalition made up of North Korea, China and Russia (stars of the hit show “The Bachelor But With Sex Slaves And Genocide”) is pretty justified. I mean, fuck, Juche is almost cartoonishly evil. Maybe, just this once, the entire western world isn’t wrong to involve themselves militarily in a conflict (the linguistic irony is palpable in that statement) despite it directly benefiting them by strengthening their food, energy, geopolitical, geographical and cultural security.
(And, to address the blatant ‘whattaboutism’ in the room, yeah. The US is wrong on Israel/Palestine. Israel brutally murdered my babysitter when I was younger, I won’t be happy until they get crushed into nothingness for the crimes they have wrought - because unlike the US, or Russia, or China, they can’t claim to have done any good for the world. Even North Korea gives out more humanitarian aid than Israel.)
I’ll be at the pro-Palestine protests and the pro-Ukraine rallies this week.
Will you be at either?
Addendum:
No, the tau aren’t the good guys. Their unity is the result of secret mind control perpetrated by the incredibly small Ethereal caste. Also, you know, Caste system.
Re: the old republic, I can accept that explanation, though the Jedi are still statist cops in that context, just not for a state with explicit internal slavery. (I only saw the prequals + original 3 + rogue 1, so I don’t know what the current narrative is)
re: Thoughtcrime- I actually liked G’Kar a lot in Babylon 5, and having psychic cops does raise all sorts of issues with how they then get used by the state as enforcers.
re: 40k I get that it’s grimdark and no sides are ‘good’ but that doesn’t preclude a lot of them from being evil- it’s just that they rationalize the evil they do as a choice they are forced into. I always took a lot of the the imperial cult stuff to be unreliable narrators- so much of their tech they don’t even understand and that’s what they have to tell themselves to justify their inhuman behavior towards xenos or heretics. Taking the World eaters as an example, Angron was set up. Not only getting the nuralink, but the Emperor could have chosen to teleport down and help him lead his slave revolt against the nobility, but he was busy with Lorgar coming up with new reasons why women couldn’t be space marines. I haven’t read all the 30k lore out there, but a lot of the plot points stem from the Emperor failing to properly interact with (or even betraying in their eyes) his superhuman children.
I would argue that both of those factions can be interpreted as the antagonists, especially if you view it from the standpoint of upholding the status quo vs advancing the plot. The protagonist doesn’t have to be ‘good’ nor the antagonist a villain. In terms of character development the chaos factions do end up pretty villainous, but they’re also the ones challenging the status quo and advancing the plot while the loyalists are just reacting to that.
If anything I think the failure to be critical of what you see as the protagonist in a story belies a possible blind spot when it comes to criticism of states you may agree with (or share a material interest with) in the real world. That said I have all sorts of unconventional opinions about the conflict due having family impacted by this. For me at least that makes it hard to see the Russians as some monolithic evil when I can just pick up a phone and call my uncle (lived in Karkov, got out before the border shut down). The guy even used my chosen name the last time we talked!
Every other war has also been heavily propagandized, including the Korean and Cold war, which is why you have the idea that something like Juche is cartoonishly evil rather than the product of its environment- I try to approach understanding any subject by reading what the people who believe in it actually say, as well as what criticism there is from people with a similar ideology, as often their enemies are often just preaching to the choir.
For example, the primary point of Juche is that each revolution must be carried out by its own people, rather than by a foreign power attempting to dominate the younger revolution towards its own interests. I would agree with this, and fun fact, Juche was actually coined as a term by Korean anarchists, and anarchists are still one of the leftist tendencies present in the DPRK to this day.
Participating in rallies is good step, though I doubt that will ever influence policy- even when Trump was in office the first time trying to get democrats to oppose war was like pulling teeth. I even got told to fuck off by my federal reps staffers because I showed up at their office to pester them about their supporting Trumps warmongering. I personally prefer to spend my time making sure the unhoused people around me have a warm meal every week instead.