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Post videos you genuinely enjoy and want to share, duh. Celebrate the diversity of interests shared by chapochatters by posting a deep dive into Venetian kelp farming, I dunno. Also media criticism, bite-sized versions of left-wing theory, all the stuff you expected. But I am curious about that kelp farming thing now that you mentioned it.
Low effort / spam videos might be removed, especially weeb content.
There is a cytube that you can paste videos into and watch with whoever happens to be around. It's open submission unless there's something important to commandeer it with at the time.
A weekly watch party happens every Saturday (Sunday down under), with video nominations Saturday-Monday, voting Monday-Thursday. See the pin for whatever stage it's currently in.
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You mean the guy whose army ended the holocaust?
That was a pretty cool move. Much cooler than the deportation, relocation, and execution of millions of peasants and ethnic minorities.
Correct, it is much cooler than the deportation, relocation, and execution of millions that your empire has been committing.
Buddy, you could make a compelling case not to deify Stalin if you stuck to the facts. Deportations happened. Executions of millions of peasants is hilariously made up.
executions were inside the party though, or did 'les purges' now intertwined with collectivization and ww2 ethnic deportations in your brain? cause directly deaths cause by stalin are not in millions range, they are around 1.5-2.5 (700k in purges, 800~2000 in deportations in totality (again debatable what is the attribution of ww2 to hard conditions, but sure). famine is very debatable to be caused by one man, deaths in prison never have been attributed to country leaders, or i would like obama death count to be amended by 30k dead prisoners.
leaving aside that, vietnam war killed two millions, people don't clutch their pearls over lbj or jfk fans, how come?
A claim like “There’s cultural genocide of Uyghurs in Xinjiang” is simply unreal to most Westerners, close to pure gibberish. The words really refer to existing entities and geographies, but Westerners aren’t familiar with them. The actual content of the utterance as it spills out is no more complex or nuanced than “China Bad,” and the elementary mistakes people make when they write out statements of “solidarity” make that much clear. This is not a complaint that these people have not studied China enough — there’s no reason to expect them to study China, and retrospectively I think to some extent it was a mistake to personally have spent so much time trying to teach them. It’s instead an acknowledgment that they are eagerly wielding the accusation like a club, that they are in reality unconcerned with its truth-content, because it serves a social purpose.
What is this social purpose? Westerners want to believe that other places are worse off, exactly how Americans and Canadians perennially flatter themselves by attacking each others’ decaying health-care systems, or how a divorcee might fantasize that their ex-lover’s blooming love-life is secretly miserable. This kind of “crab mentality” is actually a sophisticated coping mechanism suitable for an environment in which no other course of action seems viable. Cognitive dissonance, the kind that eventually spurs one into becoming intolerant of the status quo and into action, is initially unpleasant and scary for everybody. In this way, we can begin to understand the benefit that “victims” of propaganda derive from carelessly “spreading awareness.” Their efforts feed an ambient propaganda haze of controversy and scandal and wariness that suffocates any painful optimism (or jealousy) and ensuing sense of duty one might otherwise feel from a casual glance at the amazing things happening elsewhere. People aren’t “falling” for atrocity propaganda; they’re eagerly seeking it out, like a soothing balm.
Even total executions included stuff like murder, banditry, SA etc
Not just explicitly "political" crimes like treason etc
That's nazi propaganda, how do you feel about that?
Yo can you just tell me what page of the Black Book? Just want to check your sources real quick
Citations needed
You're right, Stalin is a lot cooler than Churchill
Or maybe they were both shitty? Recognizing the atrocities that occurred under Stalin's rule doesn't make somebody an apologist for Western leaders, and that certainly wasn't what I was implying.
Stalin's government massively improved the living conditions of working-class people, stopped the Holocaust and the Lebensraum (and was the most consistent and early enemy of nazi Germany), and helped anti-colonial movements.
Yeah, nah, I can't call Stalin's government 'shitty'.
'Atrocities' such as guaranteed housing, guaranteed access to healthcare, liquidation of illiteracy (all consequences of planned economy, by the way), a massive increase of life expectancy, cessation of famines.
Uncritically swallowing every bit of western propaganda demonizing the opponents of those western leaders does, though.
Don't mistake your opinion for everyone's here?
Do you believe in double genocide theory?
I'm psychically sending you images of the Weenis right now.
Note: The Weenis is a dance.
Note 2: Everybody is a genius who knows it in advance.
spoiler
Wagadugu
Thats my favorite town in burkina faso
hOlOmDoR incoming in 5 4 3 2 1
i don’t like this rhetoric and i am upset anytime i see it pop up in leftist spaces.
and before you reflexively downvote me, im not making any claims as to the soviet governments’ roles in the holodomor but regardless of your opinions on that matter it was still a massive loss of human life and a gigantic tragedy. this isn’t debated in academia whatsoever by any serious scholarship and if you’re willing to walk into “the famine didn’t happen at all” territory then you’re no better than the crazy, conspiritorial, fascist historical revisionists on the right side of the aisle.
idk. maybe i’m a pearl clutcher, but like. have some respect for these people who died even if you have contentious opinions on the exact causes of why they died… it just leaves a bad taste in most people’s mouths, especially those you should be the most invested in extending leftist outreach towards, when you choose to treat it entirely as a joke. this is a bad look regardless of opinions, chat, and this is my hill to die on when it comes to our spaces online.
Thanks. I appreciate that me making fun of the Nazi name formulated to make the famine in Ukraine to be equivalent to a genocide that gets regurgitated by anti-communists nearly 100 years later makes you feel this way.
This is Hexbear nerd, we don't have downvotes. Quit projecting.
To respond to your comment; Emphasis is the atomic unit of propaganda. Referring to it as "The Holodomor" and pretending it's some special things that happened to Ukrainians is an ahistorical, aka revisionist, narrative that attempts to overemphasize the tragedy to a particular people as part of a contemporary political agenda. Nobody around here denies there was a famine, but that same famine affected every nationality in the USSR, not just Ukrainians. Famines were also not atypical of the time period, and while of course they're great tragedies that should be prevented and those who could have should be criticized for failing to do so, it doesn't make any sense to give this one a super special Holocaust like name associated with a single ethnicity and assign universal blame and condemnation at the feet of one man. That's the propaganda getting its hooks into you. If you gave liberal darlings of history the same treatment you'd be forced to condemn Churchill forever in every conversation because of the Bengali famine that happened during the same time period.
I'm not sure how to respond to this part. Hexbear is a Lemmy instance, there most certainly are downvotes whether you see them or not. Or whether you want to call them "downvotes" or something else... not sure what projection you seem to be trying to point out. Regardless, I'm sure we would agree to put a pin in that one as a semantic argument.
Sure, I won't make an emphatic argument for or against this statement. It doesn't really carry a lot of weight in a vacuum though.
This is a strawman... no one here has made any claims or "pretended" that it is some special thing. I won't disagree with you because this statement is true, this definition of the holodomor you give is revisionist, but in a metalogical sense this statement has no bearing on the current discourse here because you're arguing against hypothetical claims no one has actually made. I understand you want to point to people who might make such claims, as this take isn't an unpopular or unfounded opinion in academia. Don't put those words in my mouth, however.
I will say, I've definitely seen people deny the famine happening at all in my time online. However, I won't harp on that point or claim the community here propagates that opinion, else I'd be stepping in the same strawman fallacy from before. The famine wasn't limited to just Ukrainians or Ukraine, yes, but I'm not going to stick on that because, again, I never argued otherwise.
Famines aren't typical or atypical. At every moment in human history there has been an active famine somewhere. I don't see the point of trying to say "famines were also not atypical of the time period" other than as disingenuous rhetoric that, contrary to what you seem to be arguing here, underplays the significance of the events and the culpability of those responsible.
Blaming the entire famine on Stalin or claiming it solely affected Ukrainians would be, again, asinine. Which is, again, explicitly why I did not argue that point. Did you even read what I said or did you just see Holodomor discourse and decide my opinions for me? Further, who's to say the treatment of the Holodomor shouldn't be the norm? Why should the "Great Depression" or the "Bengal Famine" not get the same treatment and use more apt and historical local names for the tragedy? It isn't revisionism to use the term. And, frankly, even if it was, why do you and others take such issue with it? Ukrainians themselves call it the Holodomor. There is evidence of Ukrainians using this terminology even before glasnost. Maybe the problematic terminology isn't "Holodomor" and is more generic names like "Bengal Famine"... people give more of a shit when nouns have gravitas in the West, like it or not. It isn't fair but it is a definite aspect of Western culture and media.
Uh-huh... again, the only person I have seen parroting any rhetoric that might be eschewed as originating in propaganda so far is you, by claiming my own opinions for me with no cognizance for what I actually said. I never made any of the claims that you identify as originating as propaganda; you brought those to the table and claimed someone had said them when that hadn't happened. That is dishonest.
WE FUCKING SHOULD DO THIS!!!!!!!!
For fucks sake dude, YES!! Nobody is arguing otherwise. I agree with this. You are the one trying to bend your words to argue against your ideal strawman. I fucking hate Churchill. Churchill, Stalin, Hitler, and others are all equally fucked people. Jesus fucking christ. There isn't some bar I have where once it is crossed the person gets to go in the "genocidal megalomaniac" bucket... I indiscriminately throw all these bourgeoisie fucks in there because they are all monsters who would murder millions of the "poors" before even considering giving up one of their own.
This dishonest fucking rhetoric surrounding the Holodomor in leftist spaces only serves to make the general public see us in the same light as Holocaust deniers.
Fucking honestly, they might have good reason to do so when people like you do Olympian mental gymnastics like this to try and suck the balls of yet another flawed human government from history that, like every other society ever, has contentious and problematic events. I very intentionally have made no personal arguments about the veracity of the Holodomor as a genocide thus far. My fucking point is that this sort of behavior in our spaces helps nobody other than stroking the egos of people like this, like you.
No
You know what, to some extent here, mea culpa. I misread the intent of your original comment. Without going through with a comb I'll just gesture at an apology for most of it, but disagree on two particularly important matters.
You're still wrong in your attitude regarding "I fucking hate Churchill. Churchill, Stalin, Hitler, and others are all equally fucked people," statement in your comment. Churchill's famines were driven by willful negligence and contempt of a people he deemed subhuman, thus worthy of starvation and instrumentalization towards other goals. This kind of racist disregard for people is still seen today and doing harm given how calamities that disproportionately affect the global south are treated as secondary to matters that affect white people. Just look at the "civilized world's" response to the Russo-Ukraine war and genocide in Palestine. Same thing has been happening for decades, where horrendous civil wars, acts of oppressive violence, and all manner of disaster whether man made or natural, are treated with polite brow furrowing at best from "The West," if not readily permitted and supported. Churchill's Brand of racism is alive and well and it's body count grows annually. Hitler and Nazism were/are uniquely evil in their explicit intent to murder people not out of a lesser regard for their humanity, but a complete denial of it. The mere existence of Jews, LGBTQ+ folks, Roma, the disabled, and anyone else considered an "untermensch" was itself treated as a threat that needed to be eradicated. This is distinctly worse than liberal/capitalist racism's deprioritozation of black and brown or disabled people. At least under capitalism's grotesque logic you have a right to exist so long as you're economically valuable to the bottom line, it's no willful extinction drive.
Compare those two ideologies and their champions to Communism and Stalin, and you've gone and done a grave injustice to history. There's no evidence that Stalin had any kind of animosity to Ukrainians themselves, nor racial prejudice guiding his policies and politics. Deaths that occurred in the Soviet Union may have been prevented and that is unfortunate, but this is in the context of Stalin rapidly industrializing the least developed nation in Europe in the face of the genocidal threat of Hitler, something so unique and evil it simply cannot be compared to any other kind of atrocity in history, and to do so is to inadvertently white wash it from the start. The entire framing of Stalin as some kind of moral equivalent of Hitler is pure anti communist brain worms.
Second matter is in regards to your line, "Ukrainians themselves call it the Holodomor. There is evidence of Ukrainians using this terminology even before glasnost."
I appreciate another user of lemmgrad for linking a relevant source for how the framing of the Holodomor as some super special event worthy of breathless condemnation at every mention of the Soviet Union originates from and perpetuates Nazi ideology. I'll include another source which identifies similar patterns across Eastern Europe.
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
Relevant quote:
Lastly, a point of order. On Hexbear there are not downvotes. Comments and posts on our instance do not show them nor even have an option for us to use them. For me, your comment is locked at 1 because presumably nobody has upvoted it. While I don't expect that to change, nobody is going to downvote it either.
Good comment
Ok
https://archive.org/details/fraud-famine-fascism