Just blocked lemmy.ml from my Lemmy account, and I swear to god it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done on this platform. My homepage feels actually clean now.

For the past few months I’d been seeing a lot of tankie posting and pretty much far-left propaganda on my feed. It got tiring enough that I finally checked my blocked-user list, and realized pretty much everyone I’d blocked was from lemmy.ml. So I just blocked the whole instance instead.

Saying this as someone who considers themselves a leftist: I used to think Lemmy itself was an echo chamber. Turns out lemmy.ml was the problem the entire time. Probably the reason I tolerated it for so long is that I agreed with a lot of what they posted, but like an oversaturated meme, I’d had enough. Browsing the platform was starting to feel way too tiring instead of fun, which defeats the point of being here in the first place.

The breaking point was seeing some dude post a “meme” implying North Korea and China are basically communist utopias and that the West sucks. I mean, the West does suck, but come on - you’re saying North Korea is the ideal the West should strive for? What the hell…

  • InFerNo@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    Could someone give some examples of these leftist propaganda posts? I just browse all top day, maybe they get diluted enough for me to overlook these… i’ve seen this argument pass by so many times.

    • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      If you criticism the Chinese government on a .ml instance, you will quickly get banned for “rule 2: xenophobia”.

      Go to basically any comment section of a politics-related popular post on a .ml instance. I can almost guarantee that there will be some china/Russia/north Korea brainless take.

    • w3dd1e@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      I got banned from memes in Lemmy.ml over whether genocide in China is real. All the supporting evidence provided to me was from the Chinese government.

      Not saying US propaganda is trustworthy either blindly believing propaganda from any government is wild.

      I was also told that no one died at Tienanmen Square in that same thread.

      • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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        16 hours ago

        All the supporting evidence provided to me was from the Chinese government.

        Well now you’re just factually, unambiguously lying. Which kind of goes you show how bad your position is; that you have to knowingly lie to defend it.

        I was also told that no one died at Tienanmen Square in that same thread.

        A claim that even Wikipedia agrees with.

        • Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.de
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          4 hours ago

          The massacre wasn’t at Tienanmen Square, it was just all around it so it doesn’t count!!!1!

          is a very typical .ml take.

          • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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            10 hours ago

            Do they make for swear to post some variation of this post every time you see .ml when you sign up for .world? It’s pavlovian for you people

            • Crashumbc@lemmy.world
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              10 hours ago

              Says the guy responding with “ROFL” to every comment that goes against their propaganda in this thread… You’ve posted in this thread like 30 times and only like 2 posts weren’t a variation of “ROFL” . Real productive posting buddy.

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        I checked the thread you were talking about, that’s not what happened. The supporting evidence came from a huge number of different sources, including many western sources. You also equated Chinese diaspora with the Chinese government itself, which reeks of chauvanism.

        As for the bit on Tian’anmen Square, it’s correct, even Wikipedia says so:

        Deaths in and around Tian’anmen Square itself

        Government officials have long asserted that no one died in the square in the early morning hours of 4 June, during the “hold-out” of students’ last batch in the south part of the square. Initially, foreign media reports of a “massacre” on the square were prevalent, though subsequently, journalists have acknowledged that most of the deaths occurred outside of the square in western Beijing. Several people who were situated around the square that night, including former Beijing bureau chief of The Washington Post Jay Mathews[i] and CBS correspondent Richard Roth[j] reported that while they had heard sporadic gunfire, they could not find enough evidence to suggest that a massacre took place on the square.

        Student leader Chai Ling claimed in a speech broadcast on Hong Kong television that she witnessed tanks arrive at the square and crush students who were sleeping in their tents, and added that between 200 and 400 students died at the square.[268] Ling was joined by fellow student leader Wu’er Kaixi who said he had witnessed 200 students being cut down by gunfire; however, according to Mathews, it was later proven that he had already left the square several hours before the events he claimed to have happened.[211] Taiwan-born Hou Dejian was present in the square to show solidarity with the students and said that he did not see any massacre occurring in the square. He was quoted by Xiaoping Li, a former China dissident to have stated: “Some people said 200 died in the square, and others claimed that as many as 2,000 died. There were also stories of tanks running over students who were trying to leave. I have to say I did not see any of that. I was in the square until 6:30 in the morning.”[269]

        In 2009, human rights activist Robin Munro, stated that he was present during the clearance of Tiananmen Square and that, according to his account, there were ten Western reporters near the Monument to the People’s Heroes at the time. He also reported a Spanish television crew that recorded footage of the event. Munro disputed Wu’er Kaixi’s claims of mass killings inside the square, stating that he did not witness fighting there and instead observed students peacefully complying with the soldiers’ demands to leave the square in an orderly manner. He further noted that the Spanish TV crew reported not seeing killings within the square during the final clearance.[270][271]

        In 2011, three secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing from the time of the events were leaked and published by WikiLeaks, all of which stated that there was no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square itself.[194] Instead, they said Chinese soldiers opened fire on protesters in Beijing outside the square, around Muxidi station, as they fought their way from the west towards the centre.[194] A Chilean diplomat who had been positioned next to a Red Cross station inside the square told his US counterparts that he did not observe any mass firing of weapons into the crowds in the square itself, although sporadic gunfire was heard. He said that most of the troops who entered the square were armed only with anti-riot gear.[194][216]

        The square was evacuated bloodlessly, all of the deaths that day occurred in areas scattered around Beijing during riot suppression. A few hundred people died, which is a tragedy, but not 10,000 people being executed on the square like the west initially reported. Substantial evidence to the contrary since then has come out, and Wikipedia has accordingly responded and added this context.

        I don’t think Wikipedia is a CPC front group.

        • Nouvellalia@lemmy.world
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          17 hours ago

          Peak party truth is arguing akshully against a massacre occurring because it ‘really happened a few meters outside of the square’.

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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            8 hours ago

            The killings weren’t “a few meters outside the square.” Riots happened in disparate places all over Beijing, with PLA members lynched. The PLA responded with force, and in the end a few hundred rioters and a few dozen PLA members were killed. The west reported on an entirely fabricated story of the PLA running their tanks over 10,000 students on Tian’anmen Square itself, which has remained in pop culture as the understanding of the events. It isn’t about trying to play semantics, but to highlight that the west quite literally invented an entirely different history and reported on it as fact against a geopolitical enemy, one of many such examples.

          • DudleyMason@lemmy.ml
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            17 hours ago

            That’s not remotely what was said.

            Why would you lie about something anyone can see just above the lie?

          • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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            16 hours ago

            As opposed to the peak truth of just outright saying false things and getting mad that people point out they aren’t true?

            • Nouvellalia@lemmy.world
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              16 hours ago

              “I didn’t murder him.”
              Pushed harder
              “Akshully I only pushed him down the stairs and sent him to the hospital. He died of an MRSA infection he picked up in the ICU”

              America exaggerated because that’s what they, and China do, but the constant BS of “nothing happened in the square” outside China and strong arming people inside China, when you know what we’re talking about and you know shit happened, is abuser shit.

                • Nouvellalia@lemmy.world
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                  13 hours ago

                  I’m just going to start calling it “The Tiananman square adjacent massacre” to diffuse this toddler-ass behavior from y’all before it starts. Though, it does make you all look ridiculous when you do this. So, maybe not.

                  • DanceMomsSavedMe@lemmy.zip
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                    12 hours ago

                    I’m shocked you got them to admit any deaths at all. Used to they wouldn’t do that.

                    I guess the mask is slowly falling off they have to admit some of the shit here and there now or else they’d lose credibility completely.

                    That’s a good example of the entire instance and users on it though. “Well it wasn’t in the square” lol ok, but they still murdered a bunch of people for protesting.

                    Its like they have a fundamental need to be “right” no matter what. “There is no Tianamen Square massacre because it didn’t happen in the square. So HA. All those murders inches away from the square were because they deserved it for illegally protesting!”

                    Also I think its wild that on their instance they all have their pronouns listed when China is pretty notoriously anti LGBTQ.

                    From Wikipedia (which I’m surprised they used as a source earlier, you try doing that on their own instance with anything that goes against their narrative and you will be perma banned for “imperialism”)

                    "LGBTQ venues and events have been forced to shut and LGBTQ rights activists have become subject to greater scrutiny by the country’s system of mass surveillance. The CCP increasingly considers LGBTQ advocacy the work of “foreign forces”. LGBTQ content is censored. "

                    They should all move to that utopia that is China but I’ll bet you all of them live in capitalist countries. (Which is fucking hilarious) Meanwhile here (which is also not a great place at all but I’m allowed to be honest about that) you can adopt kids and marry if you’re gay. Two things that are illegal in China.

                    Vehemently defending a country that hates you for existing has to be some form of self hate or something. Its hard to understand the logic of it.

    • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Try commenting that maybe, just maybe, Stalin wasn’t the greatest benefactor of humanity, ever.

      • iocase@lemmy.zip
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        1 day ago

        Trotsky would have been no better than Stalin.

        Then watch the fireworks.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          6 hours ago

          I think it’s a pretty common take that Trotsky’s idea of Permanent Revolution would have been suicidal for the fledgling socialist state, so yea, I think running the Soviet Union directly into a broader, protracted war and losing the entire Soviet Union would have been worse than Stalin.

      • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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        16 hours ago

        “Can you give me any examples?”

        “No, but I can give you a lie I just made up!”

      • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND HE HAD TO MURDER MILLIONS SO THAT 10s OF MILLIONS COULD BE MISERABLE AND LIVE IN A CORRUPT OLIGARCHY REGIME, WHERE THE QUALITY OF LIFE WAS DECADES BEHIND THE WEST.

        and don’t forget how glorious and prefect and FREE life is in China and North Korea.

      • nymnympseudonym@piefed.social
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        1 day ago

        Want to really piss people off?

        “Over the last 50 years, regulated market economies have produced more wealth, pulled more people out of poverty, and resulted in less war than any other economic system in any period of history.”

        In other words, the status quo of the last 50 years that everyone blames everything on, was in fact an exceptionally GOOD period of human history.

        • Nouvellalia@lemmy.world
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          17 hours ago

          “Now that we’ve killed everyone we needed to kill and dominated all the resources we wanted, things are going pretty well for us”

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          1 day ago

          The biggest problem is that this heavily relies on calling a socialist market economy like China a “regulated market economy,” it’s deceptive and implies capitalist countries have been pulling people out of poverty. In reality, China has pulled massively ahead with its socialist system, while capitalist countries have stagnated.

        • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          saying shit like is a good way to get reported and banned. because it’s verifiable reality, and we can’t allow that to enter into our discussions. because reality is clearly fascist propaganda.

      • InFerNo@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        What’s so hard about that? You are jumping to conclusions because my account is registered on lemmy.ml because at the time it seemed like a good place to start.

        Stalin wasn’t the greatest benefactor.

        Now you say it about Trump, Netanyahu and Putin.

      • InFerNo@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        Had a look, all I can say is that they don’t quite come up when I browse all, and if they do I just don’t bother and skip over them. They’re not funny and the message therein is not one I support.