As others have said, you are using language that has diffused to you through propaganda or spending too much time interacting with Western news media and social media.

If you are interested in socialism/communism, you’d do well to re-examine what “authoritarian” means, as it’s nothing more than an idealist catch-all term meant to quickly dismiss any country that’s not part of the Western capitalist system.

The second thing to note, is that you should try and understand what idealism, realism and materialism mean. They are different philosophical approaches to examining and analyzing history, politics and economics. If you are interested in Marxism, you should understand that Marx was a proponent of materialism, and materialism concerns itself with material conditions (which is what most of us ascribe to here), rather than fake “morality” (idealism) or with selfish self-preservation (realism).

As an example, why do wars get started?

1. Realists would tell you that the world is a chaotic place, and that countries act out of selfish interests. If a country sees itself as being able to win a conflict with another country, and benefitting from it, then it will start the conflict. The only way to ensure peace for a realist is to ensure that an international system exists which ensures that any conflict is too costly (because of big alliances) or will result in less benefits than envisioned (due to international pressure).

2. Idealists would tell you that the world is divided into ideological camps. Countries with different ideological frameworks (political, economical, cultural, religious, etc) will always be at odds with each other and therefore will always fight each other. The only way to ensure peace is to convert everyone into the same ideological camp through any means necessary. Typically, idealists will view themselves as the “good guys” and anybody who stands outside their group as the “bad guys”. The latest evolution of this framing is the “freedom/authoritarian” divide that the West has been pushing for the past 60 years.

3. Materialists would tell you that the world is governed by capital. Capitalists, through various means of control and pressure, will direct their nations to wars that aim to secure resources, open up markets to themselves and exclude competitors, or destroy competing capital. The only way to secure peace for a materialist is to eradicate capital and the capitalist economic system, so as to take away the conditions that cause wars.

Having said all that, why do we critically (not blindly) support Russia?

• Western imperialism has almost total control of the world, has a massive economic, industrial, political and military infrastructure in place, and has the means and range to affect any nation on Earth. Hence, any socialist projects are immediately and brutally besieged by Western imperialism, which is why it is extremely difficult for socialist projects to currently succeed.

• After the dissolution of the USSR and a decade of shock therapy, Russia finds itself mistrustful of the West and outside their system. Hence it has become (or has always been) a target of Western imperialism. Therefore, to survive it needs to resist and fight Western imperialism, which is the dominant force in the world right now.

• Russia is the one nation, beside China, that is currently able to effectively fight Western imperialism. Therefore, having both the means and the motivation, means that Russia can be an ally against Western imperialism.

• Russian politics and society are dominated by reactionary and conservative elements currently. And its government is highly anti-communist. However, there is still support for communism among many people, and its alliance with China makes it a possibility that Russia might one day return to socialism. However, the important part is that Russia is in no position to suppress socialist movements outside its borders, as the US and its allies have been doing endlessly for decades. In fact, it’s in its interests to support such movements, so it can gain allies in its fight. Russia has formed strong alliances with both China and North Korea. It has strengthened its ties with Cuba and Venezuela. And it is attempting to support socialist projects in Africa, such as that in Burkina Faso. Maybe in the distant future, Russia will turn imperialist as well, but it’s not right now.

• The war in Ukraine was an attempt by the West to weaken and dismantle Russia. The west has invested so much in this war, that a defeat of the West here would create effects that would ripple across decades. In fact, I would argue that the decolonization efforts of Western African nations from the chains of France, would not have been possible, had the US not been so focused and invested in Ukraine.

• The efforts to build a multi-polar system can only help our efforts to build socialist projects. Especially if one of those poles is China.

• I’m not going to touch on how the war in Ukraine got started, as that would make it a much longer post than it already is. Suffice to say that it’s our view that this war was provoked by NATO, and Russia is right to have intervened militarily in Ukraine, both on a political level and on a humanitarian level.

Therefore, we don’t particularly like the internal politics of Russia, but materially, its foreign policy is aligned with our goals right now.

They want to step Russia on its metaphorical throat, so it submits to the whims of the West. The idea is that Russia’s nuclear defense umbrella was built at a time when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. Therefore, Ukraine is one big hole in this defense. So Ukraine being part of NATO means that at least for 2-3 decades (and likely forever more) NATO would have nuclear first strike capability over Russia, without fear of retaliation.

Which is exactly why Russia was willing to go to war over this. When they say it’s an existential threat, they really mean it. If Ukraine joins NATO, that’s the end of Russia as a sovereign nation.

Show me the numbers. Curious how population growth rate in both USSR and China rises unprecendently, after these two came to power.

That’s a pretty vague definition you came up for to dismiss people.

Oh yes, wanting to raise people out of poverty is totally what fascists want.

You don’t know what you are talking about. You are just repeating something someone in authority once told you to believe. Ironic.

Or you can use an ad-blocker. Also youtube is profitable just fine. If it wasn’t Google would have shut it down a long time ago.

Thank you :)

Depends who you ask. If you ask a Marxist, they’ll tell you that in an electoral system where elections are largely determined by who has the most money in order to reach the most ears, is not really a democracy.

A democracy would be a system that gives you the right to actually and directly influence specific policy through voting (e.g. through referrenda), and direct control over representatives (e.g. ability to recall them if they are not doing their jobs).

In Norway and Germany (to use your examples) people might enjoy a lot of personal freedoms and a high standard of living, but both domestic and foreign policy is still functionally determined by corporations and the rich elite.

The economic system of capitalism makes it so governments realistically care more about the interests of business, rather than the interests of the citizens. And that’s an oligarchy. It’s just that some countries are better able to pacify their populace because they happen to have the resources to do so. But we still see that in Norway and Germany (and any other traditionally-regarded “good democracy”) the social welfare systems, that make them such appealing examples, are systematically diminished and destroyed. I do not think it’s the citizens who demand that.

All this, without getting into the fact that we spend 1/3 of our lives in a feudal-like or dictatorial system we call “job”, where we hardly have the power to influence how it operates.

As a Greek speaker who also knows Latin and Ancient Greek, both words mean the same thing and come from the same roots in their respective language (demos = publius = people/community/population). I don’t know why political theorists try so hard to separate them. The only real use of separating them is for easily differentiating the Athenian Democracy from the Roman Republic, for historical purposes, but nowadays both democracies and republics are functionally the same thing (and linguistically should be the same too). The only difference is sometimes the functioning leader’s name (president vs prime minister). Every other difference between them are for the sake of local cultural/historical traditions.

In the classical sense, Parliamentary/Representative Republics/Democracies ARE oligarchies. A true democracy would give voting power not just for electing representatives but also for determining specific policies and laws (i.e. Referendums), which very rarely, if at all in many cases, actually happens.

Sure, but then so is Hitler by that standard. They just used leftist iconography on the surface for propaganda purposes, and did not commit their crimes in the name of any sort of left-wing ideology. Pol Pot in particular was supported by the US military and intelligence mechanisms (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_United_States_support_for_the_Khmer_Rouge), and is fair to assume that his movement was used as a psy-op to hurt the communist cause in Cambodia and Vietnam.

Like who?

There hasn’t been.

Yup, if other corporations follow Threads into the fediverse, history will repeat itself. They’ll do to the fediverse what they did to the rest of the internet.

Not to disagree, but I think that’s really unlikely, unless they do a corporate merge.

Honestly, this is the biggest part that’s bugging me about it the most. Meta is probably doing this to ride on the wave of the Reddit exodus, but it’s not unreasonable to assume that other corporations will follow suit if Threads succeeds. And when that happens it’ll be like the internet all over again. Corporations coming in and setting up ad-infested data-gathering fiefdoms that will squeeze everyone else out.

I consider this to be a bad development. I could see Facebook/Meta aggressively growing to become the “default” server, then squashing everybody else. Not to mention all the US intelligence fuckery that will be potentially happening.

We laugh at this now, but in a few months we might have server admins enforcing Meta TOS on their users for fear of being cut out from the biggest part of the Fediverse.

I’d propose that right from the get-go, a bunch of instances should band together and defederate from Threads.

He’s exchanging money for, adoration, power and control of a narrative. I think he wants to run for president someday

You can limit yourself to Local, which will only show you communities from your own instance.

Also, when you see a clear case of someone acting in a shitty manner you can report them. This report doesn’t just go to the community’s mods. It also goes to all the admins of all instances involved (your and their accounts’, and the community’s instance) as well as to the top admins. But be warned that it’s not anonymous (your username appears in the report).

You can also open a discussion with the admins and users of your instance. Your admins can block other instances, but that will apply to all users of your instance.

I’d suggest just to be patient though. Usually fascist instances tend to get banned and defederated.

Or you can find an instance that is already defederated from the problematic one.