For what it's worth, I wouldn't ask any chatbot about politics at all.
For what it's worth, I don't understand why anyone needs any linkedin.
I instance-hopped a couple of times because I joined smaller instances (the recommendation everyone gives you) that then disappeared / were abandoned by the admin.
I already had this problem on PeerTube years earlier, so I played it safe with a bigger instance, at least for a main account (I also had one on gtio.io which was gone before the reddit API exodus). This is absolutely a real issue with people recommending small instances, but at the same time, it's necessary to avoid recommending just one which gets overwhelmed and disables new accounts.
I joined lemmy through a link my relative sent me and somehow I did not get to select an instance, it seemingly auto-assigned me to lemmy.cafe.
Like spujb said, my guess is the link was directly to lemmy.cafe.
If you want to quickly browse around different instances, there's https://join-lemmy.org/, which some people have said they avoided because they don't want people joining the politically-stricter instances as a first impression. So I'd recommend settling in for a week on .cafe to get an idea of how this works, before considering if you're having no problems with .cafe or if you'd like to explore other options. For example, if they have blocked any communities on other instances which you're interested in (I don't know if this is the case).
To be fair, you can’t say they’re wrong.
Most of them are. Some of them are even plain old factually wrong, not just condescending or exaggerating.
It's important to understand that many of these instances were raised by people who didn't like reddit's widespread US-defaultism (including people claiming reddit is left-of-center because it swings Democrat) and its tolerance of bigots and trolls. Now if someone wants to set up their own instances to clone reddit and keep all the bad parts, sure, all we can really do is ignore them or get ignored by them. But when those people complain that this is "a bunch of 14 year olds" with "vote bots" or a "political echo chamber", that's just plain old ignorant, or shocked that they're suddenly in a place with a different culture and struggling to believe it's mostly just normal nerdy people like reddit is.
And if you’re a dictator, at that point you dont care for any left or right leaning values…
But this just evidently isn't true. Take the fascist dictators like ᴉuᴉlossnW and Hitler, who clearly believed in their ultranationalism, irredentism, anti-communism, anti-liberalism, militarism, etc. etc. until the days they died (ᴉuᴉlossnW even created a last testament while captured shortly before death re-iterating all their beliefs despite their lost of dictatorship). Then take socialist-party dictators like Castro, Stalin and Mao, who, despite any and all critiques and shortcomings and hypocrisies and failures, intentionally took actions with measurable results to improve living conditions, health and literacy for the worker class as a whole, while limiting and even oppressing the owner class (bourgeoisie). If you already checked out that video in my last reply then we'd know 'left leaning values' can mean a heap of different things in different contexts, but I believe that these progressive and anti-capitalist efforts are solid examples to prove the point.
Also those that think they’re marxists or whatever, you’re even bigger idiot, enjoying your materialistic ps5 and 4090 dreaming of a communism… oh the irony
I don't have either of those, but I can't understand why there would be any irony or contradiction there, at all. Marxism isn't an anti-technology or anti-fun lifestyle or some religious glorification of poverty. At its core, it's an analysis of society which (long-story-short) concludes capitalism is an exploitative system and socialism is an alternative economic system where the worker class, as opposed to an owner class, control the tools and resources of production. There's far more depth than that, but how much time or money someone has doesn't (directly!) come into that analysis. The famous rallying cry in the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) is "Workers of the World, Unite!", and those workers rich enough to afford luxuries are still workers with shared class interest with other workers. You don't need to be committing crimes against labor to reach that level, they're not buying factories, commissioning mega-yachts and flying to space.
And about anarchists, some people just want to see world burn… or profit in a lawless society
I'm talking about the political philosophy and movement, anarchism. Most of them want to abolish the concept of profit whatsoever, and they make up a major part of the environmental and social justice movements. There's plenty of critiques of their movement, but they really only want to burn down the state which exploits us.
Since you're bringing up instance stereotypes, I have to say I'm disappointed to see baseless conspiracy claims from a dbzer0 user. dbzer0 is usually decent.
And as we all know if someone says they’re a certain way that makes it so!
Are you implying that this active community is somehow just an elaborate hoax? Why?
North Korea is a particularly tough topic to have objectivity on. On one hand, their isolation in itself means they're not a typical country by any interpretation, and not gonna lie I'd be surprised if even their supporters claimed it was perfectly normal. On the other hand, its portrayal in the media is highly propagandized, to the point where some defectors (e.g. Yeonmi Park) have made ridiculous claims like that citizens sometimes push a passenger train to work in power outages, and reputable news outlets simultaneously report that everyone must have the same haircut as Kimmy and that having that haircut is also illegal, or claiming multiple officials have been executed with an anti-aircraft gun but it turns out they're alive. It's hard to have a meaningful discussion when this is the information we're given to work with! While NK is often open for work and tourism (albeit stricter tourism than in most countries) and those tourists often enough share videos or write articles, they're enough to get a peak inside and learn that ok, it's not a literal cartoon place, they have a water park and rail with a nicer metro than my city and people's lives are much closer to normal than what we often hear, but there's only so much we can really learn from these foreigners' experiences.
Some of the big points that often get overlooked are:
- Their mindset, especially the skepticism and national security extremism didn't come from nowhere. A major cause of their lack of development are that the UN Command bombing 'destroyed nearly all of the country's cities and towns, including an estimated 85% of its buildings.' [wiki] and the US and later UN sanctioned them [wiki].
- The pervasive propaganda is VERY blunt by our standards. That said, their nationalism and idolization of political leaders is certainly not unique, even if the pictures and statues of their 'glorious leaders' everywhere are freakin' weird. For a comparison to a more familiar country: the US pledge of allegiance, idolization of the Founding Fathers and pervasive flag display are also unusual manifestations of ingrained nationalism, even if to a lesser degree than NKs patriotism.
- South Korea is also pretty far from normal. Their First Republic stage included their leader getting exempted from 8-year term limits and executing the opposition leader while arresting other members, and has repeatedly become a dictatorship up to the present Sixth Republic, where the current president just got impeached for establishing a dictatorship, making them the third SK president to be impeached so far (the second-previous president was being directed by a cult leader's daughter along with the 'Eight Goddesses' group of billionaires who were basically writing legislation themselves.)
But, at the end of the day, with all that context, I would never call North Korea normal or typical, just nowhere near as bizarre as the mass media portrayal from even reputable outlets. And I suppose that's why some (imo silly) people will overcompensate and try to say that they're just the same as other countries.
I can’t help but wonder if tankies are the political equivalent of flat-earthers.
One way forward is to ask them for evidence for their viewpoints and investigate their sources for errors. The problem of the flat-earther is that there is objective evidence of a 3D rounded Earth that they can't adequately counter with objective evidence.
The left-right spectrum itself just isn't a useful model, but the mere existence of anarchists contradicts horseshoe theory.
That's a bold claim. A quick look at their top communities list (one of the top 15 being explicitly a 'community for transgender and gender diverse people') and the first two rules of their CoC make it seem especially trans friendly.
“What if 4chan was communist instead of neonazi”
Not quite, that would be /leftypol/
Better politics.
This reminds me of one of their site banners:
This reminds me of a comic, which obviously should be taken playfully with a pinch of salt:
- Two Italian men are joined by a visitor trying to ask a question in Italian. "Ah, they're trying to speak Italian!" and so they turn to the visitor and welcome them in Italian.
- Two German men are joined by a visitor trying to ask a question in German. "Ah, they're trying to speak German!" and so they turn to the visitor and welcome them in English.
- Two Parisian men are joined by a visitor trying to ask a question in French. "Ah, they're trying to speak French!" and so they turn away and ignore them.
And also the representation of that culture. An ignorant attempt at mocking a culture can be offensive even if the intent is purely comic or positive.
Thanks for the detailed reply.
Strictly speaking, states cannot be friends; only people. Therefore, the comments by @PrincessLeiasCat@sh.itjust.works and @seejur@lemmy.world must be understood figuratively.
Of course, which I would interpret as, say, allies, or perhaps ideological siblings. The two states were clearly neither. They were enemies on both counts, even well before the war, despite any trade or pacts. I'd say they were no more friendly than the US and the PRC.
You're right that the treaty was not merely non-aggression and had major implications with spheres of influence in the space between the two powers, it was only non-aggression between the signing states (the two being called 'friends' in this context). I don't really know if there was any good ending possible for the countries between the two, because I believe war there was inevitable given the Nazi regime's ideology, expansionist policy and military strength. Those countries, unfortunately, were either going to be occupied by the Nazis or the USSR in the inevitable war, so the USSR made a choice in its self-preservation interest to gain power. Given that the alternative was further expansion of the Nazi regime, it's hard for me to realistically criticize it, despite the horrible implications for the occupied territories.
First, it is not and was not at the time clear that the entire West wanted the Soviet Union and the Third Reich to wear each other out; instead, it was a Soviet belief [...] That belief was questionable. The fact is that the West allied with the Soviet Union and supported it, through Lend-Lease and other means, after it was betrayed by the Third Reich. Of course, hindsight is hindsight, and Soviet leadership did have reasons to believe the West wanted them to fight against the Third Reich, but their assessment was fatally flawed and led to much suffering, not least amongst their own citizenry.
While I say this naively, Western support of the USSR doesn't contradict the theory that the Western powers wanted the two to wear each other out. Supporting the weaker side wears out the stronger side more, this is an established tactic in proxy warfare.
Second, you ignore Soviet agency and deflect Soviet responsibility to the West when you describe the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact as “realpolitik compromise resulting from the Western powers wanting the two countries to destroy each other”.
That wasn't the point of the line, I was emphasizing that the Soviet's first choice was to ally with the West. It's misleading for the poster to consider the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact as a signal of the USSR's alignment without acknowledging that they first tried to create pacts with the Western powers against the Nazi regime. They were rejected, and the USSR compromised and created a neutrality pact with the Nazis because the alternative was to be invaded first. At that point, what agency remained? To me, it seems like the options were 'form a neutrality pact and gain an opportunity to build your defenses' or 'get invaded first and probably die'. The first option was horrible too, but I don't know of a better choice they could have reasonably taken after being rejected by their first choice of allies.
These points both make sense given ideal conditions. People and businesses should have liberty over themselves, with the government serving as a neutral foundation representing the interest of voters.
Unfortunately, these ideal conditions don't exist. The government isn't neutral, but that's not because of themselves or a democratic decision, but because businesses have more power to influence politics than you and me. Look at the major shareholders of mass media and social media, look at fundraisers for political parties, look at the laws made to bias the system. The government is evidently not a neutral foundation or a representative of the common people, but a dictatorship of the owning class (I'm using the term dictatorship not to imply one person ruling, but rather, that business owners as a class dictate the actions of politicians and therefore the government). And while it's easy to consider this a crony capitalism or corporatocracy, it's ultimately just capitalism itself taking its logical course, as business owners generally have a common class interest and the government cannot work without the complicity of business owners. We see this consistently in capitalist states, all the way back to the first ones. It's not a fluke, it's the power of capital.
We also see the trend of monopolization emerge - more money makes more money, more resources makes more resources, so small businesses are generally muscled out or incorporated into larger companies unless the government can force them to stop. So while you technically don't have to interact with a specific business at all, there are many industries where you are effectively forced to interact with a small collection of the most powerful businesses or even a duopoly, even more so if you don't have enough money to be picky.
So, while I agree, the government is supposed to be representing voters' best interests, and business should not have power comparable to governance, they don't represent us and businesses do govern, and history shows this won't be changed through the electoral system they control. It has only changed when the worker class, as opposed to the businesses, has become the class directing the government.
If Lil Kim can’t handle us making estimated guesses based on the limited facts we receive
Well, it's a bit of a problem when the media's widely-reported 'estimated guesses' are comically ridiculous and easily disproven, like that everyone must have the same haircut as Kimmy (and that having that haircut is also illegal), or claiming multiple officials have been executed with an anti-aircraft gun but it turns out they're alive.
North Korea is open to tourists who film the place. They have websites you can visit. Despite the relative isolation, there's plenty of footage and information freely available. So I can't even consider half of this junk 'limited facts', it's just absurd claims made about a designated acceptable target. Look, here's some tourists who just got whatever haircut they asked for in response to that mass media frenzy.
What are we expecting the state to say, "hello world, we denounce the western media claims that you can't buy hotdogs here" every time some ridiculous claim is made? I can't imagine any of our leaders wasting time doing that, and DPRK's definitely got bigger problems to worry about than what we think of them.
Best of luck to you, comrade.
STAT is their new nickname.
No it doesn't. It requires imperialism. The genocides are simply efficient for the imperial machine creating settlements, but it's not a requirement. They're evidently avoidable and capitalists just repeatedly decide not to avoid it because they consider it cheaper to commit genocide rather than integrate more passively.