This isn’t bitching so much as a curiosity. Here in Lemmy.ml, would it be considered abusive for an admin to actively participate in a discussion, then get upset and delete the same comments they themselves have been replying to?
I’d just like to clarify the administration posture of this instance. There are lots of accusations of unfairness here. I don’t know if that’s an individualistic thing or a matter of policy.
Mainly asking so I can more easily identify what discussions are not safe to participate in.
Cheers!
I don’t know what a “glowie” is.
I don’t much care for Reddit, thanks.
Edit: you almost got my with your misdirection and muddying of the waters. Fair play.
But seriously, do I understand the original post I replied to correctly? They’re saying that the OP was banned for asserting that there was a massacre in Tiananmen Square, and then presents evidence that it didn’t actually happen?
The OP was correctly banned for spreading misinformation.
The OP was supposedly banned for spreading information that supports that an event happened (The Tiananmen Square massacre), which is something that one of the most repressive media regimes that exists in the world (China) is trying to deny.
That sounds like the use of moderation powers in support of another government’s propaganda.
I just wish .ml would be more open about whose government propaganda is allowed, I guess, which echoes OP’s question.
Is it all of .ml where only Chinese propaganda is allowed, but US is not? Russian disinformation is ok, but not English? What are the lines, assuming I am interested in taking part in discourse on .ml?
Except that the event didn’t happen, there was no massacre in the Tiananmen Square. And the event that did happen in actuality is wildly different from the propaganda you’re regurgitating. Also, have no idea why you feel the need to sealion into discussions on .ml when it’s clearly that you fundamentally disagree with the views majority of people here hold.
Things did happen there. It’s very well documented, even in the sources the other person posted. There was conflict and there were deaths, of both protesters and of Chinese military/police personnel.
I’m not regurgitating any propaganda, except perhaps implicitly in my use of the word “massacre” that is quite loaded. Aside from this brief exchange I have not said anything about Tiananmen Square anywhere.
I wish to participate on .ml because I have a deep seated interest in politics, political theory, and policy. I like having my views challenged from the left of me, and accessing alternative media.
What I don’t enjoy is being constantly attacked using various logical and argumentative fallacies, and I don’t appreciate authoritarianism or the silencing of oppositional views.
Edit: and the overarching reason is that I detest echo chambers, and because of how .ml mods and admins act, I’m finding it almost impossible to break out of my own. I’m learning that it’s because .ml seems to be another echo chamber where dissenting opinions are simply silenced rather than addressed, which really sucks.
What happened was that the west tried to run a color revolution in China that failed. In fact, the organizer, who fled to US after, is on video admitting that her goal was to incite violence. Framing this as a massacre is in fact regurgitating propaganda.
https://worldaffairs.blog/2019/06/02/tiananmen-square-massacre-facts-fiction-and-propaganda/
Also, nobody is using any logical fallacies to attack you. What you’re being actually told is that people are tired of having to address the same talking points over and over.
Finally, the whole notion of authoritarianism is deeply infantile. Every government holds authority by virtue of having the monopoly on legal violence. The only actual question is whose interest this authority is exercised in. Is it being used in the interests of the working majority the way it is in China, or in the interests of the oligarchy the way it is in US.
I am not an expert in what actually happened at Tiananmen, however at least we can both acknowledge that there were protesters, and that there was violence. Why is it so hard to consider that the US did have a hand in stirring the pot politically and supporting different dissenting groups in order to destabilize what it views/viewed as an ideological threat (which the US has plenty history of doing), but also that the Chinese government grossly overreacted and killed a bunch of protesting students? Both of these things can be true at the same time.
I also acknowledged that my use of the word was incendiary.
I’m sorry, I can’t trust the word of that site. I looked into Chris Kanthan and can’t find any evidence that he knows what he’s writing about (his bios use the fact that he’s written books to justify his expertise and continuing to write books, but it seems like he’s actually a computer programmer in San Francisco?), and there’s a clear bias towards the Chinese political elite, which I, personally, disagree with.
People are using logical fallacies. You have already done it to me, in your comment about that was removed in this thread and in others where we have met.
I don’t know what to say about authoritarianism being infantile. It’s crazy to me that somebody would be ok with repression anywhere, regardless of where imaginary lines are drawn on maps.
Every stable country technically holds or tries to hold the monopoly on violence, by some definitions, but why is it bad for me to question this assumption, no matter the perpetrator?
Speaking to your last point: I reject your absolute definition of for whom these different establishments work. I happen to believe that both political and civil rights and social, economic, and cultural rights can be protected, and I believe that repression is the counter to obtaining these. I don’t think either of these countries does enough to guarantee them, since they seem to be too entrenched in discourse of conflict and their own flawed and harmful ideologies.
The disagreement is around framing, which is very important. When you understand the reason why the protests happened, that they were intentionally trying to start violence, and that the military tried to resolve the situation peacefully, then it’s a very different story all of a sudden. You claiming that the government grossly overreacted is at odds with what actually happened. I encourage you to read the link I provided that details the events, and then point out what part of that you think was overreaction.
The site links to plenty of primary sources and photographic evidence. However, here’s another well sourced site for you. This information is well known, and well documented.
https://redsails.org/another-view-of-tiananmen/
The problem with labels like authoritarian is that they don’t provide any nuance. For example, repressing harmful views such as fascism is good and necessary. Every society represses some views because they’re seen as being harmful. It’s crazy to me that somebody would have trouble understanding this.
Once you show me this actually working in practice then we’ll talk. This is an idealist position that doesn’t appear to be grounded in reality of how human societies function.
If the disagreement is about framing then I don’t think there’s a disagreement. But if you’re insisting that tue Chinese government did no wrong, then we do have one. And that’s not about framing, that’s about covering for government murders.
My understanding is based on the links you’ve sent and my cursory looking through them combined with a few other academic sources and a Taiwanese NGO that as created to address this very topic. To me, it appears there was internal dissent within the CCP, focused on general standard of life things (inflation, cost of goods, etc.), which was opposed to some of the more entrenched power structures of the CCP/PRC government. Of this organic movement, some parties were likely co-opted or encouraged over time by foreign actors to step up their dissent into civil disobedience.
This dissent grew over some years into outright protests, which in turn grew into conflicts between the protest movement and the Chinese police and military, which turned to violence and the deaths of hundreds of protesters and at least several government agents. I didn’t watch any video of “the leader” of this opposition movement who expressly went there for violence, but I don’t doubt there were people who were preparing (and may have welcomed) violence.
However, I am of the opinion that any government has the responsibility to de-escalate and to not attack protesters with tanks and machine guns.
I hitch brings me to authoritarianism: you’re wrong, there’s plenty of space for nuance when discussing it. The term is not used to describe an ideology, it’s used to describe behavior. And there are plenty of places in the world where there are very unpopular views, harmful to society, where people aren’t murdered by the state for expressing them loudly.
And when you have any government that censors its own people by making it next to impossible to access information, shoots at them, infringes on their rights to worship as they see fit or to live and work as and where they prefer, or doesn’t allow dissenting ideology, then it’s authoritarian. Doesn’t matter if it’s left or right, and there’s not any need for nuance.
Finally: isn’t the whole communist experiment an expression of an idealism? Granted I’ve only read a few of the more foundational texts, but isn’t your logic against the entire goal of global emancipation from exploitation?
I’m just advocating for a more gradualist approach, devoid as much as possible of repressive violence. And while imperfect, I would argue that there are many places where this is/has occurred to a certain degree already; I’m specifically thinking about the social democracies in Europe.
As an aside, this is why I want to frequent lemmy.ml, and hate it when I’m simply dismissed as “a lib” when I am really just not quite as revolutionary as I used to be…