this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2026
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MeanwhileOnGrad

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I've seen his modlog so I know he's been banned here twice in the past year, both times being due to genocide denial (I'm wondering if this is about the Uyghur?).

I wonder what everyone's experiences of conversing w him has been.

I definitely think he at the very least has a wholly uncritical acceptance of China and I directly probed him on that and he essentially did admit to being open to accept it and not criticize the nation because he wasn't part of it (which is just a biased outlook— and mentioning that made him strawman by saying "everyone's biased" when this is a clear thing one can control).

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[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 25 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

In my experience, Cowbee is not much more than a verbose variant of your usual tankie shithead. I've seen him deny the Uyghur genocide, the Holodomor, the ethnic cleansing operations of the NKVD et co...

And, of course, the mandatory simping for the Soviet Union. He's insisted that single-candidate elections under Stalin were actually super democratic, and not at all the imposition of a tiny bureaucratic vanguard on the great mass of Soviet workers.

[–] Yliaster@lemmy.world 8 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Said verbosity made me engage with him much more than I normally would have otherwise, it gave him an air of knowledge and it did feel like he had done more "research" than I did, at least on some things.

w.r.t. the Uyghur genocide he says all these claims go back to one journalist (apparently), but I've not investigated the claim to know any better

...Stalin had his "war communism" spiel where he banned factions so I'm pretty sure he wasn't democratic, though.

[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 9 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

w.r.t. the Uyghur genocide he says all these claims go back to one journalist (apparently), but I’ve not investigated the claim to know any better

There's a particularly partisan journalist who beats the drum very loudly, but the claims are supported by a much broader selection of evidence.

[–] Eldritch@piefed.world 5 points 4 weeks ago

Yes a while back not cowbee. But another tankie was attacking someone in a thread with regards to the oppression of the Uhygers. Crowing how he was the only one with the truth. How everyone else was merely spouting unsubstantiated CIA agitprop. And couldn't provide any links to back up their claims. I immediately did. And of course their first action was to attack not even the messenger of the claims. Which was family members of people being held by the Chinese government. But the host of the media segment on which they appeared. I wasn't quite sure what to call this fallacy, as it wasn't technically attacking the messenger. It was even further removed than that. And just as stupid as it sounded.

[–] Yliaster@lemmy.world 1 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Yeah, that's what I thought.

When I said "there's lots of independent evidence from victims" he related it to how that's also the case for the "white genocide" spiel (which both of us thought to be false) and then went on to say I was therefore engaging in "genocide denialism" the same I thought of him.

Apart from this there was something about it being a "re-education center" to "crackdown on crime" and that it "reduced crime rates", but I'm not too keen on that because it sounds like segragation.

[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

That’s hilarious. I saw the wall of text and immediately recognized that they had nothing of value to say, before leaving.

[–] FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 16 points 4 weeks ago

Never had a good interaction with Cowbee, they for sure a Tankie tho.

[–] psx_crab@lemmy.zip 15 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Ohh he's legit alright. Legitimately need to touch a lot of grass. He's the typical chronically online redditor but on lemmy and instead of staking their territory on some fandom they hovering around protecting dictators.

[–] GrammarPolice@lemmy.world 3 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

He's a sophist. When you back him into a corner with proper sources his last line of defense is to call "propaganda"

[–] Yliaster@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah, that makes sense. I have got that in experience.

[–] AWistfulNihilist@lemmy.world 3 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (4 children)

Cowbee is harmless. Chronically online weirdo who will answer a question you didn't ask with 15 cited paragraphs from 4 books, 2 articles, and 3 papers. All of it perfect. It's honestly as impressive as it is weird and sad. Site would be significantly less interesting without em.

[–] tyler@programming.dev 13 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Usually incredibly biased papers. Honestly incredible they’re able to find stuff that biased, they must be scrolling past pages and pages of real sources to get to the misinformation.

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 4 points 3 weeks ago

There are tankie communities that have all these topic responses on hand so it takes 0 time for them to copy paste into a thread and the other person needs to take time to response. When you read the responses they are filled with real quotes and point to events but they're completely ahistorical because they leave out all the context that disproves it. So their whole claim rests on the other person not being aware that the leader said one thing but completely contradicted it with their actions.

[–] Yliaster@lemmy.world 7 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

I mean, I've mostly found it impressive, even if his blatant biases are glaring; it's difficult to prove him wrong in a manner that's satisfactory (granted I feel I have on some points, he just reframes away everything like a worm)

[–] AWistfulNihilist@lemmy.world 15 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (2 children)

The worminess is part of it, I've seen people not engage with the text, or reframe an argument. What cowbee does is avant guarde, bespoke, couture communism apologia. This place is his canvas and his words are his art. If you told me he was just a performative communist banksy, I would believe you.

[–] greenbit@lemmy.zip 5 points 4 weeks ago

Iirc their bit is ml instead of communist

[–] Yliaster@lemmy.world 5 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Elegant wordsmithing yourself. I get what you mean, I didn't give it as much thought prior.

Thanks.

[–] MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip 6 points 4 weeks ago

The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law

[–] TheFrirish@tarte.nuage-libre.fr 2 points 3 weeks ago

Lol the reason he does that is to shut you down with overwhelming propaganda spaghetti so that you immediately yield and to look intellectually superior.

[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 0 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

I rarely agree with them but I never saw anything worth a ban. For example I still believe the horrors against Uyghur people, but I also didn't realize how biased some of the reporting was, and cowbee helped point that out.

[–] PugJesus@piefed.social 7 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Fuck, man, I struggle to think of a red-painted genocide Cowbee hasn't defended. Cowbee defends the joint invasion of Poland of the Soviets with the fucking Nazis. Stalin is one of their favorite figures to simp for. They defend fucking North Korea.

Lunacy like that has no place in any community that claims to not accept fascism.

[–] Yliaster@lemmy.world 2 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I just remember reading this thread: https://lemmy.ml/post/35965427. Apparently Adrian Zenz is fairly biased, and a lot of the publicity of the whole Uyghur issue came from them

[–] TanteRegenbogen@feddit.org 0 points 3 weeks ago

When I look him up, all the people criticizing him have a crass pro-China stance and never come from a neutral standpoint.

[–] Hell_nah_brother@thelemmy.club -2 points 4 weeks ago

🍿🍿 quitting Netflix was a great move.