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Some core developers of Lemmy are hardcore tankies and that attracts others.
Also, for someone from Africa it's weird to claim they are not involved in this. China is strategically investing in African countries. If your country has any mineral or other strategic resources, China is no doubt already there.
Africa as a whole, much like India is waiting for the main players to win/lose to pick sides officially or otherwise take each other out and clear the field. Aka its nothing but silence here on most things. As for china's investments. Its a mixed bag. Its good to get more honest investments than USAid but simultaneously China is making much more than they are giving. It's a parasitic loan, not a loan of good faith. Not to include the extreme racism of Chinese influencers coming here and making videos of children saying in Mandarin how they are dumb monkeys and need Chinese enslavement.
Has the political stance of the devs ever impacted lemmy in any way? From what I can tell they do a pretty good job isolating their views to their instance. Honestly apart from a few comments I rarely see any tankies.
Yes. As per OP, tankies are everywhere in Lemmy. More so than other platforms, it's hard to miss. OP isn't wrong about that.
If a user isn't aware of tankies, they could easily be swayed by the constant posting of pro-CCP crap here.
I keep reading about this, can you show me some examples of pro-CCP sentiment? Tbf I block political communities anyway but I'm curious what tankie behaviour people keep referring too.
just have a look at genzedong@lemmygrad.ml but put your tinfoil hat on before to prevent potential brain damage
Very early on there was a hard-coded slur censor list that was eventually changed to be settable by the instance admin, that's about it.
On one hand, Lemmy used to be a safe-space for communists (including those that wish for the USSR back) before Redditors moved in. The developers of Lemmy themselves are politically pro-China and anti-USA.
On the other hand, the USA have stopped being the shining beacon of freedom and democracy they used to be seen as by many people in the west. So anti-USA posts will get lots of upvotes even from people in the west or the USA itself.
And thirdly, the western countries' refusal to speak out against Israel's genocide in Gaza, Jordan and Lebanon has turned most of lemmy against their governments.
China just looks less bad in comparison than it used to be.
When western governments don't give a fuck about human rights anymore, they have no standing to criticize China over it. And when western media refuse to even address an ongoing genocide carried out with western weapons and money, trust in them is lost and people start to doubt whether the stories they tell about the evil adversary China are true after all.
So it's a mix of Lemmy's original board culture, and a major shift in public perception in general.
P.S.: I'd love to read more news and stories from African countries on Lemmy!
China just looks less bad in comparison than it used to be. When western governments don’t give a fuck about human rights anymore, they have no standing to criticize China over it. And when western media refuse to even address an ongoing genocide carried out with western weapons and money, trust in them is lost and people start to doubt whether the stories they tell about the evil adversary China are true after all.
In my opinion, of the two shitty governments in question, I believe China actually has the well-being of its citizens more in mind than do the oligarchs controlling the USA. China's quality of life for its people has been rising by leaps and bounds in the past fifty years. Meanwhile over here the best people who aren't in the 1% can hope for is stagnation, while for the majority things are just getting continually worse.
Yes, that was always the Chinese government's deal with its citizens: We make your life better, as long as you don't rebel, resist or demand "freedom".
And the western model was "we give you personal freedom, consumer goods and some participation in government, so you don't demand an actual redistribution of wealth and power".
But in many western countries, especially in the US, the rich and powerful have stopped honoring their part of the bargain, while the Chinese government is holding up their end.
I agree with your analysis. I do still find it disturbing how silent people are about genocides in other locations such as Sudan, Nigeria, or even Myanmar. Not to speak of the Uyghur people of China. I find most people here to be people mostly repeating what they were told by someone else and not aware of the world as it is. I wouldn't say the CCP today has much to do with communism and is at its core selective towards that which benefits it and against anything that is not, that is they could not care less about political philosophy, religion, economic systems or any other stories crafted by man. If it is against them it is bad, if it is in worship of them it is good.
the USA have stopped being the shining beacon of freedom and democracy they used to be seen as by many people in the west
Only blind people ever saw it like that. In Latin-America we've known for a long time that USian foreign policy consists mostly in destroying inconvenient countries with resources for profit.
Only blind people ever saw it like that.
Maybe it was wrong to generalize. I grew up in West Germany, so my perception is naturally biased.
The contrast between how the USA used to be seen in West Germany before the W. Bush presidency and now is very, very strong.
I'd say even Reagan already was a very weird president. Before the Watergate affair with Nixon, trust in American presidents was generally high in non-socialist Europe, though imho they went radically overboard with their anticommunism, conflating anarchism and all liberationist movements with what they saw as red fascism.
After Reagan, the surface may have seemed similar to how it was prior, but beneath in the cogs of the American system, something started breaking the labourers of which we see the effects even now. Reagan instigated a new level of arguments for abolishing the state anywhere, such as COINTELPRO, Operation Cyclone, indebting the American labourer while stagnating wages, and so on, and radicalising the discourse step for step.
American here and I think your wording was spot on.
It WAS seen as a "shining beacon" by many around the world.
SEEN as. And as someone who was born here, I can assure you that many in the US absolutely know that is a facade at best.
The shell began cracking in other parts of the world decades ago (longer in places like Africa), but for most Europeans and the mostly un-terrorized-by-US-military countries, I think the turning point was "WMDs" in the early 00s. When every other "Major" country is either silent or outright saying "we have no Intel suggesting this" then you can't really claim to have moral superiority, and once you see a liar as a liar, it's all downhill from there.
"seen as" was absolutely the correct phrase, as it was only an illusion.
On the other hand, the USA have stopped being the shining beacon of freedom and democracy they used to be seen as by many ~~people in the west~~ of its own citizens.
Are we talking about recent developments here? Because, honestly, I don't think they've been a beacon in a looong time for those of us outside the US.
Lemmy was created by communists, for communists. It's gonna have communists in it.
Yea but not the cool kind of communists, the lame kind of Communists.
Less Anti-West, more like Anti-US. And the China drones are another thing entirely.
That would be understandable, the US is a shame, particularly these days. There are few places with that much wasted potential to make the world a better place.
Putting all patriotism aside, I don't think there's any reality in which the US uses its potential to make the world a better place.
The big difference nowadays is that it's become patently clear that the US government isn't even trying to make the US a better place.
Lemmy was made by communists, seeking to build an alternative to Reddit where communists will not be able to be fully censored. Federation also is similar to how the USSR was federated, and FOSS attracts the left. As such, many areas on Lemmy are going to be pro-CPC (and supportive of socialist states in general).
This isn't the case on every instance, though. Each instance has its own political leanings, some very anti-China and anti-communist in general. It depends on the moderation, federation practices, and focus of the instance itself.
Communists tend to be pro-African, especially the Alliance of Sahel States.
That's happening because you're on lemmy.world, which is connected to lemmy.ml. if you look at those pro-ccp threads, they'll be coming from lemmy.ml, the authoritarian socialist website.
My website isn't connected to .ml, so I don't see any of that nonsense.
Anyone else get a suspicious anti-genocide vibe from this place? 😳
As you can see from the above example, the users pushing the whole "America is the only bad country! China is amazing and never does anything wrong!" rhetoric are overwhelmingly from a single instance; lemmy.ml.
No matter the topic of conversation, an .ml user just can't help themselves from virtue signaling in the comments about how much they hate imperialism and how they know that anything bad about China/Russia/NK is literally all Western propaganda.
Full disclosure, I live in Africa and don't have a dog in this fight
This upset China
Lol there is actually a pretty strong pro CCP contingent at least in east Africa. I personally think they are idiots to assume people in China care about them more than their own government which honestly doesn't care about them in the slightest. Same to the west or India. There are people simping to these different countries or political ideologies but what is needed is for people here to overcome on their own and that's the last thing they want to hear.
There are absolutely pro-authoritarian agitators here who feel the need to inject their venomous or smug anti-west rhetoric at any opportunity, just looking to start an argument or push propaganda.
As far as posts about African nations being ignored I’d say that’s par for the course for the West. We’re wildly ignorant about the continent, so much so that we say that someone is “from Africa” while ignoring the 50+ countries that exist there. Our news doesn’t cover it unless we can bomb it or exploit it.
Yeah, there are certain "tankie" instances (such as hexbear.net, lemmygrad.ml) that are like that, and most sane people block them to protect their sanity, so no one counters them
I've only been on Lemmy for a few days but ...
You're on the fediverse. You are your own algorithm. What you see is what you chose to follow or what's on the instance you signed up to. Either way, you ended up there by choice. If this is a thing you notice after only a few days, you are not qualified to predict the doom and gloom of Lemmy. Work on your feed first.
You'll find biased communities on here. You'll find reasonable ones. But you need to go look for them. It's just as echo-chambery here like anywhere else on the internet.
I'm also African. I used to be fairly biased towards west, as in letting them get away with foreign intervention with just minor scrutiny while being strongly against china russia and islam for their downfalls(misogyny, oppression ect). up until the whole files release and that took me down a rabbit hole of learning about reality of 9/11 the magnitude of bias in mainstream media and finally reading about history of socialism and eventually communism starting from Che Guevara
That alone already made me have severe criticism of US as is but what sent me over the edge is how complacent americans are, if these things happened in any other country the entire economy would be shut down by the people, but they're just trying to avoid talking or bringing up this subject, or saying it's out of their power, then the next moment starting a topic about their latest high end keyboard and travel plans, then switching to the difficulties of living end to end
I do my best to try and be kind i swear i do, but things like this actually drive me insane not cause they happen but because of how often it does. I kid you not i'm completely sold that if anyone will stop the west's imperialism and foreign intervention it's going to be another African American or LGBTQ or some minority as usual, because only suffering can bring about change and i do not see suffering from the lifestyles of the americans i talk with, it's always only on paper
The way i see it is they feel unmotivated to reign their government in due to their lifestyle no longer being at the top of charts or better than europe? How does that fix anything in their situation though, and what do i say living off only 2 meals a day to save money? The only thing that got majority of west sphere to hate genocidal regime wasn't their tax money being spent on it but the raising of gas price? Please someone make me central again i'm so sad now
No i'm not paid off i'm just waiting for the American people to pull their weight in all of this or not silencing and smearing people that are trying to pull in their behalf before i can feel the brotherhood bond with them as i do with soviets(not current russia) and china fighting back against RAM cartel and fossil fuels, please
What is "the west" meaning nowadays anyway? US threatens to invade Europe and is closer to russia than NATO. They are barely allies anymore.
Although I'd say it generally skews to the political left, it's a mistake to think of the fediverse as a monoculture. Lemmy as an open source technology is politically neutral, as is ActivityPub as a federation protocol.
At the same time, there are a few hard left communist "tankie" servers, and the creators of Lemmy identify as Leninists, and these types of people tend to be blindly pro-China and pro-Russia.
Personally I do not view either China or Russia in a favorable light... Having said that, I'm not sure I view any country in a favorable light right now, aside from I guess Canada and I guess New Zealand.
Anything pro-African is mostly neutral but in essence ignored.
This is sad.
I’m American, and I want the Fediverse to be Euro, Africa, South America heavy. Basically anyone but the usual suspects that dominate news. I want to see stuff from other countries.
I was fortunate enough to get to visit Tanzania, and it was great. It’d be nice if your continent took over the world. Please…
Anyway, be aware that many of the authoritarian shills actually live in the US, Western Europe or wherever. Some do not, but the bulk seem to.
They’re just terminally online.
They don’t know squat about what’s actually going on in North Korea or Iran or China, and they wouldn’t be here if they did because lemmy.ml is banned China, Iran, and obviously North Korea.
Talk to the Eastern European Fediverse folks.
They know precisely what the deal is. You do not hear them praising the Soviets, that’s for sure.
The founders of the platform are tankies. Dessalines, for example, is a tankie that banned me for criticizing china.
I support a multipolar world order, in a large part because I believe that's what's best for developing/non-aligned countries. Since the US has been the sole superpower and has sought to establish itself as the sole global hegemon, using military aggression to expand its influence and power, it seems pretty natural to oppose it and support competition.
If the US and China are both major powers, then non-aligned countries have the freedom to choose who they do business with, which means they have some ability to bargain for a better deal. If the US or the West were the only game in town, then you'd have to accept whatever they offer, or be shut out of the global marketplace. Furthermore, many of the natural resources of poor countries remain in the hands of the Western powers that seized them through force during colonialism (Haiti is still paying reparations to France for freeing the slaves, for example). Ending this system of neocolonialism is a priority, and that requires an alternative economic bloc.
I don't believe that China invests abroad just out of the kindness of their hearts, however, China has expanded its power through peaceful economic development and trade. China has not been at war with anyone for decades, in contrast to the US which has waged (and is waging) multiple wars of aggression, for the sake of seizing resources. Furthermore, the West will sometimes just decide to steal the assets of poor countries that are invested in their banks, as the did with Venezuela. When has China done this?
Even if you dislike the Chinese system, I see it as a necessity that enabled other systems to survive. The West has a specific system that they want to impose on the entire world, and if you're the only country not doing that system, you're screwed. But China is a lot more flexible, and imposes fewer conditions on domestic policy. This in turn limits the ability of the West to impose their policies, because a country can always choose to walk.
Have you seen how much bullshit "The West" has been responsible for lately?
I dont think it's strange at all for there to be a strong undercurrent of anti-western sentiment.
For those of you picking at OP "not having a dog in the fight", because they're in Africa, that is irrelevant to OP's point.
That's why I came to Lemmy. Sure open source and decentralized and all that too. But somebody on reddit described Lemmy as "Leftist Reddit" and I said count me in!
Lemmy's core developers are Tankies (radical supporters of the CCP and anyone else claiming to carry on second world ideology, such as Putin) as are many of those running older instances. This includes older instances such as Lemmygrad and lemmy.ml, which makes them very entrenched. Still, they seem to be a very vocal minority, since larger instances like Lemmy.world lean away from that, and PieFed (an alternative but still intercompatible Lemmy alternative) is popular in part from those wishing to move away from Lemmy's tankie developers.