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Lead Lemmy Developer, Dessalines, denying the Tiananmen Square Massacre and praising the Uyghur Genocide

https://sh.itjust.works/post/8419342

Dessalines AKA "parentis_shotgun" on Reddit, is the main Lemmy dev, also the admin of lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml.

Their post and discussions on Reddit (archive as the original post must have been removed):

https://web.archive.org/web/20230626055233/https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/cqgztr/fuck_the_white_supremacist_reddit_admins_want_me/

Please join the discussions for Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem:

https://lemmy.world/post/16211417

And the discussions for finding/creating alternative communities on other instances:

https://lemmy.world/post/16235541

What is a tankie?

Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support acts of repression by such regimes or their allies. More specifically, the term has been applied to those who express support for one-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republics, whether contemporary or historical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

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[-] absquatulate@lemmy.world 236 points 1 month ago

This whole lemmy tankie dev thing has been discussed ad nauseam here for the past year or so. Not sure what solutions you suggest, but if I were to filter my software by who's an asshole dev and who's not, that list will end up really short.

As far as the ml instance goes, I don't agree that we should start defederating left and right with any and all undesirables, but to each their own. At least people now will be in the know, and it might take some weight off lemmy.world

[-] Mr_Wobble@lemmy.world 58 points 1 month ago

I've only been on Lemmy a month, and this shit is already exhausting. Isn't a main point of this whole fediverse thing that you can just block entire instances as well as users? Why is this even an ongoing topic that spans multiple communities?

[-] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 month ago

Isn’t a main point of this whole fediverse thing that you can just block entire instances as well as users?

You can do exactly that. OP wants everyone to do it.

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[-] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 23 points 1 month ago

OP has been here two months, and they were shocked to find out an instance literally named after Karl Marx and John Lennin would pretend to be on the left but support authoritarian governments...

And they assume since they just "discovered" it, no one else knows.

[-] null@slrpnk.net 86 points 1 month ago
[-] CheapFrottage@lemmynsfw.com 38 points 1 month ago

Father of the gulag, founder of the Beatles

[-] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 25 points 1 month ago

"Imagine no private ownership of the means of production, I wonder if you can"

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[-] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 month ago

terally named after Karl Marx and John Lennin

John Lennon

Vladimir Lenin

[-] Hadriscus@lemm.ee 24 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

John Lennin. Rofl Mao

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[-] deranger@sh.itjust.works 111 points 1 month ago

I had my first ever comment, in decades of forums/reddit usage, get mod deleted because I was critical of China and the USSR. It was a fairly mild criticism. That action turned me off the whole instance.

[-] realitista@lemm.ee 30 points 1 month ago

Sad that you chose an .ml community to come back to. You can't talk about Russia or China at all without getting deleted there, unless it's saying that Tienamen Square never happened or something like that.

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[-] GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 97 points 1 month ago

Regarding lemmy.ml: yes, you should avoid it. It does not make sense to create politically-neutral communities on a politically-oriented instance.

Regarding Dessalines: The great thing about Lemmy is that I don't need to give a shit about the lead developer's politics, because he's not in control of how Lemmy is used, and if he ever tried some kind of heinous cross-instance power grab, it would get shut down before it got started.

Regarding the cognitive dissonance required to A) value decentralization of power, and also B) support the CCP: 🤦

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[-] Allero@lemmy.today 93 points 1 month ago

As a fellow communist, I was always bewildered by this urge of many tankies to prove by all means, against any evidence, that China is socialist and ultimately good.

It's neither. China turned to markets, privatized many industries, and really did commit atrocities on Tiannamen square and in Xinjiang.

Doesn't mean socialism as a system is dysfunctional. United States are directly responsible for insane atrocities all over the world, and we don't need to deny that either.

We need to learn from the experience and strive for it not to happen again. Not close our eyes, scream "blah-blah-blah" and pretend it never happened.

China and the Soviet Union were responsible for acts of genocide, mass murdering/starving people, etc.

Doesn't mean this didn't happen in a capitalist world, and doesn't mean we should close our eyes on that to defend the good look of the system. If anything, this does the opposite. Problems need to be solved, not ignored.

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[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 68 points 1 month ago

Are there people that don't know that Lemmy is developed by Marxists, and their instance is run by Marxists? Thought that was common knowledge, that's why Lemmy exists in the first place, it was developed along Communist principles.

[-] blackn1ght@feddit.uk 56 points 1 month ago

If you're new to Lemmy then it won't be common knowledge at all.

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[-] otp@sh.itjust.works 65 points 1 month ago

I'm glad that this is the controversy on Lemmy, and not things like Reddit had with r/JailBait.

I'm perfectly fine with just avoiding interactions with lemmy.ml communities. They can exist, even if I disagree with them. And if I wanted to participate, I'd probably be welcome so long as I follow the rules. Unlike r/Conservative, which required proving yourself to the mods to get a pass to enter or something...lol

But yes, it's definitely good to know what the .ml stands for, and to keep that in mind whenever one sees Lemmy.ml.

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[-] Tattorack@lemmy.world 64 points 1 month ago

Good thing that Lemmy is an open source federation, then. It's not like Spaz on Reddit, where one dude can ruin the whole damn thing for everyone with a few bad choices.

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[-] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 58 points 1 month ago

I may not agree with the devs political view, but I think their work developing lemmy is excellent and made me subscribe to monthly donation on opencollective. Lemmy is an open source project where the devs have absolutely no say over how the software being used, as evidenced by so many lemmy instances defederating from lemmygrad and lemmy.ml. Their political belief won't affect other instance.

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[-] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 58 points 1 month ago

Yeah this is the origin of Lemmy. Reddit banned some far left subreddits years ago and so some Communists went and made Lemmy.

Just block the instance if it bothers you. Jeez.

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[-] haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 54 points 1 month ago

I‘m glad that the fediverse resists excessive moderation and silencing of unwanted political opinions. I‘m not a fan of some of the things said or done on .ml but we wont do anything which is awesome. You can make your own instance and defederate, ban, block whoever you like.

To make my point clear, I made a large donation to the lemmy devs as I think they are doing awesome work. @dessalines@lemmy.ml especially is a tremendous help for the open source community.

But of course you‘re entitled to your opinion. Have a good day.

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[-] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 51 points 1 month ago

Dude, this is common fucking knowledge, and nobody cares.

It's one of those things where the very tankies you're talking about made it trivial for anyone not wanting to interact with them, their instance, or anyone in specific can just block whatever. And then there's the instances that defederate from .ml and/or grad, which is a decent amount of them.

They may be assholes (though they tend not to be in interpersonal ways, only in their political views), but they're assholes nobody has to interact with for very long.

You're beating a dead horse with this one

[-] rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee 25 points 1 month ago

That horse fucking deserves it though. He knows what he did.

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[-] pH3ra@lemmy.ml 39 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Wait what? A communism advocate who also develops Free and Open Source Software, which is literally communist philosphy applied to computers?

I'm blown away

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[-] dan@upvote.au 36 points 1 month ago

Do you know the political views of the developers of every piece of software you use? Why is Lemmy different?

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[-] gofsckyourself@lemmy.world 33 points 1 month ago

I had never heard so much about "tankies" before I joined Lemmy.

Before, I had heard it so sparingly that I couldn't remember what it meant.

Perhaps there may be something more to this correlation. Why are people with this worldview so common here? If it's not more common here than anywhere else, why is it brought up so much more frequently?

[-] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 38 points 1 month ago

Lemmy was made by Marxists, along Communist principles, both the format and the devs attract Marxists and Anarchists.

There is a lot of conflict between leftists and liberals on Lemmy because there are close to no conservatives.

It's kind of like a Disco Elysium situation, even though non-Marxists can enjoy it and use it, there are going to be more Marxists enjoying it and using it as a proportion, and fewer conservatives.

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[-] filister@lemmy.world 31 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

You will be surprised how much of the open source software out there is written and maintained by lefties and tankies.

Sadly conservatives seem to have either lower education and are not notorious for their sharing and selflessness.

[-] ashok36@lemmy.world 35 points 1 month ago

Denying historical events and refusing to come to terms with their causes and repercussions is not a left or right problem.

You can be as communist as you want but pretending that events with photographic evidence didn't actually happen put you in the same category as moon landing deniers in my book.

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[-] TxzK@lemmy.zip 30 points 1 month ago
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[-] archomrade@midwest.social 28 points 1 month ago

Anyone else seeing the irony of objecting to ml politics being discussed on a platform built by a ml for discussing and organizing around ml politics?

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[-] Linkerbaan@lemmy.world 28 points 1 month ago

You should know /politics and /news ban anyone critical of israel and Lemmy.world is ran by Zionists.

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[-] RagnarokOnline@programming.dev 25 points 1 month ago

What are you implying here? People don’t use Lemmy because of this guy’s politics? Do we know the politics of other developers?

[-] originalfrozenbanana@lemm.ee 56 points 1 month ago

Mods and admins have enormous power to shape what can be discussed using comment moderation tools, bans, and promoted content. At the very least you should be aware of what potential biases an admin has that may inform how they moderate.

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[-] Blaze@reddthat.com 43 points 1 month ago

To be honest the issue is more about the power tripping than politics. Banning someone from the Arch Linux community because they disagree with you seems strange

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[-] eran_morad@lemmy.world 24 points 1 month ago

Read fkn anything on lemmy.ml and this is obvious.

[-] Blaze@reddthat.com 23 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Edit: missed that your already mentioned it, I guess the lemmy.ml link might still be useful

A list of alternative communities to the lemmy.ml ones: https://lemmy.ml/post/16531126

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this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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