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this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2025
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I think that's kind of the point. In all my time on .ml, I saw daily posts and comments that were anti-Harris/Biden (and for very good reason). I never saw one that was explicitly anti-Trump. I assumed because he is very pro-Putin.
So, to make your analogy more accurate, it's like everyone focusing on puppy-murder #1 and ignoring puppy, cat and goldfish murderer #2 because he also likes my sports team.
Like, it's super easy... Fuck Biden because he allowed Palestinian genocide, but fuck Trump too because he has advocated for worse. I rarely, if ever, saw the latter on .ml.
Unless things have gotten better for the Palestinians since he took office. It doesn't seem to be the case, but I sincerely hope so.
What a stupid fucking assumption.
Perhaps. I'm smart enough to know that, like everyone else, I can be fucking stupid sometimes.
I was deliberate to use the word assumed, because it was just based on a hunch. That hunch, however, was predicated on observations of how nothing critical could ever be said of Russia.
For example, I was confused about how everyone was (rightly) denouncing the invasion of Palestine, but not the invasion of Ukraine. The most explicit reason I ever received was, apparently, Ukraine is just chock full of Nazis and Putin is simply liberating the innocent Ukrainians. I know there is a lot of history to distill and this is not the best forum for it. It just seems like such a waste of lives on all sides.
So, it stands to reason since ml is reticent to criticize anything about Russia and I see a lack of criticism about Trump (who is buddy buddy with Putin), that may be the cause.
I know your main shtick is to be incendiary, but I just thought I would expand on my reasoning just in case you wanted to have a human conversation.
Well, no, because things critical of Russia absolutist can and are said.
Plenty of people would, I certainly do. But the people who don't certainly don't not because they're pro-Putin or anything.
We really aren't.
How do you see a lack of something? What would be the acceptable amount of criticism for Trump? certainly you won't see anyone there unironically praising him. If there's more criticism of Dems, it's because opposition to Trump is already consensus, so there isn't really more to say about the matter, where as people on Lemmy still have some support for the Dems.
In regards to Trump, by measuring it relative to the critiques of other liberals, especially when they are in a race for the US presidency.
Extremely well said, and a good point. I'm not sure it explains everything, but it's something I should definitely consider.
Keep it in mind and I think you'll find it does a pretty good job explaining everything. Think about it like this: I have never seen a single person who is openly pro-MAGA, I don't know if I've even seen someone who's pro-GOP. On the other end, we've been in this Trump dominated political purgatory for almost a decade. What's the point then, of reiterating criticisms that have been repeated ad-nausea, to a community that universally has already heard them a thousand times and already agrees.
To people who view politics as a spectator sport rather than a power structure for changing the material world, you gotta keep cheering for the home team and booing for the away team, until the end of time.
The treatment of western politics as a spectator sport is so deeply engrained in the culture that it's really hard to even get people to recognize they're doing it.
And it's ironic because I think it's become that way because the political system seems so unresponsive to actual efforts to change the material world, so people need to find a different reason to engage with it.
How many posts and comments did you see that were explicitly anti-puppy murder? I think you've missed the point of the analogy.
What? No, absolutely not. Nobody on .ml is pro-Trump, and anyone who was would be attacked and banned in short order.
This is just liberal brainrot where you ignore everything we actually say and assign us made up stances based on your own preconceptions.
Wow...came out awfully aggressive there (which I guess is part of why ml gets such hate). I'm more than willing to admit I'm wrong. I'm just sharing my experiences in the ml community. Lots of good stuff going on there, but there's definitely some issues. I've seen you a lot and I know you like to pick fights, but I'm mostly on your side. All I said was I never really saw any explicit anti-Trump sentiment. The absence of it is just weird. You cherry-picked a couple lines and never addressed that observation.
You attempted to discredit my claim (with no proof), then said I missed the point of the analogy (with a terrible false-equivalence).
You attacked the idea that ml is pro-Trump (which I never claimed).
Then you brought out the tired liberal brianrot line, assuming incorrectly that I am a liberal. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so fucking wrong.
If you want to engage in good faith, I'm here. I think you're a pretty smart dude, but ignoring some of the problems of the ml community doesn't help it grow and affect more good.
P.S. I haven't been on ml in a few months. If there are any anti-Trump posts, I would love to read them. I could be way off base here.
You talk like a politician and that is not a complement.
Right. So you said that the reason that you didn't see anti-Trump content on .ml is because he's pro-Putin, but how could I possibly interpret that as you claiming that .ml was pro-Trump?
It's not a "false-equivalence." You can't just drop "false-equivalence" and dismiss any comparison you don't like, you have to actually explain why it isn't equivalent.
People don't say things that don't need to be said, and things don't really need to be said if everyone reading them already agrees with the thing. I don't go around randomly saying things like, "wood comes from trees," or, "the sun is hot," or, "puppy murder is bad." That doesn't imply that I think wood doesn't come from trees or that I think the sun is cold or that murdering puppies is good, and if anyone came around saying any of those things, I would very firmly correct them on it.
What you're trying to claim is that us not circlejerking about Trump being bad - something that's already widely agreed upon in our spaces - means that we're pro-Trump. Oh, excuse me, your claim isn't that we're pro-Trump, it's that we give preferential treatment to Trump because he's pro-Putin, important distinction 🙄. The same logic could be used to argue that we - or .world, or any other instance or community - is pro-puppy murder because there aren't enough posts denouncing it (even though if anyone who was actually pro-puppy murder came around they'd be banned immediately).
Estimated 100 000 In NYC Alone Protesting Today As Part of Nationwide 50501 Protest Against Trump & Musk - 311 upvotes
US stock markets see worst day since Covid pandemic after investors shaken by Trump tariffs - 111 upvotes
Dow drops 1,400 as US stocks lead worldwide sell-off after Trump's tariffs ignite a COVID-like shock - 102 upvotes
China hits back hard at ‘bullying’ Trump tariffs as global recession fears grow - 73 upvotes
All of those were posted within the last 3 days.
Thanks for the links. THAT is something actually substantive that goes against the narrative in the OP. I'll try to explain the errors in your interpretation and expand on the false-equivalence claim tomorrow.
I (*very explicitly and vocally not a communist) left .ml because of all the shit flinging from .world and yes sometimes .ca, among others. It was the only negative experience I had in over a year of keeping my account there that was related to where my account was.
@[email protected] is exactly correct.
And here we are again, the monthly "Tankies are the bane of Lemmy!!11!!" post, wherein we have:
Fucking A people, you largely control your own experience on the Fediverse, that's one of the things that makes it great.
In addition, when choosing an instance (both times) I made sure to pick one that was defederated from Threads, because that was important to me. I'm sure there are instances that are defederated from .ml. If blocking the entire instance yourself or individual users yourself is somehow not enough, no one is stopping you from picking an instance that is defederated from .ml or asking your instance admin (who may very well tell you to FO as is their right) to defederate.
Edit: And you are welcome to search my username at .ml and see how much of what I posted was anti-Trump. Spoiler alert: nearly all of it.
I'm not sure if you meant to reply to me. I never said anything about Tankies, although I can see how offering my observations as a small critique of .ml could be seen as tacitly agreeing with the OP.
First of all, I'm sorry you left ml because of external pressure. That's not right or fair. I guess there's some truth in all the leftist infighting memes.
I agree with practically everything you said, particularly the comparison between 'tankie' and 'woke'. I don't utilize any blocking, though, because I like to be open to all viewpoints.
I hate crawling someone's history, but since you asked I did take a look. It's great to see that kind of content. I should have been more specific, but my .ml observations are older than your history (mainly the run-up to the US election). So, admittedly, I'm a bit guilty of "A lot of assumptions about folks just for being members of .ml" since I haven't been there in months.
I admit it was a general frustration with seeing yet another one of these threads. Thanks for the response!
Edit - also my acct there is older than the election run up unless you are using a very long definition. https://lemmy.ml/u/octopus_ink
Because you became instantly defensive and jumped to a conclusion. I get it. There are a lot of people that are rabidly against ml. I'm offering one small critique based on my observations there. One more time, just to be clear, I saw a ton of anti-Biden/Harris chatter and practically zero anti-Trump. This does not mean ml is pro-Trump. I am not claiming and never claimed ml is pro-Trump. I'm not saying that I saw pro-Trump content. It was just this weird black hole of direct criticism surrounding him. Now, this was all in the lead up to the US election, so I'm happy to see that perhaps this has changed (based on your links).
Sorry, I thought it was fairly obvious. I was speaking about specific anti-Biden/Harris vs anti-Trump content. You tried to generalize it back to puppy murder. Those two things are not equivalent. Let's ditch the analogy. If I understand you correctly, you are saying it's good enough to criticize the bad actions the US is taking without having to denounce each and every bad actor and I mostly agree. What I'm saying is I saw specific (well-deserved) criticisms of, for example, how terrible Harris would for Palestine, but most brushed aside comments about how bad Trump would be. I saw people trying to get commentors to say one bad thing about Trump and they just wouldn't do it. I mean, at that point, it's dance monkey dance so I can understand how they would dig in their heels.
I really wanted to like it there and I think I'll give it another shot. It just seemed, at least during the election, the point was more to destabilize than to actually further leftist ideals.
I don't have a lot of patience for this style of communication. If you have something to say, say it. You're just accusing us of shit while dancing around it and acting all "Who, me? Why, I would never suggest such a thing," while plainly suggesting it. The accusation that you're trying to get people to believe is that .ml gave preferential treatment to Trump with the intent of helping him to win and cause instability. So stop trying to split hairs and pretend that you're not accusing us of being pro-Trump and say it to my face.
The analogy is valid, so no, let's not.
No, this isn't what I'm saying. Please read what I said again.
What I'm saying is that our opposition to Trump is already understood so there's not really a lot of reason to just reiterate it over and over, with everyone agreeing with each other. That's not how discourse works. Uncontroversial, mutually understood points are boring and unnecessary to repeat.
We do, of course, denounce Trump. You know, when it comes up. The same way, if you ask me if grass is green, I'll tell you yes, but I'm not just going to walk up to you and go, "Hello, grass is green." I assume that since that analogy doesn't help your conclusion, it's a "false equivalence" and you'll say we should "just ditch it."
Did you now? I'd love to see a link to that. My standard is, "If someone claims something happened on the fediverse without providing a link, they’re lying."
I'm not sure how I can be more clear. I will try a more direct, succinct approach. I AM NOT ACCUSING YOU (OR ML) OF BEING PRO-TRUMP. I'm saying I observed a lack of anti-Trump sentiment in the run up to the election RELATIVE to the anti-Harris rhetoric. That is all. Lack of "anti" sentiment DOES NOT EQUAL "pro" sentiment.
Apologies for misrepresenting you. That's why I tried to remove the imperfect analogy and talk actual facts.
That's a perfectly reasonable viewpoint. What I don't understand, then, is that MLs opposition to Biden and Harris were also understood, yet it was reiterated again and again.
Being able to remember exactly which approximately 7 month old post it was and dredge up the exact comment is a tall order. I don't bookmark this stuff to use as gotchas months later. It probably involved a couple of you big dogs like brain or flyingsquid.
This has all gotten wildly off base, though. This is my only claim: In the run-up to the US election, I observed a lack of anti-Trump sentiment in the run up to the election relative to the anti-Harris rhetoric. It was extremely frustrating then as those of us that had to deal with his first term saw the danger and now as I have to deal with these fascists dismantling my country.
Now, you can claim I'm full of shit, that I'm wrong, that there was exactly as much anti-Trump rhetoric as anti-Biden/Harris, that I moved the goalposts by not initially stating this was months ago (fair), but that is what I saw and why I left. Obviously, .world has it's own issues, but I've spent entirely too long on this site already.
Edit: I just reread this part and should address it.
You're correct. I've posited a couple theories trying to make sense of the imbalance of critiques and that is one of them. I have no proof of that and should just stick to the facts. Thanks for pointing that out.
This is such an arbitrary distinction that it's not worth acknowledging. Your accusation is that we showed preferential treatment towards Trump, that we were pro-Trump relative to Kamala, that we preferred Trump over Kamala. That is what I mean when I say, "Pro-Trump."
Because while it was understood, there were a lot of people who did not agree.
The general argument happening all over the place was whether Kamala was significantly better than Trump to the point of being worth voting for. Those who said she was focused on how bad Trump was in order to convince people of their thesis, those who said she wasn't focused more on how bad Kamala was in order to prove their thesis. Naturally. Is that really so hard to understand?
If my position is that candidates X and Y are both unacceptable, and a bunch of people are trying to convince me to vote for candidate X, then naturally they're going to focus on criticizing candidate Y to show how much worse they are, and I'm going to focus on criticizing candidate X to show why I don't like either of them. That in no way implies that I support candidate Y, and if a bunch of people tried to convince me to support candidate Y, I'd change the focus of my criticism to that candidate instead.
Then it didn't happen.