Soon after I joined Lemmy a few years ago, I searched for communities based on my interests and subscribed to the ones with the highest numbers of users to ensure they are active. Sometimes I joined multiple, but then saw that some people post the same thing to more than one, cluttering my feed, so I left the smaller ones.
It’s only after my community ban from !games@hexbear.net for disagreeing about Ukraine that I was told about MeanwhileOnGrad, learning exactly what “the tankie triad” means and why big Lemmy instances have defederated from those. Lemmy.ml, where the ML probably stands for Marxist-Leninist, seems to have been defederated by fewer, possibly because it’s run by the creator of Lemmy, Dessalines. Nevertheless, there is evidence of Dessalines holding the same authoritarian communist views as the rest.
Recently, there were two posts on !privacy@lemmy.ml about Signal, but then in both cases, admin davel (who is known on MoG for seeing CIA’s hand in running Ukraine, among other things) and Dessalines linked (1, 2, 3) the same article by Dessalines, which not only argues Signal could be a CIA honeypot (as if it matters when proper e2ee is used), but also manages to shoehorn China even into that, claiming its government “prefers autonomy”. This sort of portrayal of totalitarianism as sovereignty is the reason I unsubscribed from the community. As it has been said by others, ML is not a neutral instance but a means of pushing authoritarian views onto unsuspecting users.
Edit: Made the post title clearer.
More broadly, the atomic unit of propaganda isn’t lies, its emphasis. The way effective propaganda integrates facts into its story leads the reader to come up with a desired narrative almost on their own.
You can’t really attack this type of propaganda with evidence, because true facts are being used to tell a lie, all you can do is provide a broader perspective to show how narrow and distorted the initial one was. This looks exactly like “whataboutism”.
Something something parenti quote
spoiler
“In the United States, for over a hundred years, the ruling interests propagated anti communism amping the populace, until it became more like a religious orthodoxy than a political analysis. During the Cold War the anti communist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If Soviets refused to negotiate a point they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off guard. By opposing arms limitations they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armaments treaties it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full this ment the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions) this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system. If they didn’t go on strike it was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated failure of the economic system; and improvement in consumer goods only meant that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communist in the US played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African Americans, women, and others this was only a their guileful way of gathering support among disenfranchised groups and aging power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is an unfalsefiable orthodoxy so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the political spectrum.”