Russia and Putin are not communist.

I suspect most Lemmy users in that thread are democratic socialists, and not full blown communists.

I made a silly comment in that thread that suggested that I’m a communist when I’m more of a democratic socialist.

I think it’s more complex and not easy to sort. Mostly your instance managed what you can see. But not every user is directly sorted to what their instance is called to be.

I for example never heard about ml stands for Marxists-Leninist. It is the instance of the devs and is the first getting new versions. And I registered here long time ago. There wasn’t too much instances in the past. Am I a tankie? Noo.

There’s definitely a lot more radical ideas here than usual, but outside of lemmy.ml/lemmygrad and hexbear you will generally find a mix of normal people with progressive policies instead of CCP supporters.

I wouldn’t say so, in fact I would suggest maybe it’s disgustingly neoliberal at times.

Also Putin in his own words is not looking to return to Communism he’s looking for a return to Russian imperialism.

I could use some more communism in my life, but I don’t consider myself a communist.

Another question. Why does this post have so many down votes? I have some ideas but I am not sure which is the real reason:

1. Asking about generalization could be considered unpopular.
2. Are communists down voting me?
3. Badly written post. (I mean English is not my first language and I do believe lemmy needs more content and I am trying to go out of my comfort zone and be more active user)
4. This topic is just unpopular?

The majority? No. But the instances that are, are very loud. Block Lemmy.ml, hexbear.net, and Lemmygrad. That alone will massively improve your experience. BTW, they’re not just communist supporters. They’re tankies, extreme fascists who support militant oppression.

I respect its supporters (do they respect me, that is the real question) but must admit I am not one. It places prestige on characteristics that aren’t equal opportunity in such a way that I cannot reconcile my view of humanity with it.

Obviously not. The users are just people, so the stats are likely to be in line with global reality.

And, are you seriously seeing support for Putin or CCP? Maybe on some instance, but most of Lemmy is bound to be sane and not trolling.

Lemmy.world = centrist democrat, it seems to me. It is against the TOS here to talk about the wrong kind of cat food (there was a big drama about that last month) and it tries to be a safe space by blocking everything outside its window (the most informative covid-19 community is on hexbear but you can’t read it here). Lemmy.ml = left wing, “ML” sometimes stands for Marx-Lenin. Lemmygrad is more of a joke(?) but it pretends(??) to be Stalinist.

No…t entirely.

There is a lot of extremist propaganda here - e.g. advocating for literal murder (just search for the word “guillotine” to quickly get an idea of what I mean). Also, if you criticize Russia or China on lemmy.ml, or try to claim that e.g. genocidal practices happen (even share your second-hand accounting of Uyghur family members) you will get banned from communities that you’ve never even heard of across the entire instance, with no prior warning.

The “funny” part there is that both Russia and China are capitalist nations, not communist. It helps to think about children talking about what they think (or rather wish) communism is, rather than the real world. So they’ll tell you to read certain books, while studiously ignoring e.g. that the Tiananmen Square massacre actually did take place, i.e. they cherry pick and only talk as if they care about it, rather than actually doing so. Think Truth Social, but claiming to be leftist rather than right.

But e.g. there’s also Star Trek memes, and… well I am sure there are other things too, somewhere!?:-D More seriously, each instance has its own focus, none of which (anymore) is “conservative”, all of which is left leaning, but the vast majority of which is not extremist. Mander.xyz for instance has some fantastic scientific content.

Check out !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca - I refer back to it often, e.g. to remember how to do things like use links to communities from different Fediverse instances. I wish it, or something like it at least, would be shared with everyone, but Lemmy is extremely primitive when it comes to such things (case in point, if you go to lemmy.ml, visit their sidebar, and click “What is lemmy.ml”, it takes you to a post that does not exist).

I have been advocating for labeling such communities and instances - that way, like porn, people can enjoy it all they like while also being friendly enough to let others know what’s present therein, and that way we can get along better. However extremists famously resist labeling themselves as such, treating their own views as the sole correct one and rather it is everyone else - yes literally the entire rest of the fucking world - that is “different”. So instead, each person has to find out mostly on their own what these subjects are all about. Kudos for sticking around long enough to do so.

The .ml is short for Marxist-Leninist, so yes.

I don’t think anyone has polls. There is a much higher far-left proportion than on Reddit, as things stand.

Note that Reddit is one unified world, albeit with division by subreddit.

The Threadiverse is not. Some instances have very different communities – some only permit certain types of users. And not all instances federate with each other, and if your instance doesn’t federate with another, you won’t see content from those instances.

So, for example, lemmygrad.ml and to a lesser degree lemmy.ml has a bunch of people – including the lead Lemmy dev – who are enthusiastic about Stalin and the Soviet Union, pro-authoritarian-left. Hexbear.net is kinda out there too.

Then you’ve got exploding-heads.com, which I believe is far-right.

Lemmy.world is more-mainstream, but I’d certainly place it left of Reddit on average. It doesn’t federate with lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net or exploding-heads.com.

Beehaw.org is what I’d call far-left, but less in the authoritarian camp, but they’ve defederated from lemmy.world.

You can see defederations on an instance under “Blocked instances” at /instances. So for example:

https://lemmy.world/instances

Most instances also say something about their policies in the right-hand sidebar.

I think that some of it is also that some people are very vocal about their political views, and I think that some of those are disproportionately in the far-left camp. Like, if someone wants to vent that they think that society would be better off as an anarchy or that private ownership of industry or money or whatever shouldn’t exist, I think that those people are gonna be more likely to have strong feelings about and repeatedly post about their point of disagreement than someone saying “I think that things are going pretty well, but I’d like Tweak X and Y”.