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Apparently I'm now a shitlib for not buying into this disgusting tankie propaganda that it was all the Wests fault and Stalin had to ally with Hitler.

For a mod who loves to ban others for bad jacketing, they sure have no problem doing it to other anarchists.

The Ban:

The Context:

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[-] Denjin@feddit.uk 73 points 3 weeks ago

I love how all tankie defense boils down to "dO yOuR OwN ReSeArCh"

[-] mkwt@lemmy.world 58 points 3 weeks ago

Where "your own research" means "Cowbee's research."

[-] hypnicjerk@lemmy.world 28 points 3 weeks ago

agree blindly with our threadbare propaganda or you're a sheep!!!

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[-] Lemvi@lemmy.sdf.org 24 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

They are too exhausted by all their research to form proper arguments. 🙂‍↕️

[-] Justas@sh.itjust.works 17 points 3 weeks ago

I did my own research and it disagrees with tankies' conclusions. Now what?

[-] T00l_shed@lemmy.world 12 points 3 weeks ago

Then you've been brainwashed with western propaganda is they're their usual go to

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[-] A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 14 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Wish it was only tankies. But with them, there's the additional implication that all aspects of Soviet history should be public knowledge, and if you do not know these things that alone makes you a ... reactionary? capitalist bootlicker? Something like that.

[-] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 18 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

My experience with these people is that they are extremely selectively informed about Soviet history. So ironically, they are actually quite ignorant on the topic, but they expect only their very specific cherry-picked facts and interpretations to be well understood by everyone, but none of the context or intervening events that might paint the USSR as anything other than the most benevolent organization in all of history.

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[-] Snowpix@lemmy.ca 12 points 3 weeks ago

They're too used to banning dissent from their online spaces that they don't have a clue how to actually make an argument that holds any water or without resorting to bad faith tactics. Their arguments never hold up to scrutiny.

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[-] unruffled@anarchist.nexus 65 points 3 weeks ago

Seems like a bad call to me too, PTB. I'll reverse the ban.

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/26473218

[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 61 points 3 weeks ago

Sorry but this is PTB. Criticizing Stalin and the USSR doesn't make one a liberal. Wtf.

[-] alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 3 weeks ago

Just for context, won't really engage further with this: I take 0 issue with people criticizing Stalin, the USSR etc. I'm not a Stalinist, ML nor MLM.

It was only for that specific insulting comment and claiming the USSR outright allied with fascist Germany. Literally every day that kept Germany from fully carrying out Generalplan Ost and Operation Barbarossa in general saved countless lives and allowed for proper industrialisation, later allowing a war effort at all.

I do not have any interest in engaging with people using that tone and straying from proper discussion (again, 0 problems with people trying to discuss things even if erroneous) and do not want them part of the com, it's as shrimple as that.

I took no issue with OP of that specific thread.

[-] Grainne@lemmy.dbzer0.com 48 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

You banned me for being a shitlib, not for being 'insulting'.

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[-] SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 48 points 3 weeks ago

not a tankie

cites cowbee

Pick one.

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PTB and on the basis of blatant misinfo as well. Disappointing

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[-] Kasane_Teto@lemmy.dbzer0.com 34 points 3 weeks ago

PTB, Defending stalin for siding with nazis is crazy

[-] Atomic@sh.itjust.works 14 points 3 weeks ago

Defending Stalin, period. Is crazy. He arguably killed more people than Hitler...

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[-] _cryptagion@anarchist.nexus 32 points 3 weeks ago

There is infinetly more nuance

no there isn't. they worked with the nazis. it doesn't matter why they did it, they still did it. if the choice is working with the nazis or death, then the only choice is death. go out fighting and give them hell.

PTB.

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[-] psx_crab@lemmy.zip 32 points 3 weeks ago

Linking to anything Cowbee said as "fact" is insane.

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[-] Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 31 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I'm banned from there for publicly calling out one of the mods for covertly supporting the American right-wing. I deserve the ban, let's be clear, I intentionally went out of my way to spam warnings across the community. That said, the moderation of that comm seems to be getting worse since I was last there.

PTB.

Edit: To be clear, this was the same moderator, who seems to be the head moderator, and in light of this, it now seems clear that they weren't just supporting the American right-wing, but moreso supporting any and all totalitarianism.

[-] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 3 weeks ago

Calling this one a PTB, it's not a shitlib thing to not ask the USSR to have not temporarily partnered with Nazi Germany.

[-] ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 15 points 3 weeks ago

Before 1941 everyone collaborated, appeased, or worked with the Nazis in some form. And then 1941 happened and the Holocaust.

Rather than this being a lesson for future generations of why Nazis cannot be collaborated, appeased, or worked with: it seems as though this is some ace up the sleeve for catching modern debatelords for apparently being inconsistent.

Generally I think if you're using terms like 'shitlib' you're losing ground, and of there's someone saying 'tankie' there is unlikely any common ground to be found. Accurate or no, the first one to use either term is usually in the wrong, imo.

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[-] Diva@lemmy.ml 15 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

There was way more nuance to the situation. The moderator linked a summary of the false equivalence, as well as the extra context.

you showed up to be like: "fucked up, tankie defending Nazi alliance" as if history began and ended in 1939.

YDI, I can see how you ended up a 'world news' moderator though

[-] renzhexiangjiao@piefed.blahaj.zone 58 points 3 weeks ago

On the topic of Cowbee's summary, one of the articles linked there is by this person. The article concerns the question of whether Poland was invaded by the soviets in 1939 link. I was curious about the author's argument, so I read it.

As it turns out, the crux of the author's argument was that the Polish government exiled itself to Romania on September 17th, and so the soviets could occupy eastern Poland because Poland technically had no government at the time. After all, it couldn't do anything from Romania, as it was a neutral country. EXCEPT the Polish government went to Romania AFTER the soviets invaded, and it was IN REACTION to the soviet invasion. So, because the author got the chronological order of events wrong, his argument kinda falls apart.

I don't want to suggest that the author doesn't know history, but I strongly suspect that he argues in bad faith by intentionally manipulating facts and omitting important information. I don't think you should treat this author as an authority on the topic, especially since this isn't his only outstanding claim that has been questioned by people versed in the field of Eastern European history. Among other things, he's also a Holodomor denier.

[-] prole 34 points 3 weeks ago

Their order of events seems kind of absurd... What, the government of Poland voluntarily left Poland so that the Soviets could come in and temporarily take over? LOL ok.

[-] shoo@lemmy.world 28 points 3 weeks ago

100% guarantee that pointing this out somehow turns into "well actually your history book is wrong because it was written in English." It's a comedy of fallacies with them...

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[-] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 33 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

That summary is terrible, though. It claims shit like the soviets "hated" germany / the nazis, ignoring shit like the Treaty of Rapallo wherein the violent suppression of communists by the German government (not yet the nazis, yes) was freely forgiven by the soviet union, and which played a huge role in the interaction between the Soviet government and the Weimar / Nazi governments. It also relies heavily on the writings of Grover Furr, a flag even redder than the Soviet's in any political discussion about the time period.

Grover Furr's credibility is best explained by this blurb from his wikipedia page:

Furr has written books, papers, and articles about Soviet history, especially the Stalin era, in which he has stated that the Holodomor, the 1932–33 famine in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, was not deliberate, describing it as a fiction created by pro-Nazi Ukrainian nationalists, that the Katyn massacre was committed by the Nazi Schutzstaffel and not the Soviet NKVD, that all defendants in the Moscow Trials were guilty as charged, that claims in Nikita Khrushchev's speech On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences are almost entirely false, that the purpose of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was to preserve the Second Polish Republic rather than partition it, and that the Soviet Union did not invade Poland in September 1939, on the grounds that the Polish state no longer existed.

Seriously, just go read Furr's site (it's incredibly difficult to parse due to how it's presented. He loves having multiple interlinked web pages with little context provided as to how the specifics relate, so fair warning that it's a slog.) The most blatant thing to point out is how he provides baseless in-text explanations of things like the meanings of specific language used in the M-R Pact which are completely unaddressed elsewhere in his explanation. It's maddening to see him treated as a scholar in this field, as though statements provided in inline parenthetical / editorial asides are somehow exempt from the need for citations ~~or that anything he does is acceptable academic behavior~~.

Back to Cowbee though: they completely misrepresent the "4/5 of dead Nazis" statistic, ignoring things like:

  • Troop allocations between the western and eastern fronts were wildly disproportionate
  • The seven other countries that contributed troops to the war on the eastern front (and then assign credit for all those nazi deaths to the USSR, of course)
  • That, thanks to the willingness of Nazis to surrender to the western forces, the western front captured more than 10x the number of Nazi soldiers they killed (~3,500,000 captured to 375,000 killed) which is a million more than the soviets killed (this does not include the additional 3.5million 'disarmed forces' since those are only somewhat admissible here and is a hugely complex topic on it's own)

There is a very real discussion to be had on how related, truly, were the two countries prior to the war, for example: They were close enough that the USSR even allowed the Nazis to run a tank training school, fighter pilot school and chemical weapons proving ground in their territory, which was closed soon after the reichstag fire as the political differences between the two countries became more solidifed as hitler rose to power). How much of that earlier cooperation survived? Important to discuss, and misrepresented by all sides in nearly all directions for an endless procession of political reasons. That solidification of differences is a truly fascinating topic and one fraught with complexity and intrigue and is a great subject to debate (in good faith), but the debate Cowbee is presenting is full of misinformation and absolute rampant bullshit from a king of misrepresenting history.

^edit:^ ^misformatted^ ^link^

^edit^ ^2:^ ^words^ ^are^ ^hard^

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[-] hypnicjerk@lemmy.world 25 points 3 weeks ago
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[-] Juice@midwest.social 12 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Just remember, whenever you read, "social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism," you are reading part of the justification for why the USSR should sign a treaty with Nazi Germany. The actual justifications for this are complicated, I think it is actually not completely straightforward such as "Nazis bad, treaty with Nazis make USSR fascist." However that is exactly the sort of campist and obscurative reasoning that Stalin tries to make. The argument was not "the USSR is still critically underdeveloped next to the most industrially advanced country in Europe, and we need some time to industrialize before we can oppose European fascism." It was, "The social democrats in Europe are worse than Nazis, so the Nazis need time to crush their moderate wing."

You can kind of understand the Real Politic of Stalin. It's the same justification for the endless purges of his political enemies. I think that the historical basis for authoritarianism extends beyond the "great man." But the guy was probably the greatest historical revisionist of the last 150 years. Both his enemy Leon Trotsky and Trotsky's one-time secretary Reya Dunayevskaya meticulously documented how Stalin had history literally rewritten to make him seem like a more revolutionary figure than he was.

I recognize that Trotsky doesn't have a good rapport with anarchists, nor should he, after 1921. But If any leftist tradition "weighs like a nightmare on the minds of the living," it is the legacy Stalinism.

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this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2025
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Ye Power Trippin' Bastards

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This is a community in the spirit of "Am I The Asshole" where people can post their own bans from lemmy or reddit or whatever and get some feedback from others whether the ban was justified or not.

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