The people before us weren’t perfect. Their mistakes are blueprints to learn from and build a better world

  • 秦始皇帝@lemmy.ml
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    18 hours ago

    doesn’t believe in authoritarianism.

    Authoritarian is a meaningless pejorative. All states/countries/political groups etc. must be authoritarian by necessity in class society.

    For heaven’s sake, his own guards were scared of him. In fact, he died because he instilled so much fear into them.

    Major citation needed.

      • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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        5 hours ago

        Y’all are so quick to suck up to sketchy leaders when you could be hoping for someone more classy like Thomas Sankara.

        It’s so obvious that the only standard western “leftists” have for who was a “classy” leftist and who was an evil authoritarian is whether they were martyred or not. You’re clearly just readapting Christianity here in order to say the only good leftist is a dead leftist

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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            5 hours ago

            Try looking at it from our side. Day in, day out we get bombarded with disinformation (intentionally or not), and have had these same arguments day in, day out. I don’t think it’s particularly surprising when some communists become jaded and snappy over time, even if I think it’s counter-productive. The point on Sankara is apt, Sankara was just as good a person as many other demonized socialist leaders, but was not as heavily targeted due to Burkina Faso’s socialist project getting strangled in the crib, rather than flourishing and thus getting demonized.

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        10 hours ago

        Sankara is just as “tankie” as Stalin, Castro, Mao, Huey P. Newton, etc. The difference is that he was killed before Burkina Faso really had a chance to develop socialism, and as such his name hasn’t been dragged through the mud. Regarding Stalin, there are several books I can recommend, but I’ll pick just one. Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend by Domenico Losurdo.

        Also not sure what you mean by saying you don’t “believe in class society.” What does this mean? Do you deny the existence of wage laborers and capitalists, or do you deny that classes have similar interests and philosophies that come more naturally based on how we live?

        Either way, we all love Sankara. Just because we disagree with bourgeois historiography on socialist leaders does not mean we don’t also appreciate the ones that bourgeois historiography has largely left alone.

      • TiredTiger@lemmy.ml
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        16 hours ago

        You may not believe in classes, but that doesn’t negate their existence.

        We will continue to support AES states (current and those sadly no longer extant). Go advocate for utopianism somewhere else.

      • SirSmoothAES@lemmygrad.ml
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        18 hours ago

        How can you not “believe” in class society when it is a fact? Also, Sankara was a Marxist-Leninist, the very ideology you despise.

      • 秦始皇帝@lemmy.ml
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        18 hours ago

        I don’t even believe in a class society.

        You don’t think classes exist? Or you think it’s possible to abolish classes at the press of a button without any transitionary phase? Either way this is idiotic.

        more classy like Thomas Sankara.

        Leader who believes the things I believe (Marxism Leninism) but was assassinated before the consolidation of the workers state began. You should probably investigate subjects before you speak on them.

        have several articles I can cite, but I’ll use this one because it jumps straight to the point.

        This site won’t load but from dealing with them previously I vaguely remember them as a liberal nonsense publisher however if you can provide an archive link or equivalent I can give my proper views on this article in particular.

          • culprit@lemmy.ml
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            4 hours ago

            According to the journalist Sennen Andriamirado, who wrote two early books on Sankara, the Burkinabè leader believed that “Stalin killed Leninism by stifling the soviets and making all-powerful the Cheka [secret police], the military,” and other repressive bodies.

            Hmm, I wonder if protecting the socialist leadership was a factor in this. Too bad he got assassinated, proving that using state power to oppose the reactionary forces is critically important in a nascent socialist state.

          • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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            5 hours ago

            Why don’t you just come out and admit you only like leftist leaders who get killed before they can do much, that’s clearly what you think

            • Planchette (he/him) @lemmy.worldBanned from community
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              5 hours ago

              Uhhh… no? Historically speaking, there were societies that took care of everyone. Plus, the desire for egalitarianism has existed for quite a long time. Just because I don’t agree with some historical white leader, doesn’t mean that I only like leftists who got killed.

          • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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            17 hours ago

            For example, Thomas Sankara was an actual decent person

            That’s cool that being nice is the ceiling of revolutionary possibility in your brutally constrained mind, but the Chinese Communists did this:

              • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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                6 hours ago

                Not sure if this is a joke because if you exclude China from the data, world poverty has actually gotten worse in the last 40 years. They are singlehandedly dragging that world average upwards.