The guy who replied to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in your second screenshot seems like one of the far-right wingers. They do not, in any capacity, represent the general population.

Thankfully, OP is from an instance that has not federated with Hexbear. Hexbear users won’t be able to see this post.

I don’t really agree with all the points you listed, but I want to say thank you for not employing the Hexbear approach to defend your position. I gave you an upvote.

ps. before anyone berates me for not also listing reasons to defend myself: I’m tired of arguing online.

My main issue with that article on ProleWiki lies in its first paragraph:

Authoritarianism is an idealist and loosely defined concept that is often used by liberals (liberalism being the ideology of capitalism) to demonize both past and present socialist states and dismiss any argument in support of these states.

In the very beginning of the article, ProleWIki equated liberalism with capitalism (they are very different), and also claimed them that liberals have “demonized” socialist states with this term. There is no denying that some liberals have demonized socialist states, but I would argue that this term was used properly in that context.

Have you ever noticed the most prominent difference between socialist governments and the governments of the rest of the world? In most socialist countries, you aren’t really allowed to publicly criticize the government. Ever noticed how much criticisms of the USA, the UK, France, or really any liberal country floats around the Internet? If you speak Chinese, I kindly ask you to go check out Weibo (Chinese Twitter), try posting something remotely critical of President Xi and watch your post get removed. Or try sending a message to a Chinese citizen with Weixin (Chinese Whatsapp), talk about the protest banner that someone hung on Sitong bridge in Beijing 11 months ago and see how your account gets disabled.

As you can see, the Chinese government exerts a lot more power on censoring Internet speech than the liberal countries do. I am not qualified to say whether the “western” countries are authoritarian, but in comparison, those socialist states really do enforce a lot more rules. Socialist states really are more authoritarian in comparison. It is more than fitting to call them authoritarian.

[that’s like saying] “you’re biased, so why should I believe you?” [in a debate]

Now that I think about it, I realize that that was indeed not a good argument. But that was also what another Hexbear user said to dismiss the Wikipedia article just a few parent comments above. They basically said “Wikipedia is biased, so why should I believe Wikipedia?”

BTW sorry for the late reply. I was kind of busy.

Oh well, I guess I should not have claimed that you chose to like ProleWiki more because you just like it. Now, how about I explain why I don’t trust ProleWiki on “Authoritarianism” because of its bias?

If you look at ProleWiki’s main page, it literally says that it is a communist (Marxist-Leninist) project. It leans towards Marxism-Leninism, which IMO makes its defense of those Marxist-Leninist socialist states heavily biased and unreliable.

I don’t get why some think that the US or Ukraine started the war. They did not. Russia started it. Why would any country attack another country 28 times its size?

They do. See https://lemmygrad.ml and see how almost every post has some downvotes. IMO this does make the posting culture there better.

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Heck I think Lemmygrad is more tolerable than Hexbear, by a lot.

Sh.itjust.works has already defederated from Hexbear? That quick? No announcement whatsoever?

Btw, lemm.ee is federated with Hexbear.

Agreed.

Careful calling those regimes authoritarian. Hexbears like to attack this point by assigning a slightly different definition to authoritarian and then either (a) claim that all governments are “authoritarian” or (b) blame liberals for using this word to demonize socialist states. I once saw someone cite https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Authoritarianism to “prove” that those states are not authoritarian.

Yeah, the Chinese government is totally very democratic and is receptive to the criticism of its citizens! They never censor words and topics they don’t like on their social media platforms!

I know right! Even though I agree with some of the viewpoints, I would rather not see so much discussion about capitalism, communism, or politics in general. BTW, the word is “systematically.”

I literally said that they might as well leave lemmygrad.ml and make a new account on Hexbear.

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Ah I see, thanks.

But then what the other commenter said would basically be “Both Wikipedia and Prolewiki are biased, but Wikipedia is biased to the wrong direction. I like Prolewiki’s bias more than I like Wikipedia’s bias. Therefore, Wikipedia is not reliable on the topic of Authoritarianism.”

Ok, maybe Wikipedia is biased, but I want to hear your arguments on why Prolewiki is not.

Prolewiki, lmao great source