You do realize votes don’t actually have any value right? And I have yet to see any community on lemmy ban account based on downvotes, this is just something you’ve made up here. There’s a reason why lemmy has a public mod long where you can see the reasons for bans. Show me a single instance of people being banned because their comments were downvoted.

Yes, people will try to push agendas, and this is nothing new or exclusive to social media. The real problem with commercial platforms is that a private entity controls the content on the platform deciding what people see using opaque algorithms, and introducing biases into content that benefit the company running the platform. That’s why corporate social media is so problematic. Again, you can compare wikipedia as an example to see the huge difference between an open and transparent platform compared to closed private ones.

There is simply no actual evidence to support your position I’m afraid. Mastodon network is literally millions of users now, and anybody who uses it regularly can see a drastic difference with corporate platforms.

Once again, it’s a question of incentives. People operating individual servers have no interest to allow corporate interference on the platform. The kind of small scale brigading you refer to is an organic phenomenon. I also don’t know what you mean when you say you can’t mention examples because this post will be a target. What will this post be a target of exactly, you’ll get a few downvotes. Why are you worried about that exactly?

The nature of the network makes it much more difficult for corporations to subvert the network, and the incentive structures are also different. The question isn’t one of interest, but one of structure. It’s much harder for corporations to bias a distributed network that’s not run for profit than platforms they own and manipulate themselves. And of course there are lots of instances of biased editing on wikipedia, but there’s no comparison compared to corporate platforms.

As long as it’s not run by corporations there’s no problem. This is the big advantage of the fediverse where it’s not a single site run for profit, but a whole bunch of servers operated by individuals largely running on donations. We can see how the fediverse is already refusing to federate with threads.

all corporate social media that is

That doesn’t get you from “Democratic Socialism” to “Imperialism”, as evidenced by your own linked article.

That’s not an argument I made anywhere. What I keep telling you is that democratic socialism provides a veneer of democracy for the masses which allows capitalism to operate. Capitalism is what’s responsible for the imperialism.

Per your own linked article, they remained neutral even after the end of WW2 and sympathized more with the Non-Aligned states than either of the two Superpowers.

Oh please, it’s the height of dishonesty to pretend they were actually neutral after WW2.

Alright, asshole. I think we’re done.

I think we are done, you’ll have to go make straw man arguments in a different thread now.

his has absolutely dick-all to do with their political configuration.

It has everything to do with the political configuration, and I’ve already gave a direct contrast with USSR showing what relations look like with a socialist political configuration. Politics are inherently inseparable from economics.

Because of their geographic position and ethnic sympathies, not because of their political organization.

They absolutely align with the US because of their political organization.

The benefits of social democracy are not defended by imperialism but clawed back. The institutions of social democracy are not girded but undermined.

Nowhere have I argued that socialist structures benefit from imperialism. I’m arguing that the notion of social democracy doesn’t actually work to hold back imperialism and capitalism which is its state goal.

This would posit a distinctly contrary view to what you’re stating above. Far from sympathizing and allying with imperialist states, the Swedes continued their commitment to the non-aligned movement and to independent sovereignty both for themselves and for their Third World peers.

No, it’s not contrary to my view at all which is that social democracy doesn’t work. Capitalist class that holds power gets their way in the long run. That’s precisely what the article explains.

The Swedes yearn not for their own foreign feudal lands but for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Yet, the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be achieved via reformism. The whole system is explicitly built to promote the interests of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. You can’t use the master’s tools will to dismantle the master’s house.

it was a pretty wild read

looks like it can do metadata search https://immich.app/docs/features/search

👏

That’s fair, people aren’t consciously participating in the exploitation, it’s just not visible to them.

Obviously, the vast majority of plunder goes to the capitalist class, but the working class unarguably enjoys better conditions than vast majority of the world which is how the ruling class buys the support of domestic workers for imperialist policies.

That is not the reality, unless you’re going to explain how public education and biotech are extractionary. And if that’s your game, you’re going to have to explain Cuba.

I’ve explained what I mean here repeatedly in this thread. I don’t know how much more clear I can make it. I’m not talking about things Nordic countries are producing. I’m talking about the basic necessities of life Nordic countries import that are produced by effective slave labour using resources extracted from the global south. This is what allows people living in these countries to focus on doing things like biotech.

The US system of empire is failing, from the industrial bedrock of the Chinese cities to the farmlands of Ukraine to the mountains of Bolivia. Maybe Blinken (or the next guy) will turn things around, but we’ve been losing traction since the end of the Bush Era pretty much globally.

Again, nowhere am I arguing with the fact that the empire is entering the stages of collapse.

The Scandinavian state services responsible for education, health care, and transportation had no discernible role in the occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan, the bulk fabrication of arms and armor in Ukraine, the string of failed coups in Latin America, or the ongoing occupation of Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and the Philippines in the Mid-Atlantic. They weren’t even NATO members until very recently.

This has dick-all with the point I’m making. Perhaps I’m not articulating it clearly enough?

These countries piggy back on US imperialism, they’re getting the benefits of imperialism by being members of the system. Scandinavian companies get to plunder the global south along with the rest of the west, Scandinavians enjoy commodities extracted from the global south by the empire.

The benefits are only rolled back when the democracies themselves are curtailed, as the states are bombarded with fascist propaganda via foreign media. A compelling argument for a Scandinavian Firewall, but a piss poor criticism of the democratic institutions themselves.

The case of Sweden shows that the democracies are curtailed by the domestic capitalists https://jacobin.com/2019/08/sweden-1970s-democratic-socialism-olof-palme-lo

Capital relations are degraded through the imposition of social democratic reforms. And as residents rely on these reforms to sustain themselves, they become intractable. Only by unleashing fascist media, shock doctrine economics, and foreign coercion on a country do you curb the transitionary process. That’s exactly what western political strategy has been for the last 60 years.

And it will continue to be western political strategy as long as the capital owning class remains in power.

Which were rooted in domestic industry and professional services, not extractionary practices targeting populations abroad.

The reality is that it’s both.

Western state control of the Global South has eroded with the outsourcing of US domestic industry abroad - particularly in the wake of the 1980s, when industry transplanted itself to the South Pacific.

That’s just a false narrative.

But even outside of this fact, the Scandinavian states are nearly non-existent in western foreign policy.

Scandinavian states participate in the plunder just like every other western bloc country. My cat can’t doesn’t get much say in how my house is run either, but it does benefit none the less.

The US actively embargoed Soviet States starting with the Mutual Defense Assistance Act of 1951.

USSR had an entire bloc around it and plenty of non aligned countries to trade with. US embargoes clearly didn’t prevent USSR from being able to trade and to exploit countries if it chose to. The relations USSR developed with its partners were of a profoundly different kind than the ones western imperial powers have with the countries they subjugate today. The whole discussion here is regarding the exploitative nature of the relationship between the west and the global majority.

Social democracy creates public institutions that control the means of production within their fields. But the public institutions tend to be confined to education, health care, transport and other civil services. They don’t extend out to the industrial wing of the economy.

Social democracy can have a slight short term impact in these domains, the benefits however are never permanent and end up being rolled back in times of regular capitalist crises.

So if you want meaningful democracy, you’re going to be doing some social democracy at some point in your transition.

Social democracy isn’t part of any transition, it’s a mechanism that props up current capitalist relations.

Freaking out at people who organize towards publicly financed colleges and hospitals and calling them evil imperialists will do nothing to advance the cause of public ownership in the industrial sector.

Not sure what that’s referring to even.

But we’re no longer in the short term. Scandinavian social democracy has been ongoing since the 60s.

Right, the standard of living is declining all across the empire, including Scandinavia. The difference is that there were stronger social safety nets erected at the peak, so the decline hasn’t hit as hard as other places, such as US, with more shaky safety nets.

This has been less and less true since the 90s, as the western states become heavily dependent on fossil fuel exports.

Not really, the west has continued to dominate the global south, and has a massive military presence across the globe. Western companies are extracting resources from Africa and other places at record pace today.

Scandinavian social democracy has nothing to do with American / East Asian materials extraction patterns.

Of course it does, all the material good such as appliances, phones, laptops, TVs, and so on are produced using resources and labour done predominantly in the global south.

And the whole reason we’re seeing countries increasingly preferring China to the west is precisely because China offers mutually beneficial relations as opposed to exploitative ones the west imposes.

Cuba’s trade practices are strictly regulated by the American Navy and Coast Guard.

You ignored my point that USSR was not under these restrictions and did not behave in the way you suggest. Given that Cuba being modelled on USSR politically, there is every reason to expect that Cuba would not behave in such a way either even if it was not under a blockade.

At which point they had to reorganize and reestablish new trade ties in order to rebuild their living standards. But this had to do with access to developed industrial capital, not the exploitation of labor through imperial expansion.

Again, the point here was that USSR was able to have positive mutually beneficial relations with their partners as opposed to exploitative ones the west imposes on weaker countries.

Implementing public professional services in the domestic market (or not) has no impact on your foreign policy.

It’s not possible to have any meaningful democracy when the means of production are owned privately. And foreign policy is very obviously influenced by this fact. To give you a concrete example, let’s say you have a factory that’s owned privately by a capitalist. The owner wants to reduce operating costs and increase profits. They have an incentive to move production to a cheaper labour market where they can exploit the workers more than they can at home. This creates a direct incentive for capitalists to colonize other countries and exploit them. On the other hand, let’s say the same factory is cooperatively owned by the workers. They would have no incentive to move the factory to a cheaper labour market because they’d lose their jobs at that point. The incentive for imperialism is directly related to the economic system.

I’d love to teach my cat to fetch as well. She does the first half of fetching where it’ll run after whatever you throw, but then doesn’t bring it back so you have to go and pick up the toy to throw again.

No, I’m not ignorant of any facts. And this has been extensively documented in western media. https://archive.ph/BAxYc

The regime that got in power started doing these kinds of things to people of Donbas, as was openly reported by CNN at the time.

Now, let’s take a look at a few slides from this lecture that Mearsheimer gave back in 2015 to get a bit of background on the subject. Mearsheimer is certainly not pro Russian in any sense, and a proponent of US global hegemony. First, here’s the demographic breakdown of Ukraine:

here’s how the election in 2004 went:

this is the 2010 election:

As we can clearly see from the voting patterns in both elections, the country is divided exactly across the current line of conflict. Furthermore, a survey conducted in 2015 further shows that there is a sharp division between people of eastern and western Ukraine on which economic bloc they would rather belong to:

Turns out that the civil war started exactly where the current line of contact is, and it started precisely because the nationalist regime the west installed started doing ethnic cleansing.

Rich coming from someone who only regurgitates Russian talking points verbatim.

Ah yes, Russian talking points as reported by western media. You’re an utter clown.

The whole point of a proxy war is that you use somebody else to do the fighting for you. Meanwhile, Ukraine lost its sovereignty back in 2014 when a democratically elected government was overthrown in a western backed coup. Painting this as Ukraine freely choosing to associate with NATO is the height of intellectual dishonesty.

Meanwhile, bleating about justifications is just a distraction from the reality of why the war happened. Pretty hilarious of you to run around calling others deluded while spewing utter nonsense. One thing that’s abundantly clear here is that you don’t care one bit about the actual facts. You’re an ideologue regurgitating propaganda you’ve memorized.

Stopping NATO expansion would be an absurd demand if Russia did not have the power to stop do so by force which is what it’s now doing. Russia gave NATO a choice of either stopping expansion to its borders, or resolving the situation by force. NATO chose to resolve the situation by force. The whole narrative that Putin started the war and nobody else is beyond infantile because it just ignores all the history and geopolitical context pretending as if this was some random event that happened out of the blue and for no logical reason.

NATO has maintained a policy of might makes right since the fall of USSR, it has invaded and razed numerous countries over the past few decades, and now it’s run into a country that will no longer tolerate an aggressive military alliance on its borders.