I think the Zapatistas are doing pretty good at being socialists. They’re not that far off from pure communism, either.

I was born in country where intellectuals were in jail and uneducated workers were put to management positions, because they should own the means of production or some bullshit like that. You can imagine the end result of that.

And again, this is the same “that wasn’t true socialism” argument. Obviously it wasn’t. The socialism as per your definition can’t exist on a country level. You can see it being implemented on a small company level (think family owned businesses) but the bigger it gets the more the cracks show and it just does not scale.

Interesting tidbit I picked up on an Andrewisim video recently: organizations from the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist branch of the left are particularly vulnerable to falling into cult behavior. It’s a reason to consider the whole branch to be bad and cut it right off. If not that far, then at least view organizations from that branch with a lot of criticism.

Yes, exactly it always fails, because it just does not scale. It’s an idea, that can’t exist in reality on a country level. You can point to Freetown Christiania as an example - a small anarchist commune, that already shows some major cracks in its structure. I mean, just grow family business a bit and you can already see structures and hierarchy emerging.

Ironic

Well at least they have the right to (down)vote then. That isn’t that common in the socialist paradise last time I’ve checked. 🤣

There seems to be a bit of a difference, even though both involve asking questions. To quote wiktionary:

sealioning (uncountable)
A type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity (“I’m just trying to have a debate”), and feigning ignorance of the subject matter, in order to wear down an opponent and incite angry responses that will discredit them.

Apparently coined by this webcomic:

JAQ off (third-person singular simple present JAQs off, present participle JAQing off, simple past and past participle JAQed off) (slang, derogatory) To ask loaded questions inviting someone to justify their views or behaviours, in an attempt to make tangential claims of little verisimilitude appear acceptable.

So the way I understand it, “JAQing off” is when you’re trying to guide your audience towards a certain conclusion without stating it outright (e.g. “Are the official numbers of holocaust victims really as solid as people claim? Are there alternative historical interpretations? I’m just asking questions here, not implying anything folks.” when you think just saying “The holocaust didn’t happen!” might make it too obvious you’re a Nazi), while sealioning is more about annoying the other party and trying to make them look bad/unreasonable and yourself polite and reasonable in comparison (e.g. “I’m just curious, is there any actual evidence that fascists are inherently bad people, as you claim? As a person with no opinion on the matter, I would just like to have an honest and open debate on this subject.” so when people reply with something like “Fuck off, fascist!” you can say “Wow, so much for the tolerant left.”). Both tactics are frequently applied by online trolls, especially of the far right, but they have somewhat different goals.

Ah yeah, that’s what they all say amirite?

I’ve probably only met a handful of communist who admit to the crimes of communist regimes and acknowledged that communism in practice never lived up to the ideals. But they’re only far and few and majority of communists engages in bad faith behaviour, especially when you list all the bad things communists states have done and they go “no true communists fallacy” or “what gulag?”. Or, even if they acknowledge the arbitrary arrests and purge, they say “those people deserved it”.

But yeah, keep feigning acting in good faith. I’ve seen this many times.