this post was submitted on 04 May 2026
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Many people on lemmy.ml deeply respect and admire authoritarian governments and organizations.

Iran, China, North Korea, Soviet Union...

The West has many flaws. But our flaws are nothing compared to these guys.

Iran hangs homosexuals. Iran shot 30,000 people in less than than 2 weeks. The Soviet Union had to build a fucking Iron wall to prevent people from escaping. The Soviets lied about the Chernobyl nuclear explosion. China censors the internet. China wants to eliminate Islam. North Korea is a totalitarian hellscape. Watching anime is a crime.

Why is lemmy.ml so fascinated with authoritarians?

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[–] village604@adultswim.fan 14 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

The mistake you're making is thinking that criticising other authoritarian regimes means supporting the one you live in.

It's not a zero sum game.

[–] orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

It is a valid point, though. Some people don't even realize they're in it. Like frogs in a pot of water, they've been boiled and are unaware.

[–] MagicShel@lemmy.zip 6 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

I think a lot of Americans are under the assumption that post-Trump we just go back to freedom^tm^. And I hope that's the case, but I'm skeptical.

[–] orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 7 hours ago

I keep hearing equally unrealistic things that hinge on magical one-off situations. "What if he has a stroke?" or "The Dems will win and it will all change." It won't. They're not going to self-regulate any more than they did in the past.

[–] Ryanmiller70@lemmy.zip 1 points 8 hours ago

In order to get close to freedom we'd at bare minimum have to go back to before Reagan.

[–] vagrancyand@sh.itjust.works 1 points 13 hours ago

No, the mistake I'm making is pretending any person using the word 'authoritarian' has thought for two seconds about the word or what it means. Hence why I'm trying to encourage those to think beyond the propaganda and instead actually dive into the philosophy it's trying to obscure.

Authoritarianism, also known as 'any two or more humans living together,' is a meaningless buzzword invented in the 1940s to try to differentiate American and Fascist societies to get Americans on board with fighting their ideological clones across the Atlantic.

It has no static definition that meaningfully separates any society from any other society.