I like hearing socialist and communist viewpoints to pop my American echo chamber bubble. When all I hear in Florida is how communists crave the destruction of the US and the death of all its people and anyone who disagrees is labeled a communist, you're not going to have an educated stance on the matter.

I started my Fediverse journey excited to read their federated posts. I think it was signing up for Lemmy that I was forced to read more Marx than I'd read before, not to mention recently (re-)reading Animal Farm, and now I have more compassion for Marxists than I did before.

I'm gradually learning .ml doesn't federate with others to give a voice to Marxist(-Leninists) who want to interact with others civilly.

I once dared to mention liberals tend to agree soviet bloc housing was one of the things the USSR did right. I was dogpiled and eventually labeled a troll and banned for a while.

I once dared to say I didn't realize Xinnie the Pooh memes could be racist. I was dogpiled and eventually accused of being orientalist and a fascist and banned for a while.

Now any time I bump into an .ml, they check my mod log on .ml and go on a rant about how I'm a racist and a fascist, stating they have no need to read why I was accused of that because they're sure their mods/admins are above reproach. I certainly can't disprove an accusation that requires no evidence - no one can.

I figure either they're a community of people pretending to be Marxist-Leninist to make people have a bad opinion of Marxist-Leninists...

...or (Fediverse) Marxist-Leninists are yet another group of humans who employ bad faith tactics to attack anyone who isn't them for funsies.

So they earn quite a bit of hate from the rest of the Fediverse and weaken most people's opinions of Marxist-Leninists; they've certainly eroded mine.