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The people before us weren't perfect. Their mistakes are blueprints to learn from and build a better world
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this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
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I'm leftist but I am the first to admit that Stalin wasn't a good leader at all. For heaven's sake, his own guards were scared of him. In fact, he died because he instilled so much fear into them. Personally, I'm more of a collectivist who doesn't believe in authoritarianism.
Authoritarian is a meaningless pejorative. All states/countries/political groups etc. must be authoritarian by necessity in class society.
Major citation needed.
Sankara is just as "tankie" as Stalin, Castro, Mao, Huey P. Newton, etc. The difference is that he was killed before Burkina Faso really had a chance to develop socialism, and as such his name hasn't been dragged through the mud. Regarding Stalin, there are several books I can recommend, but I'll pick just one. Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend by Domenico Losurdo.
Also not sure what you mean by saying you don't "believe in class society." What does this mean? Do you deny the existence of wage laborers and capitalists, or do you deny that classes have similar interests and philosophies that come more naturally based on how we live?
Either way, we all love Sankara. Just because we disagree with bourgeois historiography on socialist leaders does not mean we don't also appreciate the ones that bourgeois historiography has largely left alone.
It's so obvious that the only standard western "leftists" have for who was a "classy" leftist and who was an evil authoritarian is whether they were martyred or not. You're clearly just readapting Christianity here in order to say the only good leftist is a dead leftist
No, there are plenty of good leftists whom are living. Jesus, lemmy.ml users make heavy accusations towards anyone who even somewhat disagrees.
The only difference between Sankara and the leftist leaders you've condemned is that Sankara was martyred.
Try looking at it from our side. Day in, day out we get bombarded with disinformation (intentionally or not), and have had these same arguments day in, day out. I don't think it's particularly surprising when some communists become jaded and snappy over time, even if I think it's counter-productive. The point on Sankara is apt, Sankara was just as good a person as many other demonized socialist leaders, but was not as heavily targeted due to Burkina Faso's socialist project getting strangled in the crib, rather than flourishing and thus getting demonized.
How can you not "believe" in class society when it is a fact? Also, Sankara was a Marxist-Leninist, the very ideology you despise.
You don't think classes exist? Or you think it's possible to abolish classes at the press of a button without any transitionary phase? Either way this is idiotic.
Leader who believes the things I believe (Marxism Leninism) but was assassinated before the consolidation of the workers state began. You should probably investigate subjects before you speak on them.
This site won't load but from dealing with them previously I vaguely remember them as a liberal nonsense publisher however if you can provide an archive link or equivalent I can give my proper views on this article in particular.
Aka someone who dies before they can be effectively vilified
Western Marxism, the Fetish for Defeat, and Christian Culture (2020):
https://redsails.org/western-marxism-and-christianity/
You may not believe in classes, but that doesn't negate their existence.
We will continue to support AES states (current and those sadly no longer extant). Go advocate for utopianism somewhere else.
You just posted a meme and said leftists fight too much and here you are, fighting.
Hmm, I wonder if protecting the socialist leadership was a factor in this. Too bad he got assassinated, proving that using state power to oppose the reactionary forces is critically important in a nascent socialist state.
The majority of people who lived in Eastern European socialism regret its fall. The USSR had no colonies, it was an anti-imperialist, de-colonial federation. Sankara learned from Stalin, and was a Marxist-Leninist. Finally, equating Hitler and Stalin equates fascism with socialism, which originated as a form of Holocaust trivialization called Double Genocide Theory. I recommend reading Domenico Losurdo's Towards a Critique of the Category of Totalitarianism.
Why don't you just come out and admit you only like leftist leaders who get killed before they can do much, that's clearly what you think
Uhhh... no? Historically speaking, there were societies that took care of everyone. Plus, the desire for egalitarianism has existed for quite a long time. Just because I don't agree with some historical white leader, doesn't mean that I only like leftists who got killed.
That's cool that being nice is the ceiling of revolutionary possibility in your brutally constrained mind, but the Chinese Communists did this:
Capitalist apologists: see how we reduced world poverty? /s
Not sure if this is a joke because if you exclude China from the data, world poverty has actually gotten worse in the last 40 years. They are singlehandedly dragging that world average upwards.
Good context. That's why I added the /s
Ah ok