To pursue my point, something is definitely happening on the disgust front. A few decades ago, it was normal in the West to eat offal. Now plenty of Westerners are grossed out when they find bits of bone in their chicken broth at an Asian restaurant. For meat to be widely palatable these days, it has be only the best cuts, if possible in a sealed packet with no indication that it comes from an animal. Part of the explanation is surely a subconscious awareness of the horrors of factory farming. But I think something more fundamental’s going on. Something about disconnection from nature, ironically.

Absolutely agree that legislation must bring transparency to factory farming.

telling them that their culture and way of life is “gross”.

Hard to deny that in most cases. But not all, because people’s minds work differently. Personally I rind risible the idea that somebody is attacking my “culture and way of life” when they question my diet. Am I really so rare in my individualism and openness to new ideas?

Because here’s the thing: I personally have stopped eating certain foods simply after thinking about what they are. Cheese is literally the congealed secretions of the mammalian reproductive apparatus. Pretty yucky when you think about it like that, right? No rational arguments or statistics required. That’s a pretty cheap conversion to veganism. Yes, I know that most people will not be open to this kind of novelty thinking. But presumably some will, especially if it can be done with humor.

Also, some of the best plant based food is totally gross. Fermentation is life.

True. I’ve always found mushrooms a bit icky too, but I soldier on and eat them anyway because they’re so healthy.

Of course I don’t, although in my case it is. The deeper point is that if people were to reflect more closely on the origin of their food, this would certainly be a win for veganism. After all, plants are seen as many things but “gross” is not usually one of them.

Disappointed you had to jump straight into censorious mode and tell others literally to shut up.

The main reason for not eating cheese is that it’s gross! Just think for a second what it is. Think harder. Gross. Admittedly pizza is kind of tasty - IF you can stop yourself imagining what it’s made of.

Unlike meat, even the best fake cheese is not very realistic IME. But if someone else enjoys it, all the better.

Interesting read, somewhat enlightening.

But IMO, from the point of view of interoperability, it was bad enough having competing corporate social networks. We don’t want to replace that with competing open meta-networks. And yet ActivityPub and ATProto seem to use completely different paradigms, which would make bridging them pretty hard. Frustrating.

But a very, very credible voice on this subject. Let’s not fall into the easy trap of tribalism.

By no reasonable definition of the word “liberalism” has it caused those things on a scale remotely approaching that of communism. This is not controversial.

Arguing is tiring, and here the payoff will be small since the conversation has moved on, few others are reading. I’ve made my point.

Look on the positive side. Humans being what they are, it’s not usually reason that wins debates, but rather the agreeableness of the participants. So you’ve probably won this one by default.

This feels like arguing with a Jehovah’s witness. To your credit, you’re not getting annoyed or abusive in the face of my contradiction. But then that’s also a hallmark of religious people: absolute certitude, which provides a certain peace of mind.

I’ll admit that I had to look up “AES”, which appears to refer to countries that pass the magical litmus test of Marx-Engels Compatibility.

I will simply sum up my own analysis. The precise terminology of the PRC’s political system is unimportant. What is important is that wherever the recipes of Marx have been tried, the result has been violence, brutality, oppression, famine, economic ruin. I say that as a student of history. Literally: it was my degree. But the facts are in the public domain for all to see. And so I agree with Orwell, who saw it before so many others: there comes a point where you have to accept that the thing is irredeemable, and instead try something else.

That’s really all I have to say on the subject. Of course I respect your right to your own viewpoint.

Do you not think your remarks have a bit of a religious flavor to them? Quoting a couple of eccentric academics from 150 years ago as if transmitting their divine revelation. Defending your interpretation of their holy words as if you were a lawyer or a priest. Why not just look to first principles instead, to the values you considerate important, rather than citing a gospel like this?

I must admit that I am puzzled by people’s determination to defend the record of communism. It’s not worth defending. There are much better ideas for how to replace capitalism, though - spoiler - none of them involve a bloody revolution. This doesn’t mean that Marx had nothing interesting to say. Of course he did. His description of society was revolutionary. But the prescription was disastrous and I feel we would do well to just move on from it at last.

Seriously? I’m not trying to convince you, I’m trying to convince the people reading us. That’s the way a forum debate works! But I admire your earnestness.

Hair splitting. Some ideologies are more dangerous than others.

This is a bit reductive. I accept that liberalism and capitalism are closely intertwined in the historical reading. But the fact is that capitalism won the economic battle, for better and (I agree) for worse. Attempts to replace it completely, in an interconnected world, invariably end in disaster or (China) in a reversion to capitalism. Just look at the list of them. To me this whole question feels like a disconnected high-school philosophy debate.

True but that is a proper name, not the generic definition. Russia’s Liberal Democrats are ultranationalists.

Disingenuous or ignorant. By definition a Quaker or a Jain cannot commit brutality in the name of their beliefs. Conversely, an ideology which puts the collective before the individual, such as fascism or communism, is, a straightforward recipe for brutality.

When I say right, I am using the typical definition, supportive of Capitalism. Social Democrats, Liberals, American Libertarians, fascists, and all their myriad forms.

For two of the words this is not a typical definition. Social democrats do not code as “right” anywhere in the world. And liberals are only “right” when viewed through a partisan US-progressive lens, or else perhaps in southern Europe (where the word is mostly an economic term). Elsewhere they would be closer to left or center. This whole discussion illustrates the limited usefulness of the left-right axis at describing ideas.

Many would say that this is disingenuous reasoning. The fact is that the brutality was committed in the name of the ideology, and that whenever the ideology has been tried out, it always - always - ends the same way. For exactly the reason you suggest: any ideology that precludes dissent is ripe for abuse.

Yes, sure. As a liberal, I’m pretty suspicious of even speech-policing, let alone bans or (here) defederation. But I just wish more people understood that the ideas these people claim to support are not anodyne. They’re not just sticking it to The Man, they’re not democrats or even Swedish-style socialists. They’re defending the indefensible. Addendum: To be clear, I think even many of them don’t understand this properly.

The solution is that an instance that cheerfully associates itself with an ideology that wiped away the lives of many tens of millions of people and immiserated possibly a billion more - that instance should be relegated to a dusty basement room where new users won’t easily find it.

Seriously. When I learned that the “ml” stood for Marxism-Leninism I almost had second thoughts about leaving the R-site.

The ml TLD belongs to Mali BTW. A semi-failed African state which just kicked out the “imperialist” French soldiers it had previously invited to put down its jihadist insurgents, in order to replace them with Russian mercenaries generously sent by Putin. You can’t make this stuff up.