On lemmy.world I posted a comment on how liberals use ‘tankie’ as an invective to shut down dialogue and received tons of hateful replies. I tried to respond in a rational way to each. Someone’s said ‘get educated’ I responded ‘Im reading Norman Finkelstein’s I’ll burn that bridge when I get there’ and tried to keep it civil.
They deleted every comment I made and banned me. Proving my point, they just want to shut down dialogue. Freedom of speech doesn’t existing in those ‘totalitarian’ countries right? But in our ‘enlightened’ western countries we just delete you.
Everyone who has in interest in science knows that you can’t prove opinions, but only facts. You can prove stuff like “capitalism is destroying the ecosystem” or “China masacered the Uigurs” you can’t prove stuff like “Stalin was right” or “the bests way to interpret Marx is to consider the context he wrote in”
That’s the basic difference between empirical and normative science.
And basically all questions of politics are at least partially normative.
I agree that materialistic dialectics can be used as scientific tools, and are by most people, but science also means, you accept that no one can have the “only true opinion” as empirical facts can be interpreted widely different and no human has ALL information. And even if one had, there are always subjective weightings at play (is human suffering worse than human death? Is animal death worse than human suffering? Is the system more valuable than individual freedoms?)
Science means knowing what you can and can’t prove, so if you are scientific, you know that not everybody comes to the same conclusion even when using the same facts.
So what’s your problem then? The tanks were sent and the nazis were crushed. Also, krushchev sent the tanks, not stalin. What’s your problem with stalin?
What’s my problem with Stalin?
I could not have described my problem with talking to people here better than you demonstrated it in this simple question, even if I would have used 100 words.
You being dumbfounded that you have to justify your baseless beliefs that Stalin is some monster is a perfect summary of why you’re a lib who will gladly side with fascists when your treats are at stake.
There’s that empty liberal appeal to an assumed normative opinion again, combined with “uhh actually you have now proven my nebulous non-point by asking a basic question”
My man is floundering
Jean le Flambeur? More like Jean le Flounder.