Lemmygrad
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Lemmygrad is a pro-China online forum founded in 2019. The site is based around free and open source software and is federated with similar forums.[1] As of February 2023, the site hosts nearly 40,000 posts and around 200 active users.[2]
Lemmygrad is controversial on the left for the ideological stances most dominate in its community. The moderators of the forum, along with most of the usership, adhere militantly to pro-China ideology. Many users on Lemmygrad are currently banned from the site, and most of the banned users come from the related site lemmy.ml.[3]
The development of revolutionary movements and ideology is rarely considered on this site, with its rhetoric largely entailing defense for so-called "actually existing socialism", most notably, modern China. Users which do not fulfill this ideological stance are almost always banned by the moderators.[4] The moderation itself is commonly said to be plagued with poor and ad-hoc moderation policies, along with a plethora of "informal rules" which the moderators enforce.[5]
The moderators of the forum openly tolerate and at times even endorse the raiding of ideological opposed sites[6] (which commonly includes those owned by socialists) and virtual piracy.[7]
History
Founding and early developments
Lemmygrad was founded in August 2019, with its first post being on the 17th of that month.[8] Its initial moderator team and usership were largely composed of Dengists from various Telegram, Reddit, and Discord servers. However, other ideological groupings were provisionally allowed on the site as well.[9]
Reddit "migration" to Lemmygrad
In March 2022, the self-declared Dengist subreddit GenZedong was quarantined on Reddit for its promotion of disinformation and war propaganda within the context of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, and seemingly threatened with an impended ban. Its accompanying communities of "GenZhou" (its "educational" outlet) and "GenZhukov" (its "military history and tactics" outlet) were banned for their usage in evading the quarantine for GenZedong users as well as their alleged espousal of disinformation.[10]
The Lemmygrad moderators would react to this by self-promoting their project on the GenZedong subreddit and Discord server. With the further assistance of the GenZedong administrators, this would prompt a so-called "migration" from Reddit to Lemmygrad in order to ensure that GenZedong users would be able to persist in their denialist and negationist content. Due to the size of GenZedong, Lemmygrad would temporally expand greatly. So much so, the moderators of Lemmygrad would soon refer to their forum as an "/r/genzedong replacement" and would admit that most of the activity of Lemmygrad took place with "migrated" GenZedong users on their site.[11] However, this large-scale increase in site activity was only temporally. As the year 2022 progressed and the GenZedong subreddit remained unbanned, most GenZedong users in Lemmygrad would return to their original subreddit. By January 2023, there only existed only about 50 active users on Lemmygrad, including the moderation team.[12]
Purported denial-of-service attacks
In March-to-May of 2022, Lemmygrad allegedly suffered denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against it, taking down the site for a number of hours. While the moderators of Lemmygrad claimed the perpetrators of the supposed attacks were liberals and fascists who were organized on anti-communist subreddits, this claim is impossible to prove.[13][14]
Later events
Lemmygrad, as it developed in mid-to-late 2022, woud experience notable ideological purges (commonly in the form of mass-bannings of ideological groupings on the site). These purges would result in most, if not all anti-China groupings being banned from the site.
Ideological purges
Purge of "Patriotic socialists" and "MAGA communists"
By 2022, an ideological conflict had developed relating to the presence of users under the persuasion of Patriotic socialism.[15][note 3] While this resulted in a number of internal debates over the nature of Patriotic socialist ideology (particularly relating to if Patriotic socialists were to be permitted on Lemmygrad), and the moderators decided to ban all patriotic socialists in July 2022.[16]
Creation of "Lemmygrad.com" and purge
On September 23, banned patriotic socialists created a website called lemmygrad.com.[17]
A day of the creation of "Lemmygrad.com", it was taken down for supposed copyright issues.[17]
The "great purge" of Lemmygrad
On September 27, 2022, the Lemmygrad moderation would initiate the biggest ideological purge the site has witnessed. Within the span of a mere hour, over 200 accounts were banned based upon ideological reasons, including 124 members of the Hoxhaism community on Lemmygrad.[3] Following this, the Lemmygrad moderation would create two new site rules, which banned "Patriotic socialism" and anti-revisionist trends respectively.[18][4] While this purge was able to remove remaining "Patriotic socialist" elements on Lemmygrad, it largely targeted anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninists.[3] Anybody who expresses anti-revisionist view is banned on Lemmygrad, despite anti-revisionists be firmly hostile towards social-chauvinism.
Structure
Moderation
The site currently has effectively the same moderation teams as when it was founded in 2019. No election for moderation positions have taken place on the site. The currently moderators largely has extensive ties to other Dengist forums and propaganda outlets, with, for instance, moderator Felipe Forte being the founder of the Dengist website ProleWiki. The moderation prevent non-revisionists from creating an account on the platform.
Coordination of raids against external sites
The site moderation openly promote users of Lemmygrad to organize raids (also known as "brigades") against external sites, commonly those which do not comply with their ideological line.[19] The moderators have, as of 2023, organized raids against 27 separate websites (most of which have been against socialists sites). The site generally targets subreddits, wikis, and Discord servers.[20][21]
Online piracy
The site allows and even promotes online piracy. Various communities on the site provide links to torrenting software, piracy websites, and the dark web. Many software piraters have created accounts on Lemmygrad in order to evade the administration policy on Reddit.[22]
The "People's Court" of Lemmygrad
The moderators have formed a "people's court" on Lemmygrad which officially exists to "discuss administrative issues in a more transparent manner" and provide "internal democracy", however, the function of this "people's court" entails little actual transparent discussion nor democracy. Even in instances where the community elects on a certain decision, the moderators rarely, if ever, abide by it. This "court" itself acts merely as a place where the moderators can "inform" the usership of certain decisions, although the rest of their administration is entirely secretive.[4]
Ideology
Lemmygrad, like other Dengist communities, claims to follow "Marxism-Leninism" along with maintaining an "anti-imperialist" stance. However, their ideology is fundamentally little more than a deviation of Marxism-Leninism, with the Lemmygrad moderatorship of community defending social-imperialism and even bourgeois state such as the modern Russian Federation.
Anti-science promotion
Lemmygrad formerly contained users promoting anti-science content such as claiming that ADHD does not exist. The community responsible for this, c/antipsychiatry, has since been banned along with its moderator Amicese.[23]
Third Worldism
Some users on Lemmygrad express Third-Worldist views, although the majority do not. The majority believe that the First World does contain an exploited proletariat.[24]
Social-imperialism and pro-Russian war propaganda
Lemmygrad supports Chinese and former Soviet social-imperialisn as well as Russian imperialism, including and particularly its current war in Ukraine. The leadership of Lemmygrad falsely views social-imperialism as being a mere "term" concocted by "Trotskyists".[25]
During the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine, Lemmygrad users have actively propagated Ukrainophobic views, posting content which glorifies the suffering of the Ukrainian working class, denying Russian warcrimes, claiming that Russia's imperialist action is an "anti-fascist liberation war", and even claiming that the majority of Ukrainians are followers of Nazism (called by the Lemmygrad users "Ukronazis").[26]
Views on LGBT+
Lemmygrad supports the LGBT+ community, and the community c/lgbt has over 400 users, although many are inactive.[27] There is also a trans community with about 15 active users.[28]
Criticism
Lack of ideological discussion
Lemmygrad has been frequently criticized for its lack of ideological diversity and discussion. All users on Lemmygrad are effectively required to follow Dengist ideology, and those who do not are banned hastily. As a result of this, the postings on the site regularly devolve into dull mockery of so-called "ultras", without these "ultras" being able to actually defend their arguments. Thus making Lemmygrad an ideological "echo-chamber" of sorts.
See also
References
- ↑ The Best Fediverse Servers to Create Your Own Online Community by David Rutland (8 October, 2022) MUO
- ↑ Lemmygrad.ml
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Modlog Lemmygrad
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 The admins want your opinion on the Hoxhaism community. by @Farmer_Heck (26 August, 2022) Lemmygrad
- ↑ New rule on hostility... by @Whom (23 July, 2022) Lemmy
- ↑ Red Action Front community Lemmygrad
- ↑ Left Piracy community Lemmygrad
- ↑ Lemmygrad's first post
- ↑ Trotskyism community on Lemmygrad
- ↑ Gezedong is quarantined by @drstrangelove (23 March, 2022) Lemmygrad
- ↑ [HOW TO:] Lemmygrad is more than just a knock-off subreddit replacement. Let’s actively leverage Lemmy’s federative structure in our favor! by @Will (24 March, 2022) Lemmygrad
- ↑ I am concerned with the sustained activity of the subreddit. by @weridpan Lemmygrad
- ↑ We’re getting DDOSed by @Ancient_Might_5820 (25 March, 2022) Lemmygrad
- ↑ Apologies for lemmygrad being down some today, we’re working on it. by @muad_dibber (17 May, 2022) Lemmygrad
- ↑ What is a Patriotic Socialist (Patsoc)? by @leninenjoyer (3 July, 2022) Lemmygrad
- ↑ Lemmygrad mod team statement on “patriotic socialism”
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 An Urgent Reminder That This Has Been Created. Beware. by @TheAnonymouseJoker (24 September, 2022) Lemmygrad
- ↑ Lemmygrad mod team statement on “patriotic socialism” by @muad_dibber (27 September, 2022) Lemmygrad
- ↑ Reddit Action Front community Lemmygrad
- ↑ [RAC] an anarchist streamer is looking to debate a Marxist-Leninist by @CriticalResist8 [moderator] (13 September, 2020) Lemmygrad
- ↑ RationalWiki made an article about us by @Leninistkommus (23 December, 2022) Lemmygrad
- ↑ Left Piracy community Lemmygrad
- ↑ Anti-Psychiatry community Lemmygrad
- ↑ On Third Worldism in the First World by @Nameless_Partisan [moderator] (26 January, 2023) Lemmygrad
- ↑ Post by the Lemmygrad moderation
- ↑ Kiev now. No lights and snowed in. by @Shrike502 (25 November, 2022) Lemmygrad
- ↑ c/lgbt
- ↑ c/trans
Notes
- ↑ English is the only language for the site interface. However, while most posts on Lemmygrad are in English, smaller communities exist which are based around a language other than English.
- ↑ Who currently goes under the username of "Muad'Dibber".
- ↑ Not to be conflated with Socialist patriotism, "Patriotic socialism" refers to the American-exclusive social-chauvinist ideology which rejects class struggle in favor of conspiracy-like thinking, supports bourgeois nationalism and chauvinism, and other such revisionist aspects.