Too many people are confusing the two. Whenever lemmy.ml or its devs do something stupid, people go “Lemmy is getting worse and worse,” or “I’m leaving Lemmy,” or worse, “I’m leaving for Beehaw.”
If you’re using Beehaw, then you’re using Lemmy. Lemmy is the software these instances run on. If you don’t like lemmy.ml, join another instances that have rules that match your philosophy. Some instance hosts authoritarian or fascist shit? Turn to another Lemmy instance. Lemmy.ml is not even the biggest instance. People who just joined and are unfamiliar with the platform will just think the entire Lemmyverse is run by autocratic admins if we don’t get our terminology right.
FTFY
It’s funny which part of the quote you decided to omit. Tankies gonna tank, eh?
For those who haven’t checked - in the linked page dessalines(Lemmy lead dev) recommends books and articles by, among others, Lenin, Stalin & Castro.
I haven’t read those works they mentioned so I can’t say if they defend the atrocities of those regimes (they very well might), but I wouldn’t say suggesting a book about those political ideologies implies you believe the atrocities committed by those regimes were acceptable.
But I’m also totally ready for someone to tell me they do in fact minimize the bad things. As someone born in the American south who was raised with echos of Lost Cause propaganda I’m familiar with folks twisting a horrible truth.
To sum up, Dessalines believes that a genocide is not taking place against the Uyghur people by the Chinese government.
That’s basically one of the common concerns I see, just kind of in addition to the general tankie vibes that are shared by many in lemmy.ml and lemmygrad which are sympathetic to communist regimes that have committed atrocities.
Stalin went too far, sure. We know.
Fidel did nothing wrong. Lenin did what he had to do for the sake of revolution.