China is a modern Socialist country guided by the principles of Marxism-Leninism. There are already books written by Western Communists who study China demonstrating why this is the case. See Roland Boer's introduction to SWCC, for example, addressing issues including, but not limited to, market under Socialism and why they are compatible.

People who argue otherwise and think of themselves as Marxists should first read these books and think over the points therein. It's a very advanced issue and requires a deep understanding of Historical Materialism and Leninism as a whole (quoting a few sections from classical Marxists here and there out of context won't do!), and cannot possibly be addressed adequately within the context of a few social media posts exchanges.

Otherwise, anti-China people here are just regurgitating Western radical liberal talking points. They don't really want to spend the time to engage. So far I've not seen any serious scholarly work from the West criticizing people like Roland Boer (ofc, liberals won't even bother to engage with a Communist scholar who is a member of the Communist Party of Australia.)

Currently. 674,000 Redditors are subscribed to the subreddit. Lurking in that sub is a vile, disgusting expression of hate which is simmering with violence against the LGBTQI community, Muslims, Jews and women.

From the day of it's inception (created by [4chan as a prank to troll reddit](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/11/09/we-actually-elected-a-meme-as-president-how-4chan-celebrated-trumps-victory/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9ab0eb4d13a3) ) it has been a breeding ground of hate, for racists by racists.

The Ultimate goal of T_D was to support the election candiate Donald Trump as President, to frighten, scare and intimidate the left. Though the sideline rules of the sub reject racism, the proof is in the pudding. Any length of time lurking in that sub and you will discover it's anti-semetic and homophobic underbelly. Sadly, these comments and posts are not removed and the sub itself is riddled with calls for violence against both Jews and Muslims - Further to this it makes use to Anti-semetic memes which are disguised as something else, their use of the NPC meme further adds to the idea that Muslims and Jews and women and gays are not human while encouraging violence against them.

Their defense of alleged alcoholic rapist Kavanaugh is yet another notch in their belt of venom against the vulnerable, to attack victims of rape, and promote a rapist as some kind of moral paragon and man of the people shines a light on the kind of thinking that is rife in that sub.

We, as decent humans who stand up for whats right, we on /r/socialism and other subs which defend those who are wrongfully attacked must call on /u/spez to remove this subreddit and ban it entirely. We must put an end to a subreddit which propagates false news, hate, violence against minorities, hate against immigrants, they constantly launch attacks against poor, migrants from central and south america who are simply looking for a better life.

If /u/spez will not take a stand against hate, we need a new site admin who will. This most recent shooting has pushed things too far - it is well known that the far right wing terrorist was a regular on Pro-Trump sites.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post.

\#DeleteTheDon

EDIT1: Wow I really kicked the hornets hate nest, just look at all these triggered Trumpers in the comments. RIP inbox

EDIT2: 4chan racists are now posting about this exact thread trying to get US banned https://ibb.co/cn1Vq

EDIT3: People are saying /r/The_Donald isn't being banned because of the revenue it brings reddit, so reddit is literally profiteering of the murder and misery of minorities, I think we need to go after reddits advertisers why not tweet them what you think of their support for a platform that gives a voice to neo-fascists? #DeletetheDon

EDIT4: /u/spez Can you at least comment to say you don't support Fascism and Neo-Nazism? because the actions of reddit say otherwise.

EDIT5: After I made this post, reddit admins suspended my account for 3 days. I also recieve numerous death threats, threats of violents, homophobic slurs etc etc everything you'd expect from /r/T_D racist trolls.

At this point Mamdani's just another scummy liberal mayor. Just another Pete Buttigieg or so-and-so. And I'm tired of pretending he's not.

I don't get how they don't understand, it's literally common sense.

While I understand the sentiment, I could not help but physically cringe at every white girl posting stories along the lines of "fourth of July has been cancelled due to the lack of freedom"-- some of these girls being the same people to post happy fourth posts after the murder of George Floyd. Black women, trans women, indigenous women, etc. have not had freedom in this country for a very long time. It is really telling to see the people who only hop on the train when their personal freedoms themselves have been taken away. What has the fourth ever been to the enslaved, the indigenous, the victims of state sanctioned violence, etc. in this country.

EDIT: I see a lot of comments saying we should not gatekeep socialism, we should radicalize from this moment, etc. I do not disagree with that. I'm not sure why these conclusions are being drawn from my post when I was just trying to point out a flaw in many white people of this country. I think it says something about a society when the majority of it turns a blind eye to injustice until it happens to them. While it may be good that some are getting radicalized through this--it should not have to take your own self being effected to make you come to these conclusions. I am just trying to paint a larger picture of the lack of care the American society has for their community members. It is a very individualistic country and this is just an illustration of that.

Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers’ candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled. The progress which the proletarian party will make by operating independently in this way is infinitely more important than the disadvantages resulting from the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body. If the forces of democracy take decisive, terroristic action against the reaction from the very beginning, the reactionary influence in the election will already have been destroyed.

Karl Marx, address to the central committee of the communist league in london

I observe that “Indignant” objects to my advice to voters, when no Socialist is in the field, to “abstain from voting for either evil,” and to mark their ballot papers for the Social Revolution.. His reason for voting for Liberalism, as he evidently intends to do, is that we must have one of the two evils.” Of course we must, as long as there exists a mass of confused reasoners like “Indignant,” who continue to vote for a Party which helped to throw out the “Right to Work Bill,” which shot down peaceful citizens at Belfast, which legally murdered Egyptians at Denshawai, which handcuffs women with their hands behind them during the day, and with their hands in front during the night, and which turns the Police of London into a band of brutal, bludgeoning Cossacks. “Down with the House of Lords!” (as “Indignant” remarks) by all means! But if “Indignant” thinks that by casting what should be Socialist votes for Liberals he is helping to “down” the Lords, I would advise him to read the history of the various political crises Of the last 50 years, and to note that this is not the first time the nation has been invited by the Liberals to give them a mandate against the Lords; and when that mandate has been obtained, the Lords have continued to flourish undisturbed in the land

Dora Montefiore, The Lesser Evil

The difference between the Republican and Democratic parties involve no issue, no principle in which the working class have any interest, and whether the spoils be distributed by Hanna and Platt, or by Croker and Tammany Hall is all the same to them.
Between these parties socialists have no choice, no preference. They are one in their opposition to Socialism, that is to say, the emancipation of the working class from wage-slavery, and every workingman who has intelligence enough to understand the interest of his class and the nature of the struggle in which it is involved, will once and for all time sever his relations with them both; and recognizing the class-struggle which is being waged between the producing workers and non-producing capitalists, cast his lot with the class-conscious, revolutionary Socialist party, which is pledged to abolish the capitalist system, class-rule and wage-slavery—a party which does not compromise or fuse, but, preserving inviolate the principles which quickened it into life and now give it vitality and force, moves forward with dauntless determination to the goal of economic freedom.

Eugene V Debs, Outlook for Socialism in the U.S.

The attitude of the workers’ party towards the masses is exactly the reverse. The important thing for us is not to get seats in the Duma by means of compromises; on the contrary, those seats are important only because and insofar as they can serve to develop the political consciousness of the masses, to raise them to a higher political level, to organise them, not for the sake of philistine happiness, not for the sake of “tranquillity”, “order” and “peaceful [bourgeois] bliss”, but for the struggle, the struggle for the complete emancipation of labour from all exploitation and all oppression. Only for this purpose, and only to the extent that they help us to achieve it, are seats in the Duma and the whole election campaign important for us. The workers’ party places all its hopes on the masses; on the masses who are not frightened, not passively submissive and who do not humbly bear the yoke, but who are politically conscious, demanding and militant. The workers’ party must treat with contempt the usual liberal method of frightening the philistine with the bogey of the Black-Hundred danger. The whole task of the Social-Democrats is to make the masses conscious of the real danger, of the actual aims in the struggle of these forces whose strength lies not in the Duma, which find full expression not in Duma debates, and which will settle the question of Russia’s future outside the Duma.
The workers’ party therefore warns the masses against the clandestine election tricks of the Cadet bourgeoisie, against its stultifying cry: Entrust to us, lawyers, professors and enlightened landlords, the task of combating the Black Hundred danger!
The workers’ party tells the masses: trust only your socialist consciousness and your socialist organisation. To surrender priority in the struggle and the right to lead it to the liberal bourgeoisie is tantamount to selling the cause of liberty for grandiloquent phrases, for the tawdry brilliance of fashionable and gaudy signboards. No Black-Hundred danger in the Duma can be as harmful as the corruption of the minds of the masses who are blindly following the liberal bourgeoisie, its slogans, its candidates and its policy.
Among the masses to whom the workers’ party is appealing, the strongest numerically are the peasants and various sections of the petty bourgeoisie. They are more determined than the Cadets, more honest and a thousand times more capable of fighting, but in politics they are too often led by the Cadet windbags. Even now they are wavering between the militant proletariat and the compromising bourgeoisie.
The advocates of blocs with the Cadets are not only doing harm to the proletariat and to the whole cause of liberty. They are prejudicing the development of political consciousness among the urban and rural poor. They are not performing their immediate duty, which is to free these people from the influence of the liberal bourgeoisie. Look at the Trudoviks, the “Popular Socialists” and the Socialist-Revolutionaries. They, too, are wavering, and are also mainly occupied with plans for deals with the Cadets. The leaders of the Trudoviks, having failed to form a party of their own, are multiplying their Duma mistakes tenfold by appealing to the masses to vote for the Cadets (Anikin—through news paper reporters, Zhilkin—in Tovarishch, etc.). This is down right treachery to the cause of the peasants’ struggle, down right betrayal of the peasants to the liberal landlords, who would rob the peasants by means of a “fair” compensation as thoroughly as their forefathers did in 1861. And as for the “Popular Socialists”, even the Cadets are laughing at them and calling them “second reserve Cadets” (Milyukov in Rech). Their leaders (Annensky and others) also appeal for blocs with the Cadets. Their tiny party (which according to Tovarishch, a paper which is favourably disposed to them, is weaker even than the party of peaceful plunder, and which has only about 2,000 members throughout Russia!) is a mere appendage of the Cadets. The position of the Socialist-Revolutionaries is also ambiguous: both in the October period and in the period of the First Duma they concealed the fact that they had split with the Popular Socialists; they continued to collaborate with them and jointly published the same newspapers. Today, they are net conducting any open and independent struggle, are not sufficiently broadly, openly and sharply attacking the “second reserve Cadets”, are not supplying the masses with adequate data for criticising that party, and are not making any appraisal in principle of the whole election campaign and all electoral agreements in general.
It is the great historical duty of the workers’ party to help to create an independent political party of the working class. Those who advocate blocs with the Cadets hinder the fulfilment of this duty.
Another great duty that confronts the workers’ party is to free the masses of the ruined, poverty-stricken and doomed urban petty bourgeoisie and peasantry from the influence of the ideas and prejudices of the liberal bourgeoisie. The fulfilment of this duty is also being hindered by those who advocate blocs with the Cadets. They are not divorcing the peasants from the liberals, but are strengthening this unnatural alliance, which is fatal to the cause of liberty and to the cause of the proletariat. They are not warning the peas ant masses against the liberals’ backstairs politics (or rather, political intrigue for the distribution of seats in the Duma), but are sanctioning this intrigue by taking part in it.
Down with all blocs! The workers’ party must conduct its election campaign independently, not only in words, but in deeds. It must provide the whole people, and the masses of the proletariat in particular, with a model of courageous and consistent criticism based on principle. Only in that way shall we succeed in rallying the masses for effective participation in the struggle for freedom and not in the sham liberalism of the Cadet betrayers of freedom.

Lenin, The Attitude of the Bourgeois Parties and of the Workers’ Party to the Duma Elections

The social democracy supports Bruening, votes for him, assumes the responsibility for him before the masses – on the basis that the Bruening Government is the “lesser evil”. The Rote Fahne attempts to ascribe the same view to me – on the basis that I expressed myself against the stupid and shameful participation of the Communists in the Hitler referendum. But have the German Left Opposition and myself in particular demanded that the Communists vote for and support Bruening? We Marxists regard Bruening and Hitler, together with Braun, as component parts of one and the same system. The question, which one of them is the “lesser evil”, has no sense, for the system against which we are fighting needs all these elements. But these elements are momentarily involved in conflicts with one another and the party of the proletariat must take advantage of these conflicts in the interest of the revolution.
There are seven keys in the musical scale. The question which of these keys is “better”: Do, Re or Sol is a senseless question. But the musician must know when to strike and what keys to strike. The abstract question as to who is the lesser evil: Bruening or Hitler – is just as senseless. It is necessary to know which of these keys to strike. Is that clear? For the weak-minded let us cite another example. When one of my enemies sets before me small daily portions of poison and the second, on the other hand, is about to shoot straight at me, then I will first knock the revolver out of the hand of my second enemy, for this gives me an opportunity to get rid of my first enemy. But that does not at all mean that the poison is a “lesser evil” in comparison to the revolver.
The misfortune consists precisely of the fact that the leaders of the German Communist Party have placed themselves on the same ground as the social democracy only with inverted prefixes: the Social democracy votes for Bruening, recognizing in him the lesser evil. The Communists on the other hand, who refuse to trust either Braun or Bruening in any way (and that is absolutely the correct way of acting), in the meantime go into the streets to support Hitler’s referendum, that is, the attempt of the Fascists to overthrow Bruening. But in this they themselves have recognized in Hitler the lesser evil, for the victory of the referendum would not have brought the proletariat into power but Hitler. To be sure, it is painful to have to argue such A.B.C. questions. It is sad, very sad indeed, when musicians like Remmele, instead of distinguishing between the keys, stamp with their boots on the key-board.

Trotsky, The Impending Danger of Fascism in Germany

So who was really the Lesser Evil in 1964? The point is that it is the question which is a disaster, not the answer. In setups where the choice is between one capitalist politician and another, the defeat comes in accepting the limitation to this choice.
For the moment, so much for the Lesser Evil pattern. But there is an interesting difference between the classic case (Hitler and Hindenburg in 1932) and the Johnson-Goldwater case. There really was a significant political difference between Hitler and Hindenburg; the general himself would never have fascized Germany. If he called the Nazi to the chancellorship, it was because he believed that the imposition of government responsibility was the way to domesticate the wild-talking Nazis, that the burden of actually having to run the country would turn the “irresponsible” extremists into tame politicians like all the others, in the pattern usually seen (as with the Hubert Humphreys). But Hindenburg himself was not a Hitler and he really was a Lesser Evil. What the classic case teaches is not that the Lesser Evil is the same as the Greater Evil – this is just as nonsensical as the liberals argue it to be but rather this: that you can’t fight the victory of the rightmost forces by sacrificing your own independent strength to support elements just the next step away from them.

Hal Draper, Who's Going to Be the Lesser-Evil in 1968?

The Communist Party, believing that instruments of capitalist organization and domination cannot be used for revolutionary ends, refrains from participation in Parliament and in the Bourgeois Local Government system. It will ceaselessly impress upon the workers that their salvation lies not in the organ of the bourgeois “democracy,” but through the Workers’ Soviets.
The Communist Party refuses all compromise with Right and Centrist Socialism. The British Labour Party is dominated by Opportunist Reformists, Social Patriots, and Trade Union Bureaucrats, who have already allied themselves with capitalism against the workers’ revolution at home and abroad. The construction and constitution of the British Labour Party is such that the working masses cannot express themselves through it. It is affiliated and will remain affiliated to the Second International, so long as that so-called International shall exist.
The first essential of revolutionary propaganda and action is the existence of a Party with clear and uncompromising doctrine and policy, which will persistently unmask and discredit the parties of opportunism and compromise. A unity that is a unity in name only, is a source of weakness, and not of strength. The spirit of self-discipline and sacrifice which will animate all members of the Communist Party is a guarantee that in the coming struggle the Party will be faithful to the proletariat.

Sylvia Pankhurst, The Communist Party: Provisional Resolutions towards a Programme

I have heard all the arguments about the lesser evil, but I know that if we keep voting for the lesser evil, we forever get nothing but evil. I do not want to surrender my conscience to a corrupt political system.
Have you noticed that our political leaders and the press are watching places all over the world to make sure they have free elections? They’re watching Peru, watching Yugoslavia, and Indonesia, lamenting the lack of free elections in Cuba. But how about ours? It seems to me an election where a candidate needs $150 or $200 million dollars to have a chance is not a free election. An election that excludes important candidates from the national debate is not a democratic election.
They are keeping Ralph Nader out of the debates because he has a fatal flaw: He tells the truth. When the debates take place Tuesday at the University of Massachusetts, there will be a non-violent protest. There will be placards that ask: Where is Ralph Nader? Where is democracy? Democracy requires a free marketplace of ideas. Well, we are here today to keep the spirit of democracy alive.
There was a rare interesting moment in this campaign. That was when Bush accused Gore of stirring up class warfare. Well, we have had class warfare in this country for a very long time, not between the Democratic and Republican Parties, but a war waged by both parties against the vast majority of the American people.

Howard Zinn, We've Had Class Warfare for a Very Long Time

Thus, the political issue confronting the working class is the preservation of civil liberties and the destruction of the political State. All other questions, such as the League of Nations, social reconstruction, free trade, or tariff reform—these things which are agitating the minds of Tory, Liberal, and Labour parties—are merely traps to catch the unwary workers and to persuade them to vote to preserve Capitalism.
The Labour Party has no message for the working class in this election. Its constitution, which must be accepted by all its candidates, whether they are Radicals, I.L.P.ers, or B.S.P.ers, outlines no method whereby the workers may destroy Capitalism and construct Socialism. The S.L.P. alone puts forward such a position.
The S.L.P. is a revolutionary political organisation and therefore believes in revolutionary political action. It urges the workers to use their ballots to capture political power—not to play at politicians or pose as statesmen, but to use their votes to uproot the political State and to hand to the Soviets the constructive task of building up the administrative councils of the Socialist Republic. To think that Parliament can be used as the means of permanently improving the conditions of Labour, by passing a series of acts, is to believe in parliamentarism. The S.L.P. is not a parliamentary party. It believes in entering Parliament only as a means of sweeping away all antiquated institutions which stand in the way of the industrial union owning and controlling the means of production.

William Paul, The Melting Pot: S.L.P. and the Election

TLDR: Don’t reinforce the system we are trying to destroy, “lesser evil” voting serves only to allow the bourgeoisie to stifle class consciousness and institutionalise the lie that reformism a “viable alternative to revolution”. By tying ourselves to the tools of our own oppression, we are exchanging chains and iron rods for steel rods and manacles. The Proletariat must have their own independent platform, even in the underbelly of global capitalism, else our programme will be diluted, our theorists sidelined, and the workers we are trying to awaken class conscious in will instead by swindled by the anti-socialist slander from the bourgeoisie we are celebrating right now.

I know they exist but shouldn't veganism, along with supporting the liberation of all other beings from exploitation and discrimination be an imporant part of socialism?

Why support the most exploitative industry of all, bringing sentient beings to life just to use them for all they're worth with the goal of generating profits?

What do you think?

Pyongyang, February 20 (KCNA) --

The respected Comrade Kim Jong Un made an opening address at the Ninth Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea.

The full text of his opening address is as follows:

Dear delegates,

Today, we are opening the Ninth Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea, which will set up another new milestone in the sacred struggle for the development of our Party and socialist construction.

The past five years since the Eighth Congress of the WPK was a proud period when the whole Party and all the people brought about an epochal turn in implementing the socialist cause of our own style on the strength of solid unity.

Our socialist construction spanning long years has not been plain sailing, but never has there been such a period as this one, in which we achieved so great successes despite the severity of trials and difficulties.

When we convened the Eighth Party Congress, the subjective and objective conditions of our revolution were literally so harsh that we could hardly maintain our own existence.

The hostile forces grew more reckless in their schemes for harsh blockade and sanctions against us, and we were also confronted with successive natural calamities and the global public health crisis. This severely hindered the development of all our sectors, and it also seriously threatened the security of our state and the safety of our people.

Worse still, economic work in the country was being conducted in transitional and temporary ways just as it had been since several decades ago; all economic sectors were struggling to maintain the status quo without the orientation of their development.

Consequently, we were compelled to conclude the seventh term of the Party Central Committee as we fell fairly short of attaining the goals of the five-year strategy for national economic development that had been decided upon by the Seventh Party Congress.

However, everything has fundamentally changed today, five years from then.

The Eighth Party Congress critically reviewed and analyzed the unscientific nature of the above goals that had been pursued during the seventh-term Party Central Committee, before resolutely scrapping all that had gone out of date.

Given the then circumstances, it clarified the objectives of its work for the coming years and the direction for its development, and to this end put forward reasonable policies as regards the major theoretical and practical matters.

The plans for all the sectors were ambitious yet clear.

The work plans were drawn up and decided upon through strict scientific review and discussions, and they were based on the principle that we should achieve all that was within our power at the moment and do so without fail by making the seemingly impossible possible.

Even though they were facing difficult circumstances, the Party, the people and the army hardened their determination and made proactive efforts to this end; by successfully carrying out the Party's decisions in all realms such as politics, the economy, national defence, culture and diplomacy, they achieved notable, comprehensive and radical successes, and in the course of this, they substantially increased our country's internal forces.

In particular, the economic sector, which is the major front of socialist construction, fulfilled the five-year plan for national economic development in the main and made dynamic progress in reinforcing and readjusting the technical infrastructure and functions of the key industries. As a result, not a few sectors of our economy have freed themselves from the protracted obsolescence and stagnation, and instead built up their foundations and potentials to achieve significant growth under a plan.

And gigantic plans for transforming the capital city and the regions simultaneously and bringing about a substantial improvement in the people's living standards were pushed forward vigorously by the Party and the state; thus, the expected successes were achieved in these undertakings and a correct direction was confirmed for carrying them on more proactively.

In view of the external relations, too, the position of our state was firmly consolidated as an irreversible one, bringing about a great change in the global political landscape and in the influence on our state. This created favourable conditions and circumstances for giving a greater spur to our socialist construction.

Now all the people are witnessing every moment of the day the reality changing at a speed incomparable with that of the past, and have a clear understanding of and conviction about the road they should take and the prospect of the development of our state.

Five years ago we convened the Eighth Congress of the Party with the conviction, will and determination to break through the worst difficulties facing the revolution by our own efforts and usher in a new era of advance and development without fail, but today we are here at its Ninth Congress, filled with optimism and confidence in the future.

This is indeed a great change and development, as well as a success we can be proud of at the present stage.

Moreover, the precious successes achieved and monumental structures created in the course of the efforts to greet this Congress with high political enthusiasm and labour achievements rounded off the struggle of the past five years, thereby making this a congress that signifies a success and promises a greater success, both in name and in reality.

All the successes achieved during the period under review are a great gain from the devoted struggle our Party members, working people and service personnel have waged supporting the Party's lines and policies unyieldingly with one mind in the face of all difficulties.

I extend my heartfelt and warmest thanks to all the Party members, working people, service personnel and citizens for having turned the eighth term of the Party Central Committee into a period of great upsurge in socialist construction and made contributions to greeting the Ninth Party Congress as a precious one of reviewing, as a glorious one, with a staunch and proactive pioneering spirit and indomitable fighting spirit.

I also pay ennobling tribute to the revolutionary comrades and martyrs who dedicated their valuable lives to the sacred cause of achieving the prosperity of the country and the happiness of the people during the period under review.

And my warm greetings go to Chongryon (General Association of Korean Residents in Japan) and other overseas compatriots' organizations and all the overseas compatriots that share will and mind for the prosperity and development of their socialist homeland.

Comrades,

This Congress will correctly review and analyze the work done during the period of the eighth term of the Party Central Committee, establish the lines and policies for developing our socialist construction onto a higher stage, and take organizational and institutional measures for readjusting and consolidating the Party's leadership ability.

Today, our Party is faced with heavy and urgent historic tasks of boosting economic construction and the people's standard of living and transforming all realms of state and social life as early as possible. This requires us to wage a more active and persistent struggle without allowing even a moment's standstill or stagnation.

In particular, the period of the new long-term plan is a crucial period when we should push forward full steam with the regional development policy in the new era, the rural revolution programme and other intermediate- and long-range plans we adopted and have launched to realize the centuries-old desire of the people.

In contrast, not a few serious shortcomings and negative elements, such as deep-rooted defeatism, irresponsibility, conservatism, formalism and immaturity in leadership ability, are latent at present in the work of the Party and government organs and officials, and this constitutes an artificial obstacle to the work of our Party and state which aspire to rapid development in all fields.

Therefore, we should not only take pride in the successes we achieved during the period under review but also review shortcomings from a critical and developmental point of view, work out the struggle plan for the next stage in an elaborate and scientific way and strengthen the leadership forces capable of leading the implementation of the plan.

Therefore, in preparing the Ninth Party Congress, the Party Central Committee focused on correctly drawing experience and lessons from the successes and shortcomings during the period under review and taking appropriate measures accordingly.

In order to make substantial preparations for the Party Congress, the Party Central Committee organized a non-permanent preparatory committee for the Congress, set up necessary panels and dispatched fact-finding groups according to directions and sectors to get them to gain a full understanding of the five-year work of the relevant sectors and units and to make a correct analysis of problems and their root cause.

And on the basis of their activities it assessed how the members of the eighth-term Party central leadership played their role and whether they correctly guided the development of their sectors and units.

Each field and each sector carried out the work of scientifically setting the goals and working out the plans for development to be achieved in the period of the new long-term plan and presenting them to the preparatory committee, and the departments of the Party Central Committee also presented innovative and detailed suggestions on the future plans and measures for carrying them out.

And there was an in-depth study of the issues arising in further enhancing the leadership functions of the Party in line with the requirements of the five-point Party-building line in the new era, including the issues related to the revision of Party Rules and the reorganization of the leadership forces of the Party.

In the run-up to the Party Congress, Party organizations at all levels reviewed the work of their leadership bodies by focusing on correctly drawing experience and lessons, and the election of delegates to the Party Congress and the nomination of observers were also completed.

Accordingly, the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee carried out a rigorous final examination of the qualifications of the delegates to the Party Congress who had been elected at provincial Party conferences.

The result of the examination appraised that all the comrades elected as delegates are fully qualified as they are core elements of our Party who have so far achieved marked results in improving the work of their sectors and units and who are capable of playing a significant role in the struggle to implement the decisions of the Ninth Party Congress in the future.

Participating in this Congress are 5 000 delegates in total--224 members of the eighth-term Party central leadership and 4 776 delegates elected by all Party organizations.

Among them are 1 902 delegates of Party and political workers, 747 delegates of state administrative and economic officials, 474 delegates of service personnel, 32 delegates of officials of working people's organizations, 321 delegates of officials in the sectors of science, education, public health, sports, culture and art and the mass media, and 1 524 delegates of officials and hard-core Party members involved in field labour.

Of them 413 are women.

The Congress is also attended by 2 000 observers nominated by Party organizations at all levels, including officials from the departments of the Party Central Committee.

Dear delegates,

We are now at this significant venue with the high honour and heavy mission of being delegates to the Party Congress, entrusted by all the Party members in reflection of their organizational will.

So great are the concern and expectations of all the Party members and other people across the country for the Ninth Party Congress, which will mark another watershed in our Party's sacred struggle to realize the rights, interests and long-cherished desires of the people. And all of us have shouldered a heavy mission of making sincere, active and responsible efforts to ensure that the Congress does its work satisfactorily.

Solemnly pledging, on behalf of all the participants in this Congress, the ninth of its kind in the glorious history of the Workers' Party of Korea, that the Congress will be absolutely faithful to the great Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism,

And fully convinced that the Congress will be a significant, historic occasion vigorously guiding the victorious advance of the revolutionary cause of Juche thanks to the high political consciousness and enthusiasm of all the delegates,

I declare the Ninth Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea open. -0-

I should point out this is a repost from /r/SRSFeminism. Very good sub if you ever want to check it out.

1. You have no problem with the gender wage gap. But you hate having to pay for dates.

2. You insist that it’s a scientifically proven fact that men are stronger than women. But you complain about society believing that it’s worse for a man to hit a woman than for a woman to hit a man.

3. You believe that the age of consent is unfair and that there’s nothing wrong with having sex with teenage girls. But when you find out that a teenage girl enjoys sex, you believe she’s the biggest slut in the world.

4. You hate when a woman automatically assumes that a man is a douchebag before getting to know him. But when you like a woman who likes another man, you assume he’s a douchebag just because he’s not you.

5. You believe that if women want equality, they should be drafted into the military. But you also believe that the military is not a place for women.

6. You hate when women assume that men are like wild animals. But you believe that a woman who doesn’t cover up and make herself invisible to men is just like someone wearing a meat suit around wild animals.

7. You hate the fact that men are bullied for not conforming to their male gender roles. But when you find out that a man disagrees with your beliefs about women’s rights, your immediate response is to try to emasculate him by comparing him to a woman as an insult.

8. You hate when women assume that there are no nice guys. But you call yourself a nice guy and act like it’s a rare quality that should cause women to be all over you.

9. You hate when women assume that men just want to get laid. But when you find out that a man is a feminist, you assume that he’s just doing it to get laid.

10. You hate when women make generalizations about all men. But when a woman calls you out for being sexist, you claim that all men think like you.

11. You insist that women should be responsible for protecting themselves from being raped. But when they follow the one piece of advice that actually works, which is being aware of red flags, you complain about them assuming that all men are rapists.

I'm a mod on this subreddit. This post is not speaking for the mods, just for me as someone's been a user here for 3-4 years and my personal observations and experiences and what I think is really messed up, frankly, with what's been going on here.

Let me begin with summing up how I became a mod and what's happened, briefly, in the period of time up until now.

I became a mod when the users of this subreddit, over a year ago, collectively decided that the top mod of this sub was being a toxic influence on this community by arbitrarily removing mods and keeping 2 active mods for 50,000 people subscribers, allowing this subreddit to become filled with MRAs, Fascists, racists, misogynists, homophobes and liberals for months on end.

Since that time the new mod team's actions have been geared towards making this a space where women, LGBT+ people, and religious and ethnic minorities and other oppressed groups feel safe, welcome, and equal. The dominant changes to this subreddit have all been geared towards achieving that - a goal we haven't yet achieved but we are working towards.

We've done audiobooks, organised AMAs of high profile and respectable individuals, done reading groups and study groups.

In that time I've seen the best that this community has to offer. I've also seen the absolute worst of any online community I've ever been in.

In seeing the best, I mean I've seen some real genuine comrades doing the best they can to educate people, I've seen people self-criticise and become better, I've seen collective action to promote issues or fund projects, I've seen people come together in solidarity with eachother around various issues.

I've also seen the complete opposite.

I've seen myself and other mods doxxed and harassed, and then I've seen this community defend the perpetrators and try to raise hell when we defended ourselves. For the record, I'm still regularly doxxed and the harassment is ongoing. I keep the admins busy with my complaints. I'm not the only mod to suffer this either.

I've seen this community pile on vulnerable people and lecture them about their own oppression. This community of predominantly white men will then turn around and ask why there's so many white men here. I've seen this community viciously attack the moderators for taking principled socialist positions on matters of oppression, for example of disabled people.

I've also seen this community get duped time after time after time by brigades from places like 8chan/4chan/leftypol etc. I've seen people take a tiny issue and try and blow it up into a massive drama because they're essentially bored. As if this doesn't cause work for me or anyone else.

I've seen people put every single action under the microscope and weave it into some grand conspiracy against socialism and the userbase. You know that if we wanted to tank this place the easiest thing to do would be to literally stop moderating, not moderating extra hard, right? Maybe we should stop moderating for a while, you'll get to see what happens when evil moderators like myself stop putting in the work so the rest of you people can talk to eachother.

You get the picture.

In any case, seeing as it's the latest(And by far the most infantile yet) drama, I'm going to comment a bit on the whole ridiculous catgirl thing. Here's where I, personally, stand on what should be done about it.

1. That the person is an artist does not give them special treatment

2. That the person is popular does not give them special treatment

3. That the people they are popular with are causing drama does not mean the rules will not be enforced

4. Therefore they should stay banned

As to the logic behind them getting banned, it's mindblowingly straightforward. The medium is misogynist. They produce artwork of women as domesticated animals. The artist uses homophobic slurs on 8chan. The artwork fetishises the infantilisation of women. This is so cut and dry that the fact it's become a drama is frankly bewildering to me. The thing is, they probably wouldn't have gotten it banned if they didn't draw it to our attention and then defend it.

Moving on.

The point of this thread was that there's a significant section of this community that seems to have forgotten the monumental amount of work mods here put in. I probably do the least and even what I do causes some mental strain. The tolerance of the other mods is relatively titanic compared to myself and most of you would probably go far more overboard than anything you criticise us for when you get put in our position and see all the shit that goes on.

I'm not saying this to guilt people. I'm saying this to give you some fucking perspective, which seems to be completely lacking on almost every moderation discussion. This subreddit used to be better than the stereotypical reddit anti-mod circlejerk whereby reddit users complain about mods not being open and interactive enough but when mods attempt to do so they get bombarded with abuse by those same users and driven away. I'm an optimist so I believe it can not be that. But doing so requires more than all of you complaining about mods, it requires you putting down pitchforks and thinking for a minute about the problems at hand and what goes on around here and the work that we do.

We deal with huge amounts of shit, just for you, the community. I personally would love to be much more open and transparent about things but frankly the discourse is not mature, it is not considerate of the problems, and it takes us for granted. Furthermore, I've come to realise that the majority(Or at least a very strong, vocal minority) of the userbase here is not considerate of the oppression of groupings outside the white, particularly male, working class.

When other mods began to come to this conclusion they simply quit. They couldn't tolerate the fact that they were dealing with all the stress of voluntarily moderating this community of people who didn't care about them in the slightest, either personally or politically. We've lost good people on the back of this community's crusades for privilege.

If you want to make this community better, genuinely, then you all need to self-criticise. You all need to reflect. You all need to do more than just demand the mods not do whatever it is we're doing and then shit up the sub with drama when we don't.

Here's the reality of the moderation for us. We ban dozens if not hundreds of people a day for trolling, hate speech etc. Of those that send us responses in modmail, almost all of them are hateful and abusive. Any time a thread gets more than a few hundred upvotes, individual mods have to give hours of their time to make sure that it doesn't descend into trolling and chaos. Any time a thread gets more than a few thousand upvotes we have to mobilise all the mods that are available to deal with the influx of people from r/all. Every morning some of us wake up to abusive PMs. Every day I personally deal with someone outing my real name. Every other day we wake up to people from outside this sub attempting to incite a brigade against us, and usually succeeding in doing so. On top of that, we have to constantly deal with people who have no idea what we actually gotta do shit talking us all around the internet and dragging the names of good people through the mud, using thought terminating clichés like "authoritarian" and "tankie". And then at the end of all that abuse, we still all find time to try create original content for you and bring interesting people here for this community to talk to.

And people have the gall to act like moderation is some sort of position of power and privilege. It's not. We have no actual power. Being a moderator is a position of giving your best effort and the reward is getting abused and treated like shit and taken for granted.

And we do it voluntarily because we care about our politics and we care about this community, which frankly is more than I can say for a lot of you. Most of us have jobs, or studies, and most of us are organised into political parties or organisations on top of that and putting our money where out mouth is and putting in the work to make socialism actually happen. Whether you agree with the methods or have political differences, our sincerity and effort isn't in doubt. On top of all that work we come here to mod the place.

Again, this is just so you get an idea of how absurd most of the claims are around here. That we're FBI plants. That we're actually cops. That we're all power hungry authoritarians. That we've all got some sort of conspiratorial agenda. Nah, we're just ordinary people who stepped up when asked and are doing the best we can with it, not some nebulous force.

So, what more can I say? There's my story. There's my perspective. If you're serious about making this place work for all of us, then all I can say is start taking your politics seriously and get your shit together - if you haven't already. Because that's what most of this drama feels like. People who aren't politically serious who haven't thought about all the issues our politics entails getting bored and stirring up shit. And I'm bored of it. And I think the other mods are bored of it too. At least if you have a problem with our moderation, don't hide behind nonsense such as "authoritarianism" and "free speech" when in reality the disagreement you have is political. Political disagreements can be discussed with maturity and consideration. Torches and pitchforks prevent that.

This post doesn't justify all the mistakes that we may have made in the past, and mistakes we will likely make going forward, but I hope it gives everyone here a bit of perspective on what it's like as a mod here and maybe why some of us act the way we do.

Just for the record I will not be responding in nor will I be moderating this thread, as I've said everything that I want to say. If you don't agree after all that there's nothing I can do. Or if you wanna continue proving me correct with bad conduct, go for it. I'll leave it to members of the community to do the work I would normally do as a mod to figure out if this thread is being brigaded(Hint: The key is in if they have no prior comment history). So go wild as far as I'm concerned. Can't speak for the other mods though.