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.
That phrase stuck out for me too, and supports my growing suspicion that the majority of people that claim to be marxists are actually just another group of fascist conspiracy theorists. I hope to be proven wrong.
You could literally prove yourself wrong by exercising just a little intellectual curiosity. Marxism is, at its core, an economic theory based on the idea that democracy has as much a place in the workplace and economy as it does in our political system. If that’s fascist to you, you’re unserious.
Now, if you’re just unwilling to correct or criticize your own beliefs, and you want to conflate Marxism with Stalinism and Tankies, you’re better off just saying so.