I've seen countless posts about the tankie problem here in the lemmyverse
I've seen countless posts about the tankie problem here in the lemmyverse
I'm not sure I've seen any evidence of it existing though, is it just a Boogeyman, or so something that happened a while back? An in joke of some sort?
Just check out any news article outside Lemmy.world on the Ukrainian war or China.
It always gets flooded by accounts from lemmygrad and hexbear doing mental gymnastics and whataboutism to justify whatever Russia or China are doing.
You'll also find them around and about in any sort of historical sub
Most of the tankies I've encountered have been in the comments of historymemes communities on posts about the fall of the Berlin Wall. Go in expecting Regan jokes, come out after having a 30 comment argument with someone trying to claim that the Holodomor didn't happen (like, at all, not that it wasn't intentional), that Stalin never condoned the Purges, and the Stasi weren't that bad
They defend Stalin and Mao to death. Deny all negative historical events. Tianamen square didn't happen etc. It's pretty wild.
The hexbear users are especially annoying as it seems to be a requirement for them that they embed the most annoying jpegs/gifs into their propaganda comments.
I've always leaned left, and not in the "American Democrat" way. I've read Marx, Engels, Kropotkin, Luxemburg, etc. Not that I agree with them on everything, but they make good points.
But every day I see tankies defend Russia just because it's not the US, I feel like I'm moving more center just out of spite.
Russia didn't invade but if it did, Ukraine deserved it.
America been doing this for decades!
Sarcasm right
@OP There. Now you have evidence.
I feel like the Narcissist's prayer ends too quickly. What if someone, perhaps Ukraine, didn't deserve it? Isn't there an excuse for that? Like "It's not my fault you looked like you had a Nazi problem" but more generic? Hey, perhaps one could add "It's not my fault" at the end to allow for recursion.
Lemmy.world has most of the instances that would fall into that category blocked.
Thankfully.
Lemmy.world defederated from those instances. When I switched to a different instance I started to notice it. There are a lot of them, you just don't see them.
Lemmy.world defederated from those instances.
From which ones? Because they are still federated with lemmygrad.ml, which is by far the biggest tankie instance.
They're blocked in your instance, just like piracy related communities.
That's why i left LW, I want to decide which communities I block
Believe me, it's tiring to block things over and over, because lemmy has the tendency to have duplicate communities every instance.
I too tried instances with zero unfederated lists. Now I just live in an instance with minimal unfederated list.
What made you select lemdro.id ? If I may ask, I'm wanting to get off lemmy.world also, but seem to be getting stuck in waiting for approval hell from the couple instances I signed up with.
Which ones did you apply to?
Sincerely main reason was that it had no blocked instances and it had content enough, then the name is also cool.
You just need to verify your email, that's a plus as well against other instances that ask for more information or have registration closed
Me too. I found unilem who's policy is explicitly not to defederate from any instance. I prefer to be treated like an adult and allowed to decide for myself who I block.
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Yes. Protecting tankies is explicitly part of the original purpose of Lemmy. It's almost like the anti-Parler/Gab/Voat, in that it was made by left-wing people as a haven for political views that would be too radical to be tolerated on the mainstream platforms:
…Naturally, this meant that it ended up attracting people who unironically identify as "leftist" while cheerleading the genocidal imperialist war led by the right-leaning conservative United Russia Party of the RF, or the also-rather-genocidal ethnocratic state capitalism of the PRC.
I've seen one or two posts that had communist Nazi vibes. I just blocked the users posting them and haven't had a problem since.
The big name instances that generate these boogyman claims are blocked on Lemmy World. They're not blocked on my instance, but they also aren't really any different than any other posts from any other instances. The most cited reason isn't the content they post, but the fact the creator of the instance (in this case I am referring to Lemmygrad) is a tankie. Well they don't seem to post a helluva lot for it to matter, and the average users there aren't crazy assholes in my experience.
The Hexbear stuff, on the other hand... Every single user I've seen from that instance behaved like a 4chan troll or T_D user.
Yes, mostly hexbear users and
instancescommunities . I've blocked all of them.
Looking at your account, you're on a instance that is defederated with the worst offenders
Make a lemmy.ml account and pop into any thread that talks about Ukraine and you won't be confused anymore lol
Personally, I don't mind one bit that they're communist, but their trollish behavior and their tendency to act like China and Russia (and I've even seen a few for North Korea) are bastions of individual liberty, prosperity, and justice with no faults makes them exactly as annoying as the super nationalist western folks who act the same about the US or Europe (depending usually purely on where they're from).
Basically it's not a communist problem, it's a troll problem where the trolls all happen to be communist
I've just been blocking instances. I realized after the fact that I signed up with lemmy.ml, which contributes to it, but was the only instance that was quickly approving people when I signed up. It may be time to switch instances, or finally get off my ass and make my own.
I don't mind some of the ideas, but seeing people constantly sucking off Russia and China gets old in a hurry.
Saw a comment from a dude calling everyone on .ml Nazis earlier today and was like wtf??? Looked at his comment history, pro Russia tanky calling any NATO/pro NATO country Nazis/Nazi lovers. Some people are just crazy deluded. Ukraine is full of Nazis cuz it was taken by Germany in WW2 AND EVERYONE KNOWS ITS STILL ALL NAZIS.
.ml is literally run by Marxist-Leninists??? (Same people as Lemmygrad, but .ml is a general instance rather than one dedicated to leftism)
Some of them stick to posting mostly anti-west sentiment outside their home tanky friendly instances, but if you get in the right comment section. Oh man do they get wild. Crazy pro China propoganda. Lots of Russian support cuz the west is evil.
Check out lemmy.grad
It's mostly Hexbear, and they know they are annoying. The politics on Lemmy is... wildly different from what a regular social media looks like.
wildly different from what a regular social media looks like.
It's wildly different from what social media moderated by corporations looks like, but I'm not so sure which is "regular."
It looks wildly different than what social interactions with any people I know in real life.
It’s a super small percentage of the population that is wildly over represented in lemmy.
It’s definitely not “regular” outside of Russia and China.
I haven't seen tankie content, but it's not like I actively search for it.
I do see a lot of whining about tankie content, mostly from people who post bigoted shit.
What posts about the tankie problem? I’ve seen none of these posts?
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Some instances such as Hexbear federate for the sole purpose of brigading to harass and argue in bad faith. Have you not been paying attention to the countless threads they have been spamming?
Diehard democrats finding out they're not as leftist as they thought they were. Anything that runs counter to their narrative is "tankie". They're afraid of what is different and it's their version of calling everything they don't understand/like "woke".
Ahh, yes. The "Stalin did nothing wrong" posts are possessing of nuance worthy of discussion and aren't trashy troll takes at all
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I’ve been brigaded by tankies on a Ukraine thread. Anyone that argues Russia is justified and everything evil is the West is seriously warped or a massive troll. You aren’t looking very hard if you haven’t seen it.
Exactly, "tankie" is just the lefts version of "woke"
Tankie now means the same as Nazi — “a person with a political view I don’t like”.
I’ve seen people called tankies for not toeing the Trotskyist line on Stalin (this btw is the original meaning) but also for being socialists and not really vibing with the newest gender updates.
Also if you’re defederating with other instances over crap like this, why not just host a BBS?
"Gender updates" is the best term i've heard for transitioning in a while. I'm stealing it now, the bigots can't have it.
(also note for anyone reading: the term "tankie" refers to people who embrace authoritarianism and usually specific self-declared "socialist" states repressing civilians, often modern day states that don't even pretend to be socialist like Russia, or the CCP, or North Korea/DPRK, or even just any nation considered "anti-West" regardless of their behaviour or internal political structure x.x
It started when parts of the Communist Party of Great Britain split off from the main party because the main party supported the USSR crushing (with tanks) Hungarian socialists trying to break off from the USSR, for a number of reasons - others were involved too, but the worker councils themselves were major parts of the uprising - see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956 - there were attempts at worker council parlimentary democracy and such, as well as attempts for direct-democracy ^.^
The most recent Tankie Thing is supporting Russia for invading Ukraine, or doing weird enlightened-centrism on it because the USA gives support to Ukraine. More broadly, tankies generally seem to act as if any act by another country is always less bad than the USA, and that only the USA can be imperialist, or various variations on this concept >.<.
It should be noted that the right wing have started to some degree calling all leftists tankies and IMO anyone should reject this attempted co-option of the word because it allows people to falsely conflate leftism with tankie ideologies, even though they are often a small minority in IRL leftist activism, with more common groups being anarchists, democratic socialists, some Marxists (even some Marxist-Leninists, which itself is a controversial term tbh), various libertarian socialisms and communisms, and the odd further-left social democrat ^.^)
Tankie now means the same as Nazi — “a person with a political view I don’t like”.
There are actual neo-Nazis — yes, I mean people who venerate Hitler, use Nazi Party symbols, advocate antisemitism and genocide — actively involved in politics in many countries, including the US, Germany, and Russia. Do you deny this?
Which part of the parent comment implied that there aren't actual Nazis?
There are also people who do not fall into that category yet still get called Nazis by political opponents.
Oh no, the genocide supporters were defederated. Oh no, the horror!
Lol, cope
Tankies aren't just politically sussy but are often intentionally inflammatory trolls.