Reddit culture (and lemmy by extension) changed so much in a short time. Just a few years ago you weren't downvoted just because someone disagreed with your opinion. The polarization and culture war turned reddit users completely dogmatic and as immune to arguments or facts as magats.
The same is true of lemmy. Most users prefer to defederate from socialist instances because "tankies". Which really shows how right wing "limbrols" have become. They hate socialists with a different viewpoint on US empire more than they hate fascists. The fascists have succeeded in utterly destroying reddit and lemmy as a platform for useful political discourse.
We now have the vast majority of "liberals" on lemmy upvoting comments using racist slang terms for Russians to dehumanize them, just like they did for enemies in Japan, Vietnam or Korea. The fascists have made massive inroads.
The OP meme almost seems quaint to me now. The real culture war is elsewhere now.
Most users prefer to defederate from socialist instances because “tankies”.
To the degree that people bother to defederate from anything (most users don't) I would assume its because apologists for Putin and China are about as odious to talk to as MAGAs
Basically any anti-imperialist and anti-US empire critique is stamped as Putin/China apologism and downvoted or outright banned. You don't even have to be a socialist to be "odious". And of course the big instances have already defederated from the major socialist instances.
You have a right to speak but not a right to an audience that doesn't want to listen to you. I think certain groups are accused of harboring pro Putinistas because in fact they do actually feature them.
Most users prefer to defederate from socialist instances because "tankies".
I would advocate for defederation based on idiotic politics but calling tankies socialist is disingenuous. Since when is genocide denial and or worship is an acceptable behavior?
The problem is that the mainstream is simply declaring historical events one way and any other dissenting viewpoint or evidence is suppressed. And there IS evidence.
The fascists (and Putin's propaganda trolls) have been successful in disruption any dialogue between people from the actual left: socialists. Not the neoliberal "democrats".
And now you do their work for them: You censor the socialists (marxist-leninist, maoists) because some "dirtbag left" troll once was mean to someone. You probably can't even link to an example of what you accuse entire group of. But this tankie slur gets repeated and amplified more and more. People simply call you tankie, downvote and everyone piles on without thinking.
The problem is that disinformation and post-truth doublethink on the so called "left" (=neoliberals) is almost indistinguishable from MAGA like OP.
If you check out lemmy from an instance that hasn't defederated from the socialist instances you'll see that basically half of lemmy activity is invisible - the socialist half. The result is rather predictable.
He didn't deny the ills and the repression in the USSR but showed with sources that there were significant economic upsides. He states that Russia isn't communist or socialist any more. At no point does he deny Russia's invasion is illegal. He at no point denies genocide.
So what does make him a tankie? That he has a different analysis of the history about how this war came to be? Which wasn't even the topic of discussion! You can argue about the quality of the sources or survey - but you were already ready to call him an odious tankie and shitpost.
People equate anyone socialist or antiwar or anti US empire with being a tankie and putin apologist. Which leads to the wholesale censoring and defederation.
I do agree that mods are WAY too ban-happy on lemmy.
Arguably neither that post nor the political discussion belongs in that community.