Welcome ex-Redditors!

The tankie triad

making a bunch of forums seem so dark and mysterious

have you considered that some of us are just silly goofy girls

I will never understand how you would defend an instance that is not only deep in genocide denial and praise of authoritarian regimes.
But also one whose head admin (and main Lemmy dev unfortunately) is a transphobe
It's way more fun to pretend hexbear and .ml are super dark and scary than to admit what they mostly actually are: leftist memes and shit posting.
Notice Beehaw's not on the "good" list anymore? Wonder why they're not on there...
- I think Beehaw isn't on the good list here because the account that shared the meme is on Lemmy World which isn't federated with Beehaw.
  So it's a lack of knowledge of the users that left it off not any nefarious intent.
  But that's my 2 cents.
- It’s way more fun to pretend hexbear and .ml are super dark and scary than to admit what they mostly actually are: leftist memes and shit posting.
  "Ha ha, we're just having a little bit of fun denying the Uyghur genocide, praising North Korea, and saying Ukrainians deserve to be massacred 😊"
- Notice Beehaw’s not on the “good” list anymore? Wonder why they’re not on there…
  As far as I understood at the time, Beehaw cut themselves off from just about everyone else in the fediverse. If they want to make that choice I respect their position but its sending the message they're not interested in interacting with most others. If someone tells you to go away and they don't want to talk to you, I'm not going to chase them and try and change their mind. I'm going to let them go do whatever they want to do and I'll do my own thing with most everyone else.
have you considered that some of us are just silly goofy girls
Who play apologist for genocide and fascism.
Hai im a silly girl

No mention of dbzer0. com anywhere in the meme or text? To any newcomers, if you wouldn't download a car then you don't need to know about that instance.

Lol I made the original meme and text, I kinda just brain dumped the instances from the top of my head, the hope was others would chime in with their fav instances/comms and add to the list
- Happy to report that Zip has been quite enjoyable.
It must be the chunk of land they're sitting on. Just can't see it because the full text can't be read in its entirety from that close up.
If someone's identity is based on hating tankies, then they're mostly likely right-wing (aka liberal).
I don't like tankies either but they're just more right-wingers to me. Just the alt-imperial version of liberals. That's why libs get so mad.
- If tankies are right wing, liberals are right wing, not to mention those who are actually right-wing outside of your head-canon, who is not right-wing?

From what I can tell, this tankie stuff is bullshit. In the years I've been here, I've seen close to zero 'tankie' content from any of these supposedly tankie instances. There's like maybe one or two people on those instances who might fit the description if you search for them. Meanwhile, literally every day there are posts spitting on these supposed tankie instances. (And actually, it's again a very small number of people complaining - but they put their crap into cute memes to get traction).

I don't like the idea of shouting slurs at entire instances. In my view, if you hate those instances so much - just block them. Problem solved. No need to spew hate all over lemmy.

You have to remember, the people making the tankie accusations consider anyone to the left of Joe Biden a tankie.
When hexbear federatedn with SJW, I spent a day arguing Russia invading is bad actually, North Korea isn't a democratic utopia, and China isn't a shining pillar of socialism. Then I blocked them all because that was exhausting. So idk if hexbear is still so tankie, but they definitely were at that point.
I have a very different experience. When Hexbear was still federated with the large instances it was total mayhem. They would turn every thread political, constantly spam images of dictators like Stalin and Mao, and swarm anyone who disagreed. I've seen them deny the wrongdoings of China and the Soviet Union quite often, which is probably also what's necessary if you spam Mao and Stalin unironically.
I'm quite left of center myself, at least relative to most people I know in real life. But these people seemed totally insane. It was probably also a numbers game, since Hexbear was relatively large at the time compared to basically every other instance. So maybe this was just an annoying minority. But nevertheless I'd never purposefully go there, and I'd recommend anyone to stay away. It's way better than for instance a Trumpist/far-right instance, but I'd rather avoid both.
- I’m quite left of center myself
  lol, every time.
- That does sound bad. If that was my experience, I guess I might actively try to avoid them too. But as it happens, I just rarely see any hexbear stuff anyway. So the fueling of cross-instance conflicts feels unnecessary and a bit icky to me.
Perhaps that's because your instance is defederated from them? They were all over the place before most other major instances defederated from them. They are still all over the place if you're on an instance that federates with them. I had to manually block their bullshit when I was on Yiffit. I don't have to on Pawb or Lemmy.World.
- lemm.ee federates with all three of the mentioned instances, so they are definitely seeing the posts from those instances.
- Yiffit was never federated with any of them, none of them federate with porn instances.
Again, despite claims to the contrary, tankie for most people means "anything left of the Democrats, or willingness to break with US foreign policy."
- No
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
  Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support acts of repression by such regimes, their allies, or deny the occurrence of the events thereof
Try criticizing .ml on an .ml sub and you'll start to taste the authoritarianism
I'm jealous, I keep seeing them everywhere. As for the blocking, I've tried to block .ml several times but for some reason it hasn't worked. -_-
- Please see my guide posted earlier in this comment section. I hope you can block .ml soon, as it is your lemmy and you should use it how you want. Block me too, thanks.
The tankies are pretty bad on the world politics community on ml.
- The politics community on world is even more rabid and unconstructive than the Reddit equivalent
Hexbear defederated from my instance for being authoritarian Nazis. What triggered this decision? A vote organised by the instance's admins, to choose whether or not to defederate from the bears. You cannot make this shit up.
Oh and the vote itself was started because of them brigading us, calling us a bunch or Nazis. So, yeah.
- Huh, that sounds pretty bad, let me look that up. Oh wait, it's a total lie.
  My personal opinion, for those who are interested, is that these two instances (Hexbear and Lemmygrad) are filled with what we call here nazbols, tankies, or even left-wing fascists.
  "It came from the statement made in the thread that hexbear was 'aggressively pro-trans,' which seemed quite disgusting and fetishizing to me. This aligns with the rest of the authoritarian theme of the instance, you might say, having the perspective that one must make a superhuman effort to allow a minority to use a space."
  -jlai.lu admin's vichy ass.
- You cannot make this shit up.
  Really? Seems like you can and did.
I'd rather have the wild west of ideas over reddit. So I don't mind em
Based
Yep. The few I see are easily ignored. Or poked if you want to set them off.

I see calling people "tankies" is the "woke" of the Fediverse.

Nah, they're authoritarian genocide deniers.
The opposite of woke.
- What? Those are the three instant where I see the least denial of the US and Israels genocide, and the least bootlicking of western authoritarianism.
- No, I mean it's the new / local meme word to shut off conversation. And apparently used pretty much the same way right-wingers use it.
Yeah I'm a bit lost on why someone's instance automatically = their entire identity. Wouldn't that means 1) technically we are all tankies on a tankie platform and 2) I need to start learning Finnish?
- Lemmy.ml admins remove content critical of the CCP, and similar things. The admins of most other instances don't do that shit.
  Grad is much the same, while Hexbear is just 4chan for Stalinists.
- Yeah I randomly picked an instance when I created this account around a year ago, and these days I see people comment things like “lol of course you’re from .ml”.
  I don’t even know what’s the difference between instances. And it’s not like we were given a whole lot of explanation when picking one.
- Anyone who disagrees with their narratives is banned in hexbear. Ml was the default for a while so loads of people on there who have no idea what a tankie even is.
- I need to start learning Finnish?
  Good luck with that buddy. Look up "kuusi palaa".
- Yeah, hexbear and .grad seem to be mostly tankie users, but it seems much more split on .ml. The admins are questionable, and I've seen tankies there disproportionally, but since it was the default instance for a long time, there are also a bunch of non-tankie users. I think lumping .ml in with hexbear and .grad really downplays just how bad those two are.
There’s a shit ton of far-right and Sinophobic people on .world. They can’t abide anything that isn’t in line with whatever the CIA is saying.
I've been called a tankie in the same posts where I criticize the USSR and Russia, or when I say China isn't inherently good or evil.
Tankies are to liberals what woke is to Republicans. Taking a term invented by a community, reclaiming it, giving it a new definition only used by them.

This seems like an odd message considering that Lemmy, as software, is being praised here; and what is being criticized are instances wherein the admins enforce apologism for authoritarian regimes.
- If someone writes a program you like, it means they've got good political ideas. /s
Tankies aren't communists.
- Yeah, at this point the word "tankie" is used so liberaly that communists are just one type of "tankie".
- "Tankie" is a pejorative that basically looks like an exact replica of McCarthy's strawman of a Communist. The purpose of the term is to claim the accused that they genuinely hold those McCarthyian characteristics, regardless of reality. It shuts down conversation because it would be inconvenient to have those conversations, it's a thought-terminating cliché more than a real thing.
- Dude you know what I mean, don't be the ACKSHUALLY guy
I would argue FOSS is more akin to cooperative anarchism or library economics. Murray Bookchin
- i agree, commies trying to claim FOSS is really a stretch, they are desperate to pretend to be relevant

Looks at the lemmy devs on GitHub

All them use lemmy.ml

lemmy.world in shambles

Lemmy.ml is the original instance and the dev instance. I joined it because there was literally no alternative at the time. It's pretty annoying being called a tankie left and right because of this
- It's also because the devs are communists. Let's not skip that part lol
- Yeah, that's pretty unfair. You shouldn't have to put up with this; and it definitely is not your fault, or the fault of the instance. This "tankie instance" thing is bullshit.
- wHY DoN't yOu chAnGe InSTanCe?
- Same, looks like we are shady now.
that is actually the reason I chose lemmy.ml direct support from the developers is cool
- Same as a fellow code enthusiast, the dev instance seemed like a good choice. But no, do not pass go, straight to tankie jail apparently.
It's pretty insane that choosing the default instance is seen as being indicative of your politics

Yea who cares about those little human rights violations and genocides the CCP does along the way, just sweep those under the rug!
- Imagine believing that CCP is a good representative of destroying capitalism. Typical lib. smh.

"Tankie Triad?" Really? This is just McCarthyian LARPing, you don't have to constantly saber-rattle towards the Marxist-friendly instances.

Hopefully .world will serve as a quarantine instance for all the cringe-ass former redditors who love strawmen and reductionism and lame as fuck sayings like "tankie triad" and "narwhal bacon"
- Seems it already does, largely.
- who love strawmen
  like “narwhal bacon”
- Along with the cringe-ass people with propaganda terms like western imperialism and the such.
Please go back to your corner.
- Nah
In my book, it isn't "tankie" until they are the kind who claim all the authoritarian regimes that were never democratic to be "communist".
You can't have communism without democracy, that's the whole deal, it's in the freaking name, community.
Claiming to be "communist" when your regime is authoritarian is like claiming to make soup without liquids.
You can replace water with other stuff like broth, or even beer and wine, to make soup. But you need a liquid to make soup. That's soup's whole deal. Without a liquid as the base, or if you take out all the liquid after doing it, whatever you are doing, whatever you call it, it ain't soup.
For example, portable soup may have "soup" in the name, but it isn't soup. It's dehydrated food. It may have been soup once, but it isn't soup.
- The thing is, AES states are democratic. They usually don't have competing liberal parties like Western countries, but instead a more comprehensive form based on electing delegates. For example, the USSR functioned like this:
  For further reading, Soviet Democracy by Pat Sloan.
  Further, the "point" of Communism isn't Democracy to begin with. Communism is a prediction, not a perfect society created in a lab, of what will necessarily happen as humanity develops. Marx predicted humanity will move towards a fully publicly owned and planned economy with democratic control because industry gets larger and more complex over time. I think if you take away that Communism is based on analysis and not on some Utopia, you take away the reason why Communism makes sense to begin with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support acts of repression by such regimes, their allies, or deny the occurrence of the events thereof. More specifically, the term has been applied to those who express support for one-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republics, whether contemporary or historical. It is commonly used by anti-authoritarian leftists, including anarchists, libertarian socialists, left communists, democratic socialists, and reformists to criticise Leninism, although the term has seen increasing use by liberal and right‐wing factions as well.

In the past week I caught a 7 day ban for "misinformation" (x3, then for reposting a link to the mod logs, "skirting the rules", "repeated offenses" etc.) from /c/WorldNews for accusing Democrats of being complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. An actual fact - tens of billions of dollars in arms sent to an ongoing genocide/ethnic cleansing by Biden. No problems like that on lemmy.ml. That really says it all for me. Lemmy's basically just a fediverse reddit, with the same mod structure - if mods abuse their power, and admins don't keep them in check, it's time to ditch the instance.

By the way, Lemmy itself was created by Dessalines, the admin of lemmy.ml. Who I collaborated with briefly on building some of the UI that you're using right now to read this. Very thorough guy.

I caught a 7 day ban in microblog memes for "whataboutism" after I pointed out that leftists were not responsible for the democrat's loss, their actions would have been wildly unpopular whether we told them or not.
.world needs a targeted marketing campaign, we just need to point to the very public mod log. The mods at .world do all the work for us lol.
"/c/" doesn't tell us much. I assume you mean !worldnews@lemmy.ml or !worldnews@lemmy.world? Try !world@quokk.au
- https://lemmy.world/c/world actually.

Yes, welcome redditors to .world, which is trying to model itself as reddit 2.

It's a bit like OSRS for reddit - an attempt to revive the reddit we all have very rose-tinted memories of. Unfortunately we seem to have forgotten about the the rampant casual misogyny, tribalism, moderator political infighting, that the 2007 XP rates were actually abysmally implemented and desperately needed retooling (and that deeply awkward "ron paul" phase reddit went through...)
Okay, but where is the instance that is trying to model itself after slashdot? (I feel old)
- Best I can do is act like a slashdotter:
  This general idea has already failed elsewhere. What you want can't work.
So far, it's quite refreshing. However I miss some of the smaller niche hobby subreddits, as fediverse hasn't gained enough momentum yet. There are "channels" (?) that have like 300 people, and a post every other month, which is too small right now.
- Comms are more like hashtags within an instance, generally, rather than a real community in itself.

Everyone knows those rules don't apply when youre dunking on the instances with opinions outside of the US state department's approved overton window.
Ah yes, wise words UnderpantsWeevil, .worlds very own resident tankie
Incivility is only when you call out liberal hypocrisy and .world, otherwise it's sparkling marketplace of ideas.

Love everything about reddit but inexplicably wish to leave it?

Hate the idea of an english speaking internet that doesn't slavishly adhere to the party line of the US alphabet agencies?

Do you think the parable of the nazi bar is bunch of hokum?

Do you have shrieking anger towards people who refused to support genocide while having shrieking anger at (usually the same) people rejecting decades long debunked accusations of genocide made by the perpetrators of aforementioned genocide?

Join the lemmyverse! We have racism! We have homophobia! We have trans misogyny! We have daily 5 minutes hate!

And if anyone tells you different, have you considered they're a paid shill by the notorious gay sex haver Putler??

We have Ukrainian/Uyghur genocide denial!
- Remember, if the US accuses someone of genocide, you have to believe them! Donbas genocide is just propaganda though, and Gaza isn't that bad.
- Nothing says holocaust denial more than deliberately watering down the term 'genocide'
- For good reason.
  https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-russia-war-us-weapons-azov-a3a555670bedeae2022900621d79aba7
  https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/19/china-uighurs-genocide-us-pompeo-blinken/

OMG. I just discovered Lemmy yesterday after being a Redditor for a decade. I deleted my Reddit account after the insane level of suppression I've endured over the past year and was all set to go cold turkey when I found out about Lemmy! Praise the sweet lil' six pound, eight ounce baby Jesus!!

Welcome 🤗
Welcome! I am new too. Still getting adjusted to the federations and the "way" things are here.
- Welcome! 🙂
Get the app: sync for Lemmy! It's amazing
- let the person choose.
- does that have profile pictures and stuff? I use Voyager and feel like I'm missing the full Lemmy experience
- I actually prefer appless. Straight web.

It's not authoritarian bootlicking if the boot has been painted red!

It's not propaganda if it comes from the USA!
- What's your point here? Are you automatically assuming that only because I'm against China, NK and Russia (mainly because the latter would gladly bomb my home any given moment and the former two would hand over weapons), I somehow think America is an angel that hasn't been violating human rights since forever?
- Nobody thinks or acts like this
  You can be critical of two governments at the same time. You don't have to love one to hate the other
Everybody Sucks Here

There are some real weirdos here that have this as the major part of their personality.

How else are they going to find an audience for their huge list of irrelevant copy-pasted bullet points?
Like that guy with the Buckies profile pic? lol I see him everywhere

Again, nobody's talking about the porn instance.

But we all know about it
- No we don't; link, please.

Oh hey this looks familiar LMAO

Before the tankies come in here

Their calls of unity and accusations of division are false, they're Authoritarian "leftists" who deny anything bad of the CCP, Russia and NK from human rights violations to genocides and any evidence of said acts is nothing but "CIA/Western propaganda"

Tankies are not socialists, they're not communists, they're authoritarians, full stop.

Denying propaganda the CIA is selling you about China is not the same thing as denying everything the CCP has ever done wrong. Especially when even the CIA has backtracked their claims, and you religiously stick to it.

If you want nothing farther left than drumpf memes, and also like being a little bit bigoted towards Muslims, then Lemmy.world is gonna be a nice cozy home for you.

Hai! I'm new here, are all of these comments that I can't see from .world users? I assume .ml is defederated from .world?
- No, we're still federated with them. I'm not sure which comments you can't see. I've personally blocked a few of the most insufferable users for my blood pressures sake. You will see weekly (or more frequent) posts like this on .world where they complain about leftist instances and the comments are full of exhortations to block or defederate from lemmygrad, .ml and hexbear.

"Brother!"

everone knows you join instances based on how funny the @ is, duh

Am I winning?
And you picked that?
- it's funny that .zip is a domain, yes. I can't imagine it gets used for anything other than email scams
Exactly

Remember, it's not authoritarian or bootlicking if it's Israel or the US

ah yes, thats right! there are only two sides, western fascism, or eastern.
- That is indeed the .world attitude.
- There's only two sides: fascism vs humanity.
  No need for phony racist divisions.

Welcome to lemmy newbies, here is your first official feud post.

Solidarity amongst the instances! We will not be divided!

Um no, most don't want just more authoritarianism. Tankies are genocide deniers or look the other way on the many human rights abuses whenever the government doing it is China or Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support acts of repression by such regimes, their allies, or deny the occurrence of the events thereof. More specifically, the term has been applied to those who express support for one-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republics, whether contemporary or historical. It is commonly used by anti-authoritarian leftists, including anarchists, libertarian socialists, left communists, democratic socialists, and reformists to criticise Leninism, although the term has seen increasing use by liberal and right‐wing factions as well.
- Lol.
- If it’s a pejorative term, then you’re not building the justification for its usage that you think you are.

I'm not gonna be equipped to make a nuanced and detailed take right now but in my experience hexbears are alright, fun to talk to, I can learn things from them, and at worst they're spicy.

and at worst they're spicy.
Did not realize looking the other way on human rights abuses or denying genocides of China/Russia was just "a little spicy"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support acts of repression by such regimes, their allies, or deny the occurrence of the events thereof. More specifically, the term has been applied to those who express support for one-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republics, whether contemporary or historical. It is commonly used by anti-authoritarian leftists, including anarchists, libertarian socialists, left communists, democratic socialists, and reformists to criticise Leninism, although the term has seen increasing use by liberal and right‐wing factions as well.
- Bro over here just propagandaposting

If I were criticizing various nations more than the U.S., I wouldn't shame people for "authoritarian bootlicking". Glass houses and all that.

And critically, not just since Trump. As soon as the ink dried on the Nazi surrender, the US and OSS/CIA armed and funded every fascist they could find since fascists are the most dedicated anti-communists.
Everyone already shits on the US including us Americans.
It's far worse to shit on the US/West and simultaneously turn a blind eye to the atrocities of China or Russia

Can we just defederate and be done with it?

Centrists will find some new instance, designate it the "tankie instance" and repeat the process.
- Honestly I kind of want .world to defederate just to see which instance becomes the new tankie instance.
Why do you need your admins to block .ml? If you don't like what you see, that sounds like a you problem, not a us problem. Since you need your hands held through this process, I have made this easy guide on how to do it yourself.
Welcome to a tutorial on how to block .ml on your personal account.
In the top right corner of the top of the page, there are 3 horizontal white bars. Click it.
This will open up a drop down menu. At the bottom of that menu, you will see your username. Click it.
This will open another drop down menu with 3 options. Click "Settings".
At the top of your screen you will see 2 tabs. Click the one that says "Blocks".
Here you will see "Block user" "Block community" and "Block instance". Click the down arrow below "Block instance".
This will open up a search bar. Type "lemmy.ml" and click it after it shows up.
That's it! You've blocked .ml and will never see content from the instance. Now you don't need to make a feud post every day complaining about .ml and other instances you disapprove of. Think of all the time you will save!
But wait, we aren't done yet in this menu. Click the down arrow under "Block user". Now type "UltraGiGaGigantic" Make sure you select my .ml account as the other ones I no longer use. Thanks, appreciate it.
- They ought to pin this comment lol. They won't stop with the complaint posts though, since what they actually want is for nobody to encounter spaces like ours.
Maybe someday, .world is 2/3rds of the way there!

I'm curious where a lot of those folks come from/what their backgrounds are. I assume like 50% are Russian bots, but of those who are real people, how'd they end up where they are in life/holding those opinions? I have a hard time wrapping my head around it.

:::spoiler Glad you asked, more than happy to talk about it.
I was born in '91 in a conservative family, and I grew up with the naive vision that international conflicts were a thing of the past and we could put politics aside and work on developing science and technology for the good of all humankind. Then, when I was 10 years old, I watched as every adult in the country lost their fucking minds over a couple buildings falling down. I watched our civil liberties get stripped away while we started stupid pointless wars that accomplished nothing and left far more people dead, with complete bipartisan support. In high school, I leaned Libertarian because Ron Paul was a thing and basically the only antiwar voice in politics, though I grew out of that once I no longer had teachers and parents bossing me around lol.
I had hope for Obama, though I was still young and not politically engaged. He was going to shut down Guantanamo and hold the Bush administration accountable for their blatant war crimes and disregard for both international law and the constitution - or so I hoped. But he didn't. He kept the illegal mass surveillance going and, contrary to his promise to protect whistleblowers, hunted Snowden to the ends of the earth for revealing the government's crimes.
As for my personal life at this time, I had no idea what I wanted to do, so I studied physics, thinking of it as a sort of "study of everything." But even that wasn't broad enough for me, I wanted to expand my cultural horizons as well, so I studied abroad in Japan for a year, which opened my mind to a more global perspective and reaffirmed my ideal of being a global citizen.
At this point, I was a liberal, skeptical of both parties, and politically disengaged. Watched The Daily Show and would probably fit in just fine with .world. But then 2016 happened.
I honestly didn't jump on the Bernie train at first, because I subscribed to the "conventional wisdom" of moving to the center to win over moderate republicans. As the republicans went more and more extreme, the democrats would achieve total political dominance as the "party of reason," Trump would lose in a landslide. Then he won. I was extremely furious and disappointed, I couldn't believe it! How could this happen?
In my personal life, I had entered the workforce. In spite of graduating with a B.S. in physics, my focus had been on studying things that were interesting to me, without regard to practical matters like my career. I'm probably somewhat autistic, I've always done very well on tests and grasped concepts quickly, but I got poor grades on account of neglecting homework. It wasn't until upper division physics classes that I found myself actually having to study. I was also privileged enough to not be concerned about practical matters growing up. After graduating, I've worked menial jobs, including warehouse work at Amazon, which gave me plenty of time to think. Since I started having a boss and a landlord, my politics improved. I also had a traumatic experience with my brother who came back from the Middle East, "self medicated" with meth, and almost became a mass shooter, but that's a story for another day.
In order to figure things out, I tried to find a place to debate politics online, and wound up in the cesspool of r/CapitalismVSocialism, which was created by An-Caps. Freshly radical, I was of course more attracted to libertarian socialism, rejecting authoritarianism, though the term "tankie" was not popularized at the time. I saw right-libertarians as the more "reasonable" people on the right, an idea which I eventually became disavowed of by actually talking to them. Eventually, I realized that their whole ideology is based on wordplay, and that they, along with the right in general, have absolutely nothing of value to offer whatsoever, and their nonsense simply dragged down the level of debate, preventing anything of actual substance from being discussed.
Leaving that behind, I looked for a left-wing space, and found many of them to be clownish. I was turned off of r/socialism from the "Catgirl fiasco," and I was too skeptical of the democrats to fit into purely liberal spaces - both of which lacked the bluntness and diversity of thought I was looking for. As a last resort, I checked r/ChapoTrapHouse, which I had heard all sorts of nasty rumors about - but instead, it was exactly what I was looking for: a non-sectarian leftist space that didn't have a stick up its ass and wasn't afraid to tell off both right-wingers and crybullies, which made it reviled because the crybullies would run off and whine and make up rumors (just like .worlders do).
During this time, I also did a good bit of reading. Progress and Poverty by Henry George helped me get a basic grasp of political economy, while All the Shah's Men by Stephen Kinzer taught me about Iran's historical attempts to reclaim their resources through a popular, liberal democratic movement, which was crushed by the CIA (similar stories can be found in many countries around the world).
When the subreddit was banned I migrated to Hexbear (yes, I'm from there). I was still very skeptical of states like China and the USSR, but my opinion of America had plummetted in 2016, and I saw them as acting as a counterbalance to US hegemony. I took a perspective of being system-agnostic, that non-aligned nations ought to have as much flexibility as possible in regards to their economic situation so that they can experiment and get it right, and then that system can spread out of that. When there's just a single hegemon, it can exert too much control, but in a multipolar world there are more options. I was reading Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti and watching his lectures, as well as some snippets of theory.
But probably the thing that really pushed me beyond that was Covid-19. In the US, they lied to us, telling us masks don't work, and then sent us all back to work with no protections. Up until that point, I at least had trust in US scientific institutions, but that lie completely broke my trust, and it really sank in as real that the government does not give a single shit about protecting the people, and that my interests are completely in conflict with those of the state. Meanwhile, China actually listened to the science, they never told people not to wear masks, they did lockdowns, I even saw in Vietnam where the government delivered groceries right to people's homes so they'd stay inside, while in the US everyone was scrambling over each other to buy toilet paper. I had to quit my job because the situation was so bad, I lived in the south and we had no protections at all.
And yet, as usual, nobody was held accountable for the failure, and the government's mistakes were swept under the rug while the media blamed China and spread rumors that it was some sort of bioweapon. Naturally, anti-Asian hate crimes skyrocketed because of that bullshit. You can actually see very clearly where most people were fairly ambivalent to China before 2019, and then there was a major shift, coinciding with a propaganda campaign. The goal, of course, is to sow fears of China in order to justify more funding to the military, and to distract from the government's own failures. It's no coincidence that China suddenly became a military threat the moment the war in Afghanistan started to wind down, always gotta have an enemy to justify why we're building bombs instead of healthcare. And if some random people get hate crimed, the government doesn't give a shit.
Ultimately, I'd love to return to my initial dream of setting aside politics and pursuing science to build a better world for all. But how can I do that when you have cases like Jane Y. Wu, a distinguished neuroscientist who committed suicide after the US government shut down her lab for the sin of being born Chinese? How can I pretend that I'm a global citizen when the government shuts down innocent intercultural programs like the Confucious Institutes? I never signed up for this shit. I'm in this for humanity, not the United States, and the United States government is making it increasingly clear that it's an enemy to the common cause of humanity.
So there's my life story. None of us are "Russian bots," we're mostly just downwardly-mobile disillusioned intellectuals.
- Thanks, this was a great answer. I really enjoyed reading it. I was dead serious about wondering about how you all got to where you are. It wasn't just a glib statement. I'll look into those books, thanks.
I question the "Russian Bots" narrative pretty heavily, there's no evidence for that conspiracy theory nor would it make sense, Lemmy is too small to make an impact. Either way, I started reading Marxist theory a bit in college but more when I actually started working, and over the years I've read more theory and history.
- I'm admittedly not well-versed in Marxism, beyond having the experience of, "Man, this shit looks good on paper!" But I would always take that a more communal-style communism route, so where I struggle is with the purported admiration of the Chinas and USSRs in the world. I suppose you might argue that my view is based on a misunderstanding, which I kind of get. But on a gut level, I have such a hostile feeling toward any authoritarian-style structure that my hang-up always comes back to that. Again, based on a very surface level understanding of what I presume to be a diverse group of views, which is probably part of the issue with simplifying it all.
Earnest response:
- Tldr
I understand, I know that neoliberals have a very hard time recognizing the humanity of anyone outside of their own little bubble.
- Why treat them as humans when you can act smug they didn't enjoy voting for a milquetoast capitalist who only listens to the rich?
Just reading and watching the situation unfold. Whereas I can’t understand why someone is ok with the US lifting a ban on arming Nazis, and somehow I’m the asshole for just being aware of that.
You also get called a tankie on here for just pointing out that most of the Tiananmen Square claims have been debunked. Somehow I’m also an asshole for knowing the western media outlets did not claim violence from the CCP at the time, but changed the story in coordination with US intelligence. How am I in any way in the wrong just for knowing about US intelligence changing the narrative, and not going along with it? I didn’t fabricate these fucking news archives. Take it up with the Washington Post.
All of the tankie accusations amount to ‘how dare you know about that?!!’ or ‘they’re the good kind of Nazis!’
I think it's either trolls or people who have realised how capitalism exploits them, but instead of becoming actual leftists, they just jumped to worshipping another oppressive system instead. Lemmy seems to be very US-centric, so I think the thought process for some has been:
America bad
America says [insert communist or 'communist' country here] bad
Therefore [insert communist or 'communist' country here] good
So basically, not being able to understand nuance.
- Its not about lack of nuance but more about deliberately being a useful idiot because not everyone has the patience of someone like cowbee. Let me translate your example:
  Slavery is bad.
  Slavers say Dessalines is bad.
  Therefore Dessalines is good.
  Now its 2025. Dessalines is long dead and we can safely say the free people of Haiti deserved a better leader. But back in the 1800s I'd back Dessalines to the hilt because I'm carrying absolutely zero water for slavers.
  Further listening: https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-02-the-north-korea-memory-hole
- Lemmy seems to be very US-centric
  I feel that. Every single day. As a foreigner, I feel like a clown. Diving in those acid pools of people living in conditions possibily better than mine.
Extremism, whatever route it takes, is a byproduct of social isolation. And extremist groups, whether they are nazis, religious fundamentalists, incels, etc., feed upon the people who are marginalized by a conformist society giving them a fictional explanation on "why society hates them": the white genocide, infedels, women are like animals.
I don't think that "tankies" are as extreme as the other I mentioned but I believe the base mechanism is the same.
- Extremism, whatever route it takes, is a byproduct of social isolation.
  Under what definition of “extremism” is this not a ridiculous statement? Becoming “extremist” is orthogonal to one’s level of social isolation or inclusion. How isolated were the Gazans on Oct. 7th or the prisoners in the Sobibor uprising?

And FYI, you can correct your post's Title after submitting if you make a mistake, unlike the old place!

EDIT: Also, to search for a community by keyword, visit https://feddit.org/search

Looks like I chose a good instance! ^w

Markdown lol \o/
- Lmao XD

Great meme, and not a bad recommendation, but I find personal blocks to be a great tool myself. After spending a month blocking the most extreme people over there as they popped up in my feed, the remaining memes and commenters are quite nice.

That's what I love about lemmy. A little curating of your feed and dropping the occasional abhorrent 'human' into the blocklist makes this a pretty nice place.
Finally, someone who takes control over their own lemmy experience. Much more effective then being weird posting cringe feudposts about other instances and begging admins to block us for them.
More power to ya, peace

Authoritarian bootlickers is ironic, while at leats the Americans are watch their country go full authoritarian fascist right now.

And actively defend when their preferred side talks about having the biggest military budget and loves war as a method of spurring the economy!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support acts of repression by such regimes, their allies, or deny the occurrence of the events thereof. More specifically, the term has been applied to those who express support for one-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republics, whether contemporary or historical. It is commonly used by anti-authoritarian leftists, including anarchists, libertarian socialists, left communists, democratic socialists, and reformists to criticise Leninism, although the term has seen increasing use by liberal and right‐wing factions as well.

To add on to that (cross-posted):

It defaults to “Active” view, which is the least updated. You can set your posts to “Hot” and then switch between “Top 6 Hours," "New" and “Top 12 Hours” to get the most of your experience here. It will seem dead with the default.

"You must never go there, Simba!"

didn't realize that reddit actually did me a favour by giving me the boot. lemmy is way better

Days since Ive seen posts mocking tankies: 0

exactly, and the high amount of upvote is quite surprising
- If just one person says your instance is a Tankie instance, it's just a one off. If everyone says/agrees your instance is a Tankie instance, it might just be a Tankie instance.

Is Lemmy.ml really that bad? I haven't spent enough time on lemmy to know yet.

Yeah, if you're pathologically afraid of actual communist theory.
- Um no, you and your fellow Tankies support Authoritarian communism
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
  Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support acts of repression by such regimes, their allies, or deny the occurrence of the events thereof. More specifically, the term has been applied to those who express support for one-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republics, whether contemporary or historical. It is commonly used by anti-authoritarian leftists, including anarchists, libertarian socialists, left communists, democratic socialists, and reformists to criticise Leninism, although the term has seen increasing use by liberal and right‐wing factions as well.
  I for one wouldn't mind seeing the fall of capitalism in my lifetime, but not to replace it with just another flavor of authoritarianism.
Yes, go post anything negative about China and it'll be removed under Rule 1 guaranteed
Go post about tiananmen square or the uyghur genocide or even just you don't feel like people are very free in China with all the censorship
ETA:
Oor even that Russia invaded Ukraine unprovoked, that always gets them lmao
You could also check out !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works
But you'll need to look at it off the .ml instance because .ml blocks that comm specifically (talk about censorship lmao)

Lotsa butt-hurt heroes of the proletariat in the comment section.

Throw your Molotov-sippy-cups nice and hard so the commissars can see, sweeties!

Always the same brigading, always the same repeating the same lies. Just for your sanity avoid .ml hex and grad.

says the frenchman
- Do .ml Tankies hate the French now too?
You replied to a 10 month old comment of mine in a community I was banned from, lol. Sounds like you should just block those 3 yourself and save yourself the mental energy anticommunism seems to take you.
- For some reason it the post decided to point it's head in my feed in hot? so I assumed it was recent but no. My point still stands.

Can you go back and make an new account there instead?
If you want to say transphobic slurs you're welcome to rot your brain on Facebook or use X (the everything app).
Why do I see your post as
Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t say removed.
?
- .ml's slur filter removed a slur for trans people.