On .ml, "Slava Ukraini" is considered a "fascist slogan" and will be removed. Remember that when you see them accusing someone or something of being a fascist

I never heard of tankies until I got to lemmy.

The first thing that I ever saw from them was a meme about how Joseph Stalin had very little in the way of material things when he died, despite the position he held.

And I was like Bitch, I care about Stalin's earthly possessions in the exact same way that I care about Hitler's painting with watercolors skill set.

This got me thinking about my western canadian upbringing through the back half of the Cold War. A steady stream of western indictrination and perspective. I recall zero words spoken about Joseph Stalin's personal life or spending habits.

So who the fuck was that meme aimed at? Who is out there, just wanting to love Stalin, but can't on account of thinking he lived in opulence? Who is out there heaping scorn on Stalin for what he owned or didn't?

That's when I realized that tankies are just a combination of Flat Earthers/Sovereign Citizens. It’s all bullshit, and the point is to be exceedingly difficult to talk to.

There are actually plenty of tankies on Reddit, but with Reddit you have to pretty much seek it out because of the massive user base
Legend goes that dessalines actually started Lemmy because their Reddit main got perm banned because he went a lil too tankie
- I remember a huge dustup maybe 4 years ago where tankies infiltrated and tried to take over a bunch of left leaning subs within a few weeks. They do it regularly too. I've noticed quite a few db0 accounts that are around 9 months old spewing the usual tankie shit.
- Legend goes that dessalines actually started Lemmy because their Reddit main got perm banned because he went a lil too tankie
  Hey dessalines, care to chime in on why you are the way you are?
- tankies get astroturfed by right wingers so much they are pretty much invisible. and the ones on the "left" but not extreme left filters them enough for the same results.
Same here, never heard of them before Lemmy. I was shocked by their illogical statements and behavior. I couldn't believe anyone could hold such inconsistent beliefs and not just melt their brain, by so many mental gymnastics and plot holes. I still can't. It just makes way more sense that they are all done kind of weird Russian ai experiment.
- They kind of betray each other a lot of the times where some say that tiananmen square massacre didn't happen and others saying that they are color revolutionaries and absolutely deserved it.
- I was willing to listen to them until I was the target of completely unfounded censorship. I figured, meh maybe they have a few nuggets of wisdom. They called me a racist and a xenophobe for a meme I made that neither contained racism or race.
- i wish all the stupidity i see in the world was the result of russian misinformation, but that's almost too optimistic a position to hold in my eyes...guess we'll see if/when russia collapses from fighting ukraine, if it all just dries up.
- NPR did a story on this, most bots are actually human slaves in giant networks working together
I too, have never heard of tankies before joining lemmy.
Imagine my surprise, when i, a guy from a post-soviet country, where the fans of soviets are endangered species, see them all fanboying over dictators of the past century over here lol
- The best part they're from countries that never even remotely experienced soviet horrors. The lead tankies are from Netherlands and many other appear to be from flyover states of the US lol
  and obvious it's invaded by ruzi bots
- This is so relatable. I'm from a former communist country. The first time I encountered a large group of tankies was on Reddit around the TikTok ban. It was stunning. It had me thinking "My god, the far-right will put us all in the same boat as these weirdos and sink the boat"
Here's my 2¢ on how that kinda post might've been effective propaganda on me if I just saw it in the background long enough.
I grew up in America in a conservative area and everyone saw wealth as success and legitness. I now find myself beliving that if you live in excessive luxury that you are part of the problem. I can see how learning Stalin didn't have much when he died would appeal to a certain leftist in me and changes the emperor tone I originally picture him with.
I have other issues with Stalin, but maybe if I'd've lived on .ml long enough those kinda posts could've slowly changed what comes to mind when I think of him.
- I have other issues with Stalin, but maybe if I'd've lived on .ml long enough those kinda posts could've slowly changed what comes to mind when I think of him.
  Conservative estimates state that Stalin was directly responsible for twenty million deaths.
  There is no charm offensive that will "slowly change what comes to mind" when thinking of Joseph Stalin.
I envy you. I live in Hungary, and for a long while the only leftists I knew about were tankies. They're just as annoying offline as online.
Some people have made arguments that the leadership of the USSR simply replaced the old capitalist/aristocratic class and had access to their wealth through the levers of state power. I have not investigated the truthfulness of this claim, but I’m guessing this was a response to that talking point.
i heard it on reddit first surprisingly enough. i always suspect it means extreme belief of whatever sub they were in.

Lol I just got banned from deprogram for saying the Xi pooh meme wasn't inherently racist and that people used as a form of mockery of an authoritarian leader... Some idiot actually tried to argue "do you call all heads of state authoritarians or just communists?" Like bro, the only reason I don't call myself a communist is because I think it doesn't go far enough...

But they don't actually care about communism as a project or theory or even the people it claims to empower; they just want the boot to be on the other foot.

I got banned from .ml because I said China and North Korea were oppressive regimes. Apparently that means I am a “fascist sympathizer”

They are going by the MAGA definition.
China and North Korea were oppressive regimes
Apparently that means I am a “fascist sympathizer”
It certainly signals you as a mark. Can't count how many conservative trolls have used "They want to make America into North Korea!" to terrify Americans into rejecting everything from Canadian style health care to Haitian earthquake refugees to Columbia's anti-genocide protest movement.
Get away from this rhetoric and quit being terrified of places on the other side of the planet you've only ever heard about as Scary Ghost Stories. You're only a few steps off panicking over Venezuelan Biker Gangs and Ground Zero Mosques.
- I want you to reply to me "The Tianamen Square Massacre happened the third of June in the year 1989. And the government murdered 300 peaceful protestors that day, then had the fucking audacity to claim 5,000 of their soldiers were injured which is fucking laughable and expected of oppressive regimes."
  Or something along those lines.
- So your solution is to… say that China and North Korea are wonderful, tolerant regimes? What is your point lmao
  Edit: I guess it’d probably be to “just ignore it it’s fine”
- Why did you post a picture of the North Korean talking head that makes up stories about North Korea for money?
  Having seen North Korea for myself, I can assure you it is an oppressive regime
  quit being terrified of places on the other side of the planet you’ve only ever heard about as Scary Ghost Stories
  I'm curious, what is your experience with North Korea? Have you ever talked to any North Koreans yourself? Ever seen the country? Or are you relying solely on things you've heard online?
  It is a bit silly that they called China an oppressive regime though. Much of that is misinformation. A good example being the social credit score system. Many people actually believe it exists as some dystopian system, despite the fact it is effectively the same as similar systems in place in the US (credit score, points on license, no fly lists, etc. - a hodgepodge of disconnected systems)
  China is a bit more oppressive than the US, but it's far closer to the US than it is to places like North Korea, Eritrea, or Turkmenistan. Especially lately as the US has shifted noticeable towards more centralized governmental control

People should really be more upset with lemmy.ml - it's such a shit stain on the entire fediverse :(

Slava Ukraini! Go fuck yourself, .ml tankies

I had no idea so much of lemmy.ml was run and populated by a bunch of paid Russian agents and their useful idiots. One guy had only been on Lemmy for a couple of months and had already posted hundreds of propaganda pieces from Russian state sponsored new sources. Another poster specialized on propaganda from other sources but was just as prolific.

lemmy.ml is the toilet of Lemmy.

Is it just .ml or is most of lemmy instances run by tankies?

It's mostly the Tankie Triad consisting of Hexbear, Lemmygrad and .ml
I tend to focus on .ml because Hex and Grad are generally defederated from by most major instances because they are even more extreme than .ml on top of the fact that there's a perception among instances that if they defederate from dessalines' (head Lemmy dev, main .ml admin) .ml instance there will be retaliation in the form of pull back of technical support for their instance (Which, yea, I could totally see him doing that)
- There are some communities and some users who also lean tankie. !world@lemmy.world is often pretty crazy, and I have the feeling some users of slrpnk and dbzer0 also go nuts from time to time
There is a lot of Anti-US posts.
Some are EU-flavored (which I'm fine with).
But then you have a lot of pro-PRC flavored types which is just cringe. Like "I'd rather trust China" or "I'm rooting for China against the US" some BS, like.... ?!? 🧐
The EU is right there! Why choose China when you literally have a functional democracy elsewhere?
There's just a covert (not that covert actually) operation trying to promote China as this some sort of beacon of prosperity, and some even start to belive that China has "free healthcare" like what lmao
Like... Anti-US post are fine, just don't promote China as a replacement, its not any better.
- The EU is right there! Why choose China when you literally have a functional democracy elsewhere?
  EU is like "hooray we banned curved cucumbers!", and china is like "we built 48,000 km of high speed rail in 2 decades"
- i bet these people never actually live in china, or want to MOVE there, they just love to say it behind the screen. same goes with pro-russia tankies, probably living in places like the EU, canada,,,etc.
My instance doesn’t seem to be, at least.
- Mine either, phew.
the triad is. Conservative ones seems to have been completely seperated from lemmy, and most people commenting with conservative views are easily blocked or reported. cons dont seem to have much effect on lemmy like they are on REDDIT and youtube.
.ml IS THE Largest of the triad, followed by lemmy grad and hexbear.
Not really. A few years ago Lemmy was primarily based out of the dev's servers, and then like beehaw and hexbear. So you could have struck that claim in like spring of 2023.
They were sort of the original instances that didn't require an application to join. So a lot of communities started there.
But then the reddit API stuff happened and Lemmy exploded, relatively speaking. A whole slew of instances started up, and a whole lot of people entered the picture.
And, uh, the culture of Lemmy changed to say the least.
Not only .ml but not most of them
But then, it’s not just about the tankies. Most instances have their own definition of what is fine and what isn’t, and if you don’t believe what everyone else does, you’re going to get banned
- its problematic when the instances are solely political based, and there are puritanical tests.

I mean…. They don’t hide who and what they are.

I lean socialist, but yeah fuck this. Ukraine should be liberated as much as Palestine, Nepal, and the Philippines. Fuck authoritarian simps.

The ONLY conflict that should concern us all is the class conflict.

If so called "leftists" think that solidarity doesn't extend to their favorite oppressed people, then they aren't leftists. They are fascists in disguise who associate with an in-group juxtaposed against an out-group. Leftists must realize that EVERYONE is part of the in-group, even fascists themselves. For if their material lives were well nourished and enriched, they wouldn't feel the need to hate.

Now, I have heard that there has been and may still be corruption in the Ukrainian government. That corruption doesn't give permission for other countries to invade and take over, though. If anything, internal affairs should be dealt between the opposing sides PEACEFULLY and DEMOCRATICALLY. If things do come to violence, those internal seeking to restore a democratic system of government should be supported more by those external than the opposing side of corruption.

When I first started hearing their kind of talk in high school 20 years ago, it was from the Chinese students. Well not the ones whose families fled China due to being non-Han or their kids being girls. But the ones who liked China, they're the ones that said all these talking points that I'm hearing again from "tankies" 20 years later.

Probably kids of rich parents. If you're from a normal lower class family, there's no way you'd acrually think China is better.
My older brother and I are both anti-CCP so that's 2/2. (Although he's still a piece of shit and I hate him for other reasons)

I wish people would stop referring to Tankies and authoritarian regimes as leftists. If we stop entertaining the hallucination that they are- then maybe places like Wikipedia will start labeling them correctly as right wing.

From the very beginning of the terms "Left" and "Right" to describe the political spectrum, which originated in pre-revolutionary war France, the Left has always been about freedom from Tyranny and the Right has been pro-government (ruling class) control.

Maybe the USSR did start out as revolutions of the proletariat, but once they were controlled by increasingly authoritarian leadership, that should have flipped them from left to right on the political spectrum. In a sane world that's exactly what would have happened. Guess who's best interests it was to mislabel the USSR, the PRC and the DPRK as 'Leftists'? Ill give you one guess. If you said capitalists and the right wing in Western democracies- That's a bingo! And of course they are going to label themselves as 'left wing'. To admit otherwise would be to expose the whole lie. So in a weird example of cold war cooperation between the East and West, that fiction has continued.

The only reason that Communism and Socialism were correctly labeled as 'Left' ideologies in the first place is because, implemented correctly, they both offer less control by the 'ruling class'. Socialism was meant to return the power to the people, and communism was meant to abolish the state completely. Authoritarian regimes run counter to both those goals. You will NEVER abolish the state by strengthening the state. That makes about as much sense as 'trickle down economics'. Hey maybe if we give the billionaires all the money, they'll give us a little back in return. Spoiler alert, no they wont.

/rant

THANK YOU

i have bubblybubbles blocked for some outright despicable shit, fwiw haha

They are deep in the wumao sauce.

Their whole identity is being built around fighting nazis. And bringing back traditional values.

Just like conservative values are being brought back to fight wokness.

Just like israel has to eradicate Palestine.

Just like nazis had to exterminate the jews.

It is all fascism.

Tankies are fascists that deluded themselves into thinking they are lefties.

Are we still pretending .ml and hexbear aren’t almost exclusively fronts for Russian propaganda?
- russia or CCP propaganda.
Their whole identity is being built around fighting nazis. And bringing back traditional values.
Idk about that second bit.
fighting nazis
Just like nazis had to exterminate the jews.
Wait, what?
Tankies are fascists
Listen, .ml has its own problems. But when the fascists get to your door, you're going to wish you had a tank, too.
- Tankies are fascists. Period.

I mean, I blocked the instance because a lot of the content is just ragebait, historical revisionism, or just plain nonsense.

Best option is to ignore them, let them fester, then watch the inevitable infighting as they factionalise with some popcorn.

same thing, i found myself often engaging in thier posts accidentally.
I'm seeing like 13 different .ml instances. Did you block them all or is there a specific one we are talking bout here? Sorry, I'm pretty new to Lemmy
- ".ml" refers to "lemmy.ml" here.

Why even bother going or engaging them at this point? There's a block list for a reason, use it.

Might be someone browsing All and unknowingly wandered into the post. There's still tons of people not knowing where ml stand.
- i did that alot before i realized those people were just arguing for no reason at all or at very trivial things, and i found out how to block the triad. like calling SG1 woke, or too Lib-shit.
they do infiltrate other instances, by creating accounts in those just to troll.

Huh? Is this a troll post? "slava ukraini" being a fascist slogan isn't even a tankie take, it's just a historical fact. Like, who even disagrees with this? It even says so on english-language wikipedia, which is like the most lukewarm non-controversial source out there:

In April 1941 in German-occupied Kraków, the younger part of the OUN seceded and formed its own organisation, called the OUN-B after its leader Stepan Bandera. The group adopted a fascist-style salute along with calling "Glory to Ukraine!" and responding with "Glory to the Heroes!"

Your own Wikipedia article says it was around decades before WWII and Bandera. Should we shun norse mythology too because the Nazis co-opted it for a while before getting their asses kicked?
After briefly skimming that Wikipedia article, it seems like the phrase/battlecry has undergone multiple iterations over the years, originating as far back as perhaps WWI.
Could it be the case that fascist nationalists appropriated this aspect of culture to galvanize and accumulate support? Sure. Look at the Groypers with Pepe the Frog in present times.
That phrase hasn't ~~always~~ been wielded by fascists, however, and it seems like the larger Ukrainian population have taken back this phrase from the fascists.
I think the .ml mod definitely had too heavy a hand with the ban here.

They clearly live rent-free in your head.

Lemmy-verse experience

Is there a better term to describe Lemmy + Piefed + Mbin + Mastodon + whatever else is connected to them? I don’t think it’s the full Fediverse since I don’t see Threads users, for example. I could just be confused. In any case, since the .ml admins are the Lemmy devs, that experience will only change so much for those users, so it might be better to use a different term to draw users and instances away from that software and onto alternatives.

I've switched to the neutral term "Threadiverse" as that seems applicable to all "Reddit style forums and link aggregators" for most things
I use Lemmy-verse here because the next biggest, PieFed, already has the entire Triad as part of their default blocks in the new instance setup flow (which btw Tankies hate PieFed and have declared it to be "anti-communist software trying to push out Lemmy" lmao)
- Why not fediverse? I'd argue that Threadiverse is far from a neutral term; it implicitly ascribes ownership of all these spaces to Meta.
Minor detail that isn't relevant to the topic, kbin doesn't work anymore but Mbin exists as a branch thanks to kbin being open sourced.
- Thanks, I’ve corrected my comment. I can’t keep up with all of this stuff and the back end side of things gets lost on me
- Then you've got my instance that's running mbin but still calls itself kbin.earth. Go figure.
Threads is antithetical to everything the fediverse stands for, so you can still use the term because it doesn't get to claim the term.
isnt THREADS controlled by META, aka facebook, instagram. they are more likely to push right wing content than not.

funny, everone here talking about "tankies" whatever this is, but not about the fascist origin and tradition of the slogan.

Origin is irrelevant, the reality of how it's used today is what matters. Language evolves and slogans are just language.
- if this were true, that would mean that the nowadays Ukrainian nationalists didn't have enough phantasy to come up with something original.
  but the argument is bollocks. it's not only untrue, it's ignorant and dangerous.
What are the fascist origins? From what I have read, it was first used by Taras Shevchenko, a poet who promoted Ukrainian independence from tsarist Russia and was described as "the founder of the revolutionary democratic trend in the history of Ukrainian social thought" and a utopian socialist. He didn't seem fascist in the slightest. Then it was popularised by various nationalists in the Ukrainian War of Independence who established a short-lived parliamentary republic. That's not fascist either.
- you're leaving out the part where thousands of Jews and Poles were massacred under that slogan.

Who knew. Vatnik garglers consider anything that is in opposition to Russia and russkiy mir is a nazi /s

It’s wild to me that we’re on the brink of a global collapse into fascism and y’all are trying to kick out the group of people who are historically the most effective at fighting fascists. Communists by far killed the most Nazis in WW2.

Also, aren’t you guys the ones who love supporting the lesser evil? Don’t you think you should hold your nose and ally with anyone who wants to fight fascists?

Tankies love to conflate their authoritarian brand of communism as the only communism or the only "true left"
But you can absolutely be a communist without simping for authoritarian governments.
Substituting a right-wing authoritarian system for a "left-wing" authoritarian system isnt going to solve anything
That board is literally full of Russian psyop, they aren't real communists or Marxists lol
The fascist of my fascist is my fascist?