On stuff outside of lemmygrad, we are receiving a lot of hate, especially by those who just moved from Reddit. Guess they lost their hidden privilege at Reddit as their rhetoric used to be almost universal over there, while genzedong and our other subs get censored and banned. And now, on lemmy, their stuff isn’t universal, as we are more prevalent here. Seems like they really want that hidden privilege back
I came across this comment today, and it really makes me wonder how people just dismiss intellectual curiosity outright.
yes!!! they’re everywhere and anytime I see someone bring it up someone comments some shit about having an open mind… uhhh no???
Unlike the side many of them seem to blindly and militantly defend, the side they rage against is not asking for blind adherence to beliefs. You have to open yourself up to questioning your beliefs; there is no value in a closed mind.
Yeah they have the audacity to invade our space and then complain, and when we try to tell them to have an open mind, they respond with “tankes”.
I don’t really consider myself a liberal or a communist. Maybe some mixture of both? I have my own ideals that probably align mostly with eastern philosophy, and maybe some more “esoteric” practices. Id like to think im well read, for being a mostly uneducated person, and I’m very accepting of just about everyone outside of violence or blind hatred, but I have never heard the term “tankie” until reddit. Is it a reference to Tiannemen Sq or something? Just curious as I like to know as much as I can. Thanks.
Also, as someone who’s coming from reddit as of yesterday, it’s kinda cool seeing more than one political ideal, as I really don’t think there is a “perfect” system. Humans are flawed in their very nature, and tbh, we’re a little late to “get it right”.
Is it a reference to Tiannemen Sq or something? Just curious as I like to know as much as I can. Thanks.
No, it’s a reference to Khrushchev sending tanks into Hungary during the 1956 revolt. Leftist supporters of this policy within Western nations were referred to as “Tankies” since then the term came to generally just refer to Marxist-Leninists. That is until more recently when Tankie has come to mean just any leftist a person disagrees with.
If you’re interested in leftist theory then go to Marxists.org, it has plenty of free literature. I suggest starting with the communist manifesto just to get a general idea of the principles of communism before delving deeper into Marx and Engel’s work. (And maybe sprinkle in some Lenin too cause he’s sassy and a great read.)
That is until more recently when Tankie has come to mean just any leftist a person disagrees with.
While there are undoubtedly people that use the term like that, I think there is a general understanding that it refers to people that can excuse or support authoritarian or oppressive actions
But the terminology ‘authoritarian and oppressive’ doesn’t really make sense in leftist circles where all states are understood to be just that by definition. I mean, that’s why people are socialists. Tankie is lib terminology referencing anything that undermines liberal democracy. It only makes sense when coming from anarchists.
You’ve never had the pleasure of interacting with someone that can produce endless excuses for the USSR or PRC?
Yes, but that doesn’t make them more authoritarian or oppressive because no matter what every state is using what it deems the most effective path to enforcing its will and if that means violence it will always resort to violence. It makes them bad communists.
It’s not a matter of oppression or no oppression but a matter of oppressing the right people. If the USSR and PRC were perfect they would be a contradiction to their own purpose, no?
Look amigo, I get there is a lot of depth to be had in a discussion like this, but I’m just explaining what people generally mean when they say tankie.
I would agree they are bad Communists, but unfortunately they are extremely visible and influence how non-Leftists see Communists, which is why many Leftists are quick and eager to disavow any connection with them.
They are bad because they oppress the privileged, I assume. The privileged do not need communism. Leave communism to the unprivileged people.
Found the lib
Sure 🙄
Lemmy.ml banned my account there lol. Why are they so concerned with a little bullying of liberals?
Lemmy is tone policed… apparently except when someone is calling us “red fash”, that’s not bannable.
really makes you wonder about the proclivities of the devs tbh
You gotta get the normies on the network for the network effect to take off!
i hate to say it, but i don’t want the network effect taking off. in fact, that’s a sign it’s time to leave. is it possible to ever just have a smallish community where real discussion and ideas can flourish without the rest of the US dragging everything down to the lowest common denominator?
I guess you have to ask yourself, are we spreading ideas and looking to chip away at the predominant hegemony, or do we want to self isolate?
One of the nice things about lemmy.ml is that it starts from a far left perspective and as a result of reddits own unmaking, places normies in a position of no longer being the predominant opinion in the room.
This has two outcomes from what I can guess:
- Normies show up in droves, and their perspectives shift as a result of having to defend their point of view for once.
- Normies show up, but leave because they can’t handle not being able to call forth the shibaliths they’re so accustom to, and having their points of view challenged on equal grounds.
Or normies show up and take over?
You think they’re going to take over lemmygrad, or hexbear? The thing about federation is that you can avoid the outcome you’re talking about by only federating with communities that share our values.
Isn’t that what the entire federation point is? We can keep this community and keep it insular.
To expect that lemmy as a whole can remotely be the same as lemmygrad is delusional and indicative of being way too online. If anything having lemmy as a whole being more moderate and broader based is a propagandistic tool (not that it even matters that much, online is fake, join a party).
Gramscian hegemonic analysis with regards to the superstructural “war” is silly as fuck and a huge waste of time. We will never have hegemony offline or online under capitalism, the smart response is to adapt, propagate our ideas where it makes sense, and act strategically.
Honestly for me online is mostly a venting space, I see literally zero value over debating libs in that area. Pushing a counter narrative has some use yes, but even then that impact is minimal, and conclusive to at best the worst recruits you can possibly imagine.
edit: it’s also a dogshit habit when it comes to mass work where you have to interact with countless ideologically backwards elements in the organized working class. You will never find purity. Going full guns blazing on libs is a time and place and contextual situation and you need to learn how to not flip the fuck out over backwards and even reactionary ideas in those settings, because doing that will lead you to never be able to stamp them out amongst the masses.
Just you wait until US newscorps start advocating to ban the entirety of lemmy and its source code from the USA.
If Imperial America suffers a crisis even severer than the one in the summer of 2020, that would become a serious possibility.
obviously the Chinese are making us all think for ourselves and talk amongst ourselves… there could be no other answer
“China is a censorship dictatorship and we should ban all things that come from there to protect our free speech.” liberals probably
The regularity in which I have this exact conversation with my local friends group is exhausting. Admittedly, its only one out of the few, but they are by far the loudest. The same nonsense about “changes to movies” because they want to also be released in China. “Can’t say anything because CHINA has MONEY and the entertainment corporations want their money!!”
probablyactually
dear comrades living and dead, please help give me the self control not to try arguing with all the “Lemmy is anti human rights” takes polluting the fediverse rn 🙏
outrage liberals are the worst
I deeply care about human rights
Must be one of the most nebulous and abstract things you can stand for. What rights? The right to die on the street? The right to monopoly?
The right to be forced to work to earn back the right to exist
The right to be airstriked by NATO peacekeepers, duh
That post on !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone got me fked up because one of the comments there was like “authoritarian communism” is an oxymoron actually 🤓 and another was like “Marxism is not materialism” and it had double digit upvotes.
Like jesus WHAT THE FUXK are you on about. Read Marx and Engels. Read Lenin.
It’s like arguing with toddlers.
Read Marx and Engels. Read Lenin.
Marx is a tankie, Engels is a tankie, Lenin is a tankie.
You lost them at asking them to read. They do not read.
This is false. They can definitely read… Twitter and reddit and anything else pumped out by the feds that comes in short quips with no real background information or data backing it up.
Stalin dunks on these types in Anarchism or Socialism it’s funny af, some say Marxism bad bc it’s materialism, some say it’s bad because it’s not materialism, some say it’s bad because they don’t understand the what type of materialism it is, and don’t even get him started on what Nobati and Sh. G. thinks of Dialectics😪
Everyone click on the All button and start participating in federation.
Worst thing that can happen is the liberals complain.
But if you’re going to be participating on lemmy.ml please don’t make the admins’ job harder, respect the instance rules. They’re already working overtime to handle the influx of new users across the software.
If you’re going to throw around “liberals” as some sort of derogatory “us vs them” term then you should probably think twice before clicking all.
There are two sides to any coin. Check yourself before you shit on other people, to make sure you’re not just proving yourself to be at least as bad as them.
liberals is a derogatory term lol
I wonder if it’s struck them yet that, as their neoliberal platform fails, other platforms built on fundamentally better ideas and infrastructure are rising up. I wonder if this challenges their preconceived notions at all? Nah, it’s just a bunch of tankies.
It is definitely inducing cognitive dissonance. The developers are simply are communists trying to collectivize social media, and that will live in their heads rent free as long as they stick around.
Man… I haven’t been on reddit in quite a while but I don’t remember it being such a shitlibfest. It’s really bad and it pretty well overran lemmy.ml immediately.
Reddit tends to ban commies. It’s like a mini red scare: with the left removed, the right thrives.
It puts me in an odd spot because I care amd believe in Lemmy as a project and I want it to grow, but on the other hand it was kinda nice to not be called a fascist… because im a communist… because that somehow makes me the antithesis of communism
I think there will be an adjustment period, where the Reddit habits will continue to be exhibited. Most redditors have been heavily propagandized for years. Those that stick around and don’t end up in defederated instances will eventually grow more and more deprogrammed.
There’s currently a big push on reddit to keep the protesting communities away from a lemmy migration (downvotes, censored comments, highly upvtoed suggestions towards irrelevant alternatives that are owned by corporations and not part of the Fediverse). I suspect that the massive Western psyops mechanism is afraid to lose one of their most effective echo-chambers.
The only concern I have is that lemmy.ml is already leaning towards tone policing, which makes it somewhat susceptible to be taken over by the shitlibs and fascists.
How are they leaning towards tone policing?
I think we need to some easier ground for people to land and figure out an alternative to propaganda exists. That’s the role of main lemmy.ml, in my opinion, being a landing pad. I think it would be sensible to remind people that the place for talk between tankies is here, not there. And arguably, some general communities here should be more accessible to the “general” public than others.
People that give themselves the work to come check us out need to be happy to see sensible people, and sensible discussions, even though we know and are angry at seeing the same pattern and problem everywhere. There’s a path, a funnel to understanding that. And everyone is in their own personal journey. Our role is to feed them and give them directions.
We didn’t get here because someone though us. We got here because someone fed our curiosity. And there’s different food for different stages of curiosity.
How are they leaning towards tone policing?
The rules lean towards “civility” over the actual content of what is said, which left it vulnerable to “just asking questions” types. It’s being revised after a spat with a TERF who took advantage of those rules.
Lemmy.ml mods/admins tend to remove heated discussions. That by itself is not necessarily bad, but it has been taken advantage of by various alt-right characters who were seeking to troll or propagandize under the guise of “asking questions in a civil manner”, then reported anyone who responded to them in an even slightly offensive manner. That will certainly be happening again with the massive migration from reddit.
As for the rest of it. I completely agree, and that was my original point: Be patient and engage the new arrivals. At the very least, it’ll help them grow out of the behaviours reddit has taught them.
The really good news is that all the communities on lemmy.ml have been created long before radlibs showed up, and are administered by sane people.
Wait are y’all tankies wut
