Even if you disagree with them, Trotskyists are not tankies, simple Marxists aren’t tankies, leftists curious and exploring different theories aren’t tankies, and ffs anarchists like myself are not tankies.
I feel like “tankie” indicated a very specific worldview at one time, but it’s been used lately a lot to mean things like “doesn’t agree with nations supporting oppression and inequity up to and including genocide” – which is drastically at odds with how I’ve seen the term used in the past, no?
I’ve only ever seen it applied by liberals to actual tankies who wish Stalin were in charge and think it’d be great if Putin defeated the US. I’ve seen conservatives and those on the hard-right use the term to paint anyone to the left of Reagan. Never once have I ever seen anyone use the term “tankie” based on someone’s support for Palestine.
You’d see it more if you browsed communities on .world. I’ve even seen it here on the instance I’m on, and I can think of some specific users who’ve been called as such.
I’ve received reports and DMs calling me one for things I’ve posted here.
I’m happy to hear the communities you frequent don’t seem to have this problem.
Well you’re also a Russian troll for not blindly praising Biden /s (that was a funny accusation yesterday)
Luckily I don’t see this stuff much except in this community, I generally stick to blahaj and a select few less popular communities.
I should really start browsing only local and subscribed communities instead of all lol
Why is there a red-scare on Lemmy? I’m admittedly a bit of a suspicious person, but the concern about .ml and the suggestion to defederate seems manufactured. I struggle to believe a bunch of “liberals” on .world are so butthurt by the meanies on .ml that they need to censor them completely. It just seems astroturfed.
Ive personally noticed a really big influx of liberals and liberal bullshit on my feed this past like month or so, and it does seem centered around .world. personally my guess is they someome got an influx of users and theyre all scared of “the radical left” when they discovered .ml
I’ve most recently seen a .ml praising the Taliban in an lgbtq+ community. They’re not good people (or their instance draws, tolerates, and encourages those kinds of people). I don’t really want that sort of crap spilling into other instances. Alas, programming.dev has not defederated from them. When instances do defederate from them, it’s not censorship, it’s just not pulling data from their communities or users. Users are welcome to make an account on .ml if they want to see the things on there. Do you understand the difference? If not, I can explain it a little more with some better examples if you let me know the sticking points.
I get what you’re saying, and I’ve personally experienced some of what you’re talking about regarding. ml, but I just want to add that it is a large instance, and I’d not assume that everyone on .ml is bad. I feel the same about the rampant liberalism on .world, but like .ml there are a lot of users who join just because it’s a large popular instance without investigating further, so I try to remind myself that it’s just a handful of users causing most of the problems. The majority of users on .ml and .world are probably just fine.
I’ve most recently seen a .ml praising the Taliban in an lgbtq+ community.
Do you have a link to that?
https://lemmy.ml/comment/11454789
That might not work, here’s the thread: https://lemmy.zip/post/16774498
Here’s the comment:
Taliban is a very admirable group in their fight against a foreing invader. If you want people there to have a mentality that no longer condems individuals for their sexuality, they need to develop economically first. I think its naive to belive that an agricultural country set back in development many years by a foreing invasion will have any kind of progressive mindset. And no ecomic development will occur under invasion and war. So if theres any chance for a progressive mindset to come for the people there in the future, its path starts with the fight taliban did, even if they are against it themselves.
I mod the comm and it has been removed now o7
I thought I had reported it when first encountered, but I’m still using the eternity client, so maybe it didn’t work or something, but thank you!
Thank you. While I get their point, saying “Taliban is a very admirable group” is definitely taking it too far, especially in that context. Reported it fwiw.
I mod that comm and it has been removed o7, thanks for reporting it
Do you understand the difference?
Yes, but you don’t. You’re promoting cutting off an entire group of viewpoints all on the flimsy justification that there are some shitty people and trolls on .ml (just block the bad users on your own ffs).
Defederating will create echo chambers across the fediverse where dissenting voices aren’t heard by people who really need to consider a contrary opinion. That’s censorship. Sure technically each individual user could go make a new account wherever they please, but that’s an extra step and it’s easier to police any dissent that trickles in. Don’t tell me that’s not censorship, I’m not stupid.
It’s nice the fediverse doesn’t have centralized control, (otherwise the tankies that built it would have banned everyone), but this place will ultimately produce nothing useful for society since it’s devolving into isolated echochambers where people go to get intellectually jerked off when they feel sorry for themselves.
First, the “some shitty people” thing comes off the same as “not all men” to me. It’s enough that it’s noticeable.
Next, censorship:
It’s not censorship. (And being wrong isn’t the same thing as being stupid.) You can shout all you want, but people don’t have to listen to you or amplify your message.
Other people’s servers, communities, etc., aren’t automatically yours to do with whatever you want. You’re a guest of their hardware, knowledge, and labor. Their instance might serve a purpose that’s not providing you with a platform to give people an opinion “they really need to hear” or producing something of value to society, whatever that means. You don’t get to decide that. And that’s the beauty of federation.
Anyway, I’m done with this so I’m going to block an individual user as you suggested, so take the time you would have used to write a response and really think about what I’ve said. Take some time to develop some empathy and be able to see things from viewpoints that aren’t your own (maybe you’re the one in an echo chamber that needs to consider new opinions). Or don’t, I’m not your mother.
You have the ability to block an instance yourself, and you’ll personally not see comments or content made by people from that instance. It’s a sad thing to do, I wouldn’t do it myself, but you don’t have to remove that entire instance for everyone simply because you keep running into shit you don’t like yourself.
Other people’s servers, communities, etc., aren’t automatically yours to do with whatever you want. You’re a guest of their hardware, knowledge, and labor. Their instance might serve a purpose that’s not providing you with a platform to give people an opinion “they really need to hear” or producing something of value to society, whatever that means. You don’t get to decide that. And that’s the beauty of federation.
I could not agree more. People who abuse the good-will and hospitality of another instance should be banned/
deleted by creator
I’ve seen the most trolls, fascists, and even some Nazis (although I think they were really just trolls) come out of .world. Should we defederate from them too? If not, what’s the difference?
If their moderation can’t keep up with it and they become a Nazi bar, then yeah. For me, I have consistent experiences with .ml users in that the vocal ones support oppression of minorities up to and including atrocities, deny historical atrocities in a manner similar to antivaxers/flat earthers/etc, and generally smell like a creepy cult. If those are the users getting noticed, those are the representatives. If their mods condone that, then I don’t think the problem is solvable on a per user level.
I have a .world exclusive alt for when I feel like swimming through a sea of memes and I’ve seen this tankie drama building since the initial Reddit diaspora. I think it has come to a head thanks to an increasing number of very vocal, very prolific users frequently posting about it.
They’re often upset, sometimes legitimately because a mod was being heavy handed with comment removal, sometimes because they were being an asshole and received a ban. They can’t just accept it and move on. No, they must have revenge! Because access to content was removed, everyone must defederate from whichever instance… thereby removing access to all the content themselves. Much of it doesn’t make sense. A hefty dallop of idealogical purity á la Exiting the Vampire Castle is in there too.
Now both the aggrieved and vicariously aggrieved are using “tankie” to describe anyone they don’t like, especially actual leftists whose ideas challenge their center to center-right worldviews. With a rallying cry to get behind, a poorly defined common enemy, and a lot of idiotic theatrics, their movement is gaining some traction. I don’t even know if it’s the majority of .world users, but it’s enough where browsing by all has resulted in my feed getting shitted up with lib drama.
tbh i don’t think lemmy is big and relevant enough to have targeted astroturfing campaigns like this.
a bad actor could be watching, but i doubt it would be worth it to run interference just yet.
Removed by mod
I actually got banned from a comm on here just yesterday for pointing out that one of the people who was posting a load of things saying “FUCK TANKIES” had repeatedly admitted that they were a fascist and shouldn’t be trusted. Like I’m a trot, I have no love for stalinists obviously but I think it should be pretty obvious to people at this point that the people constantly yelling about tankies are just using it as an excuse to amputate the entire far left out of political discussions.
receipts
The image I posted: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/d7110acb-ec24-4f8b-9454-955956eb2548.png
The mod who removed it:
I saw that community hit trending, but I didn’t know you got banned, damn. That community is sus – doesn’t really appear to be about leaving ML. I browse by all > new a lot, and I’ve seen a number of similar anti-“tankie” communities pop up all at once on several instances. I half think maybe a few people got upset by a recent thread on [email protected] asking people if they’re tankies.
If you don’t mind me asking, what app are you using that lets you do a keyword search like that? I use Jerboa, but I don’t think it has that function.
I literally just use the web browser bcs I’m spiritually a boomer despite physically being a zoomer
Well looks like the boomer is me because I just learned that it is possible to do a keyword search like that for one user. Thank you kindly!
You banned me, a gay man from lgbtq_plus with no explanation.
The way I’ve heard “tankie” defined is blind defense of anyone waving a red flag, no matter what they do. I do think there might be a very limited use-case for that because you do occasionally get like edgy teens like that, but I’d argue that it doesn’t apply even to all - or even most - Marxist-Leninists.
If the USSR was so perfect, then why did it collapse? How is it possible to reconcile blind defense of Stalin with blind defense of Kruschev, who hated Stalin? Or Deng who criticized Mao, or the whole Sino-Soviet split, and so on. Even if you tried to, you couldn’t really blindly defend everyone calling themselves a communist because there have been too many disagreements and failures.
It would be pretty easy to trip someone up if they were really just blindly defending anyone who calls themselves a communist, but the people accusing people of being tankies never do. If anything, they seem to strongly resist any sort of nuanced discussion of the successes and failures of self-described socialist projects. I’m sure there’s someone out there who would call you a tankie if for example you acknowledged that Cuba’s literacy program was successful and a good thing, regardless of anything else you think about Cuba. It really seems like it’s less about “blindly defending,” and more about “not blindly condemning.”
There are almost certainly bad actors (paid trolls) infiltrating leftist spaces, both as extremists and “concerned centrists” attempting to divide, confuse, and disrupt any communities that are developing. I believe one of the big goals is to encourage violence and extremism. They had a lot of success with this among young men and teens, pushing fascist ideology. Now they are trying the same on the left. If not that, then division and confusion will also be satisfactory.
As for “liberals”, give me a break. There is no liberal invasion. Again it’s trolls. Don’t fall for it.
Don’t be paranoid, just be aware.
Hmmm I’ve looked at a lot of liberals’ comment histories in the fediverse, and they seem like they’re being genuine. This doesn’t sound right. I think it’s very dangerous to assume everyone is a troll.
As much as I dislike the liberal shit, I’m not fond of dehumanizing people by assuming they’re all bots, shills, and trolls. I think it’s misconceptions like that which cause the really harmful division.
Why would “liberals” even be here? Are there even any liberals left under the age of 40? What is with this liberal scare stuff? I’m just not seeing it.
Edit: changed over to under.
Where is “here” in your comment? If it’s Lemmy in general, lemmy.world is packed with liberals thanks to the earlier Reddit diaspora. Now they’re interacting with actual leftists and some are losing their shit over it. I believe that’s what prompted the post.
Ah ok, I use beehaw.org and even though I always switch to “all” posts, I’m probably not seeing all of the relevant discussions. That and lemmy.world is defederated, even so I do lurk on .world. Now I kinda want to see these freakout posts.
Oh boy, then do I have something for you! One of the more prolific tankie decriers on .world goes by PugJesus. If you check their profile, you’ll be able to find a ton of it.
I wanted to avoid dropping names, but that one user is solely responsible for a big part of the problem on that instance. If you ask them, they’ll claim to be leftist, but they constantly lash out at the left, and every political opinion they espouse is very centrist/liberal
They’ve straight up called me a fascist because I said I disagree with the incarceration and deportation of Latin-American immigrants, no matter how popular the idea is that we should persecute them. I don’t bother to comment much on .world anymore because every thread is a cesspit of toxicity.
PJ is one of those liberals who’ll say they support leftist policy personally but it’s just not popular among ‘most people’ so we shouldn’t act on them.
…today I learned that apparently supporting basic human rights for immigrants is fascism.
Whatever that person is smoking, I want some of it…
And yeah, I try to keep an open mind but it feels like .world tends to lean pretty toxic lately…
They’re wild. I’ve observed them many times and even talked with them a few. I believe their stance for any given discussion is whatever they feel makes them appear right to the most people at the time.
I honestly think they just try to get a rise out of people so they can argue and gain approval from others like them.
There are a lot of liberals of every age, unfortunately. It’s a widely popular worldview that is killing us all.
Why would “liberals” even be here?
I ask myself this every time I ban one lol. Even though it’s expressly against the rules, they still come here on a daily basis. They seem to have an innate need to dominate the conversation. This tracks with their centrism, allyship of political convenience/popularity, and defense of capitalism, coupled with their desire to be seen as the “good” and “wise” voices in the room, in spite of all the atrocities they support.
I get what you’re saying but Lenin & Trotsky(and those who come after) didn’t exactly have ‘clean hands’ and if MLs/trotskyist acknowledge this it begs the question what reforms to their ideology do they think would prevent these horrors?
On that note, as an anarchist I don’t have the answers to some of the potential pitfalls of abolishing states, and I think it’s a mistake to demand instant answers to these questions. An important lesson I’ve learned is it’s ok and good to admit we don’t have answers to everything, while still being able to recognize the harm and inequity inherent to market capitalism.
There are Trotskyists in this community, and perhaps someday they’ll make a post, but I’m not going to demand it from them since this is sorta supposed to be a respite from such things.
I always say that capitalism is treated as a default, and its failings as “facts of life”. Judging socialism or anarchism by their few short, sabotaged instances without giving people a few hundred years to refine i the systems isn’t a fair comparison.
Very well said!
Fair
As an ML, I believe that the best course of action is defined by material conditions, such that there is no universal set of policies that is best for every country. Countries like the USSR and the PRC came into being with extreme poverty, little industry, and surrounded by enemies, and some of the measures that they took were necessary for their survival and development, and would not be necessary for other countries with different conditions. But other measures weren’t necessary at all.
Both countries eventually transitioned from a more militant leader to a calmer, more civilian government. In both cases, it would’ve been better if it happened faster. But there are also plenty of governments around the world that did not take such strict measures to protect themselves and were defeated as a result, often with devastating consequences, and navigating that is a challenging question for everyone, not just for MLs.
There are plenty of countries that did not take strict measures to ensure their security and fell to CIA coups, sometimes resulting in fascists coming to power and committing mass slaughter while securing their power for decades. Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran, for instance, was a true believer in democratic ideals, and the result was that he did nothing as the CIA infiltrated the country and ousted him, which led to decades of the shah’s secret police hunting down and exterminating the Iranian left, which led to the situation there now.
So, it’s tough to say. On the whole, I believe that the revolutions in Russia and China did more good than harm. But the skillset you use to win and secure a revolution is not the skillset you need to manage a country during peacetime, and which of those is more important at a given time is driven by external factors.
I have genuinely only seen tankie used by anarchists and libertarian socialists generally. Didn’t even know that liberals knew of the term. :/
Thanks to .world, a lot of liberals here now know it. The issue is many are using it like the American right uses woke: anything or anyone they don’t like, generally because their political or social commentary challenges their assumptions and makes them uncomfortable.
That sucks. I’ll have to watch my usage of this term, or at least use it in circumstances where it’s clear that it’s not meant to critique leftism. Surely there’s gotta be some new term now, though? The term is quite old at this point, and comes from a very specific situation where it was clearly one authoritarian side, which was criticized from the left using the term tankie. I think someone ought to have come up with an apt term to describe authoritarian “”“communists”“” today.
One thing I’ve seen used for CPGB-ML (an ML party so notable for their transphobia that JK Rowling has repeatedly endorsed them and their members and even the MLs in Britain largely range from looking down on to openly hating them) are the phrases tailism and right deviationism being applied to them
As a general trend in Britain the term tankie (at least in my experience) is used less by the far left because it originated here and has had more time to be misused to the point that most of us remember stuff like Jeremy Corbyn being called a “tankie trot” by Boris Johnson and stuff like that
tankie is just a blanket term to define ‘leftist i dislike’ now.
and its usually accompanied with a lot of strawmen like we are the most evil thing to ever walk the earth for an unspecified reason, and how we are fighting for things we aren’t.
this very instance has a lot of it, so do a few more.
