Source https://sh.itjust.works/comment/21042568
Modlog https://p.programming.dev/modlog?user=143877
Join the lemmy.ml boycott today and help foster a better Lemmy-verse! No more posts, comments (except to counter their propaganda ofc!) or upvotes on any comms on the Lemmy.ml instance!
And consider donating to individual instances instead.
Check the megathread for more!
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 is a funny story about the real currency of power that involves Stalin. The story goes that Stalin and his party officials came upon a beggerwoman on the side of the road. She asked them if they could spare some money. In a rare moment of generosity from Stalin he went for his wallet, only to find it empty. He asked the officials if they had any money, but all of their purses sounded empty.
Those in power do not need money, as everything they ever want will be given to them.
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
sorry you have to experience that
It’s interesting how almost all Tankies come from the US
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”
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
My first interactions on lemmy here were with a large pod of tankies on memes of all places.
It was not clear to me they were anything but super politically correct Americans so I argued with them for like a hundred different replies before one of them told me, then they kept brigading me and following me on to other posts and such.
Then my phone started acting wonky and I got afraid I was getting hacked by them so I made a new account, I do not know if they can find you from Lemmy but I still have both.
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.
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.
We’ve been noticing the same. your thoughts?
Pretty sure it’s just an attempt to normalize their talking points by worming them into discussions. Spreading to different instances is a reaction to grad and hex being largely defederated and ml names being a huge red flag for a bunch of people. I think the reality is that even if everyone defederates every tankie instance, they’ll keep creeping in through different instances. I don’t see a solution beyond simply keeping an eye out and tagging/moderating individuals as they pop up.
and what if they’re okay with those users and instances?
Who’s they? The broader fediverse or mods or both? I guess in either case the thing to do would be tag the users, downvote, and call out their bad talking points. Hopefully enough people pile on to show that we won’t swallow their bullshit.
It’s tough when they’re clever about it. It took me months to realize what cowbee was doing. Luckily most of them aren’t that clever.
Dbzer0’s instance, community members and admins
Hey dessalines, care to chime in on why you are the way you are?
alot of tankies probably got banned from reddit for the same reason they are getting blocked/defederated here. plus we get conservatives too trickling from time to time.
I’ve honestly never seen a conservative on Lemmy. But then again I don’t tend to browse much of the fediverse as it’s all yankslop
Tankies never venture into this community, despite this being a place where they can freely discuss their viewpoints. It’s because they know their positions don’t hold any weight, and they’re afraid of being scrutinised.
Funnily enough, for all of the prominent Tankie talk about not wanting to be an echo chamber and welcoming debate, .ml actually has this comm instance-blocked LMAO
Yeah. They’re as bad as MAGA with the snowflake hypocrisy.
i call them mirror image of conservatives. inverted image of conservatives.
Idk where here is referring, but memes is all tankies.
here this community
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.
What’s the “extreme left”? Anarchists? Why would they support authoritarianism?
Indeed as an Anarchist, tankies and maga conservatives are the mirror of each other, it’s just who holds the hammer and gun that differs.
You won’t see a tankie doing a nazi salute, but you will find them spouting the same antisemitism
Anti-Semitism as a phrase is broken, maybe you should find a new word to use that isn’t poisoned. Did you know that the Arab peoples are semitic?
what do you mean broken? what do you propose instead?
Idk what to use instead but the Nazis busy accusing everybody opposing the Nazi shit in the Middle East right now of being anti-Semitic has ruined that phrase.
Ie, Israel’s others, forced into ghettos Israel controls where they control everything coming in and out, impoverishing the populations for decades, have after a ghetto Uprising embarked on a final solution, first for Gaza later for the ghettos in the West Bank.
Anyone calling this for what it is is accused of anti-semitism. And every organization has been bullied into accepting it as a valid criticism, from social media companies to political organizations to universities. So I don’t know what a replacement phrase should be, but that phrase I believe is broken.
I guess he refers to the fact that the US/UK uses it to label human rights activism as terrorism.
Kind of likewise; coming from Reddit the political weirdos were American conservative types, “Jesus needs more guns to shoot the gays and the poor and the blacks” sort of folks. The idea of fervent fucking Soviets on the English speaking internet was new and instantly boring.
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.
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.
It’s not just Russian troll farms now. Russia, China and Iran have combined their troll farms, and it’s just steamrolling through social media.
putin is funding the troll farms personally, i think it will be the last to collapse before russia does unfortunately.
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 personally know a born-and-raised Chinese person who’s loyal to the regime. Not even he denies the Uyghur genocide. He just admits that he thinks china should be an ethnostate. I think about that every time I see some keyboard warrier say the genocide is western propaganda.
I’ve found it very curious how Tankies will apply a coat of liberal paint to authoritarian states like China, Iran and Russia. They don’t realise that diversity and the freedom of self-expression they so love are all largely suppressed in these states.
very much a chickens for KFC scenario.
asians are pretty hardcore conservatives, at least for the older generation. vietnam, china,etc. thats why you seem them “rallying” with right/white supremacists quite often, also older millennials(35+) tend to gear towards conservatism more than progressivism/left leaning ideology. Or at the most they support some left leaning, but does not like things gay marriage,weed,drugs,etc. i know people that are this way. also notice asians that have at least some religious upbringing, either christianity or buddhism(funny enough) and left the religion partially, but became more right wing when trump came around. i knew someone early in college that was a vietnamese immigrant, he was very PRO-BUSH,war. and yes i am asians.
you’re vietnamese or?
I’ve seen them saying it was fine because the students wanted to be killed. Insane
Yeah, just bizarre.
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.
can you link that comment? did ya get banned?
That’s all they do, is engage in name-calling. Nothing actually productive. They’re just a bunch of name-callers.
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.
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.
Well I’m no historian. I didn’t have that number. My point is that I don’t think about Stalin that much, and, without grounding, posting about how minimalist Stalin was sounds like a decently effective way to change how I view him.
It sounds like you’ve got a much more detailed understanding of Stalin than I do.
it’s very much a us-centrism position that most people from the US, meaning tankies, see Stalin. They don’t care for the Holodomor, most have never heard of it.
Anyone my age range or older would have no excuse for not knowing what kind of monster Stalin was. Anyone who has spoken to survivors who escaped his regime would never have the fucking audacity.
By comparison, Pol Pot was responsible for the killing fields in Cambodia. His murder spree is just a rounding error in Stalin’s body of work.
What about liberal estimates?
Triple that.
Isn’t that like ten holocausts?
and how many of those were invading nazis?
Stop trying to put lipstick on a pig.
“Don’t believe the victims!”
Isn’t the part of a winning charm offensive.
Any quibbling you attempt in an effort to massage the numbers just dies, when you consider that the numbers you want to fiddle with are in the fucking millions.
My point is if they have to pad the stat with millions of dead nazis, what else are they willing to lie about?
i heard it on reddit first surprisingly enough. i always suspect it means extreme belief of whatever sub they were in.
Modern tankies are likely a spook psyop… Both foreign and domestic. They serve a useful purpose for both sides within the online eco systems
they’re the result of a psyop instead of directly being one.
tankies seems to boost conservatism idelogy more than they do for the “left”. because they have the same messaging and values.
well yeah they want to conserve authoritarianism
Based on how fucking bad they are at peddling their shit, my alternate theory is that they’ve been funded by some western democracy foundation, with the brief of making anything that is Warsaw Pact scented as unpalatable as humanly possible.
Like PETA working overtime to get people to hate Vegans.
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.
If they don’t have their name written on it, just use the estates and other expensive things all their life it’s technically not theirs. This is the tankie argument
“The people’s presidential ballroom”. Funny how well aligned out current capitalist leaders and the so-called communists can be.
Some people go as far to say that US is literally repeating USSR arc in some ways…
For example COVID is Chernobyl as it exposed that we are essentially ruled by nepo imbeciles. And people with any degree of independent thinking and competence get side lined.
Food prices and over all stagnation of the working people. Young people who have zero faith in the regime.