I’m new as in this is my first day using lemmy. I don’t know anything about lemmy etiquette and don’t want to do anything bad
thanks and have an amazing day! also plz be kind :D
I’m new as in this is my first day using lemmy. I don’t know anything about lemmy etiquette and don’t want to do anything bad
thanks and have an amazing day! also plz be kind :D
I’m like OP from a few months ago. I joined ML because it was easy and sorta anonymous. What’s the story on ML? Who defederated? What am I missing?
It’s the devs’ test instance.
The devs are Marxist-Leninists. They’re the admins of the instance. Therefore the instance has nuanced-to-positive views on Actually Existing Socialist (AES) states, and allows for criticism of Democrats from the left.
It’s been defederated by instances whose admins aren’t wiling to critically examine their lifetime of capitalist programming and are accustomed to Reddit’s universal condemnation of AES states.
It’s the devs’ test instance.
The devs are tankies. They’re the admins of the instance. Therefore the instance is tankie-ish (but not as much as Lemmygrad).
It’s been defederated by instances whose admins (or users, if the instance is democratic enough) don’t want to federate constant tankie bullshit.
(Personally I’d also defederate .world, which tries to be so much like reddit that it’s like .ml but in the opposite direction, but that would mean defederating a major fraction of lemmy users, I suppose.)
EDIT: To clarify the “clarification” below, a tankie is a delusional fascist who in their delusion believes themself to be a communist (e.g., a stalinist), or, more often, a bot or other disinformation agent pretending to be one, be it to whitewash Russia or China (neither of which are communist, but both of which are ultraauthoritaran), to promote ultraauthoritarianism, to give communists a bad name, “for the lulz”, or any combination of the above.
For anyone reading this who might be scratching their head as to what “tankie” means, you can find descrriptions of its history a number of places, but for all intents and purposes here on the fediverse, it simply refers to the people who have the most education in history and socioeconomics. Since reality is in direct contradiction with most of the prevailing narratives pushed by the powerful beneficiaries of the dominant systems (the most obvious of these systems being capitalism), there will always be a contingent of true believers in the dominant narrative who are shocked to find that there are others who openly reject those narratives. The former will clutch their pearls, aghast that the propaganda they’ve believed all their lives is being questioned by these… these… muckrakers! And so a pejorative is used (hence the word “tankies”) to otherize and sequester the individuals best able to challenge those narratives, individuals whose presence tends to trigger the uncomfortable feeling of cognitive dissonance in those who aren’t yet ready or able to put their beliefs to honest questioning.
In short, if you have no problem with seeing and reading perspectives that might make you question your own perspective, then you should have no problem with the “tankies.” And as for those who would actively defederate from those vile tankie instances so as to avoid having to confront even the possibility that their own beliefs are riddled throughout with deep misconceptions, well that should tell you something about the priorities of those tankie-fearing communities.
Thank you friend. That is the most succinct explaination of ‘tankies’ I ever read.
Well, to be fair, you should add that this definition matches also crazies on hexbear or ml who will defend EVERYTHING done by AES or Russia or China, because since Europe and USA are bad, then surely not those are always good.
(Population of crazies is significantly smaller than 100%, but they tend to be remembered by the people throwing “tankies” at them).
No major instances block Lemmy.ml, by the way. Some users take issue with the pro-communist stance of Lemmy.ml, but that’s nothing new for communists to deal with.
Tankies aren’t pro-communism, though.
They’re pro-authoritarianism.
They just clumsily try to disguise it as being the same thing, or genuinely believe it to be the same thing, which is quite a bit tragic.
(For instance, they’ll claim Russia and China to be communist, when neither has been communist in a very long time and both are instead ultraauthoritaran late stage capitalist kleptoctacies.)
Show me someone claiming modern day Russia is communist. I usually do not actually see this.
“Tankie” is a strawman. It’s a pejorative for Marxists and anti-imperialists, filled with falsehoods and contradictions. The purpose of calling someone a “tankie” is to turn them into this strawman in the eyes of onlookers, it terminates the conversation. An example of this is you claiming so-called “tankies” think Russia is still a socialist country governed by a communist party, which is absurd. Russia does maintain strong ties to socialist countries like China, does oppose the western Empire, and does have rising socialist sentiment in the broader population, but absolutely isn’t socialist.
The PRC is socialist, though. Public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy, and the working classes are in control of the state. Huge state owned industries are the backbone of the economy, while mixed forms of ownership make up the small and medium firms. Socialism isn’t the absence of private property, even under Mao and the Gang of Four there were still large numbers of private firms.
As for what you call “authoritarianism,” what we communists support is the working class using state authority against capitalists. Authority should be used by the working classes. This confusion of yours is why you misunderstand China. The PRC is by no means “late stage capitalist,” rather it’s relatively early in socialist development:
All in all, I suggest you listen more to these so-called “tankies,” rather than letting your imagination run wild.