Many people on lemmy.ml deeply respect and admire authoritarian governments and organizations.
Iran, China, North Korea, Soviet Union…
The West has many flaws. But our flaws are nothing compared to these guys.
Iran hangs homosexuals. Iran shot 30,000 people in less than than 2 weeks. The Soviet Union had to build a fucking Iron wall to prevent people from escaping. The Soviets lied about the Chernobyl nuclear explosion. China censors the internet. China wants to eliminate Islam. North Korea is a totalitarian hellscape. Watching anime is a crime.
Why is lemmy.ml so fascinated with authoritarians?
Totally, we communists support republican policies like checks notes universal healthcare, free education, guaranteed housing, guaranteed employment, state pensions…
And then there’s .ml tankies that also support wars of conquest (if by Russia or probably if China, too), harsh censorship, wholesale slaughter of perceived enemies, etc.
The question wasn’t about communists. It was about the dipshit tankies on .ml.
Exactly. My issue with .ml users isn’t really their ideology on a surface level. It’s the way they’ve repeatedly behaved in their interactions with myself and others and the pride they hold in some pretty ignorant views.
“Tankie” is a pejorative for communist, I think you’re confused here. Communists don’t support “wars of conquest,” but they do support using force as necessary against fascists and capitalists, and censoring capitalist and fascist speech. Class analysis is core to communism, by reducing it to “groups we don’t like” you’re obscuring the class nature of communist theory in a way that makes it seem based on whims or genetics like fascism.
If this was the essence of what it is to be a .ml user then I’d be best buds with them. But the reality is in the overwhelming majority of interactions I’ve had with them, they’ve been rude, ignorant, and proud of it. I get the same vibes I get when dealing with a MAGAt. This has happened frequently enough for me to form a generalized opinion of its userbase.
I guess if they don’t want those labels, which apparently much of Lemmy is now bestowing upon them, then they need to change the way they behave.
I can’t say I’ve had the same experience as you, but looking at your removed comments in the modlog I think I can tell why.
I have seen you make this “correction” about 50 times.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tankie&t=fpas This is what the average person sees and defines as tankie. The first result which means it is the most viewed and read page any time someone searches that. You can disagree with that definition but you’re literally doing the Jordan Peterson of redefining a word to mean what you believe it should mean and muddying the waters for everyone else. I have never heard anyone besides people from ml describe tankie as “perjorative for communist.”
Your google search backs me up. I’m not redefining anything, it’s a pejorative for communists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
No.
“Authoritarian” communists represent the overwhelming majority of communists, as the communist critique of authority is about which class holds it, the proletariat or the capitalists, and sides with the proletariat (the dictatorship of the proletariat). So-called “non-authoritarian” communists are as such a global extreme minority.
Youre whitewashing it again https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_socialism
Authoritarian Communism does not mean “siding with giving the proletariat authority.” Again it’s fine if you have a definition you use, but words have meaning. People are criticizing the authoritarian part, not the communism. Even if it is the majority opinion held by authoritarian communists today.
Your reading comprehension sucks. That, or you aren’t really arguing in good faith. That link does not back you up at all. First definition listed is about tank engines, obviously not that, so here’s the second definition:
Note that we got to Communist Party of Great Britain in the first like quarter of the sentence, and then it keeps going to describe people who support specific things because just being a communist isn’t enough. As in, this does not apply to all communists, just ones who support these things.
But let’s look at Wikipedia, maybe that’s a little incorrect. I certainly don’t use it in direct relation to UK communists in particular, nor do most others.
Every last sentence in that paragraph goes into some aspect of how tankies aren’t just any communist, but a specific type of communist.
I’m not arguing in bad-faith at all. The “specific type of communist” just so happens to apply to the overwhelming majority of communists. The definition is of course a liberal perspective on the concept of authority, but absolutely backs me up. If a pejorative is applicable to the overwhelming majority of a group, it isn’t a pejorative for a specific type, but a general pejorative with exceptions for specific types.
By the same logic, a pejorative for Asians is a pejorative for people in general since 60% of the world lives in Asia, almost 4x as much as on the next most populated continent, but if someone in this thread said something like that, I bet you’d consider them a racist instead of a misanthrope.
Being asian is an intrinsic characteristic. Supposed “anti-authoritarian” communists are “communists” that reject the core communist analysis of authority, chiefly that all authority is of a class character and the proletarian use of authority is critical in establishing and maintaining socialism. Your comparison is faulty.
Some people may use it more loosely as a term for all communists, but I understand it to be a pejorative for a specific type of communist. Specifically, the kind that will excuse anything done by a communist or formerly communist regime. They make excuses for Russia invading Ukraine in defiance of their own diplomatic agreements, seemingly just for the sake of railing against the west. They make excuses for the most gruelingly authoritarian things communist groups may do or support. They generally seem to relish the idea of righteous violence, so long as they can find a way to align it with their world view. Tankies are the ones who will stand up for even the most brutal of regimes so long as they are communist or descend from historically communist states; in their eyes, the only possible failure of a communist state is genuine failure and collapse.
What you’re describing isn’t a real person or ideology, but a caricature in the form of a strawman that can be wielded to delegitimize communists. You aren’t describing a real group, but instead a real perception of a real group that is projected onto said real group.
I am describing behavior I quite frequently directly observed in .ml threads, but go off about how it’s not real. I personally got banned for calling Russia out for the war in Ukraine and the lack of any proper justification for it, and it was relevant to the discussion at hand, not just some random post to stir the pot.
Of course, there’s also the popular theory that .ml is heavily astroturfed by Russia and China, so maybe you’re right that they’re not actually communists, just a bunch of malicious propagandists the communists can never seem to weed out.
Or maybe a bunch of western propaganda to make communists look like violent assholes. Which, again, never seems to get weeded out.
Or some combo of the two.
But in all cases, it’s a common observance on .ml, and the one thing they’re not doing over there is distancing themselves from it literally at all. Far more likely to find .ml users like you in other communities trying to stick their head in the sand and pretend it’s not happening.
I’m on Lemmy.ml, I have never seen anyone that fits your description. Further, Lemmy.ml isn’t astroturfed by Russia or China. Regarding Ukraine, you were banned for misinformation, such as the idea that Russia is trying to “force everyone to become Russian,” with a temp ban at that.
If you could give an example of people “standing up for the most brutal of regimes,” for example, that would help. The simple fact is that socialist states have not been “the most brutal regimes,” western countries have been.
All I can really say to that is that you should maybe look closer. They show up pretty frequently when Russia and China come up in discussion, regardless of reason, but especially if someone bad mouths either.
Let’s be real, every online community of any significant size with open registration is being astroturfed to some extent. The only real question is which countries are most heavily involved in astroturfing any specific community. Here on Lemmy, spreading misinformation that supports Russia and/or China comes from lemmy.ml accounts much more frequently than from other accounts. That’s not to say that all lemmy.ml accounts are like that, but if I see someone spreading very obviously bullshit in favor of Russia or China anywhere on Lemmy, it’s almost a given that it’s a lemmy.ml account. You’re also likely to see lemmy.ml accounts pop up out of nowhere any time Russia or China are mentioned in any sort of negative capacity, sort of like how Riverside@reddthat.com picked up on a tangential mention of China in one of my earlier posts in this thread and launched into a bunch of whataboutism and Chain apologia. Frankly, it’s kind of surprising to see it from an account that’s NOT @lemmy.ml.
Nope, not even the Lemmy.ml mods would claim that when they banned me, temporary or not. They classified it as a violation of rule 1, which seems to cover the banning of various forms of bigotry. They aren’t any more specific than that, but I imagine they would classify it as xenophobia or, if they cared to get more specific, Russophobia.
But let’s talk about the idea that that statement was misinformation. Let’s remind ourselves of the context. Four years ago, Russia began their invasion of Ukraine, which still continues to this day. Ukraine had not attacked them. Russia makes no claim that Ukraine attacked them first. Russia did this in spite of being party to the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances in 1994, about 30 years ago, in which Ukraine voluntarily gave up Soviet era nuclear weapons in exchange for a promise from the USA and Russia that Ukrainian sovereignty would be respected. Russia then violated the agreement in 2014 when they annexed Crimea and violated it again with their ongoing invasion. Russia is annexing Ukrainian land. If you live in Crimea or any of the more recently conquered land, I’m terribly sorry, you now live in Russia. So, in light of all that, could you maybe explain to me how the fuck it’s misinformation to describe it as forcing people to become Russian? Do you just expect Russia to expel the Ukrainians if they succeed? I suppose that would make my statement technically incorrect, but I don’t really expect that option.
No, I’m not wasting more of my day to track down evidence for the most obvious shit that almost everyone on Lemmy outside of Lemmy.ml already knows. I’m not going to go and find proof just so we can sit here and split hairs on the exact nature of what was said, which I know will inevitably happen because I’ve made that mistake before. If you want evidence, just pay more attention next time you’re digging around in Lemmy.ml threads. It’s not that hard to find, which is why Lemmy.ml is somewhat commonly defederated from other instances.
Yes, thank you, I’m sure that will massively recontextualize things for me the next time I’m witnessing someone defend the start of a pointless war that’s probably lead to around a million casualties and growing, just to stroke some corrupt old fuck’s ego. And before you try to bUt IsRaEl AnD iRaN me, which happens every god damn time I point out something bad that Russia or China did, yeah, I fucking know, and I don’t like that, either. In a thread about those topics, I’d be agreeing with you, but here, it’s just whataboutism and deflection.
Just a formatting tip, you need a double newline in between quotes and comments you mean to have in your own voice, not just a single newline.
Either way, your comment is a continued lack of evidence, and doubling down on misinformation. For example, the Budapest Memorandum was nullified by the US first, Crimea voted to join the Russian Federation after the 2014 Banderite coup, and Donetsk and Luhansk have been at war with Kiev since they seceded in 2014 and requested aid from the Russian Federation in 2022. Russia isn’t trying to turn everyone Russian, this is clear misinformation on what is far more complex than “Russia is evil definitionally.”
It’s a specific kind of communist, not all communists are tankies
The ones of any relevance seem to count. It’s a term levied against every major Marxist party and every socialist state.
Anything’s possible when you make shit up
See, this is exactly the sort of “insightful” comment I’d expect from an @lemmy.ml account. I didn’t mention anything I haven’t directly witness happening on lemmy.ml myself, but go off on how it’s just made up. Anything’s possible when you make shit up, right?
My insights are that y’all are full of shit as usual, if you want better responses then try being better
Arrogant, no facts presented, treats everyone who disagrees with him as an idiot with zero evidence, yep, checks out, you belong on lemmy.ml
Presented without evidence, dismissed without evidence. Cry about it halfwit
I spoke from what I’ve personally repeatedly witnessed in lemmy.ml communities, but sure, tell me not to trust my lying eyes and ears. And don’t flatter yourself into thinking you’re making anyone cry except any poor woman you get to sleep with you.
Like I said, presented without evidence. You can believe your eyes all you want, expecting other people to believe your eyes is stupid
Please do tell me which conquest war China has engaged in the past 50 years.
It’s 2026, we’ve seen how western legacy media are owned by Zionists and social media are owned by oligarch Epstein class, we literally go into the Lemmyverse running away from this. Only thanks to Chinese-born social media such as Tiktok have we been able to witness the genocide in Gaza and open our collective eyes to the Palestinian cause. How, with this hindsight, can we criticise a country wanting to protect its citizens from this?
Additionally, seeing your interest against censorship, are you aware that most Russian media is outright banned in Europe? Have you seen how Chinese social media gets banned in the US unless it changes ownership to an American firm? And most importantly: does this desire for media availability from all over lead tou to read news coming from, say, Iranian, Chinese or Russian media? Do you actively consume such media, or do you consume your media de-facto equally to as if there were censorship of such media?
I believe you’re mistaken, the countries currently engaged in the genocide of Palestinians and threatening Iran with “the total elimination of a civilization” are the US and Isntreal, not communist.
Can you now bring up some points that are not projection of Western imperialism onto China?
Yes, this is why I had to qualify China with “probably”. But mark my words, if China moves on Taiwan with force, tankies will laud it. Mind you, not all communists are tankies, which is a point that has already needed to be made in this thread.
And you’ll notice I didn’t defend any of that, either. This whataboutism is a meaningless deflection predicated on the assumption that just because i disapprove of Chinese censorship must mean that I am either unaware or supporting of western censorship.
But if you want to compare them, only one of them is severe enough that all your communications are subject to government filtering. A known way to screw with Chinese hackers in video games is just to mention censored phrases in chat and have their connection drop.
Oh no, the most prolific liars of all the world’s industry of paid liars is blocked in the place the liars most often lie about. So when China censors the ENTIRE INTERNET, that’s protecting their citizens, but when the west censors a hostile nation’s state sanctioned propaganda center, that’s an egregious overstep.
I believe you need to pay a little more attention to the discussion at hand. The discussion at hand is what tankies support, not what nation states are doing today. Tankies, as a specific subtype of communist, which means NOT ALL communists, will generally support brutal crackdowns of just about any sort so long as a perceived communist or communist successor is the one doing it.
This level of absolute butthurt at the mention of China combined with the complete misrepresentation of both the discussion at hand and and my comments on it is astonishingly egregious. I almost struggle to believe it’s a mistake made in an attempt at good faith argument, and it’s representative of why some people suspect that .ml is heavily astroturfed by Russia and China masquerading as communists. ANY attempt to criticize Russia or China on .ml is almost always met with an attempt to paint the poster as a critically misinformed fucking idiot because SURELY only one such as that could EVER find the slightest flaw in our PERFECT state of Russia/China.
If you want to reply again, read closely first. If half my response is going to have to be me repeating myself, I’m just going to save my time and remind you your reading comprehension is still absolute trash.
Because you’re projecting western imperialism on China and guessing futures to make it sound imperialist.
That wasn’t “whataboutism”, that was justification of Chinese censorship of western media with hindsight. I was simply arguing that, with hindsight, banning western media and social media was the correct choice, and I can’t fathom why any self-proclaimed leftie would disagree with that seeing the rise of fascism in the “free press” western world.
Hahahaha cope. US propaganda is much more pervasive and prevalent than Russian propaganda, much to the dismay of Russia.
Notice how you avoided my question about your media consumption: do you consume media from China, Russia or Iran? Or are you, de-facto, living in a similar information bubble to people in a nation with stronger censorship?
Maybe, just maybe, the US and EU don’t censor as much not because “they’re free nations”, but because by means of global dominance over the previous century, they didn’t need to censor in order to prevent their own citizens from consuming media from designated enemy states. Once people start questioning this and they lose the global narrative hegemony, they’re forced to censor (tiktok, Russian Media, online ID verification soon, etc.).
Well, yes, tankies don’t work in hypotheticals, we work in facts. You can’t just imagine catastrophes and genocides worse than Gaza and pin those to tankies because you would be making them up.
Westerners simply can’t conceive that someone working outside western propaganda wouldn’t be a paid actor.
Not true. Reasonable criticism of those countries is well met, what’s not well received is constant bashing based on western-manufactured lies.
No, because while China has denied or threatened Taiwan’s sovereignty many, many, many times over the last 50 years, they have yet to actually make a militant move against them. But if China wants to spend the last 50 years talking shit about it, they don’t get as much grace for not actually doing it. They clearly want to, although they get some credit for having restrained themselves so far. That’s If China learns to rival their chip production, though, I dunno how much longer that will last.
You might be right if you’d stopped talking on that topic there. But instead, you continued on into direct whataboutism when you had to point out all the western censorship. Again, that’s only really relevant on the assumption that my disliking of Russian and Chinese censorship must mean that I approve of western censorship when that is not the case.
Eeehhhh, that’s not really an appropriate comparison. You’re comparing state media with a known history of telling VERY blatant lies that always DIRECTLY favor the state that funds them, to the entire propaganda output of the US, both intentional and that spread by misinformed believers. Of course an entire nation and its culture produces more propaganda than a few specific outlets.
That said, let’s assume you’re right, and that while they are incredibly prolific liars, they are not the most prolific liars. Congrats, they’re not the most prolific, but they’re still competing for first place. And since you’re so in favor of censoring foreign propaganda, shouldn’t that be acceptable content to censor? I’m not sure I’m a huge fan of any censorship at all and would prefer an adequately educated populace, but you sure seemed to approve of the idea.
I didn’t really want because this sort of questioning almost always turns into an attempt to ferret out some way to invalidate me rather than the argument I make. But since you insist, fine.
Do I routinely seek out explicitly Chinese, Russian, or Iranian media? No. Do I ensure I get information and viewpoints from sources all of the world, including from regions critical of western states and regimes? Yes. Am I highly critical of western news, especially where it relates to the interests of the western oligarchs? Oh god yes.
Hey, thanks for that. Could you maybe elaborate on anything else I already have a firm grasp of? Like maybe you could explain how this relates to my already expressed distaste for western censorship?
You’re the only one making any sort of comparison to Gaza, which, to be clear, is an atrocity for which a great many people should face punishment as war criminals. The only thing I’ve said that you could maybe related to Gaza is the part about tankies making excuses for the most brutal of regimes. I spoke in hyperbole. That’s my mistake. I should have known a tankie would come along and split hairs over the slightest imprecision in my words so that they could find excuses to treat me like an idiot.
Well, the alternative is that a ton of them are parroting propaganda on accident for the propagandists. Which, to be fair, the west has our own propaganda-parroting idiots. Either way, a lot of very obvious misinformation in direct support of China and Russia comes out of @lemmy.ml accounts. It may not be intentional propaganda, but if it suddenly became Russian and Chinese propaganda, I frankly wouldn’t expect much to change in that regard.
If you look at some of the more specific behavior instead of just dismissing the idea, though, you’ll start to understand why people suspect it. If you mention Russia or China just about anywhere on Lemmy that hasn’t defederated lemmy.ml, especially if you’re saying something negative about them, you get @lemmy.ml users popping up out of nowhere to defend China/Russia. Dissent from Russian or Chinese actions is frequently censored, especially when it’s well founded since they could just publicly mock you if you were obviously wrong. I kinda get it for China since they’re still at least partially communist (they’ve clearly incorporated some capitalist aspects, I guess to stay competitive, but they also don’t seem to have wholly abandoned communism, either), but I just do not fucking get it for Russia. They’re no longer communist at all, and they’re very clearly harboring some imperialist intentions with their invasion of Ukraine, but Lemmy.ml refuses to accept that Russia maybe shouldn’t have done that. The only non-propagandist take on it I can come up with is that they’re so full of vitriolic hatred of the west that they’re willing to support literally anyone who opposes them, regardless of why, and that’s not a very generous take.
I could probably come up with more reasons, but I’ll just summarize with this. Not everything that comes out of Lemmy.ml in support of Russia or China is astroturfed content, but I don’t think it’s reasonably to assume it doesn’t happen at all since all major states astroturf all sizeable communities they think they can influence, and a lot of it bears a strong resemblance to what intentional astroturfing would look like.
Lol. Lmao, even. I’ll try to go with the generous take that you yourself try to respond well to reasonable criticism. But to say that for Lemmy.ml as a whole? Absolutely not. Maybe if you stopped ignoring those posts, you’d understand a little better why people suspect the astroturfing.