In the past week I’ve been absolutely roasted for criticising two different countries. Normally I’d be okay with that, I can handle a mild toasting and after all debate is a good thing.
On both occasions though I was flamed for mentioning human rights issues that are established facts and have been known for many, many years. I was critical of the actions/laws of their governments and not the people, their race, religion, general political ideology or nationality.
On both occasions I was bombarded by long posts that parroted propaganda, and in the case of one country I was told (on multiple occasions) that I was ignorant, racist and even fascist for mentioning the issues I did. I’m not complaining about how I was treated, but as a reminder, I was discussing internationally-recognised human rights concerns that can be verified and based in fact.
I could just be paranoid but I’m fairly convinced the responses weren’t from patriotic citizens. I think they were paid trolls or bots, and I think their purpose was to quiet negative talking points about the countries that were mentioned.
Has anyone else had a similar experience?
It’s usually pro-Russian or pro-Chinese tankies that you can disregard readily as MAGAts. They’re worse than that to me, they’re pretending to be left for freedom when they’re boot lickers.
“Communists are worse than fascists” is indeed a take I expect from western liberals.
Nobody is pro-russia, Putin and his cronies (with help from the west) helped destroy the USSR, cause the largest drop in human life expectancy outside war or natural disaster in modern history, and bring about the current fascist dictatorship, you just perceive it that way because they don’t support another fascist dictatorship.
Most “socialists” don’t care about ideology, it’s more about the aesthetic and hating western countries. They have weird fantasies about BRICS being a real force in the world and destroying western economies or something like that. It’s mostly just a vague angst mixed with contrarianism with no real consistency. We generally call these people tankies because they usually identify as socialist (even if few of them even know what that actually is) and they’re fans of countries that fight against any country that’s aligned with the west as if geopolitics is a support.
So yes, tankies often do support Russia. It may not make sense, but tankies don’t ever make much sense.