Just blocked lemmy.ml from my Lemmy account, and I swear to god it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done on this platform. My homepage feels actually clean now.
For the past few months I’d been seeing a lot of tankie posting and pretty much far-left propaganda on my feed. It got tiring enough that I finally checked my blocked-user list, and realized pretty much everyone I’d blocked was from lemmy.ml. So I just blocked the whole instance instead.
Saying this as someone who considers themselves a leftist: I used to think Lemmy itself was an echo chamber. Turns out lemmy.ml was the problem the entire time. Probably the reason I tolerated it for so long is that I agreed with a lot of what they posted, but like an oversaturated meme, I’d had enough. Browsing the platform was starting to feel way too tiring instead of fun, which defeats the point of being here in the first place.
The breaking point was seeing some dude post a “meme” implying North Korea and China are basically communist utopias and that the West sucks. I mean, the West does suck, but come on - you’re saying North Korea is the ideal the West should strive for? What the hell…
Same. I don’t block anything and it’s perfectly fine tbh. So called “tankies” supposedly everywhere, but all I see are left-wing people.
“Tankie” is essentially a pejorative for those that support AES states. Tankies are everywhere on the fediverse, the reality is that so-called tankies aren’t the evil people that want to eat babies or anything like those loudly complaining about us believe.
It’s my understanding that tankie refers to people who think of themselves as left-wing but actually back authoritarian states and make excuses for their war crimes and human rights abuses.
All states are authoritarian. All states are monopolies on violence, in the interests of the ruling class of society. The major difference with socialist states is that the ruling class is the working class, while owning classes are subjugated by the authority of the state. Further, so-called tankies aren’t really concerned with excuses, but with dispelling bourgeois mythos. Information warfare is incredibly complex, and directed against anything that serves as an alternative to the dominance of western hegemony and neoimperialism, led by the dominance of finance capital and multinational corporations on a global scale.
If Tankies were anything like you’re trying to portray them. Then they wouldn’t blindly support Russia, China, North Korea which are dictatorships. They wouldn’t ban anyone who mentions tiananmen square or the China and Russian genocides…
I mean who actually believes the working class in China (which doesn’t own anything much less the means of production) supports getting “scored” for their social standing… Lol
Tankies don’t “blindly” support the Russian Federation, PRC, and DPRK. Ask a tankie about what they support about anything you find odd or abhorrent. Tankies don’t even support Russia, just their movements against the present hegemonic system of US imperialism, which by opposing they help take the boot off the necks of the global south. The PRC and DPRK are supported, as actually existing socialist countries, but not blindly. Ask away and you’ll get nuanced answers.
You aren’t banned for mentioning the 1989 Tian’anmen Square protests, nor the June 4th, 1989 Beijing Riots and suppression of said riots. You get banned for repeating now debunked atrocity propaganda about 10,000 students on the square itself getting killed, rather than the truth, which is that the hundreds that were killed that day, including dozens of PLA officers and a few hundred rioters, happened in areas all over Beijing as the PLA advanced towards the square. As for China and Russia’s genocides, not even western consensus agrees that these even exist. The UN doesn’t believe any repressions by China or Russia amount to genocide, and Wikipedia simply reports on the allegations, not taking a firm stance.
As for China, the working classes own and control the state, which in turn controls and owns the commanding heights of the economy. Virtually all finance is state-owned, and all strategic industries such as defense, electric power, petroleum and petrochemicals, telecommunications, coal, civil aviation, and shipping are overwhelmingly state owned. “Pillar industries” such as equipment manufacturing, auto, information technology, construction, iron and steel, nonferrous metals and chemicals are largely but not as thoroughly state owned, and emerging industries are largely private.
Private industry is allowed to assist with the socialization of production, developing the foundation of public ownership and planning. It’s very difficult to individually plan millions of tiny firms, but a few monopolies become very easy to plan, and folding them into the public sector turns them into public use. Markets create these monopolies naturally, and that’s how and why they are used.
As for the idea of a social credit score, it doesn’t exist outside of a few cities, and is largely used for corrupt businesses. The idea of an Orwellian style credit score simply is fiction meant to scare you, when in reality the west has social credit systems like FICO that apply to every citizen, and dramatically impact what you can afford to do and how to live.
Talk to a tankie sometime.
I got banned for “inventing reality” after talking about the 2009 Green Movement in Iran and how a lot of Iranians don’t love their regime. Basing this on Iranians living in Iran apparently was akin to “inventing reality”.
It went quite a bit deeper than that, you were contesting the idea that Iran is the most democratic country in West Asia. This is pretty true, considering their neighbors are largely monarchies or the genocidal apartheid settler-colony. The idea that Iran is all sunshine and rainbows is wrong, but that wasn’t the point actually being made, which was that Iran isn’t literally Mordor while many of their regional enemies are far worse than they are.
Yes, and I will contest this idea. Should I be banned for that? Are they more democratic than Turkey? Or is turkey not in West Asia? And how democratic can you be if, again, a protest questioning the results of an election gets 1.500 people shot?
That’s like saying that chicken is the tastiest vegetable. It’s not a vegetable.
Their supreme leader is an unelected position that controls, by design, all access roads to power. This position was now literally transferred from father to son.
Every Tankie I’ve run into on .ml has blindly supported all three, banned me for even mentioning things like the square, genocide, Russia being a dictatorship, China “social report card”… The list goes on and and they are consistently as cultist as MAGA lovers in the US.
So forgive me if having been on Lemmy for several years now. I call complete bullshit on your statement.
Oh and seeing the rest of the statement, your attempt to down play the square massacre and split hairs about where and how many were killed. You are absolutely a Tankie and as bad as any MAGA cultist. Take your bullshit propaganda back to .ml
Unfortunately for you and your lies, your moderation history is public
It should be it illustrate the craziness of .ml mods. Good Bye!
I’d need to see any evidence of what you claim, because it sounds like you repeated right-wing mythology and got shut out even when shown direct evidence to the contrary. For example, I already explained how China doesn’t have the social credit system you think it does, yet you keep repeating it like it’s relevant and real.
No you don’t, you have no intention of discussing good faith. And you provided zero proof yourself. You are a typical propaganda agent. Heck your lies are proof enough. Good bye
Would you mind rewriting that so someone not as versed in theory as you can understand it?
What part was difficult? I’ll do my best.
The whole thing is full of jargon.
I’ll try to define anything one might struggle with then, I guess.
Authoritarian - to hold a monopoly on authority, ie the political legitimacy to the use of force
Ruling class - that class which owns the commanding heights of the economy and controls the state
The state - the special administrative body for managing the affairs of the ruling class
Owning class - that class which gains their means of subsistence through ownership
Working class - that class which gains their means of subsistence through labor.
Tankies - those who defend socialist states
Bourgeoisie - those who own capital and employ it to profit off of the labor of others
Hegemony - the dominance of a given subject
Neoimperialism - the current, highly financialized system propogated worldwide whereby the more developed capitalist countries profit dramatically off of exploiting lesser developed countries
Finance capital - the monopolist merging of bank and industrial capital
Yes. Because “tankie” is just a pejorative for anyone to the left of the western Overton window
What? Tankie is a term that came around to disparage communists who sided with the USSR in sending tanks to Hungary. It specifically means authoritarian Stalinish stuff
Nobody in the year 2026 is using the word tankie in the context of the internal disagreement between British Trotskyists and Khrushchevists about the Hungarian uprising in the 1950s. Even you immediately - one sentence later - pivot to claiming it must means “authoritarian Stalinish stuff”, which is both incredibly vague and has nothing to do with the Hungarian revolution; a term that can be used for anyone to the left of the western Overton window.
I see why people block y’all. No. No one calls anarchists tankies. Confabulate as much as you want. It means what it means, and has meant since its inception. People like you, probably. And you fucking know it.
Happens all the time, it’s a right wing/ center-lib tactic to sow division
Anarchists that support existing socialist states get called tankie all the time. “Tankie” isn’t an ideology or a species of human, it’s a pejorative for a loose grouping of those that like, say, China and Cuba.
Lol like everyone in here complaining and blocking, when you were presented with facts, your true colors came out.
Softer than baby shit.
lol all they did was disagree with you relax
Oh no! Someone disagrees with you! Better reach for that block button! That’ll show them.
Yes they do. All the time. Ask me how I know.
Go back to reddit
You don’t seriously believe that the word tankie, in this day and age, is only used to refer to people who support Khrushchev sending tanks into Hungry half a century ago. So you’re just undeniably being willfully dishonest now. And for what? What is the point about lying about this?
I was not born for several decades when the Hungarian revolt occurred and have no real opinion on it, so no, I don’t “fucking know it”, I know you’re fucking wrong, and are trying to cover that up with impotent aggression.
You know because George Soros paid you to tell that lie probably!
It feels like people are upset about running into users who are politically left-leaning… on federated social media.
That’s like being upset about encountering queer people in the arts, or chuds in the weightlifting space, or conservatives at the gun range. What the hell did you expect?
As somebody who was able to see those before they got defederated: If they’re not denying stuff like that Russia is the aggressor, then they have improved and the common conscious is just slow to forgive.
It was “they must be trolls” levels when I still saw them. Pure ragebait levels. And you did often get the feeling that they were just trying to be as edgy as possible.
What’s wrong with people expressing their opinion?
You mean like JAQing off? Like trolls?
No, that’s not what they said