Seeing libs seethe about “too many tankies” is really funny.

The really good news is that all the communities on lemmy.ml have been created long before radlibs showed up, and are administered by sane people.

I wonder if it's struck them yet that, as their neoliberal platform fails, other platforms built on fundamentally better ideas and infrastructure are rising up. I wonder if this challenges their preconceived notions at all? Nah, it's just a bunch of tankies.

It is definitely inducing cognitive dissonance. The developers are simply are communists trying to collectivize social media, and that will live in their heads rent free as long as they stick around.
I saw someone comment, in an almost gleeful manner "I didn't even know of the word Tankie until today!" like a kid who just learned about the word "Fuck". 🙄

That post on !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone got me fked up because one of the comments there was like “authoritarian communism” is an oxymoron actually 🤓 and another was like “Marxism is not materialism” and it had double digit upvotes.

Like jesus WHAT THE FUXK are you on about. Read Marx and Engels. Read Lenin.

It’s like arguing with toddlers.

You lost them at asking them to read. They do not read.
- This is false. They can definitely read... Twitter and reddit and anything else pumped out by the feds that comes in short quips with no real background information or data backing it up.
Stalin dunks on these types in Anarchism or Socialism it’s funny af, some say Marxism bad bc it’s materialism, some say it’s bad because it’s not materialism, some say it’s bad because they don’t understand the what type of materialism it is, and don’t even get him started on what Nobati and Sh. G. thinks of Dialectics😪
Read Marx and Engels. Read Lenin.

Marx is a tankie, Engels is a tankie, Lenin is a tankie.

I came across this comment today, and it really makes me wonder how people just dismiss intellectual curiosity outright.

yes!!! they’re everywhere and anytime I see someone bring it up someone comments some shit about having an open mind… uhhh no???

Unlike the side many of them seem to blindly and militantly defend, the side they rage against is not asking for blind adherence to beliefs. You have to open yourself up to questioning your beliefs; there is no value in a closed mind.

This and curiosity have led me to where I'm now, I consider those most important virtues.
Yeah they have the audacity to invade our space and then complain, and when we try to tell them to have an open mind, they respond with "tankes".

Wait until the liberals find out that free and open source decentralized networks like Lemmy align with the general direction of communism.

( At least, I assume it does. I may be very wrong. In which case, I apologize. )

Wait until the liberals find out that free and open source decentralized networks like Lemmy align with the general direction of communism

This already happened and reading it was hilarious.
I don't think you are wrong. I mean, we've somewhat siezed the mean of communication? I guess?
@Henkire
It's not a coincidence who the developers and early adopters are - people firmly opposed to capitalism don't want to be trapped on a corporate internet
@aidnic
Ah yes. The big communist governments are known for * checks notes * their staunch, unmoving ideals of free speech.
- "free speech" without consequence from the state has never existed, and certainly not in capitalist states
- You should talk to Edward Snowden and Julian Assange about free speech.

liberals flooding OUR website and then saying to kick us out is hilarious to me

Everyone click on the All button and start participating in federation.

Worst thing that can happen is the liberals complain.

But if you're going to be participating on lemmy.ml please don't make the admins' job harder, respect the instance rules. They're already working overtime to handle the influx of new users across the software.

I’ve been browsing lemmygrad near daily for over a year now and had never clicked the All button lol there is a whole lot going on out there, fediverse is pretty cool
If you're going to throw around "liberals" as some sort of derogatory "us vs them" term then you should probably think twice before clicking all.

There are two sides to any coin. Check yourself before you shit on other people, to make sure you're not just proving yourself to be at least as bad as them.
- liberals is a derogatory term lol
- Yes, thank you, I've been posting on lemmy.ml for 4 years now.

dear comrades living and dead, please help give me the self control not to try arguing with all the "Lemmy is anti human rights" takes polluting the fediverse rn 🙏

Just write one response and reuse it, and then don't engage further unless it's in good faith.

Idk man, I got a temporary ban for saying that ACAB means all cops and some dipshit told me to read Lenin's State and Revolution lmao. Seems to me like a lot of people on here are just having dick measuring contests about how far left they are.

The little joys of being a leftist is arguing who is more

I don't really consider myself a liberal or a communist. Maybe some mixture of both? I have my own ideals that probably align mostly with eastern philosophy, and maybe some more "esoteric" practices. Id like to think im well read, for being a mostly uneducated person, and I'm very accepting of just about everyone outside of violence or blind hatred, but I have never heard the term "tankie" until reddit. Is it a reference to Tiannemen Sq or something? Just curious as I like to know as much as I can. Thanks.

Also, as someone who's coming from reddit as of yesterday, it's kinda cool seeing more than one political ideal, as I really don't think there is a "perfect" system. Humans are flawed in their very nature, and tbh, we're a little late to "get it right".

Tankie is a meaningless term now, the deprogram just did an episode on it:

It’s also on other platforms like spotify etc.
- I really loved Hakim's take on it being a very privileged position within the imperial core to scold those who see the state as crucial to sustained revolution.
- That discussion was halfway identical to my own commentary on the term four years ago. It’s a vague buzzword about 90% of the time and I’m ashamed to say that I said it unjokingly in my Fedbook days. After I understood why the people’s republics were appealing to so many (rather than dismissing the defenders as mindlessly desperate), I let go of my grudge and quit using the term for anything other than comedic purposes.
  
  Hearing that podcast made me wish that I could have a live conversation with Hakim. Although at this point I’d be interested in having a live conversation with any communist. In that format they’d be likelier to offer active feedback on the history that I share.
There's the etymology of tankie and there's the actual ways it's used. The etymology is rolling tanks into Hungary in 1956, which caused a solit (among many) among UK communists (who came up with the term). The usage varies wildly because liberals don't understand politics very well and slap it on anything to the left of Obama.

Communista understand politics through a series of criticisms of capitalism and a framework by which to understand those within it, namely economic classes whose interests align/do not align depending on the material context. You might find that some of this appeals to you, as a material grounding is more common in Eastern traditions than Western. Also we are super duper correct, so we've got that going for us.

Re: flawed humans, there are of course a variety of people out there and we all make mistakes. However, it's also important to recognize tgatva lot that is attributed to "human nature" is actually fairly recent and is either a consequence of living under the capitalist system (which came into being over a period of about 1000 years) or is just a myth spread to justify the violences done by that system to the common person.

And re: perfection, you might like us there, too. We view the political economic system as an evolving thing that changes relative to material conditions. There is no perfext system, but there are valid struggles to replace the current one with systems that prioritize people over profit. For example, no communist would say that socialism is the solution to hunter-gatherers in Crete because hunter-gathering Crete isn't capitalist - the idea would have no meaning. We also know and expect that the fight doesn't stop even after a revolution, that there will still be struggles for a long time - but at least we could fight them together and with greater agency.
- Hey thanks for writing that.. OK so you've confirmed my general understanding of the idealogy.
  
  After I wrote that I knew you were gona come back with something about capitalist perspective and long term goal. So that was a good refresher for me I appreciate it.
  
  I feel like there is too many people still tbh lol.
  
  Capitalism doesn't work. I've been through it and it's underbelly enough to know that. I do think the wealthy west has distorted our view of ourselves. I'm aware of that. I try to come at things as objectively as possible, though sometimes I fail.
  
  I sort of agree with the main tenants of communism absolutely. I do consider myself somewhat of a socialist, tho I'm more a broad strokes type person, hence I sort of default to self betterment and mindfulness, while trying to bring a base understanding of our nature through my interactions to others as a way to better the world. My perfect system would be living close to the land, hunter gather style. Im kind of a hermit tbh (: there too many people for me lol.
  
  I bookmarked your comment. I'm gonna revisit it later. Appreciate the talk.
  
  Edit: fwiw, I do believe at a fundamental level, people are good, and we are in agreement about things more than we disagree. We just have a track record of complicating the simple ime. Im guilty as well.
Is it a reference to Tiannemen Sq or something? Just curious as I like to know as much as I can. Thanks.

No, it's a reference to Khrushchev sending tanks into Hungary during the 1956 revolt. Leftist supporters of this policy within Western nations were referred to as "Tankies" since then the term came to generally just refer to Marxist-Leninists. That is until more recently when Tankie has come to mean just any leftist a person disagrees with.

If you're interested in leftist theory then go to Marxists.org, it has plenty of free literature. I suggest starting with the communist manifesto just to get a general idea of the principles of communism before delving deeper into Marx and Engel's work. (And maybe sprinkle in some Lenin too cause he's sassy and a great read.)
- That is until more recently when Tankie has come to mean just any leftist a person disagrees with.
  
  While there are undoubtedly people that use the term like that, I think there is a general understanding that it refers to people that can excuse or support authoritarian or oppressive actions

Just you wait until US newscorps start advocating to ban the entirety of lemmy and its source code from the USA.

obviously the Chinese are making us all think for ourselves and talk amongst ourselves.. there could be no other answer
- "China is a censorship dictatorship and we should ban all things that come from there to protect our free speech." liberals probably

Unfortunately the more invested and "hardcore" Redditors still tend to be libertarians, although a lot of run-of-the-mill liberals are now included in that group.

So what happens when you get tons of them leaving a platform en masse? They'll bring their reactionary toxicity with them, claiming "no hatred" or "bigotry-free", while enabling pro-rulling class rhetoric and blanket-banning/defederating with communists. At least this split on Mastodon isn't as heavy as it was already filled with a lot of "leftists", and as there aren't really any explicitly ML instances available, a lot of communists are intermingled in left-leaning spaces.

Here though? They can push all their ire onto lemmygrad.ml, alienating a pretty big chunk users if they defederate, even worse if they eventually do so with lemmy.ml given the admin crossover.

they eventually do so with lemmy.ml given the admin crossover.

There's an admin crossover?
- Yes, both are run by the devs who are of course communists. These were the two original lemmy instances: lemmy.ml was the "standard" flagship to show what lemmy was capable of, while lemmygrad was the communist space

Lemmy.ml banned my account there lol. Why are they so concerned with a little bullying of liberals?

Lemmy is tone policed... apparently except when someone is calling us "red fash", that's not bannable.
You gotta get the normies on the network for the network effect to take off!
- i hate to say it, but i don't want the network effect taking off. in fact, that's a sign it's time to leave. is it possible to ever just have a smallish community where real discussion and ideas can flourish without the rest of the US dragging everything down to the lowest common denominator?

I don't think I'm a liberal. If you have any kind of empathy at all for a fellow human and look outside (in the US, at least), I really don't see how you can come to a conclusion that isn't "Holy shit capitalism causes so much harm and suffering we need to find to do something else.".

I don't know what flavor of leftist I am. I looked at anarchism for a bit and I ultimately found it really idealistic. No one seems to agree on what a "just hierarchy" is, and anarchists as a whole seems to argue for the complete annihilation of any hierarchy. I really wonder how they're going to run a hospital in an anarchist fashion.

But at the same time, I don't want to create something worse. I don't want to help build an authoritarian regime that paves over people's individuality and rights. I've seen the outcomes of that and I just can't agree with that.

I probably look dumb saying this but my preferred ideal society is pretty much Star Trek.

Hey, just want to say that I think you're on the right track! A lot of us felt this way before (at least I know I did for the most part), I would highly reccomend reading marxist theory, imo it really does answer a lot of these misgivings. If you don't want to read, there are a lot of audiobooks out there, or even just starting with beginner socialist videos is ok
- I've read the communist manifesto in high school. Since those years, I've struggled with reading any kind of long-form text. It's something I'm trying to work on as it causes a lot of strife in day-to-day life.
  
  I will gladly take audiobook recommendations.

Wait are y'all tankies wut

I actually just drove a tank over a tiny grandma's house while laughing maniacally
lemmy was made by MLs, yes.