this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
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MeanwhileOnGrad
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"Oh, this is calamity! Calamity! Oh no, he's on the floor!"
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Meanwhile On Grad
Documenting hate speech, conspiracy theories, apologia/revisionism, and general tankie behaviour across the fediverse. Memes are welcome!
What is a Tankie?
Alternatively, a detailed blog post about Tankies.
(caution of biased source)
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Sh.itjust.works Instance rules apply! If you are from other instances, please be mindful of the rules. — Basically, don't be a dick.
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The first is comical. The second I don't get. That looks like sarcastic satire to me.
I hate the word tanky though. It has no clear definition. It is often used here as a subversion of opinion.
Most of my comments, especially political comments, are intended in the abstract/sarcastic/satirical light. It's mostly the frustration of my situation with physical disability and how depressing it is to deal with the US government knowing every article about homeless or food deficiency is my future while I'm barely able to take care of myself with a little help right now but slowly getting worse. Like who has the right to label and discredit that frustration?
Feel free to call me out. I don't like to argue, but I love to learn and expand my horizons. Just don't try to belittle me with some niche subculture label in an attempt to subvert my opinion. That is predatory and prejudice.
I won't speak for others, but I've been called a tanky here and I find it offensive and toxic. Like I'm on here a lot when I'm hurting too much to do anything else. I try my best not to be negative towards other people. If anyone is offended I'll gladly step back and apologize or try and clarify my thoughts. Why ostracise people that see things differently unless those things are comically wrong? Maybe if someone can answer that I'll STFU.
The word "tankie" does have a definition though, and a long history behind it.
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
It's not. They go on to justify East German guards gunning down escaping civilians as 'preventing imperialism' and a host of other questionable things.
You see the issue, or part of it. Some people overuse the word 'tankie' to mean 'left person I don't like', but actual tankies - typically MLs or MLMs - hold incredibly vile and wrong views. I went onto lemmy.ml the other day to see, out of morbid curiousity, what they were saying about the war in Ukraine. A lot of "NATO PROXY WAR" and "UKRONAZIS" style discourse. Heinous shit. That's not the kind of stuff you say "Agree to disagree" about, it's not the kind of thing you give any sort of respect or legitimacy to; it's the kind of thing you shine a light on and scatter whenever you see it.
Marxist-Leninist Marketeers? Sounds about right.
Nah they don't actually care about communism, its a facade for their propaganda.
Yeah, it just so happens that said propaganda is authoritarian communist in nature, always talking about dragging landlords and "right wing people" (read: those that support capitalism rather than communism, meaning you if you think "shooting people they don't like" is bad) out of their homes and shooting them in the street, with not even so much as a distinction between large firms and the sweet and nice capitalist pig Mabel who used to rent the punk house to us and was really cool about it. They literally say after we kill all the people who disagree we can transition to the classless stateless society we call "trve communism."
We can play "no true Scotsman" all we want but if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and wants to kill people, it's probably a duck that wants to kill people. Tankies are communists (but not all communists are tankies), they're just "bad." Yes, communists can be bad, communism isn't "when good." They want to usher in communism through abhorrent acts. We may know that is impossible, but they do not, they unironically think they'll cede power "when the time comes."
Instead I think it's pragmatic to recognize that they are communists but as with ice cream there are many flavors of communism, they are neither the "only" flavor nor do we agree with their violent flavor, opting instead for a diplomatic approach. To deny makes us seem either naive or willfully ignorant, to acknowledge but distance appears more level headed.
Except many of them really aren't communists. Sure there are some genuine communists and some useful idiots, but most of it is a facade for propaganda.
Can you back that claim up with anything other than "Nuh uh, real communists are like me!" or are we just pretending/conveniently using their status as losers to say "but they haven't accomplished anything?"
Go look at their content. Most of them aren't trying to spread communis. If they believed in it they'd be trying to persuade others of their views, but its much more common to see strawman attacks and low effort group think.
Of course, I don't have secret Kremlin or CCP files to share with you, I'm not sure how else I could prove it. No doubt you've seen some of the posts of "Trump supporters" happily offering cooking instructions when requested, or claiming to be a gender/race they obviously aren't.
The Kremlin and CCP are highly active spreading propaganda through anonymous social media, and they're absolutely here on the Fediverse with its sporadic moderation.
I have, I guess we're seeing different tankies, because the ones I see are trying to spread communism through dogma and force. They do try and persuade me and others, constantly talking about "the revolution to end capitalism" and such. Yes, their shit plan of "just murder anyone who rents out a house and everyone with over $X (usually billionaires, sometimes even millionaires) and everyone who employs people when they (rather than all employees equally) own the means of production and everyone who disagrees with the plan" won't work and is the worst plan in the world, but it is still a plan nonetheless and one they intend to use to bring about a utopian era of communism (which is "utopian" through violence, coercion and force, thus actually dystopian even if everything else is "perfect").
Low effort we'll agree, though I don't believe that group "thinks" at all lmao.
Sure I've probably seen trump supporters write a recipe, they are just people after all, shit leader or not. Hell ngl my uncle is one, and that motherfucker can cook. I won't take his advice on political matters, but if he tells me to try something he's made to eat I'm in. I don't think I've seen them pull digital blackface because tbh I don't use social media, but I'd believe you on that.
Wouldn't be surprised to hear they are, but nonetheless the chapo trap house degenerates that make up hexbear and grad are real. They do believe the dumb shit they say. It can't all just be explained away with CCP and FSB boogeymen unfortunately, that would honestly be better imo. I'm sure some of it is, but mostly it's people crazy enough to believe the stupid bullshit they spout.
Hell, I've met a few of them irl. Before lemmy existed even. They were definitely not just a CCP or FSB plant, they were mostly dumb shit white american neckbeards.
I don't see most of that low effort "you'll get the wall" type stuff as people trying to spread an ideology. They're trying to make it look like they want to spread it, but there's essentially no genuine effort.
It's not an actual "plan" to spread communism, its just extremist rhetoric meant to divide people and cover up their true intentions.
I suppose I disagree in that I think they do want to and are dumb enough to think that their methods are effective at spreading communism, it seems we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.
Fair enough. Maybe the truth is that there are fewer shills and LLMs than I think, and more than you think.
That's usually how it goes, somewhere in the middle, you're probably right about that.
I've never seen that kind of stuff on .ml. Now grad is a whole different story, but even with my account on .ml, I don't see much grad stuff. It could be that I export my block list from here over to there and I block a lot.
I actually joined grad at random in my first attempt to check out Lemmy 2 years ago, glanced at it twice, rolled my eyes, and never used it.
I think I'm going to dive into this with AI tonight. I lack the vocabulary to express why I don't like the term and want better ways to describe this type of subject. Thanks for the inspiration. Maybe I'll make a Word of the Day post if anything interesting stands out, not that anyone cares or would change.
Might be because tankie is sometimes used as a 'thought terminating cliche' - you say someone's a tankie, and then voila, you don't have to deal with them. End of.
That's not how it should be used, of course. If you accuse someone of being a tankie fuck, it should be to highlight what you are dealing with - "This is pattern recognition - don't be fooled into thinking their motivations are to 'just ask questions' or whatever the excuse du jour is, they're fascists painted red who consistently argue for fascism, and their arguments should be studied and refuted with that in mind, not viewed independent of context"
But people, even people on the same 'side' as oneself, often prefer the easy path of a thought-terminating cliche.
I get what you're saying. I mean more the philosophical context though. Like a more exact way of describing all angles of this, but primary why I find tankie to be a colloquialism I dislike and what I would prefer to use. I have an AI prompt tuned for this kind of exploration against my personality. I tend to feel vulnerable to manipulation on some kind of psyops-like level, like I'm not always self aware within this space, or my best of intentions are obviously easy to manipulate from some perspectives. It is really one of those back burnered things I've mulled over for years but never directly explored. It seems like the amateur psychology 'gaslighting' label fits, but what do you call the gaslighter's functional thought and philosophical perspective.
I'm not saying you were doing this, or that this is the definition of tankie. It is just the feeling of someone using it as a label to discredit someone. Like platonic sophistry is to make a plausible false narrative or perspective argument that is difficult to disprove, and is intentionally misleading. Trump is a master sophist, especially because he has no ethics but is so dialed in to a niche audience, they are the only ones that can't see his true nature. I despise the guy, but I have to admire someone that is so skilled as a con artist that he might just burn down the world for kicks and giggles when he leaves.
Platonic sophistry doesn't really describe when the individual is the target. Gaslighting is the instance where the individual is the target but is indirectly subverted by undermining their basal logic. What would be the word for when the individual is subverted through invalidation without an attempt to mislead, like with a poorly define colloquialism?
Don't think I have an answer off the top of my head, but I wish you luck! Examining language and its relation to reality and implication is always a worthy endeavor.