this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
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Hopefully this defuses the "lemmy is a tankie network" rumour once and for all
I think that second part is the part that the vocal dissidents dont quite realise, or won't
I can't blame them for that. One of the biggest issues getting Lemmy to grow is going to be how difficult it is for the average person to grasp how it works.
I couldn't care less if they are actually tankies, just keep developing the code and don't try to inject malware (well it's open source they can't lol), believe whatever you wanna believe, I don't care.
Well of course they aren't genocide deniers. You can't deny something that never happened. Also note that they did not deny being Tankies - they denied being Fascists. Tankies don't recognize themselves as Fascists and will vehemently deny that they are. Here's another phrase for Tankie for the uninformed: Red Fascist
Here is one of the Lemmy devs denying that the Uyghur genocide in China is happening:
https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/xq49ct/deleted_by_user/iq954mu/
Here they are again denying it:
https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/xq49ct/deleted_by_user/iq951cv/
And just so nobody can deny that
parentis_shotgunis a Lemmy dev: - "I'm one of the devs of Lemmy"Direct links to the posts will not work but still exist on the user's profile page: https://old.reddit.com/user/parentis_shotgun/ - hold PgDn until comments stop loading then Control+F. In fact feel free to peruse their history in general - it's quite interesting.
One of my favorite posts is their defense of the government of North Korea in /r/AskTankies: https://old.reddit.com/r/asktankies/comments/tb1836/okay_but_dprk_seriously/i04d1wu/
Now ask yourself why would someone who is not a Red Fascist Tankie piece of shit be answering questions on behalf of Tankies in /r/AskTankies while defending a totalitarian regime? Is it... perhaps because they're in support of such a regime because they are in fact a Tankie piece of shit?
They also lied about the "single user on Mastadon not providing sources". They did provide sources. The source were things said straight out of the dev's mouth.
Let's play a game of spot the difference between fascists (nazis) and fascists (tankies).
Nazis: Fascists who are directly responsible for the deaths of an estimated 12,000,000 people. Deny a genocide ever took place despite evidence to the contrary (Holocaust). Antisemites who forced minority ethnic groups to work in forced concentration and labor camps and starved them to death. These concentration camps began in 1933 and ended in 1945 lasting for a period of 12~ years. Had a secret police known as the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo) whose job it was largely to suppress political opposition by any means necessary including execution of dissenters and spy on behalf of the Nazi party. Torture and execution were common - including that of women and children.
Tankies: Fascists who are directly responsible for the deaths an estimated 26,000,000 people. Deny multiple different genocides ever took place despite evidence to the contrary (Holodomor being the most well known). Antisemites who forced minority ethnic groups to work in forced concentration and labor camps and starved them to death. This Gulag network of death prisons began in 1919 and only ended after Stalin's death in 1953 lasting for a period of 34~ years. Had a secret police known as the Чека (Cheka) whose job it was to suppress political opposition by any means necessary including execution of dissenters and spy on behalf of the State. Torture and execution were common - including that of women and children.
Amen
Great post and I really appreciate bringing the sources to the discussion.
I know some people don’t have an issue with the developer’s views, so long as it doesn’t affect their software, but I’m not comfortable using Lemmy. I wouldn’t be comfortable using a Nazi developer’s software either.
You would be surprised how many genuinely amazing pieces of software you use / rely on on a daily basis the developers of which you don't politically align with.
I agree that separating the artist from their art is not (always) easy, or even possible. However, in the case of Lemmy you can actually separate yourself from the influence of the creators (for example by defedarating from any instance they have control over), in the worst case scenario, where even the software itself would include these kind of biases, parts of the community could literally fork the codebase and remove all the problematic parts.
That’s a fair point and something I’ll need to keep in mind. There are plenty of game developers I’ve walked away from over the years because of their views and behaviors. While I’m sure there are plenty who’ve never said the quiet part out loud, I’ve divorced myself from those who do.
I’m no programmer and I understand that open source is a significant shield against weighted algorithms and behind-the-scenes shenanigans, but I also know where Lemmy’s roots lie, not just the developers, but the initial communities they created.
To me, kbin already feels like a fork I’m happy with. I’m not trying you be dogmatic, but for now, this is where I’m comfortable.
I'm old and out of the loop but that astroturfing was so blatantly obvious it pinged my BS meter immediately.
What astroturfing? The tanky astroturfing or astroturfing about the place being tanky?
Because before the influx, Lemmy.ml was absolutely tanky. It's just been completely drowned out by the flood, so it barely matters anymore.
Like, this entire platform has arguably gone through one of the most dramatic changes in a week in the history of the internet. What was here before is almost irrelevant now. What the devs believe is also irrelevant because it's open source and decentralized. Literally the whole point of this is to not be beholden to them.
Can confirm lemmy.ml had a pretty unsavory look to it before the migration. It's the reason I elected not to sign up there out of precaution because with what I was seeing, I worried about it getting defederated stat.
Absolutely, when I first arrived… seems long ago but wasn’t! The “tankie” talk was thick and I was hearing all kinds of wacky perspectives I’d never heard before and presented pretty heatedly. I do think they’ve been drowned out now with the influx.
A tankie is not a fascist. He denied being a genocidal fascist.
I've seen a lot of pro-China propaganda coming from Lemmy and I suspect tankie is still on the table.
Another phrase for Tankie ideology is Red Fascism.
I'd specifically like to highlight that someone who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp - so has firsthand experience with a fascist regime - described the Soviets as the following, emphasis mine:
So in what ways exactly is a tankie not a fascist?
"We did not hesitate to shoot thousands of people, and we shall not hesitate, and we shall save the country." - Vladimir Lenin
https://www.britannica.com/event/Holodomor
The State
Lenin;Stalin
Five year plan
Cheka secret police.
If Tankies are not fascists - then neither were Nazi's.
Man, I really appreciate this post and I think tankies are absolutely authoritarian turd burglars. Calling them red fascists is fine and maybe that’s how history will know them.
I know there’s a lot of diverse thought on what makes a fascist and many definitions try to distinguish it from run of the mill genocidal authoritarianism.
That’s why I chose to distinguish tankies and fascists. I broadly think they have different goals, beliefs and methodologies, though the damage they’ve wrought is remarkably similar. At the end of the day, if we look at results, it’s probably just as fair to lump them in together.
I don't like lumping them together because in my experience current tankies tend to be people who want good things, but are wrong about large chunks of history and current events. Fascists just want power and to enforce oppression so go with whatever story or lie they think will get them there as truth is immaterial to them.
That also describes civilians living in Germany during Hitler's reign. They were swept along with the populist zeal until they found their children passively picking up racial slurs and their neighbors competing to report on each other. This is why it's important to focus not just on the end result of Nazi fascism (the Holocaust), but the path that led there and the parallels that can be found in modern day societies. (both western and eastern)
Tankies isn't a cute catch-all term for Communists who do have various goals, beliefs, and methodologies of how to transition to, create, and maintain a Communist state. They're Stalinists and/or Maoists who deny well-documented genocides and claim that everything against their ideology is a Western conspiracy theory and the only correct sources of information come from Russia and/or China. In a similar way that Neo-Nazi's claim everything is a Jewish conspiracy theory and the only correct sources of information come from their biased as all hell Alt-Right/Neo-Nazi sources like Stormfront.
This is the exact type of ignorance that I'm talking about when I say people defend Tankies because they were taught the Holocaust in school but never taught about the Holodomor.
E: "The US government is evil so the people the US says are the bad guys must actually be the good guys and are undoubtedly correct about everything. There is no such thing as CCP or Soviet propaganda - that's propaganda from the CIA. Read this article from the CCP explaining it all."
Communism is on the left, Fascism or on the right. Purely from an academic perspective talking about Red Fascists is like debating virginity of a prostitute lol
If we're going to get academic about it, the political compass is an imprecise tool and it's a fool's errand to take an absolutist approach to assigning political ideologies on the spectrum. :P Just because an ideology is generally in the authoritarian-socialist quadrant doesn't mean it can't crib notes from a philosophy in a different quadrant. The authoritarian axis is more anchoring here than socialist/conservative.
"Tankies" are not communists, they are fascists with red masks on
This is like a small child's understanding of politics
I mean if you want to get academic about it - I suggest you talk to some people in academia. Nearly all of those who say "Fascism is different." self-describe themselves as Marxists or are Stalinist apologists - such as Michael Parenti or Sheila Fitzpatrick. Gee, I wonder why Marxists would want to distance Communism (and more specifically - Stalinism) from being compared with other fascists regimes like the Nazis. Maybe they don't like how it makes them look bad?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nazism_and_Stalinism
No really - read the above link and anyone who is cited as saying Stalinism isn't fascism check their wiki profile. Without a doubt they're a self-described Marxist. They're quite literally the only people who deny that Stalinism was a form of fascism and play apologists for all the atrocities that took place.
A disturbing amount of Communists see attacks on Stalinism as an attack on Communism and so make all sorts of mental gymnastics to defend Stalinism.
Edit:
I much prefer the "That wasn't real Communism!" brand of Communists over the "That was real Communism and here's why the mass murder they did was justified or never happened (despite being well-documented by the Stalinists/Maoists themselves)!" brand of Communists.
Just because they said they weren't? They just dismissed the claim without linking to any real counter evidence by claiming it's just a random Mastodon user or whatever
I've never heard of that. Where did that rumor come from?
Moron, morons everywhere
If you follow the link and then the "History of Lemmy" link it does get weirdly anti US....
What does it mean to be "weirdly anti US"?
Have accurate assessments of US politics, socioeconomics, and foreign policy
Just my feeling read it for yourself I guess
I don’t have an issue with the developers being Tankies as long as it doesn’t affect the software
Here are some mod logs from lemmy.ml (which is an instance run by the Lemmy devs) from a few years ago: https://raddle.me/f/TankiesGonnaTank/89852/the-lemmy-ml-admin-is-banning-anyone-that-mentions-stalin-or
Here's one of the Lemmy devs (you can tell it's them from their profile activity) denying genocide: https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/xq49ct/deleted_by_user/iq954mu/
Insisting that fascists are good, actually not fascists at all, as long as their nationalism makes them oppose the US (because the enemy of my enemy is a totally good guy!): https://old.reddit.com/r/DebateCommunism/comments/vgg2x3/thoughts_on_slavoj_zizek/id2cxb8/
There's more here: https://raddle.me/f/lobby/159606/-/comment/294792
Mostly irrelevant in this context, because the topic at hand is the developer denying that they condone these practices and insisting that it is a manufactured narrative. You are replying to a rebuttal of this.
Your opinion is a completely fair one to have, but we don't need to shift the conversation back to it every time someone provides a rebuttal to "the dev never actually said that" with receipts.
Yeah I know, I don't think them being tankies is really a problem for Lemmy as a whole. I was just annoyed that all they had to say is "no we aren't tankies" and people just took them at their word lol
IMO it's a little more cynical than that, they rephrased the narrative into one that they could cleanly reject and be quoted on. As others have pointed out, it is almost a certainty that 1) they do not consider themselves or their ideology to be fascist, and 2) they aren't supporting genocide if they do not acknowledge that the peoples in question are actually subject to genocide.
Edit: ...Which you've already affirmed in one of your previous comments, my bad.
Yup, you're exactly right with your analysis. They're pulling typical tankie BS ironically.
I guess it kinda matters in that people like me certainly won't be giving any code contributions, which for an open source project can be critical to its long-term health.
But devs also tolerate and use tons of code and the licenses that Richard Stallman wrote, even if he's a huge creepball that a bunch of other free software orgs had to back away from.
So we'll see. I also wouldn't rule out a fork of it just so that it's officially ran by a less controversial group.
It impacts as long as those problematic instances are federated
How? Like in what way?
The users, communities and posts of those instances are enabled and pushed to innocent users as well and not just contained on their own "island".
In their own blogs they actually offer the solution to be defederation of harmful instances but nothing is currently happening with the situation.
Perhaps, it is possible some communities do follow... uh, whatever that is. (I am oblivious to what a tankie is).
But, like reddit, there will ALWAYS be echo-chambers, or less desirable places/communities.
Remember, the_donald? Despite- that sub basically dominating the top feeds all over reddit, reddit never got ousted over it.
I feel, lemmy will be the same way. There will be... areas you likely want to avoid. As any platform.
I am here for the platform itself, and the communities on it.