The comments are what you expect. All agree that we’re psychopaths who support genocide and just want authority as a goal in itself. All agree we do no leftist praxis, I guess just based on vibes. One user wrote:

let’s be honest, they should be removed from society

which is cool. One-on-one, online or in person, I’m pretty patient with people like this, but when I see a whole thread like this with hundreds of upvotes and no pushback it makes me feel tired.


lemmy.ml link in case any of you have alts and want to wade in: https://lemmy.ml/post/6930975

The democracy thread she commented in right before posting this: https://lemmy.ml/comment/5160468

  • kristina [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    they do this a lot. its disappointing to see trans users be ok with shit like this. especially considering how many chasers are in that comm. fam, you can do better, and you should demand better

    it always reminds of this one time i helped a trans lady out, bought her transit to her appointment to hrt, bought the hrt, she came back to the center to hug me and said i changed her life and that what i did made things so much easier for her. some time later she realized i was a communist (i think someone made a joke about it or something), asked me if it was true (i said yes, i help people), then she yelled at me about being a tankie and ghosted the whole center. i didnt even say anything or get in an argument, she just overheard it. i cant help but mourn the idea that she could have had a good and safe space and made a lot of friends, but she ended up hurting herself due to propaganda.

      • kristina [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        yeah ive shared it here before. its always how i feel about sectarian trans people, kinda bleak. like i even excuse many lib behaviors in trans orgs because we all know how awful the outside world is to trans people. i only ever had to kick out someone once (some weird ass finnish fascist trans person that started harassing a jewish person). nobody really ever goes that far. having someone kick themselves out is just as disheartening.

        my brain is a bit ptsd addled right now, sorry if im not explaining how i feel properly.

    • WittyProfileName2 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      they “should be physically removed” 🚁

      That’s a dog whistle towards Pinochet, right?

      Anti-communists once again proving they’ll side with fascists without a second’s hesitation.

      • zifnab25 [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        It isn’t meaningless, in the same way “woke” isn’t meaningless. It is purely reactionary. A primal visceral hatred of change, of a shift in status (particularly their own), of anything that might - even superficially - undermine their own sense of supremacy.

        Woke is the sentiment that causes people to reject the modern state of affairs.

        Tankies are the agents of change, coming to plow up their fields of strange fruit.

      • HornyOnMain [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, I got suspended from the original sub ages ago bcs I got into a heated argument at someone in the replies to an “upvote to scare the tankies” meme that was just a picture of Syngman Rhee and then banned at a later date over getting angry at someone for saying that the US should go back into Afghanistan to liberate them from the Taliban.

        I also got banned from the blahaj version recently for saying something along the lines of “ngl, it’s sus af that you’re accusing someone of being a tankie for posting an anti-fascist, anti US government meme” in reply to a comment that said “kick tankies out of 196” in the comments to that meme about the US hiring Nazi officials

      • quarrk [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Also watch The Act of Killing, a fantastic documentary on the same subject (definitely CW violence though). Vincent Bevins cites it as inspiration to write The Jakarta Method. I read the book first and watched the documentary last week, and it brought me to tears.

    • HornyOnMain [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      That reminds me of the time I quit using Reddit entirely after getting into an argument under a meme that was just a picture of Syngman Rhee with the caption “Upvote to scare the tankies” and like well over a thousand upvotes. Also people saying that mass imprisonment and executions of “Stalinists” was the same as post ww2 denazification (ironically, the position of a load of 196 users I once argued with on post ww2 denazification in the ussr is that it was authoritarian Stalinism)

  • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    I read through most of that thread and christ it is tiring, I agree. Historically illiterate bastards equating China to Nazi Germany left and right with only a couple voices of reason.

    Their idea of MLs is completely incoherent. What, do I want to be a dictator? I am actively averse to personally having authority, that shit is too much of a hassle, I get a headache just imagining it for the sake of counterargument.

    So what do I actually want? Since these people seem to think being ML is just pure “authoritarianism” with no true beliefs of any kind.

    I want people to be fed, clothed, housed, educated, and so on [in short: their needs provided for] and I want the entity doing that to defend itself from the capitalists seeking to undermine that process. It’s a very simple desire and something that, for all the valid criticism you can make of the CPC, something it does, as does the DPRK.

    You really described it the best, it’s just tiring.

    Edit: I wonder how many overt neoliberals are there chanting hand-in-hand with those so-called “anarchists”

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      They think you’re either lying about wanting liberation for marginalized people, or that you’d entrust the task of liberation to a bunch of liars who would instead simply recreate capitalism but worse. They also believe you secretly harbor a suite of bigotries like transphobia or Islamophobia and you’d gladly endorse genocide against such groups so long as you had some vague aesthetic of socialist revolution. You’re right that it’s incoherent. None of what they’re saying makes sense.

      That’s really the entire accusation. You’re both brainwashed and insidious, you’re dishonest, and you praise countries that are designated as “capitalism but worse somehow.”

      There’s also a really serious element of nationalism that can’t be ignored in the word “tankie.” It means a westerner who is regarded as a traitor. You’re praising foreign countries who are enemies of the west and that violates every other western political framework. Principled anarchists and communists get called tankies because we’re the only westerners who wholly reject western hegemony.

  • MalarchoBidenism [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    Communism is the only political ideology where for some reason it’s acceptable to claim its proponents don’t believe in the things they say and actually secretely believe the opposite. No one is ever “just pretending” to be a liberal, a conservative, a monarchist, a fascist, a social democrat or a libertarian, it’s just communists. They never explain what one gets out of this “pretending” either.

    And the worst part is these people are themselves leftists, so they have surely heard the same “you’re just bitter and jealous of rich people smuglord” bullshit from conservatives, but they turn around and repeat it at us.

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      I sometimes peek my head into chud communities and they actually do this too, sometimes with weird funny parallels to what we get. It’s why the term RINO exist. They will frequently accuse conservative figures of secretly being too liberal or too socialist. It was actually frequently mentioned by some who were critical of Trump before he got elected, he was called a New York liberal, etc. Chuds also absolutely accuse liberals of lying and actually being Marxists (don’t laugh!)

      Libertarians do this too, frequently accusing their own of being statists or socialists for the smallest violation of ideological purity.

      Liberals and conservatives have to accuse us of lying about what we want because we often have political demands that align with theirs, especially if they’re working class, and that causes cognitive dissonance. So the only mental strategy they have is to accuse us of trickery. They’ll make childish analogies like saying socialists want everyone to have a pony, or they’ll say our demands are so extreme there must an equal price to pay. As in, for every gain in rights for the working and poor, there must be an equal loss in rights.

      • MalarchoBidenism [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        That’s an interesting point I hadn’t considered, but I still think this is different from the ideological purity fights that are common to every ideology.

        Like, when we say AOC is a liberal or whatever it’s an expression of disappointment that she’s not as leftist as we’d like. But we’re talking about positions she holds openly, we’re not claiming she secretly doesn’t care about free healthcare, or that it’s a smokescreen for some nefarious purpose. The conservatives fuming about RINOs and the libertarians that booed Gary Johnson for being pro drivers’ licenses (lmao) are operating on a similar principle I think.

        The conspiratorial “they’re saying they want good things but it’s a trick to gain power and become evil tyrants” brainworms are very specific to communism I think. The closest thing on our side is when we accuse the reactionary right of knowingly trying to divide the working class by blaming everything wrong with capitalism on X minority, but even then I don’t think they’re “faking” it, necessarily. They really are bigoted and will do bigoted things if given power. It’s not a trick.

        Chuds do call everyone a Marxist though, that’s true miyazaki-laugh

      • HornyOnMain [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        Ngl, dronerights was a way better wrecker than silver legion, like it caused a large struggle session on blahaj, hexbear and beehaw one after the other.

        But now it’s just clawing to have that level of, idk, influence again. in a way, its fall from posting grace is kind of depressing sadness

  • panopticon [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Hey what do you know, some of them can think for themselves:

    @BigBlackCockroach@lemmy.world

    I’m an anarchist, we don’t call anybody tankies. Tankies is a term coming from the UK i think the 80s some eastern european nation was taken over by the USSR and some Brittish came out in support of it. So they were called tankies.

    These political fighting words need to be layed to rest. Communists hate me as much as anybody else but I’d rather engage on the idea level instead of ad hominem attacks and name calling.

    I suspect this whole tankie thing might be a coordinated propaganda campaign geared at discrediting communists and at the same time creating tension between them and other leftits. I suspect this as this whole infighting over small differences doesn’t lead to a victory for the left but effectively disables and neutralizes it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsqE9kEsDVY

  • emizeko [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    undermine democracy

    oh no, if that happens… then even if 80% of Americans want universal healthcare we wouldn’t get it!

    • invalidusernamelol [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      It’s not ideologically anarchist, it’s aesthetically anarchist. Which is why they latch on to a century old conflict between anarchists and Marxist leninists in Spain instead of actually applying any sort of critical rigor to their interactions with the world.

      • WittyProfileName2 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        Sometimes the more well read ones’ll bring up Makhnovshchina, but typically don’t know much more than they fought against the Soviets in the aftermath of the revolution.