I feel like we need to talk about Lemmy’s massive tankie censorship problem. A lot of popular lemmy communities are hosted on lemmy.ml. It’s been well known for a while that the admins/mods of that instance have, let’s say, rather extremist and onesided political views. In short, they’re what’s colloquially referred to as tankies. This wouldn’t be much of an issue if they didn’t regularly abuse their admin/mod status to censor and silence people who dissent with their political beliefs and for example, post things critical of China, Russia, the USSR, socialism, …
As an example, there was a thread today about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre. When I was reading it, there were mostly posts critical of China in the thread and some whataboutist/denialist replies critical of the USA and the west. In terms of votes, the posts critical of China were definitely getting the most support.
I posted a comment in this thread linking to “https://archive.ph/2020.07.12-074312/https://imgur.com/a/AIIbbPs” (WARNING: graphical content), which describes aspects of the atrocities that aren’t widely known even in the West, and supporting evidence. My comment was promptly removed for violating the “Be nice and civil” rule. When I looked back at the thread, I noticed that all posts critical of China had been removed while the whataboutist and denialist comments were left in place.
This is what the modlog of the instance looks like:
Definitely a trend there wouldn’t you say?
When I called them out on their one sided censorship, with a screenshot of the modlog above, I promptly received a community ban on all communities on lemmy.ml that I had ever participated in.
Proof:
So many of you will now probably think something like: “So what, it’s the fediverse, you can use another instance.”
The problem with this reasoning is that many of the popular communities are actually on lemmy.ml, and they’re not so easy to replace. I mean, in terms of content and engagement lemmy is already a pretty small place as it is. So it’s rather pointless sitting for example in /c/linux@some.random.other.instance.world where there’s nobody to discuss anything with.
I’m not sure if there’s a solution here, but I’d like to urge people to avoid lemmy.ml hosted communities in favor of communities on more reasonable instances.
Tankies make liberals uncomfortable because liberals believe they are the furthest left you can go before you become wrong and bad (forgetting that there are folks to their right on the political spectrum who think they are.
The worst thing for a tankie like me was running here to get away from the insane msn-pilled discourse and doing some actual leftists and have you ducking pumps chase me down screaming the whole time how i am following them. I mean shit I’m just trying to talk leftist ideals that haven’t been twisted into neoliberal business-school-bullshit talking points. I care bout the same shit yall do, i just don’t think the DNC is going to help us get there.
Libs? If you are burning with desire to debate politics? I am begging… begging you to understand that the politics you learned in school and yesterday on the tv aren’t acumen (why would they be?), and to embrace the idea/possibility that there’s an iota of a chance you might not actually be right.
Does this notion mean i am? No. But if you don’t think you might be wrong then you’ll likely never find out you are.
Without trying to be combative, but that sounds like one of those tidbits which one side believes about the other, circulated only to divide. At least I don’t have the impression that it is a view with any footing amongst liberal-minded people.
Most liberals want to move further left, ideas like free college and public education, public transport, less corporate power and splitting up large corporations, even unconditional basic income, etc. are popular with the majority. Just violent revolution and authoritarianism won’t roll, after all, liberal means “live and let live.”
As a mixed-ideology lefty (maybe I fit within your definition of liberal), I’m not worried about tankies being too far left, not at all, rather, I am tempted to think of them as confused right wingers believing themselves to be “the left.”
Yeah that’s horseshoe theory my man! There is a left further than liberal! It’s not like liberal is the end of the pol spec right? It’s hard to get my tone right here but the idea itself that tankies are right wing is itself one of those things I’ve side believes about the other.
Also, i don’t hate liberals, i like em! I was one even. My family’s lib. I want to help libs move left of course, like you guys wanna make me see the light. The ones who tell me my politics like they know better are the only ones who annoy me and an example of the type of commenter i tried to leave behind.
Except tankies are authoritarians, and some even support the CCP, who are basically a dictatorship. How is this left wing again?
I am not going to say that tankies are right wing like this guy you’re replying to. What they are is confused people who tried to join the left for the wrong reasons and ended up becoming authoritarians because of it. That or you fell into a cult-like group that spreads misinformation.
Also Tankies saying they like liberals is a new one to me. Normally they like complaining about liberals. I’ve been called a liberal for some of the most asinine shit imaginable, basically just because I don’t immediately agree with them.
Uh…tankies and leftists are not the same thing (though the liberals on Political Memes don’t seem to understand the difference). Tankies are authoritarian-apologists. It was coined by British communists who wanted to differentiate themselves from pro-Soviet communists (specifically, communists who were defending the Soviets sending tanks into Hungary). In the modern sense, it’s used to describe communists who defend authoritarian socialist or communist states. If you don’t feel compelled to justify Stalinism, the Tiananmen Square massacre, or the Uyghur genocide, you’re probably not a tankie.
weeeeellllll some of those things i am compelled to defend. Mostly in the sense that two of those are terribly misrepresented. I dont count tiennamen square with those other two, but i haven’t read anything on it. So i guess i am a tankie! Anyway I’m not here to change minds so let’s leave it there
I mean, fair enough, but I’ve never heard anyone use tankie as…well, not a pejorative. Like, I’ve never heard a liberal call themselves a, “libtard.”
Yeah you’re probably right that it started out as a prejorative. I’ve personally embraced the term cuz fuck it if I’m gonna get called names for expressing my opinion i may as well own that shit
If they are going to call me a horse fucker, well, I guess I better own it.
Now you get it!
Whatever you say, horse fucker.
That’s not what’s happening here. Not all marxists are okay with covering up Tiananmen Square or supporting the CCP. I used to be part of a Trotskyist org and they wouldn’t be caught dead supporting either Stalin or the CCP. Anarchists certainly aren’t okay with it, and they are further left than you are. Stop pretending all your enemies are liberals.
Liberals aren’t my enemies though? I’m not pretending anything. Liberals are very high representation in lotsa comms and they are who i’m talking to seeing how this is a thread with a liberal complaining about me. Capice? Let’s not fight, let’s just chill today
Bro your the one supporting genocide denial, that’s the reason people are fighting you. Stop doing things like that and maybe “the liberals” and everyone else will leave you alone. In fact no one actually mentioned liberals until you did. You are the problem here.
No.
So you acknowledge the Uighur cultural genocide then? Also you weren’t denying the Tiananmen square massacre earlier? Why are you in this comment section if you don’t deny these things? It’s specifically complaining about Tankies who deny both those atrocities committed by the CCP.
I’m not sure you understand exactly what a tankie is. I mean, do you really think it’s all right to sacrifice (I.E. straight up murder) people to the ideals of communism and socialism?
Being ultra liberal is fine IMO, even having the attitude that we might have to have use violence to overthrow of our government in order to get liberal ideals to be a part of our system is somewhat okay. But to think that our government, should it become communist, should be allowed to kill people in order to maintain a socialist or communist society is just straight up wrong and as far as I know that’s what a tankie is, someone who thinks that Tiananmen Square and Stalin’s reign of terror was just a necessary evil in order to strengthen the communist societal norm.
Seems to me the real objection should not be the ideology but the existence of any system that must murder the people it governs in order to continue to govern.
All governments kill people. That’s what governments do, specifically militaries do. I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong for a socialist or communist nation to defend itself. What’s wrong is countries killing peaceful protesters for no other reason than vocally disagreeing with them. That’s what makes Tiananmen Square and Stalin wrong, not just that they killed people.
Well, I stand corrected. You are, indeed, a tankie.
In that case, get fucked. Governments murdering its citizens, or anyone for that matter, for any reason whatsoever is not okay.
I wasn’t the one calling myself a tankie, learn to read usernames. I am not a marxist so can’t be one anyway. Are you a pacifist or something? Because it sounds like you oppose all militarism.