I saw a post that talked about racism towards people and when I talked about it the response I got was very heated and a person even called lemmy.world a community of ‘hitlerites’
I have been around for a week or so and this is my first time seeing such explicit vulgar reaction towards another community, is this a one-off or should I block hexbear?
Would you be willing to explain the difference? I don’t know and I did do a google on it awhile back and I guess if I learned anything it didn’t stick…
Signed: idiot on the internet who wants to know these things.
Someone else already commented how tankies got their name.
Tankies in the comments can generally be recognized by:
The last point especially for Hexbear. Holy shit you have to see it. It’s like walking into 4chan if it were a highschool with their endless meme train circlejerk and single image replies all the while being shitheads in bad faith.
“Tankie” is a derogatory term for Marxist-Leninists. We support AES or “actually existing socialist” states, in contrast to left idealists who support every revolution except the ones that actually succeed, which can always be imagined as perfect because they never had to confront practical reality. We’re known for our opposition to war (except class war) and belief in multipolarity, which is the idea that one nation shouldn’t be the lone superpower with hegemony around the world, and we treat the media with reasonable skepticism when it tries to tell us who to hate - ironically, these traits cause us to be characterized as militaristic, authoritarian, and blindly gullible.
People who have never read any communist theory beyond the Manifesto (if that) don’t think we’re real communists because they have no idea what they’re talking about.
As far as I am aware, the primary difference is that tankies are authoritarian. They got their name because they supported the USSR sending tanks into Hungary in 1956. I’ve seen many express positive opinions towards China and North Korea while ignoring or denying things like mass censorship in both countries, China’s concentration camps of Uyghur Muslims or the fact that people and their families risk death if they try to flee North Korea.
I typically add a user note to all tankies I encounter or I just block them.
Edit: I originally incorrectly cited that they got their name because they deny the tiananmen square massacre (which they claim was either peaceful or non-existent). It is still true that they deny it, but it is not the origin of their name.
I continue to say: Wikipedia itself states that between 0 and 1 people died in Tienanmen Square. Nobody denies protests happened elsewhere.
The name actually came from British communists that supported the USSR sending tanks into Hungary in '56.
Ok that does seem correct. I’ve just always heard from others that it was the tainanmen square massacre that gave them their name.
Tankie was initially someone who didn’t have an issue with running over protestors in a tank in support of their beliefs, and has grown to include anyone willing to use violent means in support of communist ideals.
Current examples include supporting Russia or blaming Ukraine for the conflict, or supporting China invading Taiwan.
I don’t think it has grown to include that (or I don’t think it should have grown, if it actually has and I didn’t notice).
Any revolution will require violent means. That doesn’t inherently make it bad, just sad. It depends who is the target of the violence.
There aren’t many Americans who condemn the American revolution for it’s violence against the British, for example.
You can have non violent revolutions.