Communist apologists. Nicknamed “tankies” because many would deny/defend things like the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Hungarian revolt of 1956, Czechoslovakian revolt of 1968, etc… Instances where authorities rolled tanks into town to deal with revolts, which caused images like this:
For a long time, communism’s first response to revolution seemed to be “send in the tanks to deal with it”, thus the nickname “tankies” for people who defended the practice. Lemmy has a lot of communist undertones. It sort of goes hand-in-hand with the “anyone can spin up their own instance and be their own admin” philosophy. The .ml instances are meant to stand for “Maoist/Leninist” so you’ll see a lot of tankies from those .ml instances… But some of the most prominent Lemmy devs use .ml as their home instance, so many instances are hesitant to defederate from them entirely.
It also means there are lots of disagreements about what “real” communism is. Discussions which would get buried on right-leaning (compared to communism) platforms like Meta or Reddit are up front and center on Lemmy. So you’ll see the word thrown around a lot here, especially compared to anywhere else. Because the only thing that causes more arguments than “left vs right” is “moderate left vs far left”.
Most of the leftists and communists at least recognize the evils that communism has enabled in the past. But you’ll inevitably get tankies with the “akshually it wasn’t communism’s fault, it was the individuals” every time anything slightly anti-communist gets brought up.
It should stand in contrast to Maoist communism, but tankies don’t care much for the distinction and will support the worst abuses of the Chinese government.
It would be more accurate to describe them as authoritarian communists, as opposed to the more liberal communist/socialist positions many people on here tend to hold.
Equating communism with the authoritarian dictatorships that called themselves that does a disservice to both the people living under them and everybody else that thinks late-stage-capitalism might not be that great either.
Communist apologists. Nicknamed “tankies” because many would deny/defend things like the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Hungarian revolt of 1956, Czechoslovakian revolt of 1968, etc… Instances where authorities rolled tanks into town to deal with revolts, which caused images like this:
For a long time, communism’s first response to revolution seemed to be “send in the tanks to deal with it”, thus the nickname “tankies” for people who defended the practice. Lemmy has a lot of communist undertones. It sort of goes hand-in-hand with the “anyone can spin up their own instance and be their own admin” philosophy. The .ml instances are meant to stand for “Maoist/Leninist” so you’ll see a lot of tankies from those .ml instances… But some of the most prominent Lemmy devs use .ml as their home instance, so many instances are hesitant to defederate from them entirely.
It also means there are lots of disagreements about what “real” communism is. Discussions which would get buried on right-leaning (compared to communism) platforms like Meta or Reddit are up front and center on Lemmy. So you’ll see the word thrown around a lot here, especially compared to anywhere else. Because the only thing that causes more arguments than “left vs right” is “moderate left vs far left”.
Most of the leftists and communists at least recognize the evils that communism has enabled in the past. But you’ll inevitably get tankies with the “akshually it wasn’t communism’s fault, it was the individuals” every time anything slightly anti-communist gets brought up.
Marxist/Leninist
It should stand in contrast to Maoist communism, but tankies don’t care much for the distinction and will support the worst abuses of the Chinese government.
It would be more accurate to describe them as authoritarian communists, as opposed to the more liberal communist/socialist positions many people on here tend to hold.
Equating communism with the authoritarian dictatorships that called themselves that does a disservice to both the people living under them and everybody else that thinks late-stage-capitalism might not be that great either.
Not quite right. Some other people cover the definition properly in this post.
Edit: Your comment is very wrong to be clear. Read this comment instead: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/21148571/12557557 and this one: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/21148571/12560912
Removed by mod