Yeah, I have, and it’s honestly disgusting. But for every pig shit emoji I have seen, I have also seen hundreds of comments shitting on tankies, dunking on commenters for expressing “radical leftist opinions” that are not that radical outside of social media, shitting on the work of the Lemmy devs for being professed marxist-lenninists, or claiming that Lemmy.ml is somehow cancer on the network that needs getting rid of, because it’s nominally a tankie instance despite the sheer amount of democrat shilling, Israel apologia and NATO bootlicking you can see here.
It’s a matter of scale. I will concede that I simpatize with the more leftist parts of the political spectrum, both marxists and anarchists, but I feel like at this point I would be grossed out at Lemmy even if I was 100% a liberal. Political disagreements are fine I guess, but the way they permeate the culture on Lemmy is weird, obsessive and unhealthy, and most importantly, it comes from a very small number of instances. And it’s not the tankie ones.
The Soviet Union made being gay illegal. Marxism-Leninism has a very long history of calling queerness “bourgeois decadence”. Some tankies choose to follow in the footsteps of that history. Others just ignore it and pretend it was excusable. Tankies aren’t allies.
Well, that comment by nutomic is certainly unfortunate, but I don’t think that’s exactly what people are thinking when they complain about tankies. The Soviet Union banning homosexuality is certainly also unfortunate, but it’s not different from what every other country on Earth was doing in the 20th century. It’s not reasonable to expect communist countries to get social issues right on the first try and attach their failure to do so to their economic organization. My country also banned homosexuality, for the record, and we absolutely were not communists.
It also just happens that most LGBT people I know, by a landslide, are marxists, because it’s the logical consequence of applying to capitalism the same questioning that allows breaking free of the cisheteronorm. Sometimes economics and gender/sexuality intersect in interesting ways, and to an extent attempting to stomp out marxist ideology also often inadvertely makes the place hostile to LGBT people.
You can argue that “tankie” only refers to toxic, LGBTphobic marxists such as nutomic right here, and I mean, fair. But I’m complaining about the Lemmy community being incessantly hostile to people and communities that are outside of a very narrow worldview that you can really only find in terminally online people. 99% of the usage I have seen of the word “tankie” on Lemmy has been for this, It is keeping people out of the norm away from this platform and, as seen with the way so many users harassed drag, for good reason.
I debated with myself about replying to this comment because of our few messages yesterday/day before.
I decided to chime in because, despite not being terribly fond of you, your point here is very important, and valid.
I had an account on .ml, as I am very left, and everything was fine at first. I eventually got sick of the constant rhetoric of: America bad, which means China and Russia are really good, and we would all be better off living in a M-L utopia like they do there!
And look, I’m not a Xenophobe/Sinophobe/Russophobe, I think that the people of those countries are just people. Sure America bad, but it’s a bit fucked up to go from that and recognising that some of what is said about them(China/Russia) is almost certainly propaganda, to the frothing true-believer fanaticism that goes on.
There’s a lot of talk at hexbear(when I’d gone to have a look and make my own opinion of them) and some parts of .ml about 2SLGBTQ+ safe space, acceptance and protection. And at the same time through the actions of folk there and the admins/mods it was clear that it was lip service.
I moved on, and then Trump was elected again. All of a sudden you had loads these .ml accounts not only calling people enablers of the bourgeoisie, Sheeple etc, then in the next breath they are Staning Trump. On more than one occasion when I called them out on parroting the GOP lines about things, they would quote Sartre at me and say I was a class traitor.
Was a real “Masks Off” realisation for me.
Again Drag, I am hardly a fan of you, and I’m sure you’re aware of that…but you’re absolutely right here. Tankies, or at least the ones that are the most vocal, are not allies, are not even tolerant as far as I can see.
Also considering how many times in the last thread you replied to a comment that Ada had made apologising, I’m positive that they know. I feel like this thread is a bit superfluous. And isn’t doing you any favours.
Yeah, I have, and it’s honestly disgusting. But for every pig shit emoji I have seen, I have also seen hundreds of comments shitting on tankies, dunking on commenters for expressing “radical leftist opinions” that are not that radical outside of social media, shitting on the work of the Lemmy devs for being professed marxist-lenninists, or claiming that Lemmy.ml is somehow cancer on the network that needs getting rid of, because it’s nominally a tankie instance despite the sheer amount of democrat shilling, Israel apologia and NATO bootlicking you can see here.
It’s a matter of scale. I will concede that I simpatize with the more leftist parts of the political spectrum, both marxists and anarchists, but I feel like at this point I would be grossed out at Lemmy even if I was 100% a liberal. Political disagreements are fine I guess, but the way they permeate the culture on Lemmy is weird, obsessive and unhealthy, and most importantly, it comes from a very small number of instances. And it’s not the tankie ones.
This is the second in command of lemmy.ml:
The Soviet Union made being gay illegal. Marxism-Leninism has a very long history of calling queerness “bourgeois decadence”. Some tankies choose to follow in the footsteps of that history. Others just ignore it and pretend it was excusable. Tankies aren’t allies.
Well, that comment by nutomic is certainly unfortunate, but I don’t think that’s exactly what people are thinking when they complain about tankies. The Soviet Union banning homosexuality is certainly also unfortunate, but it’s not different from what every other country on Earth was doing in the 20th century. It’s not reasonable to expect communist countries to get social issues right on the first try and attach their failure to do so to their economic organization. My country also banned homosexuality, for the record, and we absolutely were not communists.
It also just happens that most LGBT people I know, by a landslide, are marxists, because it’s the logical consequence of applying to capitalism the same questioning that allows breaking free of the cisheteronorm. Sometimes economics and gender/sexuality intersect in interesting ways, and to an extent attempting to stomp out marxist ideology also often inadvertely makes the place hostile to LGBT people.
You can argue that “tankie” only refers to toxic, LGBTphobic marxists such as nutomic right here, and I mean, fair. But I’m complaining about the Lemmy community being incessantly hostile to people and communities that are outside of a very narrow worldview that you can really only find in terminally online people. 99% of the usage I have seen of the word “tankie” on Lemmy has been for this, It is keeping people out of the norm away from this platform and, as seen with the way so many users harassed drag, for good reason.
I debated with myself about replying to this comment because of our few messages yesterday/day before.
I decided to chime in because, despite not being terribly fond of you, your point here is very important, and valid.
I had an account on .ml, as I am very left, and everything was fine at first. I eventually got sick of the constant rhetoric of: America bad, which means China and Russia are really good, and we would all be better off living in a M-L utopia like they do there!
And look, I’m not a Xenophobe/Sinophobe/Russophobe, I think that the people of those countries are just people. Sure America bad, but it’s a bit fucked up to go from that and recognising that some of what is said about them(China/Russia) is almost certainly propaganda, to the frothing true-believer fanaticism that goes on.
There’s a lot of talk at hexbear(when I’d gone to have a look and make my own opinion of them) and some parts of .ml about 2SLGBTQ+ safe space, acceptance and protection. And at the same time through the actions of folk there and the admins/mods it was clear that it was lip service.
I moved on, and then Trump was elected again. All of a sudden you had loads these .ml accounts not only calling people enablers of the bourgeoisie, Sheeple etc, then in the next breath they are Staning Trump. On more than one occasion when I called them out on parroting the GOP lines about things, they would quote Sartre at me and say I was a class traitor.
Was a real “Masks Off” realisation for me.
Again Drag, I am hardly a fan of you, and I’m sure you’re aware of that…but you’re absolutely right here. Tankies, or at least the ones that are the most vocal, are not allies, are not even tolerant as far as I can see.
Also considering how many times in the last thread you replied to a comment that Ada had made apologising, I’m positive that they know. I feel like this thread is a bit superfluous. And isn’t doing you any favours.