I’ve seen a lot of hysteria around “tankies” since I started using Lemmy and I gotta say I really don’t get it. Yes, there are people here who are to the left of Democrats. No, that doesn’t make them the enemy, or secretly MAGA or Russian or whatever. They just… disagree with liberals. I see opinions attributed to “everyone from a .ml community” that I’ve never seen from any of the actual users. People gleefully brag about blocking swaths of other users, yet I’ve almost never seen any .ml user actually being as toxic as they get branded. I’m pretty sure I’ve even heard people say that you are a particularly bad one, but I haven’t witnessed it.
Also, lemmy was created by ml’s right? It’s one thing to have very little tolerance for different political opinions, but it’s another thing entirely to literally just be the gray characters from this meme and still somehow think you’re in the right.
I’ve seen a lot of hysteria around “tankies” since I started using Lemmy and I gotta say I really don’t get it
I used to think this but then discovered that most of the actual tankies are blocked by my instance.
By contrast I pointed my browser to lemmy.ml just now and the front page includes a celebration of “Russia Unity Day”, a reading group for “Soviet Democracy”, and three “good news only” type puff pieces about China. There’s definitely a solid bloc of propagandists out there.
As others have said, they want to run that kind of instance I don’t actually have any huge beef with it. To an extent I think it’s good to have some other perspectives and news sources. Just be aware that that’s who people are talking about when they talk about “tankies”, not the people who post stuff critical of the Democratic Party.
Most content from .ml users likely isn’t even political, so people certainly overstate how prevalent radicalism is. Lemmy is part of the fediverse and isn’t a reserved political space any more than any other part of it. But you are much more likely to see controversial positions from the “tankie triad” compared to other instances and other social media. It is one of the few big instances where you can find popular support for Russia over Ukraine or denying the Uyghur genocide for example.
I think people generally think of themselves as progressive when they come here, and it might be their first run-in with revolutionary socialists. They get caught between their progressive beliefs, largely around the Bernie/AOC area, and this suddenly new group (to them) of people that despise reformism and the Democrats almost as much as the Republicans. It creates a lot of friction, IMO. And yea, Lemmy was and is made by MLs, which means we have a permanent foothold here.
Have you tried browsing hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml? Lemmy.ml has its own vibe because we don’t really defederate from anyone, but Lemmygrad.ml and Hexbear.net are pretty good examples of what “tankies” are like when we aren’t getting into constant squabbles with liberals. You’ll see tons of queer people, a lot of passionate people, and a lot of normalcy, to be honest.
People should run their lemmy instance as they want.
The non stop feudposting about what people do in their own instance is ridiculous. Block the instance and move on with your life if you need to. Block me to while youre at it! Who cares?
It seems there is some other agenda at play with those who are on this dumb ass crusade against .ml
I’ve seen a lot of hysteria around “tankies” since I started using Lemmy and I gotta say I really don’t get it. Yes, there are people here who are to the left of Democrats. No, that doesn’t make them the enemy, or secretly MAGA or Russian or whatever. They just… disagree with liberals. I see opinions attributed to “everyone from a .ml community” that I’ve never seen from any of the actual users. People gleefully brag about blocking swaths of other users, yet I’ve almost never seen any .ml user actually being as toxic as they get branded. I’m pretty sure I’ve even heard people say that you are a particularly bad one, but I haven’t witnessed it.
Also, lemmy was created by ml’s right? It’s one thing to have very little tolerance for different political opinions, but it’s another thing entirely to literally just be the gray characters from this meme and still somehow think you’re in the right.
I used to think this but then discovered that most of the actual tankies are blocked by my instance.
By contrast I pointed my browser to lemmy.ml just now and the front page includes a celebration of “Russia Unity Day”, a reading group for “Soviet Democracy”, and three “good news only” type puff pieces about China. There’s definitely a solid bloc of propagandists out there.
As others have said, they want to run that kind of instance I don’t actually have any huge beef with it. To an extent I think it’s good to have some other perspectives and news sources. Just be aware that that’s who people are talking about when they talk about “tankies”, not the people who post stuff critical of the Democratic Party.
Most content from .ml users likely isn’t even political, so people certainly overstate how prevalent radicalism is. Lemmy is part of the fediverse and isn’t a reserved political space any more than any other part of it. But you are much more likely to see controversial positions from the “tankie triad” compared to other instances and other social media. It is one of the few big instances where you can find popular support for Russia over Ukraine or denying the Uyghur genocide for example.
I think people generally think of themselves as progressive when they come here, and it might be their first run-in with revolutionary socialists. They get caught between their progressive beliefs, largely around the Bernie/AOC area, and this suddenly new group (to them) of people that despise reformism and the Democrats almost as much as the Republicans. It creates a lot of friction, IMO. And yea, Lemmy was and is made by MLs, which means we have a permanent foothold here.
Have you tried browsing hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml? Lemmy.ml has its own vibe because we don’t really defederate from anyone, but Lemmygrad.ml and Hexbear.net are pretty good examples of what “tankies” are like when we aren’t getting into constant squabbles with liberals. You’ll see tons of queer people, a lot of passionate people, and a lot of normalcy, to be honest.
I like hexbears cute pictures, even if they dont like me. lol
People should run their lemmy instance as they want.
The non stop feudposting about what people do in their own instance is ridiculous. Block the instance and move on with your life if you need to. Block me to while youre at it! Who cares?
It seems there is some other agenda at play with those who are on this dumb ass crusade against .ml