this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2025
90 points (93.3% liked)
Asklemmy
50898 readers
1238 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
There are far too many comments that just got removed by the moderator! I asked the question, and while I might not agree with all the replies, I was glad that people felt like it was okay to do so.
You asked the equivalent of "What's a limey bastard?" at a British pub. It's quite funny, but basically everything you kicked off answers your question.
We removed many comments, since its a blanket term used to demonize leftists, like "commie", and carry out anti-communist witch-hunts (the instance you're currently on blocks the major leftist lemmy servers, so we're seeing a lot of witch-hunters).
Its kinda similar to going to a non-theist forum, and asking, "hey everyone, what's a heathen?" And a lot of the answers then demonize these supposed "heathens".
If you want to know about any subject, ask a person that is a proponent of said subject first and then get the harshest criticism second and see how the first holds up. You will find an answer eventually in this hegelian dialectic. E.g. You don't want an anti-feminists explaining feminism to you, without hearing from a feminist first.
you asked what a "tankie" is in one of the very few places on the internet that is a tankie space/instance. Let them explain to you first. The removed comments are "dronies" (politically confused people that hold the same views as western imperialists and are subject to their hegemony) are outsiders that come from other parts of the fediverse repeating the same talking points you read about everywhere else on the (western) internet. (To stay with the analogy: similar to an anti-feminist saying that feminists hate men, when its not true). Comments get removed here when they are factually wrong
"Factually wrong" might be a bit slippery when it comes to this issue. I get the impression that the term is going through some changes in use (as words tend to do) and some groups might legitimately disagree with each other on the definition. Some of the comments that got removed were not in any way helpful to the conversation, but others seemed to have their own definitions. Now they are deleted, who can say? The last definition standing wins?
You asked with a .world account, meaning you're defederated from 2/3 biggest communist spaces on Lemmy, on Lemmy.ml, the last third. As such, it became quite a mess, because communists are outnumbered by anti-communists if you cut out 2/3s of communists.
The ones that had their comments removed were picking a definition that does not correspond to reality.
It's kinda like asking what the word "woke" means. MAGA people are going to give you this elaborate strawman, and others are going to tell you that it's just a pejorative strawman.
If you want to see all sides, read the wikipedia page for "tankies," first, as it's the liberal understanding. Then compare that to the prolewiki entry for "Tankies," for a communist perspective on it, then read "Tankies" by Nia Frome to get someone to elaborate on how it's actually used today, beyond its origins and the strawman characteristics it holds.
The problem here is that "tankie" is just a strawman with ready-made characteristics. In the minds of viewers, a tankie is exactly what McCarthy described, yet also someone who believes that the McCarthyian version of a communist is a good thing. The problem is that this doesn't describe real people. Communists disagree with common western, liberal viewpoints on existing socialist states, and believe them to be unfairly represented in western media. Communists aren't paid trolls, we aren't in it for ego. Many of us are members of communist parties, volunteer in our communities, etc.
You say these supposed "tankies" identify with crimes against humanity, but that's demonstrably false. I can say that, for example, the idea of the 1930s famine in the USSR being intentional is utter mythology. That doesn't mean I support the famine, it means based on evidence from the opening of the soviet archives, we know that it was a tragedy caused by adverse weather conditions made worse by kulaks destroying grain and livestock as resistance to collectivization, and that food output grew with collectivization. None of that "identifies with" the idea that the famine was intentional and is somehow good.
Even your points on the Russian Federation are wrong. Nobody thinks they are still socialist, critical support for the Russian Federation lies in the fact that it's forced into trade with socialist countries, resists western imperialism, and has a rising socialist public that wishes to reimplement socialism. The DPRK isn't the dystopian nightmare the west pitches it to be, and we know this by measuring up defector testimonies and comparing them to reporting both internally and externally. China is socialist, public ownership is the principle aspect of its economy.
All of this is to say, yourself and others are getting downvoted because you're treating the McCarthyite strawman as if it's a real thing.
So much arrogant, condescending chauvinism in this comment.