MeanwhileOnGrad
"Oh, this is calamity! Calamity! Oh no, he's on the floor!"
Welcome to MoG!
Meanwhile On Grad
Documenting hate speech, conspiracy theories, apologia/revisionism, and general tankie behaviour across the fediverse. Memes are welcome!
What is a Tankie?
Alternatively, a detailed blog post about Tankies.
(caution of biased source)
Basic Rules:
Sh.itjust.works Instance rules apply! If you are from other instances, please be mindful of the rules. — Basically, don't be a dick.
Hate-Speech — You should be familiar with this one already; practically all instances have the same rules on hate speech.
Apologia — (Using the Modern terminology for Apologia) No Defending, Denying, Justifying, Bolstering, or Differentiating authoritarian acts or endeavours, whether be a Pro-CCP viewpoint, Stalinism, Islamic Terrorism or any variation of Tankie Ideology.
Revisionism — No downplaying or denying atrocities past and present. Calling Tankies shills, foreign/federal agents, or bots also falls under this rule. Extremists exist. They are real. Do not call them shills or fake users as it handwaves their extremism.
Tankies can explain their views but may be criticised or attacked for them. Any slight infraction on the rules above will immediately earn a warning and possibly a ban.
Off-topic Discussion — Do not discuss unrelated topics to the point of derailing the thread. Stay focused on the direct content of the post as opposed to arguing.
You'll be warned if you're violating the instance and community rules. Continuing poor behaviour after being warned will result in a ban or removal of your comments. Bans typically only last 24 hours, but each subsequent infraction will double the amount. Depending on the content, the ban time may be increased. You may request an unban at any time.
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I don't understand why these people who pretend to be supreme leftists are putting alt-right dogwhistles in the Democratic candidate's name. I guess you can just call everyone you don't like a Nazi when everyone who disagrees in your echo chamber gets banned.
I mean, they're in there praising nations that are state capitalist and producing hundreds of billionaires, so it clearly isn't the leftist economy part that they like.
They want Donald to win so that China and Russia can gain more global influence. I guess they are bad at propaganda and just forwarding what their MAGA allies invent or something. Makes sense, they all have the same goals this election.
Hexbear is legitimately filled with right wing trolls pretending to be leftists.
I'm not unconvinced that the whole leftist presence on that federated side of Lemmy is a psyop.
Lemmy is far too small and unimportant to attract any governments or psyops. Extremism comes in all flavours.
Sounds like something the feds would say
Get out of my walls or I'll turn up the thermostat again
Or it's the perfect, extremely cost effective training ground for Russian propagandists before they get promoted to Facebook and Reddit.
The main dev instance is literally a safe space for Russian and Chinese propaganda. Why is this so difficult to believe?
Because it's nonsense, think of it logistically.
Why would shills bother with Lemmy when they're already extreme? Why water a floodplain, you know? They're already converted; they don't need any more shilling. Why wouldn't they pull all their resources to mainstream social media like twitter or reddit, which has everyones attention? No international news or big influencers exist on Lemmy. It is a loss of resources.
People are just extreme. Being paranoid and calling everyone you don't like a shill or a bot ignores the fact that some people just have extreme views. They ain't bots, they ain't shills, they're just bigots in safespaces and afraid of discussion. Pretending that extremists naturally don't exist makes you as paranoid as they are. This community has been called psyops, and myself a foreign agent more times than I can count. You're not a shill. I'm not a shill. Don't stoop to their level, basically.
(I'm not saying they aren't affected by shills. The propaganda they willingly consume originates from psyops on different websites, but they aren't the prime target)
Especially in all forms of stupidity
Are you sure though? I'm just imagining Xi being like "write that down, write that down!" after every crazy take
Fairly sure. I've seen some Chinese nationalists in Lemmygrad and Hexbear's personal chatrooms, but I don't think they're federal agents.
My bet is on troll factory workers slinging ideas around to see what and who sticks, and then they continue to sling ideas with their growing group. That was what the early days strategy of The_Donald on reddit were.
It doesn't matter that lemmy is relatively unimportant, what matters to them is having a testbed for what is and isn't sticking along with growing a crowd of supporters they might be able to take elsewhere where it matters.
Why do you think this?
They tried to pretend Lemmy was just software and call "their platform" Haxbear, in some sad attempt to culture-roll Lemmy itself.
Not a really square plan when 90% of the user base are leftist socialist code-monkies.
They should rename Haxbear to "Rekt Center".
"The second coming of Stalin"
anyone who complains about reeducation camps will be banned or shot
that's satire, right?.... right, guys?
Wrong. They're just extreme.
It's more than just extreme. There are several... really continuously happening examples of them spouting off straight up GOP and Russian information warfare which is very far removed from anything resembling their alleged politics. And this is taking into consideration their silly "imperialism is when USA" framework, and their penchant for accelerationism *and* their particularly outdated view of leftist philosophy.
There are two possibilities here - they are either so out of touch and steeped in anti-liberalism that they've come full circle to becoming a far right safe space, or a significant portion of their user base are trolls.
Whatever the motivation, clearly they're just morally bad people
yeah, I don't doubt they repeat the propaganda. I think they're just a part of the pipeline as opposed to being directly fed propaganda.
Tankies like Modern Russia because Russia opposes the US. If anything opposes the US, even if that thing is opposite of their ideals, then they'll still support them.
They don't have complex views, just full-circle.
The political spectrum is a circle. If you go to far left or right, authoritarian ideas start making sense to you, you parrot authoritarian talking points, everyone who doesn't agree with your extreme ideas about how the world ought to be is either weak or evil, and you end up kissing the boots of some authoritarian leader or other.
Horseshoe theory is bunk. The extreme left is full of anarchists, not authoritarians. What appears to be authoritarian left cares more about replacing US worldwide influence with Chinese or Russian influence than actually building a more leftist society.
Tankies aren't leftists. They're not agitating to take apart hierarchies, but replace the existing hierarchies with their own.
In this case kissing the boots of several great world supreme leaders who just happened to be responsible for the deaths of millions.
Im not even on hexbear but i see it fairly often. Im also not american so maybe that gives me some different perspective, but do you really not get it or are you just being obtuse? Kamala and biden are actively supporting a genocide, and thats not even hyperbole. Theyre sending billions of dollars of weapons. Its not like they just wont publicly condemn israel, theyre explicitly and outright supporting them. Say that trump would be worse all you want, but the nazi association seems obvious when you considee that theyre actively supplying weapons to a genocidal regime.
Oh, you have an answer? Perfect! What should we do instead of voting for Harris?
I probably would vote for her. But i also wouldnt attack people raising legitimate concerns, and i would try to put as much fucking pressure on the democratic party to stop fucking around as i could, which means not unconditionally supporting them no matter what they do.
I get it, but stop pretending that Trump wouldn't be so much worse. Trump has literally said he would give Isreal carte blanche.
That is your alternative. Voting 3rd party is just going to help Trump since he has never won the popular vote.
If you vote, I say raise your standards and vote for a third party.
Do not reward those that are for another genocide and for more forever wars.
Which third party? The most successful third party in the US is the Libertarian Party, and they want capitalism to become the worst version of itself. The next most successful are the Greens, who have a candidate that's fine taking dinner invitations with Putin and Michael Flynn, and believes in the power of healing crystals. After that, we're getting into parties that are so small and poorly organized that they're not worth talking about.
By suggesting people vote for a third party, all you’re doing is betraying the fact that you don’t understand (or, perhaps, are intentionally misrepresenting) the realities of the American electoral system
Take your opinion, put it in a pocket somewhere and just worry about yourself, dickweed.
be nice to differing opinions that aren't extreme
If you're not just taking the piss, you should really know that Hexbear absolutely does not deserve the benefit of the doubt in hearing out their arguments. There is always a punchline in the form the shittiest take imaginable.
You're fucking high.
You're very quick to draw on the nazi card.
I don't recommend it.