Wait, wildly overconfident man, with odd hairstyling who we can only presume straddles rather than sits in chairs in absolute defiance of all that is prim and proper in the world, wildly points at screen where smart people are talking about others who repetitively, some might even say blindly, repeat the same motions over and over again - perhaps a dozen, maybe even a hundred times, who can tell? - methinks I may might have seen this one before...

::: spoiler oh no, for the love of all that is holy and decent in the world, please don't do it, OpenStars DON'T do it, don't you dare do it... again

:::

Oh heyyy! There's my latest post! 233 up votes not bad LMAO

Being a bit new to the Fediverde, what is this about? i have a hard time grasping the framgmentations of Fediverse

"Meanwhile on Grad" is kinda best described as "shit tankies say" and it's always full of screenshots of ridiculous takes coming out of .ml, grad and their lot.

In case you're like me and have never even heard the term "tankie" before this place, here's a helpful Urban Dictionary link: http://tankie.urbanup.com/15148876

The threadiverse is made up of multiple servers (instances) run by individuals or small groups but are all distinct and have their own rules, themes, enforcement and sometimes ideologies and they are all interconnected. Think of email providers where youll have gmail, proton, yahoo and privately run email servers where they can all talk to each other but each is distinct.

This setup is great for censorship resistance and breaking "platform lockin" that mainstream social media loves. But in some ways not so great because anyone can setup an instance that means you can have toxic instances with toxic ideologies such as MAGAt/right-wing aligned instances or other authoritarian instances.

On the Threadiverse there are 3 instances known as "The Tankie Triad" they are lemmy․ml, Hexbear and Lemmygrad. Their ideology is aligned with authoritarianism and praise/defend authoritarian countries such as Russia, NK and China (and even denies the word authoritarian is legit, often saying it's just a CIA psyop or flops to "ALL governments are authoritarian!"). They also constantly spread Russian propaganda, such as that Russia was justified to invade Ukraine or denial of genocides those governments committed. They frequently conflate themselves as "the only true communists/leftists".

Hex and grad are widely defederated from (which means other instances block accepting communities, content, votes and user submissions from them. Akin to an email provider blocking another rouge/spammish one.) because of how excessive they are about their views, often giving death threats, harassment and general negativity to those they deem won't align with their views

Lemmy․ml is similar, but is way more subtle about it because the admins are also the devs of the Lemmy software (and are hardcore tankies themselves), often opting to just censor and ban people who don't align with their views or dares to call out their misinformation, authoritarianism or even just saying something like TASS or RT is Russian propaganda (which is frequently posted there). You can't even say Trump is a Russian agent over there without being censored (which is the top thread in the screenshot). They still frequently yell at people they deem to be "liberals" (anyone who doesn't align with their authoritarianism) to "go back to Reddit"

!meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works is a place to document what they say and do and therefore, like all authoritarians in regards to things that document them, hate it

Here's a big mega thread that documents lemmy․mls shenanigans

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support or defend acts of repression by such regimes, their allies, or deny the occurrence of the events thereof.

Welcome!

Tankies are sorta like a leftist MAGA, but instead of supporting Donald Trump against all arguments to the contrary, they simp for Russia, China, and North Korea. That's right, they ironically believe (or at least claim to) that Ukraine is the one to blame for Russia being "forced" to invade them. Not only that, but their form of argumentation is very toxic and draining to have to constantly listen to. Refusing to listen, those incels demand the right to speak, and also your right to be forced to listen to whatever they are spewing at any given moment.

You may hear the confusing term "Nazi bar" being thrown around, which I will clarify does not mean "actual Nazis", and rather is a reference to the Paradox of Intolerance. Basically, if Nazis are in the space and we allow that, then we cannot be surprised when a member of a scorned group, let's say a Jewish person, visits the space and does not feel welcomed. Such a person will typically leave immediately, and tell everyone how we here at the bar are either outright "Nazis" (or in this case "tankies"), or at least are comfortable in the presence of that group and their ideology.

Tankies routinely call for the murder of everyone in Western nations and the downfall of all Western capitalist civilizations. And they routinely use "alternative facts" in their biased presentations. For example, when Donald Trump ran against Kamala Harris in the last USA election (not that everything has to be about the USA but it's a fairly powerful example), tankies continually proclaimed how bOtH sIdEs SaMe, as if electing her would have lead to anything remotely close to the outcome that we are now seeing from having elected him. In their defense, they may want to get through the fires of the fall of civilization first, then pass through the anarchy phase, in order to open up the pathway to pure communism on the other side. Except they lie so much (chiefly to themselves) that it is not clear if this is a convenient excuse or merely wrong, i.e. this argument is predicated on (a) Russia, China, and North Korea being exemplary models that should be followed, and (b) that the end justifies the means, no matter how many have to die in order to reach it, plus (c) that the end-goal even exists in the first place and is somehow reachable from the current state in the first place, plus still further that we would not end up in some other state entirely, such as a techno-feudalist empire.

All tankies are communists (ostensibly, at least they call themselves that, no matter how hypocritically), though most communists are not tankies.

I think the constant barrage of hate for "tankies" on lemmy and piefed is somewhat of a psyop to make sure people don't start to wonder why the status quo in the west has been "communism bad" for decades, while it sure seems like all of our daily struggles are caused by capitalism. Communism is not a threat to the entire world. Capitalism is. That's why capitalism spends soooooooo much money on shitting on communist countries. Okay, go on now, hit the down vote, everyone.

Are we gonna talk about Dondi from The Isle?