"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?
(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.
However, when it comes to everyday societal challenges that are usually points of interest for the left wing—like policing, climate change, healthcare, housing, and workers’ rights—tankies seem less engaged.
Ah yes, the "I don't care if trans people get sent to concentration camps because the Democrats are continuing to permit the war in Gaza" crowd.
Seeing the data on it is, admittedly, releiving. These Internet bubbles can really leave you worrying for people.
Tankies pretending to support egalitarianism is basically the "left" equivalent of MAGAts pretending to support freedom.
Throughout our topic analysis, we find that tankies are particularly vocal about major geopolitical events (Fig. 4 and 5). They are especially focused on issues such as Chinese and North Korean politics, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the Israel-Palestine conflict. They also show a keen interest in topics related to communism, fascism, and Stalin. However, when it comes to everyday societal challenges that are usually points of interest for the left wing—like policing, climate change, healthcare, housing, and workers’ rights—tankies seem less engaged.
This pattern reveals a striking insight: tankies appear to be deeply invested in state-driven political events, often at the expense of grassroots societal issues. This underscores a distinct divergence in the priorities and discourse of left-wing extremists and the wider far-left community.
Now do an analysis of comment times to see which timezone they are likely living in and which country's holidays they sync up with.
I think they’ve wised up to the necessity of posting in the timezone of the targeted country at this point.
And yes, it is weird that they went into so much detail about how deeply these accounts care about state-actor issues, and how little about domestic political or social issues that are more normal for the ideologies they are claiming to speak for, without drawing the obvious conclusion. “Just one of those little mysteries,” they seem to say.