That's why we add all tankie instances to our block lists.
this post was submitted on 21 May 2025
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...but tankies are fascists.
The "red" part of "red fascist" is a fairly important distinction so you don't give libertarians free ammo in their rhetorical war to claim all fascists are socialists.
It sounds like you finally learned about hexbear firsthand and don't have to rely on others' reports on their behavior.
It will be a great day when the fediverse defederates from all the tankie instances.
Hexbear tankies really are something incredible. I've been around left-wing politics most of my life and in the real world I've met like one or two people actually like them. Difficult to understand where they all came from. I'm thinking maybe it's a r/Pyongyang where it started as a joke and then they started taking it seriously.
I think they’re just the people who’ve gorged themselves on the most propaganda
I call them the MAGA of the left, they hate it, but they’re just as big of zealots for their own beliefs as MAGA is, they defend tyrants who’s values appear to align with theirs on paper and don’t understand the concept of nuance.
They believe in only black and white and the idea that gray exists, and the thought they could be (are) morally gray, along side almost everyone else, is intolerable to them, they have to be “Good”, no shades of gray allowed and the way they prove it to themselves is by constant virtue signaling and purging to stay on top of the imagined “morally pure” pyramid they’ve convinced themselves exist - a lot of them are ableist and don’t consider disabled people in their grand schemes
Life is messy, people are imperfect, they’re almost never a completely correct option that serves everyone equally. They want logic, which is simply making something internally consistent, context is irrelevant, they do not want philosophy which strives to incorporate as much context as possible in order to come to a conclusion
r/chapostraphouse, if that subreddit rings any bells. Lemmy was the place they came for refuge after getting nuked off of Reddit for brigading (shocking, I know).
I don’t remember such aggressive Russian and Chinese propaganda on that sub
I think that the nature of the community has changed, whatever it was before certainly doesn't reflect who they are now — aside from the brigading.
I agree, most of the tankies we're plagued with online simply don't exist in irl leftist spaces, because no one likes them and most people in irl spaces understand that you don't get to call yourself a leftist and support authoritarianism in the same sentence.
If a tankie ever went public in the Baltics countries and said that shit out loud they would immediately get a well deserved beating. From some perspectives they're equivalent to nazi sympathizers because thats what they basically are.
I know. I was fuming watching some halfwitt useful idiot propagandist saying that the animosity many Polish people have for Rusisia is a product of propaganda and not, y'iknow, the USSR's horrendous treatment of their country in the 20th century.
I’m thinking maybe it’s a r/Pyongyang where it started as a joke and then they started taking it seriously.
I know. The same thing happened with The_Donald. It started out as a meme space. It's where Donnie as "The God Emperor" all started. But then people actually started taking it seriously.
So I guess we have Reddit to blame for the situation that America is in right now.
Thanks Reddit!
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They came from the response to rising right wing authoritarianism
No I do not condone or endorse tankies, just telling you why there are so many of them now
Reactionaries, in a nutshell
I dunno how much I buy that. America's been going fasc for most of my adult life. Under Bush we had the patriot act, "enhanced interrogation," "extraordinary rendition," etc. Sure we didn't have masked brownshirts pulling people off the streets (of America) yet but everyone could see where it was all going and people were incredibly upset.
The Putin and Xi-loving tankie seems to be an artifact of the internet. It's the meme-internet trajectory of "haha" to "ha ha only serious" to "seriously." It's a way to revel in the base pleasures of the malevolent thug without having to be Pro-trump, Pro-America or Zionist.
I wouldn't be surprised if these aren't real people or they are being manipulated by very effective propaganda the same way the qanon are.
If you look objectively, the various tankie movements are a net negative when it comes to promoting socialist ideologies. Its having an inverse effect of whatever they're trying to accomplish.
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