• Kedly@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        108
        ·
        edit-2
        7 months ago

        Hence why we call them Tankies and not communists

        Edit: Stop defending Tankies. If you are truly a Communist that doesnt support Russia and China, then defending the Tankies by letting them pretend ALL communists get called Tankies is only making you look bad by comparison. If Tankie was synonymous with communist, it wouldnt need to exist as a word.

        2nd edit: I’m giving some of you WAAAYYY too much benefit of doubt but heres a further point, at the moment there is two options

        1: You help clarify that Tankie means “Communist who Supports Authoritarian Regimes and their use of violences to suppress dissent” for people who are using the word incorrectly

        or

        2: You help create a smokescreen for Tankies to hide behind and let Tankie and Communist blur so Tankies can claim that all Communists get called that so the word means nothing. And if you are successful in that, the vast majority of us with great distaste for the Chinese and Russian goverment will just switch to telling ALL communists to fuck off because we certainly arent going to grow more tolerance for regimes that have no issues violently suppressing minorities

        There is no 3rd option

        Final Addition: 9 communists are sitting at a table when 1 Tankie decides to join the table. No one rejects the Tankie from sitting. 10 Tankies sit at a table

        • Grayox@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          22
          ·
          8 months ago

          I get called a tankie quite regularly advocating for Communism, like it or not the terms are becoming ubiquitous.

          • Kedly@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            48
            ·
            edit-2
            8 months ago

            It’s your ideal, we’re giving communists who dont support Russia and China respect by labelling Tankies as Tankies, and not Communists, but if you want to give the Tankies a smoke screen to hide behind by letting the two terms blur, then its more your loss than its mine. Russia and China are not bastions of LGBTQ rights though, so I dont know why you’d want to help the Tankies

          • YeetPics@mander.xyz
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            23
            ·
            edit-2
            8 months ago

            The old adage goes “if you meet an asshole once in the morning, you merely met an asshole. If you meet an asshole in the morning, at noon and again at night, you are the asshole”

            Reassess your behavior and stance; if you’re getting called a tankie it isn’t because the whole world decided to shift a definition.

              • Kedly@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                22
                ·
                8 months ago

                It really isnt. Tankie is specifically for those who’d support Russia and China. Are you defending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? Are you making arguements that Taiwan should become part of China? THEN you are a Tankie, but if you believe true Communism hasnt been done yet, and Russia and China DEFINITELY havent done it right, then no one who matters is going to call you a Tankie. If Tankie and Communist were synonymous, there would literally be no need for the term Tankie. You dont see “Fuck off Communists” everywhere on Lemmy, you see “Fuck off Tankies”

                • daltotron@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  7 months ago

                  yeah that’s too much singular linguistic prescriptivism for me. I’ve definitely seen a litany of people here called tankies. Lots of people just decrying US imperialism, particularly what’s happening in Gaza, lots of people criticizing Biden, that’s a classic way to get accused of being a tankie, I think I’ve also seen people advocating for basic shit like healthcare being called tankies. Prison reform is a big one that’ll get you called a tankie, as well as lots of anti-police takes, for whatever reason.

                  Yeah. It’s a term that’s like originating out of apologia for the suppression of the Hungarian revolution, it’s not used for that anymore. The definition has changed historically and from person to person over time. It doesn’t have this clear meaning that you seem to think it does. It can have that clear meaning for you, sure, you’ve defined your use case, but you can’t really guarantee that every other person using that term is going to use it correctly. It would be, you know, theoretically, pretty advantageous for some right wingers to pose as left wing and then just kind of throw around a term commonly used in left wing circles as a derogatory term to shut down discussions, with basically no coherence to use.

          • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            22
            ·
            edit-2
            7 months ago

            Is it because you occasionally simp for authoritarians?

            I too advocate for socialism, but I keep getting banned from “socialist” spaces for wrong think, because I think Lenin’s shit stinks.

          • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            16
            ·
            8 months ago

            Conservatives and liberal chuds also use it because they see us saying it, not realising that it’s a call-out of viscous authoritarianism, and not necessarily a critique of communism let alone socialism.

          • honey_im_meat_grinding@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            8
            ·
            edit-2
            8 months ago

            I feel like communism has been conflated with ‘tankie’ (as in, the meaning, not the word) for a long while thanks to the red scares. “Tankie” seems to be a more recent (or at least, recently resurrected) term that is attempting to split the authoritarianism away from ‘communism’ and bring that latter term back to its roots as ‘classless, stateless, cashless society’.

            But also, you can often avoid using loaded terms like communism. Personally I like to just double down on “democracy” since it literally means rule by people and has positive connotations. If you add more and more rule by people, eventually you get communism.

            • Kedly@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              11
              ·
              edit-2
              8 months ago

              Tbh, after dealing with Tankies on Lemmy for the past half year, I can understand why the red scares happened (understanding =/= agreeing with). With normal facists and bigots, you can tell they are assholes pretty much at a glance, but Tankies meanwhile seem nice and caring at first glance, but are salivating at the chance to violently revolutionize you

              • force@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                12
                ·
                edit-2
                8 months ago

                The Red Scare happened because it threatened the American ruling class, and America wasn’t occupied by Nazis in WW2 so they didn’t have the experience of being liberated by mostly leftist rebels. Immediately after WW2, communists and socialists were seen as liberators who freed various countries from Nazi rule, even in the UK where Winston Churchill lost re-election partly due to him going all-in on anti-communism (which the people didn’t like). As a result, Europeans were a lot friendlier to communism and were more open to adopting socialist policies. The US was both the leading capitalist power AND it was very distanced/separated from the oppression and rebellion against the Nazis, so they just saw communists as a threat.

                • Kedly@lemm.ee
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  7
                  ·
                  8 months ago

                  Yes, I understand the history and the political motivation, my point on Tankies being fucked in a kind of scary way still stands however

          • dethedrus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            8 months ago

            If your goal is to help the proletariat and not to create a oligopoly (or kleptocracy) then you’re aces in my book for what little it’s worth.

      • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        29
        ·
        7 months ago

        It’s pretty hard to tell on Lemmy.

        I’ve been banned from .ml twice for criticizing Putin’s Russia.

          • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            edit-2
            7 months ago

            Anyone reading this should know that this is a lie, and you can easily look at the logs yourself. Better yet, the broader body of my post history should illustrate that I am not a troll. My bans from .ml have nothing to do with xenophobia of any kind, and this is a perfect example of how .ml trolls abuse this kind of language to censor even very mild dissent. And the irony of the name calling in there just perfectly illustrates how these trolls are used to special treatment, double standards and protection on their home instance. Chef’s kiss

            It’s actually pretty hilarious that you took the time to write all that out but didn’t bother citing any of my own words which produced said bans. I think we all understand why.

              • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                5
                ·
                edit-2
                7 months ago

                I rest my case.

                If I made this exact comment on .ml, I’d get banned for the name calling and mild sarcasm alone.

                It is nice to know I’ve got fans, at least. You all know you are rapidly becoming a joke in the fediverse. I can just feel the seethe and cope. I guess you can either do better, or keep impotently trolling, and banning everyone who makes fun of you.

      • el_bhm@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        14
        ·
        7 months ago

        Cue in Omaega Haxor and Yoghurt jumping in to appologize for Putin and North Korea.

  • mogoh@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    94
    ·
    8 months ago

    No no no! You got it wrong! It was because checks notes Imperialist USA!

  • Jaytreeman@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    67
    ·
    8 months ago

    Lenin and the Bolsheviks essentially legalized it though.
    Nobody likes Stalin. If you do, think about your life and your place in the world

    • SimplyTadpole@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      7 months ago

      ehhh, unfortunately I’ve met more than my fair share of people who unironically like Stalin.

      Lots of actually good communist figures out there and they go out of their way to choose the homophobic drunk domestic abuser who kept a literal child rapist as his right-hand man.

      • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        7 months ago

        Being the leader of the nation that defeated the Nazis gets you a lot of credit. Moreso when Nazis start cropping up again.

        I think these days his iconography tends to just trigger those who would ultimately roll with fascism over communism.

    • Liz@midwest.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      7 months ago

      I can’t come up with a good, succinct comment on these parallel universes, but there sure is something about seeing these side by side.

          • Grayox@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            7 months ago

            Trotsky is who Lenin wanted to take over the party after his death, but Stalin framed him as a power hungry authoritarian and took control of the party then forcing Trotsky to flee the USSR then had him murdered in Mexico to stop his criticisms of the USSR under Stalin’s authoritarian reign.

  • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    55
    ·
    8 months ago

    I remember tankies telling on Reddit me how “Pushing for LGBT Rights is forcing Western ideals on non-Western people” and how “Putin killing the gays is good actually”… the Horse Shoe Theory is real

    • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      66
      ·
      8 months ago

      Horse shoe theory still doesn’t work-- you have to change to the stethoscope model to include tankies

      • retrospectology@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        edit-2
        7 months ago

        Well, the whole notion that things are on a spectrum is kind of false.

        There are the people using what we know about the world right now to try to improve the conditions for all of us and who are willing to adjust course based on evidence and results, and then there are those clinging to failed notions of the past, whether it be an outdated philsophy from four hundred years ago or a failed theory from yesterday.

        In that way it’s more of a binary that does not care if you’re anarchist, monarchist, communist, libertarian, democratic etc. If your ideas aren’t working and you fail to admit they aren’t working then you have become a conservative, regardless of how radical your idea was when it was concieved.

    • roscoe@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      21
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      Yup, it’s always “critical support” for any country with an adversarial relationship to the “imperial core” no matter how fucked up they are on human rights, or anything else.

      It’s never critical support for any of the “succdem” countries for their advances on human rights and social safety nets despite not moving towards socialism/communism, and then trying to get them moving in that direction.

      Not that all or even most of the countries they support are actually moving towards socialism/communism either. The countries they list as AES (already existing socialism) make me think they have literal holes in their heads, like that guy that didn’t realize he shot himself in the head with a nail gun for years.

      They’re good at quoting Marx but when it comes to who they support their only requirement is anti-western aligned countries, and they’ll twist their brains into any knots necessary to invent a narrative to justify that support.

      • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        7 months ago

        It’s because they don’t care about socialism. They mostly care about relitigating the cold war. It’s honestly pretty transparent.

    • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      7 months ago

      It’s a very common thing for people to equate queerness with other concepts of otherness like “not from my group!” type pearl clutching. Bigots in a lot of places are weirdly more accepting of individual queer folks when they are noticeably foreign and more treat the concept of people being queer as an outside corrupting influence… Nevermind that the existence of queerness is basically a universal. People from non-permissive places really don’t want to believe that their culture will also constantly manifest new queer people. They often believe something along the lines of if they stamp on it hard enough it becomes more rare instead of just more people hiding and struggling in isolation and silence often risking their lives if they misjudge a social situation or dying because of a pervasive sense of dispair.

      But no matter how hard you stomp the “problem” never goes away. You have to keep stomping forever in perpetuity. The boot must always rest heavy on someone’s neck and will never touch floor again because there will always be someone there to rise if the pressure ever stops. It’s in part why the concept of people essentially just being “born that way” has been so powerful.

    • neoman4426@fedia.io
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      16
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      And to circle it to a common online debate, DC has its “Red Son” alternate continuity where the major divergence point is Kal-El’s birthing matrix lands in Soviet territory rather than Kansas so there’s a Superman born and raised wholly believing in the idealized theoretical form of communism rather than an idealized version of the US, do could get the “Goku vs Superman” argument going

    • antidote101@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      8 months ago

      Stalin did apparently love cowboy movies, and made party members stay up every night drinking and watching them.

  • umbrella@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    7 months ago

    wasnt the ussr one of the first places in the planet to stop criminalizing gays?

        • Liz@midwest.social
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          45
          ·
          7 months ago

          Under Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union recriminalized homosexuality in a decree signed in 1933. The new Article 121, which punished “muzhelozhstvo” with imprisonment for up to 5 years, saw raids and arrests. Female homosexuals were sent to mental institutions. The decree was part of a broader campaign against “deviant” behavior and “Western degeneracy”. Following Stalin’s death, there was a liberalisation of attitudes toward sexual issues in the Soviet Union, but homosexual acts remained illegal. Discrimination against LGBT individuals persisted in the Soviet era, and homosexuality was not officially declassified as a mental illness until 1999.
          […]
          Since 2000, a campaign by Russian president Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church to promote “traditional Russian values” and oppose “liberalism” in regards to homosexuality has led to many pieces of anti-LGBT legislation being passed federally, including the banning of distribution of “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships to minors” in 2013, an amendment in Russia’s constitution banning same-sex marriage passed in 2020, and expansion of the 2013 propaganda law signed in 2022 to apply it to anyone, regardless of age.

          Taken from this article.

          • umbrella@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            edit-2
            7 months ago

            were gays actually executed? from what i hear from cuba for example, treatment was much less bad than elsewhere. dunno about the ussr.

            • daltotron@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              13
              ·
              7 months ago

              Treatment was less bad in Cuba iirc but still included sending people to go work on sugar plantations, which is pretty back-breaking and horrifying labor. I mean, horrifying to the point that the Spanish colonial state were willing to force their slaves to do it, you know?

              Luckily this isn’t an issue anymore as cuba has somewhat recently liberalized their constitution and legislated free medical care for trans people and decriminalized homosexuality, probably in no small part due to the “thaw” that Obama put in place (probably one of his small wins), opening them up for better tourism and money, that trump then reversed and Biden has maintained.

              But shhh, you didn’t hear any that from me, Cuba’s only allowed to be evil.

            • Liz@midwest.social
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              11
              ·
              7 months ago

              I’m not educated enough to say one way or another, sorry. I was just providing a source for the recriminalization.

            • Ranger@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              5
              ·
              7 months ago

              “Cuban gay writer Reinaldo Arenas wrote, “[T]he decade of the sixties … was precisely when all the new laws against homosexuals came into being, when the persecution started and concentration camps were opened, when the sexual act became taboo while the ‘new man’ was being proclaimed and masculinity was being exalted.””

              https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Cuba

    • 100_kg_90_de_belin @feddit.it
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      7 months ago

      The Soviet government of the Russian Soviet Republic (RSFSR) decriminalised homosexuality in December 1917, following the October Revolution and the discarding of the Legal Code of Tsarist Russia.

      The legalisation of homosexuality was confirmed in the RSFSR Penal Code of 1922, and following its redrafting in 1926. According to Dan Healey, archival material that became widely available following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 "demonstrates a principled intent to decriminalize the act between consenting adults, expressed from the earliest efforts to write a socialist criminal code in 1918 to the eventual adoption of legislation in 1922.

      Taken from here