this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024
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Not exactly. This started yesterday, when a user accused mods on .ml of, "tankie censorship," (meaning censorship by tankies, not of tankies). He also came with some pretty good receipts that appear to show .ml mods removing criticism of China that, whether you agree with it or not, didn't seem to violate any rules, and was well within the bounds of what most people would consider civil discourse. He also claims to have received bans from all of the .ml communities he'd ever participated in for pointing this bias out. It's possible he's presenting all of this with his own slant, but what he showed seems legit, and I'm not sure he could have provided more evidence without encouraging brigading.
This is now starting to snowball, with users starting to call for defederating from .ml. One .world user also posted on .cafe about Dessalines previous tankie comments, while another user has posted about finding replacements for the largest .ml communities.
So, saying what's happing on .world is anti-communist isn't accurate, as most the criticism has been anti-tankie. However, .world has a much higher level of liberals than most of Lemmy (they created a little echo chamber for themselves on Political Memes), and most of them are incapable or unwilling to understand the difference between a tankies and communists (or tankies and leftists...or tankies and criticism of Biden...). So, it will probably only be a matter of time before this group tries to blur the line between valid criticism of baised moderation from authoritarian apologists to general criticism of leftists.
So, tl;dr: .world isn't broadly anti-communist, but a large portion of the community is upset about what appears to be biased moderation from tankie .ml mods, and there is a small contingent of .world liberals who I'm sure will take this opportunity to bash anyone to their left.
The problem with this is that "Tankie" is a sliding target, including all Marxists. If you claim to only have a problem with Tankies, not all Marxists, but do your best to attack the majority of Marxists, does that mean the majority of Marxists are Tankies, or that .world has become an anticommunist instance?
I'd say this will only end up creating a multipolar Lemmy. Dessalines has already stated that .ml will not be the first to defed, as they believe in an interconnected Lemmy. However, the target boogyman for .worlders has shifted from Grad, to Hexbear, to now .ml. After .world finally defeds from .ml, will they shift towards db0? Lemm.ee, perhaps? Who knows.
This isn't the first time this has happened, haha.
Tankie used to have a specific and clear meaning
But then people not in the know learned the word without caring what it meant
So now it just means "guy that I think is an asshole (leftist beliefs optional but expected)"
Wasn't it .world that defed from db0 already (but later added it back) because of the piracy support? Or maybe that was .ee? When that happened I moved from that instance to here.
Honestly i wouldn't mind. Users on .world that don't want a butt load of defederations will probably (and hopefully) move to another instance, whilst the rest of lemmy will be free from all the liberals uncapable of discriminating between communists and tankies
And .world would be free of all the communists incapable of discriminating between communists and tankies. Everyone wins.
I really only started to see the meaning of tankie start sliding once I got to Lemmy, and it goes in two directions; tankies who swear they aren't tankies, they just have a lot of feelings about why the Uyghurs aren't being mistreated, and liberals who literally think tankie is a synonym for leftist. (Seriously, if Lemmy has one unforgivable sin, it's introducing the, "but her emails," crowd to the word tankie.) Personally, I don't care if I get tankies in my feed, but I'm not OK with instances that censor opinions they don't like (I mean, assuming they're not bigoted). Those mod logs are pretty damning, I'd like to hear from the .ml mods why they felt those weren't legitimate discourse.
Honestly, my real takeaway from this whole mess is that it's really dispelled the myth of federation as a silver bullet for all of social media's ills. Federation was sold to me as a solution to overly-large internet communities, since federation would stop single communities from becoming too powerful, and communities could simply be defederated if they didn't get along. Meanwhile, .world is whining that .ml's communities are too large and important to lose, while .ml is bitching that .world defederating would be egregious and unreasonable. The whole thing feels more like a flame war between some large subreddits than the glorious online utopia that I was told federation would bring us. Actually, it feels a lot like the schism that started when r/antiwork fell apart.
I don't think .ml is whining about .world defeding, more like thinking it would be goofy, but expecting it.
This was already happening in Reddit roughly 2 years ago.
This isn't an attack on your comment, which gave quality information, but I think it's relevant to the conversations linked in your comment.
Their definition of authoritarian is a contradiction to their actions and used subjectively. "I hate authoritarianism, so we should defederate to keep out the authoritarians." This statement is supportive of a fundamentally authoritarian action.
This is also why people who use the term "tankies" seriously are themselves deeply unserious. Their understanding of the topic is superficial at best and colored only by Western biases rooted in anti-communist propaganda. The concept of authoritarianism was itself a product of propaganda.
Saying "no" is authoritarian. Holding elections is authoritarian. Authority itself doesn't matter, what matters is who is in power and how they use their power to influence the world.
Some people recognize and accept this reality and then openly support the power that best aligns with their own benefit.
Anger at tankies is usually just a lack of class consciousness and ignorance based on a term that changes based on who you support and who you do not.
And that, right there, is an example of the paradox of tolerance of intolerance.
They are very active though, and they don't lose their chance to mention and antagonize .ml, which I think is kind of shitty. It happens even in threads where people are commenting about stuff unrelated to politics. lemmy.world is constantly looking for targets to defederate from.
edit: I'd like to mention that I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just giving my perspective on it.
Oh, yeah, they're a very loud, obnoxious little group, and removing users that are only interested in picking fights is perfectly valid. But the screenshots from the original post really only seemed to be talking about China's censorship of Tiananmen Square, and while it's impossible to say without of context, their tone really didn't seem to be combative. They just seemed to be expressing opinions about China that didn't align with the .ml mods' beliefs, and that's troubling.
What's more, Dessalines gave a response that's kinda telling about all this. A user called .ml out on censorship (in a very respectful tone), and Dessalines basically replied saying asking questions is OK when it's done in good faith, but a lot of people only ask them to start fights. When the user replied that he was actually talking about people being censored for expressing opinions in good faith that run counter to .ml mods beliefs, Dessalines chose not to reply.
I really seems like .ml wants to remove opinions that run contrary to the mods beliefs about communism. If that is the case, fair enough, but then maybe it does make sense for instances that don't moderate that way to defederate. I don't want to worry about policing myself on a bunch of the communities in my feed because I might get banned for my opinion on a news story.
Maybe these fears are unfounded, and this whole thing is being blown out of proportion, but none of the .ml mods have addressed the original post yet. Dessalines has left several comments on the Ask Lemmy post Are You a Tankie, but he's chosen not to reply to the censorship claim. Given the silence, I have to assume the worst.
Based on just your link, it just kinda looks like he was posting unsourced gore. That doesn't feel like civil discourse to me.
I don't really see any criticism being removed. If Katana314's message was congruent with reality it would count, but otherwise just making accusations isn't criticism.
I love being able to block individual people. I've seen much less "pro-Biden a vote not for Biden is a vote for Trump" political compass meme shit lately because of that.
time to block me because not voting for biden increases the ods of trump getting in office
You support a candidate that is supporting a genocidal regime. You support genocide.
Wish granted!
Do you think trump is going to accept being declared the loser this time?
Last time some people tried to reverse the election results.
This time they’ve got a plan to harness the administrative states power once they get the presidency. Do you think there hasn’t been an equal amount of planning what to do to stop the steal a second time?
You better block me as well. I don't know why we should help support Bibi's favorite candidate by doing exactly what Repubs want and voting for someone who barely broke 1% of the popular vote. I guess people really want more far-right theocratic judges who are blatantly unqualified and corrupt?
I’ll bite. The democrats aren’t listening to us, we have two options: not support them in the election or (it was surprising to see this one end up in the news recently) an appeal to heaven.
If you think trump is too much of a threat, that the president we already had will destroy democracy and there won’t be a 2028 election, that the most important thing is to keep out a candidate who didn’t accept it the last time he was declared the loser of an election and has had four years to prepare for this one as evidenced by project 2024, stop trying to get people to vote for the democrats and start stockpiling ammunition and training to oppose trump supporters in the streets instead.
SCOTUS is right now still somehow deliberating on whether a president is allowed to Night of the Long Knives or not. SCOTUS is already taking away rights from my friends and neighbors. You may be privileged enough to pretend it won't affect you, I guess.
You think you aren't being heard now, it isn't going to improve under a fascist regime that ends voting with their Project 2025 shit. Have you not been paying attention to how Repubs have dealt with protesters? Yeah, becoming an armed insurgent would be the only option for change remaining once it gets to that point.
That's cool, though, you do you.
Wait, the unelected branches of government are restricting rights of minorities and giving power to the executive branch now but we won’t have fascism to fight against until this one guy wins an election?
What happened last time he wasn’t declared the winner of an election? What makes you think that wouldn’t be a concern this time around? How do you square that with the degree of preparation that went into project 2025?
Let me make my thesis crystal clear: if you believe that trump will usher in American fascism and you recognize that he won’t accept the results of the election, you don’t need to get people to vote for Biden to make sure the results of the election aren’t in favor of trump, you need to prepare to physically confront trump supporters in the streets with guns and training to prevent a for real this time coup.
I’m not saying that to get you to go out and buy an ar-15 and a plate carrier (although you should, theyre not getting any cheaper), but to get you to recognize the absurdity of holding all those beliefs together.
I do think that's a concern this time around. I think the best chance at stopping it is not giving him the legal right to take office, and not giving him a blank check to Long Knife whomever he wants.
Yeah, I guess I see your point also. Assume the country will be attacked either way. Get ready to defend myself if not fight for it. I don't disagree.
I still remain unconvinced that it is a good move to throw a vote away instead of casting it against Donald.
It’s pretty ahistorical to suggest that the law is a shield against fascism. Even if it weren’t, you came out of the gate saying that the judiciary, the organ of government which interprets the laws, is already fascist.
Rather than accepting the idea that you need to become a new type of fighting true patriot, armed, ready and able to defend the country against its enemies, I had hoped you would see that the government isn’t worth defending and that the future you want can’t be delivered by it no matter which of the two major parties is in power.
If a person accepted that reality it’s no big leap to vote for a party they actually support, considering that party will benefit from event and ballot presence, media appearances, public awareness and funding due directly to the ballots cast for them this go round even if they don’t win.
Of course that means voting for a party, not a person. I have been throwing the party for socialism and liberation out there because it represents my own politics and ideas, but there are others.
It is ahistorical to think a third party will win at all with FPTP. Libertarian Gary Johnson had over three times more votes than Stein in 2016 and he only got a bit past 3%. Neither of them had actual EC votes.
The government is not going to trend towards leftism from voting. It is going to trend towards fascism and authoritarianism because the Repubs reliably come out to vote and will vote for someone who already did a putsch and is openly talking about dictatorship and assassinating political opponents. The Dems are going to trend (further) towards fascism chasing the middle voter if they do get another chance.
Plenty of countries have managed to be authoritarian for decades if not longer, but perhaps the regime would be toppled after a period of war. I don't think there's any guarantee an improved government would form out of the rubble from that.
Well, I don’t think a third party will win either to be honest. That’s why I didn’t say it would or that the third party voter should only do so if they can win. I think a strong third party showing like what you described from greens and libertarians from a party that does grassroots organizing like psl would build political power that doesn’t come from the extant local/state bourgeois and national/global bourgeois structures.
That newly built political power would either have its ideas folded into one of the major parties or would fundamentally change the political landscape of the imperial core and become a new major political party or even some unknown third outcome!
I agree with you that voting isn’t gonna turn the government towards leftism of any kind. A leftist third party vote will though tip the scale however imperceptibly towards giving attention, material advantages and public awareness to those ideas.
Now if you’re like me, and you believe that there’s no future with the republicans or democrats, then it’s a no-brainer to vote for a leftist party like psl.
But for a person who sees the ratchet effect in action yet still believes it to be reversible, who believes that the democrats can be good enough to oppose fascism instead of just being its handmaidens, I also believe a third party leftist vote is a no-brainer: it forces the democrats to see your views.
They cant twist your ideas, they can’t say they have a mandate to continue the genocide, they can’t deepfake or dismiss you because you told them in clear, unequivocal terms exactly what votes they could get and in what districts they could win if they had those policies and platforms.
If you don’t care weather we get a new ascendant egalitarian American labor movement that ushers in an end to global neoliberalism or the democrats cynically adopt left wing policies and platforms as long as things get better then a third party vote for the leftist party of your choice is best.
In a world where the Repubs would also vote rationally it might be the right choice. But they're all in on this guy. They're all in on whoever it is every election. Fox has brainwashed a huge swath of the country. Even worse, the land area gets the voting power instead of the people. So the Dems are only ever going to actually care about the opinions of a few select districts in a few select states.
And I don't think you see as much of a difference between Dems and Repubs as I do, so you view Donald as less of a risk than I do. I think it was a huge disaster 2017-2021 and it would be complete and (this time) irreversible disaster 2025 to whenever. I'm still not sure if 2017 was reversible TBH.
I appreciate the dialogue but I think we've reached the point where our fundamental beliefs about it are just at odds. Neither of us will convince each other to be all the way on the other's position. Let's conclude amicably (I think we were).
(I don't mean to cut you off, if you had closing thoughts to respond with here, I'll read them. But I might not follow up.)
You don’t need to respond to anything you don’t want to. I’m not trying to convince you of anything, but I hope that someone who reads our exchange and doesn’t feel comfortable with your outlook yet still wants to vote or can’t let themselves give up in despair will see mine as an alternative.
How do you think the republican base voting rationally would make a leftist third party vote the right choice? I tried to work within your own suppositions that the system is fundamentally broken and that we already have fascism to construct my arguments, I can’t see how the way the conservative base votes plays into that.
If you’re willing to elaborate on the differences between the democrats and republicans you see I’m always interested to hear them. I also think that they’re different but that those differences aren’t significant enough in word or deed to make me consider one over the other.
I’d also be interested in hearing what made trumps first term so disastrous and why you think it might not be undone.
Your Savior, Genocide Joe, had the ability to put more people in the Supreme Court but he didn't. Stop with the bullshit.
You support genocide.
Wish granted.
Thought you were blocking us? Keep helping Bibi's preferred candidate, great work. When the killing accelerates even faster you can pat yourself on the back.