this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2026
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TankieJerk
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Tried to talk with them. They banned and canceled many of my comments. So I blocked their instances.
They give anticapitalism a bad name.
They're not really anti-capitalists even, given their love for China and russia
Just anti west. Not that there aren't good reasons to generally be against western powers. Our governments have done a lot of damage. But not because they're the west, they certainly don't have a monopoly.
And just think what a stupid position that is. Blaming the "west" as if an arbitrary direction has some causation. Imaging how stupid it would sound to blame something in the "east". I think anyone would be rightly ridiculed for saying one. But oddly, not the other.
And they whine about other leftists not having solidarity with them. And we're like, my supposed brother in Marx. A direction on the compass didn't cause that. The petite bourgeoisie did. Have basic consistency.
That's being slightly pedantic, because everyone understands "the west" to refer to Europe and the anglophone world. Australia and New Zealand aren't in the western hemisphere, but they're still part of "the west."
Conversely, there's no unified "the east." That could mean very different things between China, Russia, India, SEA, or western-aligned Japan/Taiwan/South Korea. There's no unified concept called "the east," at least in terms of geopolitics.
Part of the reason for this difference is the history of the 16th-20th centuries, but we all know those details.
That doesn't make your criticism of tankies any less valid, but the focus should be a bit different to make it more bulletproof (not that a bulletproof argument ever stopped a tankie from digging their heels in).
You're right that the west isn't solely responsible for all the atrocities in the world. Some, yes. Many, even. Possibly even most if we're only counting from the colonial era forward. But tankies only focus on the atrocities the west committed, and sweep everyone else's atrocities under the rug. That's where they err.
That's why they lick russian and chinese boots when they're just as guilty or even more from the 20th century forward. But tankies will never acknowledge the authoritarianism, capitalistic exploitation, and ethnocentrism prevalent in those nations' governments, or others like Iran's. Anything that's "anti-west" to them gets put on this pedestal where they can do no wrong in the tankie worldview.
And yeah, they're impossible to argue with because they don't care about facts or logic. If you're not unquestioningly subservient to their particular flavor of ideology, you might as well be a fascist in their view. It discredits not only leftism as a whole, but also anyone who points out actual fascism, because the term has already been watered down by tankie's overuse of it.
They're authoritarian extremists and wannabe militants, plain and simple. I've told them they're no better than fascists and then they go into the difference between the political polarities, as if that makes a difference, and accuse me of not knowing what I'm talking about.
I had one try to tell me over and over that yellow-green is actually orange, in a metaphor where orange represented fascism and green represented leftism (presumably in all its shades).
They're basically an authoritarian bootlickers
That's what I tried to say.
Moving on from being slave of the corpos, to being slave of the party isn't such a progress.
If it goes really wrong it can end like China. Slaves to both corpos and party. Like Europeans in the middle age with their heads between the lord and the priest.
Some people just can't live without the boots
Tried that too. They will waste your time and 'win' by tiring you out. Literally not one braincell to be found in lemmy.ml
That's the point
I sincerely believe they are that ignorant and misinformed. I've seen them in the wild. It's the human psychosis of tribalism.
Write out any statement by a tanky or a magat, block out any specifics or tell tail phrases. So you can just look at how they talk about others. You won't see a huge difference.
I think it's both... They're the "useful idiots" and bots of someone else's machinations...
My theory is it's a liberal plot to keep liberals from considering communism.
They're more like a cult.
Ooh good point, they're the red scare agenda to discredit what's real
I strongly believe that (of course they've sucked a couple of unbalanced real people in as well)
Can you block a whole instance from your client?
Edit: oh I just noticed voyager supports this too. Never had to use it.
Piefed has much better blocking than lemmy. For lemmy people/instance you blocked can still see, comment, and vote on your comment and post, you just cannot see it. When I was on lemmy, I need to find a instance that completely defedrates from tankie instances like ml.
For PieFed, the blocking is two ways, effectively defederate from them yourself.
That is one of the reason I switched to piefed. The other reason is that I donate to the project I use, and I don't want to support tankies financially.
Yep, I'm using Boost App.