One of the biggest topics of these days is that of mods in lemmy.ml banning and censoring people because they’re Tankies. This has had a rather sizeable discussion of people agreeing and even arguing for defederating ml. I’m sure a lot of people are arguing from good intentions, but there’s also bad faith actors among them, as I will try to show in this post. The original post was based on the moderation history of the ml instance so I respond in a similar fashion.
I browsed through the discussion for a while, and stumbled upon a comment of someone who had created an instance in response, namely de_ml@lemmy.blahaj.zone The original post in about the moderation in ml has to do with the Tiananmen Square Massacre, so I decided to make a few posts in this new instance about other historical facts which are less discussed, but that we should remember too, namely the Bengal Famine and the US support of fascism in Spain.
Initially these posts were well received and had some upvoted, but after a while I got a notification that one of them had been banned. To my surprise, I looked at the mod log of the instance and found this. So, both posts being about historical atrocities committed by capitalist countries were either banned or locked, and I had been banned from the community altogether for the reason “commie?”
I checked through the admin’s history of comments and found this.
Is this admin, who censors posts that talk about historical grievances committed by capitalism, who pins “fuck Tankies” to the instance, really a person without an agenda trying to protect a community from a supposed malignant moderation, or is it someone with an agenda trying to call everyone to the left of centrism a Tankie?
We should, in my opinion, be careful with accusing and polarising one of the biggest communities in Lemmy away, which is full of non-political content, and really examine what’s going on and what agenda there is behind it.
This doesn’t tell the devastating story I think you were hoping it would tell. Your posts there, while not wrong and not even necessarily disagreed with by the people there, were off topic and obviously just an attempt at whataboutism.
Whilst we’re on the topic of bad faith actors, you seem to be intent on drumming up drama by posting things that you know are off topic, that you know are likely to get you removed and then cry foul about it here. Yes, the term “commie” as a synonym for tankie is wrong and a little concerning, but you’re not making a strong case here.
Maybe they are some shitbag centrist, who knows. That doesn’t change the fact that the tankie instances are doing tankie things completely consistent with the behaviour of tankie mods which are notorious to anyone with experience of them either here, on reddit or elsewhere.
This is a good point. I checked the community and it’s all complaining about ml and tankies. So why would a post about American imperialism be relevant? OP was banned with the comment “commie?” and honestly I get why. It sounds like a tankie move to post anti-US imperialism stuff to a community like that. Although commie isn’t a synonym for tankie, tankie is a subset of communist.
OP’s name is also a reference to Lenin, making me question their motives here. Liking Lenin doesn’t make one a tankie per se but it makes me skeptical.
Edit: the account is also 3 days old. I wonder if it’s an alt from a ml person
As I said, I was the first post in the community, I’m not going to an established community with a topic to troll them, I’m going there to express other grievances that are equally important to remember in my opinion.
How is commie=tankie? This is exactly my point, the word “tankie” is so abused in lemmy.world that anything to the left of centrism is categorised as such.
“Tankie is when you post anti-US imperialism”. Again, absolutely misusing the word and accusing everyone who posts any complaint about western imperialism of being a tankie.
Good concern, I’m not, I’m actually new to Lemmy, and I’m very surprised to find the word “tankie” in every fourth comment, used most times to refer to anyone who doesn’t buy “US good China bad”
And, again, linking communism with being a tankie when you say “a reference to Lenin makes it suspicious”. People don’t have to preface every leftist commentary with a 10-page essay condemning the failures of historical communist projects any more than people criticising Hitler don’t have to preface the commentary with a 10-page essay on the atrocities committed by allies in WW2.
Tankie is when you spam anti-US imperialism on inappropriate communities.
Why would you co-opt a random community to spam off topic shit? That makes even less sense?? You just felt compelled to post anti-US stuff in a random empty community? Why?
As said on the post, there were no guidelines on the sidebar and no posts in the community, so by whose standards is it inappropriate. Spreading anticapitalist propaganda doesn’t make someone a tankie ffs
You said they pinned “fuck tankies” to the sub. (Not an instance btw)
You know the sub is called “de_ml”
You obviously know what it’s about, that’s part of your point, that it’s an anti-tankie sub. But then you want to have it both ways.
Who are you trying to fool?
As you can see on the modding history, that was done after my ban. As I explained, that post wasn’t there when I posted, my post was the first in the sub and there were no guidelines.
And no, I didn’t know it was an “anti-tankie” sub, “de_ml” implies pushing against ml.
So you can understand then why posts about the crimes of British and US imperialism are off-topic there, right?
Like, I don’t expect much here, but you’ve given me this little hint that you could in theory understand if you wanted to. I don’t think you do though, do you?
They were the most upvoted posts in the community, so no, they weren’t disagreed at all
How can it be off-topic? There’s no declared purpose of the community in the sidebar other than a few rules, and were literally the first posts of the community
Making an entirely new post in an entirely new community is an attempt at whataboutism? I happen to be Spanish and to take the issue of fascism very seriously, since my ancestors suffered it directly and I still suffer its consequences. What part of making a new post about it is whataboutism when I’m not even comparing it to anything??
Wait, a post about fascism in Spain, and a post about a famine in India, are going to get me removed? Do you realize what you’re saying? People aren’t allowed to talk about other international grievances for how long exactly after the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre without getting accused of whataboutism, being Tankies, and getting banned? Do you realize how anti-communist discourse works?
That’s not what they did. They banned me for being a communist, not a tankie, they didn’t use it as a synonym.
I’m not here to argue about that, that’s a topic that has been discussed a lot already in the original post, I’m here to talk about bad faith actors jumping in the supposedly anti-tankie reaction to ban anti-imperialism content and anything that smells of communism.
I just want to point out that you have said in another comment that they were the first posts, so it’s not exactly surprising that they were the most upvoted at least at one point in time.
Beyond that this is such transparent concern trolling and your posts were so obviously off topic, and your attempts to feign ignorance so woefully unconvincing that they don’t even bear responses. Anyone who thinks this is a scandal is already a tankie like you, volodya ilich, meaning they can’t see this for the transparent bullshit that it is. That kind of credulity is a requirement for becoming a tankie in the first place.
I cannot imagine anybody being convinced by this.
…and there we go, the magic word to end all discussion in this platform. You guys keep disregarding any and all criticism of capitalism and accusing it of whataboutism and tankieism. Again, how many days have to pass from whichever commemoration of a heinous act committed by a communist project until people can discuss the problems of capitalism and imperialism without fear of being accused of being tankies?
Spend three seconds on Lemmy and you’ll see how wrong this is.
Now you’re conflating tankies with anticapitalism in general, another classic tankie trope. You don’t have a monopoly on the concept, although you love to pretend you do because the only way your ideas could have any legitimacy is if it is literally a binary choice between neoliberal capitalism and what amounts to state capitalism. Just like in your mind it’s a binary choice between US imperialism and red imperialism.
No thanks, I’ll take my actual anticapitalism and anti-imperialism instead of a red flag any day.
You don’t seem to have much self-awareness about this, so I’ll just repeat it: you are not convincing anyone. Let it go. Take the L. I’m sure any attempt to rebutt this will just be you showing your butt all over again. I doubt you’ll listen to this because myopic, tone-deaf self-righteousness seems to be another tankie trait, but at least I tried.
My ideas being “stop doing supporting fascist dictatorships and stop creating famines in Bengal”, right? Because what else do you know about my ideas from the post?
Again, you’re making things up and accusing me of things I haven’t said, and accusing me of being a tankie because you assume my ideology to be a given one. You may think I’m tone deaf, you may think my critique here is not legitimate, and all of that’s cool, but how am I a tankie?!
Holy shit, you’re still pretending you’re not a tankie. Not a tankie, but you chose the name volodya ilich, which is a deep cut about Lenin’s childhood nickname.
And you’re still pretending you don’t understand what was wrong with your posts. Who are you saying this for? Do you actually think anyone believes you? Is this an elaborate troll? I wish I knew but this is beyond parody. If you are doing parody: you didn’t make it obvious enough. I’m so sorry.
If you think a reference to Lenin makes you a Tankie, you have no idea what tankies are and you’re just blatantly anti-communist, that’s the issue here. Thinking that Lenin is an admirable Marxist theorist, doesn’t mean you support tanks invading Hungary, and you’re either mistakingly or willingly conflating communism with authoritarianism, which is absolute bullshit.