They’ve gotten very strange in the past year or so. I’ve seen multiple dbzer0 users, including two admins, do complete 180s on tankie bullshit, and it’s rather bizarre.

My best guess is that tankies offer them a sense of community, which is how many terminally online folk get drawn into it. People who have a deep desire for community will overlook moral issues if invited to be a part of that community, and even adopt, consciously or unconsciously, those positions in order to better ‘fit in’ with the community.

In a time when the real world is more recognizably hostile than ever, or at least for as long as most of us here have been alive (insofar as we are both aware of it and noting that it is backsliding rather than improving), online communities probably seem quite tempting to hew closer to.

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[–] TankieTanuki@hexbear.net 95 points 3 months ago (7 children)

tankies offer them a sense of community

You know what's an even bigger community? The hegemonic ideology of liberal imperialism. It's literally the biggest community in the (Western) world.

[–] SevenSkalls@hexbear.net 34 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I was just thinking the same thing. Wouldn't you get a bigger sense of community just taking up the liberal point of view that takes up, I don't know, the entire mainstream media and rest of the freaking internet, including most of Lemmy, has?

No, it's just some people like to read up on real facts and can't delude themselves when they compare those facts with what their eyes and ears show them is happening in Gaza.

[–] spectre@hexbear.net 33 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's not like this is an easy community to be a part of either. There's a lot of history and "advanced struggle sessions" that an average Internet user is not going to be able to partake in at all without months of lurking the site and consuming off-site materials (theory etc)

[–] ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net 35 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The FBI complaining that infiltrating communists is hard because they make you read

[–] dumpster_dove@hexbear.net 10 points 3 months ago

fedposting

Looks down at the unopened copy of "Superimperialism"

"I'm not getting paid enough for this"

[–] AmarkuntheGatherer@lemmygrad.ml 34 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

The size of that community is counter-intuitive. Liberalism, as the ideology of a system that atomises society, validates any attempt at fracturing communities. This is one reason why they're in love with quintillions of ideological labels to describe people's inclinations just right. The result is that person A feeling B's 3% titanium tax goes too far and B feeling A's 3% titanium tax doesn't go far enough won't feel in a community together.

[–] ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net 24 points 3 months ago

It's bigger and more widespread, but I think maybe that comment contains an admission: hegemonic liberalism sure doesn't feel like a community

[–] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 22 points 3 months ago

Don't be silly, the dominant world-view that surrounds them is obviously non-ideological

[–] Ferrous@lemmy.ml 21 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's also a textbook case of them trying to psychologize issues that have no business being psychologized.

[–] ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net 20 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Liberals and "everyone who exists outside of the worldview i was taught as a child does so because they're fucked up and crazy in the brain": a centuries-long ideological romance

[–] gay_king_prince_charles@hexbear.net 14 points 3 months ago

A community of 500 million is hardly a community at all

[–] Damarcusart@hexbear.net 11 points 3 months ago

Doesn't really have a sense of "community" though, it's more about everyone constantly trying to get one up on everyone else and fuck everyone else over to get ahead.