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 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It's not the worst usage of the word "authoritarian", for sure. I've just grown to hate the word in any context, because it's practically meaningless (as you described). It simply means "wielding power"—it doesn't distinguish between power used to oppress and that used to liberate. Liberals also apply the word inconsistently because they're blind to most oppressive structures of capitalism, and thus fail to label them "authoritarian".

I prefer Awoo's term, "heavy handedness", because that better describes a benevolent strategy which was taken too far.