this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
632 points (90.1% liked)

MeanwhileOnGrad

2072 readers
536 users here now

"Oh, this is calamity! Calamity! Oh no, he's on the floor!"

Welcome to MoG!


Meanwhile On Grad


Documenting hate speech, conspiracy theories, apologia/revisionism, and general tankie behaviour across the fediverse. Memes are welcome!


What is a Tankie?


Alternatively, a detailed blog post about Tankies.

(caution of biased source)


Basic Rules:

Sh.itjust.works Instance rules apply! If you are from other instances, please be mindful of the rules. — Basically, don't be a dick.

Hate-Speech — You should be familiar with this one already; practically all instances have the same rules on hate speech.

Apologia(Using the Modern terminology for Apologia) No Defending, Denying, Justifying, Bolstering, or Differentiating authoritarian acts or endeavours, whether be a Pro-CCP viewpoint, Stalinism, Islamic Terrorism or any variation of Tankie Ideology.

Revisionism — No downplaying or denying atrocities past and present. Calling Tankies shills, foreign/federal agents, or bots also falls under this rule. Extremists exist. They are real. Do not call them shills or fake users as it handwaves their extremism.

Tankies can explain their views but may be criticised or attacked for them. Any slight infraction on the rules above will immediately earn a warning and possibly a ban.

Off-topic Discussion — Do not discuss unrelated topics to the point of derailing the thread. Stay focused on the direct content of the post, rather than engaging in unrelated arguments.

Brigading — If you're here because this community was linked in another thread, please refrain from voting, commenting or manipulating the post in any way, this includes alt accounts. All votes are public, and if you are found to be brigading, you will be permanently banned.

You'll be warned if you're violating the instance and community rules. Continuing poor behaviour after being warned will result in a ban or removal of your comments. Bans typically only last 24 hours, but each subsequent infraction will double the amount. Depending on the content, the ban time may be increased. You may request an unban at any time.


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

2025-22-08: Due to a (suspected .ml) troll spamming the comment section, you'll now need to sort the comments by "Top" to see the actual comments from users on this post.

Good job everyone blocking and boycotting .ml! It's having an effect, users are noticing and MAUs on their comms are falling!

And for anyone asking "Why are we boycotting/blocking lemmy.ml?" Here's a quick recap:

Lemmy.ml is an instance run by admins who are hardcore tankies and will enforce their ideology on their instance through various means from allowing (and pushing it themselves) propaganda (Such as Russia being justified in some way to invade Ukraine) and known propaganda outlets (Like RT) to removing content on their instance critical of their favored authoritarian regimes such as Russia or China and even banning users for such speech or speech critical of them if it's off their instance (Just like the Reddit mods of ol!).

If it was just some random instance it would have been defederated from long ago like the rest of the "Tankie Triad" (Hexbear and Lemmygrad), but they've positioned lemmy.ml as the "flagship" instance and abused that position and influence to become large enough to keep other instances from defederating from them.

Which I believe is harmful to the Lemmy-verse's overall growth and outside reputation. I have seen it come up before on Reddit threads (and other testimonials from people who came back and tried it again) that "They tried Lemmy but it was a bunch of tankies and went back to Reddit"

I don't know about you, but I'd prefer Lemmy to not end up with the reputation for being "Tankie Central " or even worse "Voat 2.0".

So if you haven't joined the boycott yet, join today and help us foster a better healthier Lemmy-verse!

You can take a look around here on !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works for documentation of it or checkout this list of curated documentation

Noteworthy Selection

Full collection list at the end

Dessalines - Head .ml admin - Head Lemmy Dev

"Slava Ukraini" is considered a "Fascist slogan" - https://lemmy.world/post/36065538

"NK is actually good, and anything counter to that is Western LIES" - https://lemmy.world/post/31595035

"The BBC is not a credible news source" - https://lemmy.world/post/35824465

Showing support for Ukraine on .ml is worthy of a site ban - https://lemmy.world/post/32775563

Open declaration of support for Russia - https://lemmy.world/post/27352415

"Don't worry guys, the Uyghur Genocide was REALLY just birth control! - https://lemmy.world/post/30580167

Censoring criticism of China while allowing fellow "in-crowd" user "concentration camps were just reeducation camps and weren't that bad" misinfo to remain - https://lemmy.world/post/26985447

Censoring when users call out propaganda - https://lemmy.world/post/32776038 | https://lemmy.world/post/33416433 | https://lemmy.world/post/34051329 | https://lemmy.world/post/35919522

Discussing winnie the pooh and/or the negatives of china is a 30 day ban - https://lemmy.world/post/35374967

Davel - .ml admin

Spreading anti-ukraine Russian propaganda - https://lemmy.world/post/34655572

General negative sentiment to other instances who haven't "seen the way" yet - https://lemmy.world/post/27426510

"See! nobody died IN Tiananmen Square, just AROUND it, so it doesn't count!!" - https://lemmy.world/post/30673342

Response to a valid report of "NK is actually good" as propaganda/misinfo https://lemmy.world/post/32627834

Removal of a credible article that was on the Uyghur genocide - https://lemmy.world/post/33205310

It's totally fine when Russia kills woman and children, war is war after all - https://lemmy.world/post/33224299

Nutomic - 2nd in command Lemmy Dev

Their continued transphobia - https://lemmy.world/post/29222558

General Tankie user behaviour

"Propaganda is good actually" - https://lemmy.world/post/36162233

"The China censorship tool isnt actually censorship! And if it is, it's actually a good thing a state has that much power!" https://lemmy.world/post/30010789

Rooting for Russia in the Russia-Ukraine war https://lemmy.world/post/29274763

Spreading Russia talking points like the Ukraine invasion just being a "negotiating tactic" https://lemmy.world/post/27012640

Biden is worse than Trump - https://lemmy.world/post/33631617

Uyghur Genocide denialism - https://lemmy.world/post/33873969

Full Collection

Evidence of bans, censorship and bias to push their 'ideology'

https://lemmy.world/post/34395059

https://lemmy.world/post/32720369

https://lemmy.world/post/32298242

https://lemmy.world/post/32471440

https://lemmy.world/post/35919522

https://lemmy.world/post/32292143

https://lemmy.world/post/35254858

https://lemmy.world/post/32222856

https://lemmy.world/post/32426343

https://lemmy.world/post/32058315

https://lemmy.world/post/35919814

https://lemmy.world/post/32775892

https://lemmy.world/post/33554899

https://lemmy.world/post/33194656

https://lemmy.world/post/34502019

https://lemmy.world/post/34502777

https://lemmy.world/post/34503244

https://lemmy.world/post/35919218

https://lemmy.world/post/36120253

https://lemmy.world/post/36120386

https://lemmy.world/post/32825174

https://lemmy.world/post/32426884

https://lemmy.world/post/32191006

https://lemmy.world/post/32720652

https://lemmy.world/post/32676095

https://lemmy.world/post/32298242

https://lemmy.world/post/32292143

https://lemmy.world/post/32221990

https://lemmy.world/post/32222278

https://lemmy.world/post/32222991

https://lemmy.world/post/32223697

https://lemmy.world/post/32224698

https://lemmy.world/post/32425984

https://lemmy.world/post/31569892

https://lemmy.world/post/31368129

https://lemmy.world/post/31329952

https://lemmy.world/post/31596159

https://lemmy.world/post/30665418

https://lemmy.world/post/30876228

https://lemmy.world/post/31090903

https://lemmy.world/post/31329952

https://lemmy.world/post/31368129

https://lemmy.world/post/29490804

https://lemmy.world/post/29507466

https://lemmy.world/post/29878102

https://lemmy.world/post/29980157

https://lemm.ee/post/65494823

https://lemmy.world/post/28480760

https://lemmy.world/post/28481615

https://lemmy.world/post/28482147

https://lemmy.world/post/28480936

https://lemmy.world/post/28482273

https://lemmy.world/post/28481272

https://lemmy.world/post/28481064

https://lemmy.world/post/27674360

https://lemmy.world/post/27674117

https://lemmy.world/post/27673934

https://lemmy.world/post/27673724

https://lemmy.world/post/27577337

https://lemmy.world/post/27378634

https://lemmy.world/post/27346630

https://lemmy.world/post/27341283

https://lemmy.world/post/27288224

https://lemmy.world/post/27156418

https://lemmy.world/post/27054157

https://lemmy.world/post/27008261

Allowing known propaganda outlets, altered headlines and general misinfo tactics

https://lemmy.world/post/32764202

https://lemmy.world/post/32323822

https://lemmy.world/post/32283425

https://lemmy.world/post/32289824

https://lemmy.world/post/32337368

https://lemmy.world/post/30843744

https://lemmy.world/post/28275465

https://lemmy.world/post/27428838

https://lemmy.world/post/27416097

https://lemmy.world/post/27314050

https://lemmy.world/post/27288953


Update 6/1/2025 - adding additional links since original post

Update 6/14/2025 - adding additional links since last edit

Update 6/19/2025 - adding additional links since last edit

Update 6/30/2025 - adding additional links since last edit

Update 7/03/2025 - adding additional links since last edit/formatting changes

Update 7/09/2025 - adding additional links since last edit

Update 8/13/2025 - adding additional links since last edit/formatting changes

Update 9/20/2025 - adding additional links since last edit

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] cm0002@toast.ooo 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support or defend acts of repression by such regimes, their allies, or deny the occurrence of the events thereof.

[–] TankieTanuki@lemmy.world 0 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

Although there is not really a concrete definition, recent work by Petterson [87] provides a succinct description of tankies:

Tankies regard past and current socialist systems as legitimate attempts at creating communism, and thus have not distanced themselves from Stalin, China etc.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.06981

[–] cm0002@toast.ooo 1 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

Why how odd you didn't copy the entire block

What is a “tankie?” Tankie was originally a pejorative term referring to communists who supported the USSR’s invasion of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 [87, 96]. Over the years, the context of the usage of tankie evolved. For example, it has been used to express derision towards pro-Soviet hardliners [42], to describe communists who support China’s policies [69] (e.g., supporters of China’s actions on Uyghurs [95] and the Hong Kong protests [7]), as well as young, online Stalinists in general [44].

Thus, tankie is now used to describe much more than the set of communists who supported specific events from the Soviet era. The term tankie now covers communists who support “Actually Existing Socialist” (AES) countries; especially those with a Stalinist or authoritarian leaning.

Thus it is of wide spread usage to mean "authoritarian communists" regardless of whether or not it's in a bonafide dictionary. Which, I might add, is a follower not a leader in language.

Furthermore, the entirety of their large scale study seems to be based on that definition

[–] TankieTanuki@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I think Petterson's succinct definition is one of the best ones I've encountered, but the one in that study isn't too bad—it's certainly better than Wikipedia's. I take issue with just two of the terms:

Stalinist is just a pejorative for Marxist-Leninist, and authoritarianism is a practically useless word that's based purely on one's ideology.

All states are authoritarian because they have monopolies on the use of violence. Liberals don't view the routine weaponization of the bourgeois state against poor people as authoritarianism, but will instantly decry the reverse as such. Thus, a billionaire landlord evicting a single mother isn't characterized as authoritarian, but Maoists giving landlords the boot is. Germany seizing the bank accounts of critics of Israel (as happened recently) isn't labeled authoritarian, but the Stasi doing the same to corrupt capitalists in East Germany was.

[–] cm0002@toast.ooo 0 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

and authoritarianism is a practically useless word that's based purely on one's ideology.

All states are authoritarian because they have monopolies on the use of violence. Liberals don't view the routine weaponization of the bourgeois state against poor people as authoritarianism, but will instantly decry the reverse as such. Thus, a billionaire landlord evicting a single mother isn't characterized as authoritarian, but Maoists giving landlords the boot is. Germany seizing the bank accounts of critics of Israel (as happened recently) isn't labeled authoritarian, but the Stasi doing the same to corrupt capitalists in East Germany was.

Aaand we've reached authoritarianism isn't real. Go ask average people what they think "authoritarianism" means and you'll get answers that center around suppressing freedom of speech, journalism, censorship.

Are there people who do call your examples authoritarianism? Absolutely. But there are also real people who claim the earth is flat.

[–] TankieTanuki@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

So you don't think taking away someone's bank account for their comments counts as suppressing free speech? Do you even read what you type?

Censorship? Like when the authoritarian Western regimes and corporations ban all Russian and Chinese journalism?

“bUt ThAt’S dIsInfOrMaTiOn!”

And that’s exactly what they say of American ~~news media~~ propaganda!

[–] goat@sh.itjust.works 1 points 34 minutes ago* (last edited 13 minutes ago)

hey, tankie dipshit, question

why can't you be gay in russia? why doesn't china have same sex marriage?

why would anyone who's LGBTQIA2+, ever move to these shitholes?