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posting 'tankie' is the new 'woke' slur on a lemmy instance..

On lemmy.world I posted a comment on how liberals use 'tankie' as an invective to shut down dialogue and received tons of hateful replies. I tried to respond in a rational way to each. Someone's said 'get educated' I responded 'Im reading Norman Finkelstein's I'll burn that bridge when I get there' and tried to keep it civil.

They deleted every comment I made and banned me. Proving my point, they just want to shut down dialogue. Freedom of speech doesn't existing in those 'totalitarian' countries right? But in our 'enlightened' western countries we just delete you.

86 comments
  • This is liberal mental space, full of "freedom of speech". Liberalism is a cancer which leads to right extremism. And social democracy leads to liberalism. If you exclude ML from discourse, you eliminate whole left wing point of view consequently.

  • Sometimes it kind of of makes me feel really irritated in a way because like, a lot of these people who are so overly concerned over "tankies", don't have that energy directed at fascists or reactionaries? They seem more concerned over "tankies" than reactionaries or fascists who are in power in various places and are hurting people. Like they will make a post or whatever denouncing "tankies", but where is that towards fascists? or reactionaries? If anything all they do is help fascists and reactionaries whether they are aware of that or not.

  • We should call liberals coupies because of all their coups.

    • Call them boaties because NATO sent 19 warships to surround and blockade Lisbon in 1974 after Portugal overthrew fascism and started nationalizing industries and redistributing land.

  • Liberals are incapable of intelligent conversation with others, especially those of opposing viewpoints. They've been trained to desire and maintain the status quo (Capital), even in the face of creeping fascism, and will parrot insults at anyone who doesn't tow the line. 'Tankie' is just the newest term.

    It's just western red scare paranoia with a millennial twist. I hadn't peeked at those communities before, but I'll make sure they're given a wide berth now.

    • Wow you're not using liberal the american way are you? What is your definition of the world liberal?

      Edit: Downvoting me for asking a question is so reddit of you, feels like home <3

      • I mean liberalism in the sense of support for things like private property, liberal 'western' democracy and an exploitative, laissez-faire approach to market economies. I am American; perhaps I'm just not understanding the varied meaning of the word?

      • Sorry for the long comment, hope this clarification helps. If others disagree with my explanation, feel free to clarify or call out any wrong ideas. I'm a new Liberal convert so I'm still working through these details.

        In essence, the "left" are socialists, the "right" are fascists (Glossing over some details here). Fascism is authoritarian capitalism, but Liberalism is capitalism that's not fascism. Liberalism is theoretically to the left of the political spectrum, but it's a compromise to the capitalists.

        Our problem with Liberals is they seem completely incapable of having a real conversation about how the world works, and how to make change. As well, they demonize anyone that doesn't share their viewpoint.

        For example: "Woke" is kind of a fake word now, it means whatever conservatives want it to mean, but it comes from a real place. Initially being woke meant that you see the injustices that are institutionalized in the world, and seek to better yourself after learning that information. This is a good thing and lead to more people understanding the contradictions of our wold. But Liberals kinda turned into "I'm better than you because I went 'woke'", "If you aren't woke, then leave my circle of friends", "Anything that isn't woke isn't worth talking about". This perpetuates the culture war that the conservatives are winning, because in the end, who wants to side with the assholes who push their own out at any sign of disobedience? The fascists are playing open arms to everyone the left excludes, perpetuating the growing movement of right authoritarianism.

        I was a liberal for a long time, but always felt out of place because although the conservatives made up a lot of bullshit about liberals, they touched on some real things that also irritated me. Instead of moving to the right, I was educated and looked at the source of some of these things. That led me to find where the real problems of the world were, opened my eyes to those that were in charge, causing these problems in the first place. That lead me to socialism, communism, etc. and now I think I'm more on the 'left' than I have ever been.

  • I got 11 upvotes on a Ho Chi Minh quote in the clown shoes thread. Was that all you guys?

    • I see it got deleted. Ho Chi Minh should have known better and organize Vietnam's liberation from colonialism through confederated and horizontally-organized municipal communes, I suppose.

  • As Hakim or Yugopnik (I can't remember exactly) said, "tankie" is the new "commie"

    • Yugopnik I think from memory. He was saying how libs can't say "commie" because its such a dated word and nobody takes it seriously (except some conservatives who still say it unironically which is actually hilarious😂). It's too much associated with redscare era propaganda. Tankie doesn't carry this baggage but has exactly the same function.

  • By the way, it seems that moderators in 196 are deleting those comments from lemmygrad posters in a way that appear as visible while seen from lemmygrad while they appear as deleted by mods from any other instances (or so I suppose, I do not know very well how does Lemmy work). This is happening even if there is no breaking of rules in sight.

86 comments