I thought it was all the tankies from your instance flooding the fediverse with their tankie rhetoric, but it’s nice that you’re giving me the sole power to warp the public image

point out the classic tactic of spending a lot of time picking apart minor details in an attempt to discredit the whole

no u

My impression was that you guys were supposed to be more eloquent than this

No but it sure doesn’t help their public image willingly occupying the same spaces and appearing alongside them

Sorry I forgot to add “Ok but, were they really inside the square, or just near it?”

Spending the first 7/8ths of your comment dancing around the main issue (at a minimum hundreds, thankfully you at least have to admit to that since those are the official Chinese numbers, potentially thousands, of civilian protestors being killed by the Chinese military), laser focusing on some minor detail like it’s a great big gotcha, then brushing the whole thing off at the end with “Yep it’s bad, but it happens shrug” is exactly what I’m talking about

I guess I should at least thank you for so deftly illustrating my point though

I guess I just don’t see much benefit in fraternizing with them, the optics on it are bad (see: hexbear being labeled and dismissed as a tankie instance), and if they’re the ones who ultimately win, things historically have not gone well for the anarchists and anyone else who values personal liberties

I didn’t call anyone a tankie, a whole bunch of people from hexbear sure did show up feeling incredibly offended by my description of tankies though, if they want to out themselves like that, that’s on them

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I would hope there’s not too many useful idiots who think left unity will get them anything but a free ride to a “re-education” camp

I forgot to add “struggles with reading comprehension”, that’s also a big indicator

My personal definition would be “authoritarian communist (or “”“communist””“) regime supporters/apologists”. I think a good litmus test is, if the topic of the Tiananmen Square massacre comes up, and their first input is “Ok, but, how many zeroes did the number of dead civilians really have”, they’re probably too far gone to bother engaging much with

Too many anarchist/commune types consider the authoritarians to be their allies because they also hate the capitalists, right up until the point they’re next on the list of undesirables destined for the wall

I can tune out tankie nonsense (not accusing everyone at hexbear of being tankies, but you guys sure do hang out with a lot of them) pretty easily, it’s the 20 full pages of literal pig shit I’m talking about

I hadn’t experienced hexbear (literally) shitting up the place yet, has a way to block entire instances been implemented or do I gotta find a new one that isn’t federated with them?

I’m stuck with Comcast 1200/30 with a 1.2TB cap for $100/mo, it’s this or DSL

My point is, I think the general impression is that the leftist spaces don’t do enough self policing to keep the actual tankies out, and regardless the smart ones (I know, smart tankies, a radical concept) can just keep quiet about their true motives and attempt to keep the waters muddied as they attempt to radicalize like minded individuals

I saw a thread from them specifically about the Tiananmen Square massacre in my feed, and tankies were coming out of the wood works with their prepared Chinese propaganda “”“sources”“” categorically denying every single fact about it ever happening, it should be no mystery why people are accusing them of being tankies when these sorts of things get highly upvoted

I think a lot of the conflict is a result of the difficulty in telling the difference at a glance between “just askin’ questions :^)” Soviet/CCP atrocity apologist authoritarian tankies and the regular people who just disagree with the capitalist system and want to see it dismantled and replaced with a system that they believe is better

I feel like many people’s impression is that they’re either one and the same (they do unfortunately use a lot of the same language, and it’s impossible to know someone’s true intentions) or at the very least that they are willingly fraternizing with one another (which also isn’t a very good look)