I was recently talking to some friends about Lemmy and the whole Fediverse idea, as it seemed like a really cool part of the Internet. As I was talking about it, though, I realized how unusually friendly this whole place is, and I joked that I “surprisingly haven’t found any bigotry.”

I’m wondering if anyone has come across that, by any chance. If it’s rare, my guess is that even though it’s decentralized, each instance has a set of rules and values that are shared throughout the Fediverse, and I’m guessing it’s easy to defederate with any seedy communities haha.

  • Alien SurferEnglish
    4•1 year ago

    Hi, I’m not in in the know. What’s a tankie? Pardon my ignorance.

    • @[email protected]English
      8•1 year ago

      Short version? Mix and match the following:

      • Pro Xi Jinping
      • Pro Joseph Stalin
      • Pro Mao
      • Pro use of tanks against civilians as in Tiananmen Square in 1989 or Hungary in 1956.
      • Pro Vladimir Putin

      Basically a tankie is any apologist for government violence against civilians – whose apologetics usually go something like, “those weren’t real civilians. That was a color revolution. The government of [authoritarian regime] responded with no more than the necessary amount of force. Western propaganda is making it look more violent than it was in reality.”

      From Wikipedia

      The term “tankie” was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defense of the Soviet use of tanks to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring uprising, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions.

      • Alien SurferEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        Thanks. Did not know that. So tankie is short for military tank. I get it.