Lead Lemmy Developer, Dessalines, denying the Tiananmen Square Massacre and praising the Uyghur Genocide
https://sh.itjust.works/post/8419342
Dessalines AKA “parentis_shotgun” on Reddit, is the main Lemmy dev, also the admin of lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml.
Their post and discussions on Reddit (archive as the original post must have been removed):
Please join the discussions for Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem:
https://lemmy.world/post/16211417
And the discussions for finding/creating alternative communities on other instances:
https://lemmy.world/post/16235541
What is a tankie?
Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support acts of repression by such regimes or their allies. More specifically, the term has been applied to those who express support for one-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republics, whether contemporary or historical.
I may not agree with the devs political view, but I think their work developing lemmy is excellent and made me subscribe to monthly donation on opencollective. Lemmy is an open source project where the devs have absolutely no say over how the software being used, as evidenced by so many lemmy instances defederating from lemmygrad and lemmy.ml. Their political belief won’t affect other instance.
To me it is weird that every day on lemmy I see new posts complaining about all tankies… but I never actually see any of the content they are complaining about. And outside of lemmy, I never see or hear the word ‘tankies’ used at all. I’ve asked a couple of people I know in real life if they ever seen discussions about it in their parts of the internet, and none of them people I’ve asked have ever heard the word before.
So… like I said, I find it weird. It’s like some kind of lemmy boogieman.
I’ve seen a few posts and comments make by ‘tankies’ (I had to look up this term, as I’ve never seen it outside of Lemmy) and I don’t think there should be such a moral panic about them. It implies that everyone is so impressionable that they can’t be exposed to a minority fringe political opinion without being instantly turning into a rabid and dangerous extremist.
See something you don’t agree with? Ignore it. Downvote it. Block it if you really want to. So many people seem to come here just looking for a fight with other users or to get some general outrage out of their system, whether it’s ‘tankies’ or ‘anti-tankies’. Just relax. Lemmy is diverse and ever-expanding; there’s loads of fun, interesting and positive stuff to see and talk about here.
I will mention that smaller, niche communities have way more harmonious and interesting discussions. This suggests to me that the majority of aggro comes from people who are just logging in and scrolling down the ‘front page’ for something to do. It’s worth putting in a bit of effort to find specific topics you’re interested in and then looking at the feed of your subscriptions. It’s a much better experience for everyone.
I had never heard so much about “tankies” before I joined Lemmy.
Before, I had heard it so sparingly that I couldn’t remember what it meant.
Perhaps there may be something more to this correlation. Why are people with this worldview so common here? If it’s not more common here than anywhere else, why is it brought up so much more frequently?
Lemmy was developed, in part, to be a tankie community and they are around if you go outside of lemmy.world.
Tankie á la .world = anything left of center.
No, it is the Soviet Union did nothing wrong in 1956 definition.
The United States exterminated Native Americans and currently is a systemically racist country that murders its dissidents - see Kent State and Ferguson. It also has the largest prison population in the world.
Are you trying to argue that the two are moral equals?
How is the United States better given the entirety of its history and current oppression of the working class and minorities? We have a larger prison population than China despite having a far smaller population, and our quality of life has plummeted over the past 2 generations, whereas theirs has drastically improved over the same period
More importantly, why does any of that offend you to hear? You’re so patriotically brainwashed that you can’t tolerate criticisms of the US? Why would that be in a country that is supposedly free? If you’re being oppressed by American oligarchs, then you should want others to point out this oppression so that we can eventually reform our system
How is the United States better given the entirety of its history and current oppression of the working class and minorities?
I was talking about the definition of tankie and how it is different than leftist. I was not discussing the United States nor was I making an argument that the American system was superior.
Lemmy was made by Marxists, along Communist principles, both the format and the devs attract Marxists and Anarchists.
There is a lot of conflict between leftists and liberals on Lemmy because there are close to no conservatives.
It’s kind of like a Disco Elysium situation, even though non-Marxists can enjoy it and use it, there are going to be more Marxists enjoying it and using it as a proportion, and fewer conservatives.
Why are people with this worldview so common here?
Plenty of them aren’t “people,” they’re simply anonymous accounts used to spread and promote propaganda. Some content generated by people, some from LLMs.
They’re common here because they can run their disinformation campaigns without a corporation interfering. Tik Tok isn’t the CCP’s only attempt to influence people through social media.
If you’re claiming they are bots, I don’t think that’s the case. Judging from the little threads I’ve been reading throughout this post, it seems as if Lemmy was created by some diaspora of Marxists from reddit after reddit banned their stuff. If this is true, you’re not interacting with bots, you would be interacting with actual Marxists. People.
Some are regular people, some are paid shills, some are bots.
That’s the thing, I think they’re all just regular people with more radical views on politics. I feel as if this recent fad of “dead internet theory” which posits the majority of the net is filled with bots, is really an attempts by certain groups to dismiss certain online communities/dismiss the idea that these communities are indicative of some sort of wider trend within society, which is really what I think is an attempts to gain control of what is seen as consensus reality online, dehumanize the other side, and justify the suppression/repression of certain ideas, opinions, and groups.
And a good thing it is, too - if you liberals were managing it lemmy would have been sold off to Meta or Google a long time ago.
YSK: you will never see more pathetic whining than people on Lemmy constantly complaining about “tankies”. Full disclosure: I have been called a tankie one time in two years on Lemmy. I commented on a post that was basically jerking off to the idea that Japan would repeat its atrocities against China in the event that there was a war over Taiwan. I expressed doubt that it would go very smoothly, for which I was banned and labeled a tankie.
I mean… What is your point here? This is the internet no?
Yeah this is the origin of Lemmy. Reddit banned some far left subreddits years ago and so some Communists went and made Lemmy.
Just block the instance if it bothers you. Jeez.
Here I am… Joined Lemmy.ml because it was supposed to be a security, privacy and FOSS focused community. Now people are probably going to block seeing my comments.
Are there people that don’t know that Lemmy is developed by Marxists, and their instance is run by Marxists? Thought that was common knowledge, that’s why Lemmy exists in the first place, it was developed along Communist principles.
Plenty of people try Lemmy then promptly leave when they realize it’s run by “Marxists” (i.e. people pretending to Marxists as a facade for spreading CCP propaganda).
Bruh, Lemmy is a federated clone of Reddit. And tankies did not come up with the Fediverse or Reddit. If anything Lemmy is closer to a classic capitalist structure with the communities being owned by the admin (boss). Users have no control of any community no matter how much they contribute. I guess since tankies are state capitalists anyway they feel right at home.
That’s not quite correct, they are Marxists Leninists, who are the more Authoritarian and reactionary counterparts.
Exactly. They’re the left sect of fascism, and have “purged” communists in the past
All Marxist-Leninists are Marxists, not all Marxists are Marxist-Leninists.
It’s accurate to describe them as Marxists still.
technically accurate sure, but it implies that all marxists are tankies, which is absolutely not true.
what precisely would be the problem with referring to them by the specific term for what they are?
What separates Marxists from Tankies? I’ve seen dozens of definitions of tankie.
Kind of but not really. They’re state capitalists.
How so? Where along Lenin’s analysis of Marxism does there become a jump away?
Uh the fact that the workers didn’t own the means of production but the state did. Spare me all the philosophical pretzels about how the state WAS the people haha.
Since when does Marx say that a Worker-State isn’t Socialist? You may wish to revisit Critique of the Gotha Programme. No need to read Lenin there! Marx was no anarchist.
I’m not an anarchist. But pretty sure “Capitalism but the booj is the government”. Isn’t Communism
Great. now we have fediverse Stalin :D
Are you referring to me? Or Dessalines?
The way comments and users are purged from ml would make Stalin proud!
If you’re new to Lemmy then it won’t be common knowledge at all.
Could be, but again, Lemmy was made along Communist principles, it’s safe to assume people interested in Communist principles are going to be here.
But they may not know the history of it or why it was made before joining. I certainly didn’t, it was more about a decentralised alternative to Reddit, I just joined and explored.
Perhaps the point is that those principles predate Communism by quite some time, and Communism added a lot of its own baggage on them.
Because Lemmy is usually marketed as the Fediverse alternative to Reddit, not as a communist platform.
Maybe political repression and the mass killing of protestors and the internment of ethnic minorities has very little to do with a countries mode of production. Maybe you guys can advocate for an alternative mode of production without defending genocide and using the military to crack down on protests? And maybe liberals can do the same when Western Capitalist Countries do it?
please… :(
As long as the developers don’t force their political views on people using the software I really don’t see an issue.
You could argue they aren’t doing it today but what about tomorrow?
Well I would say everything is open source. If something does change that you don’t agree with you can just take the code and build your own. (Obviously with blackjack and hookers)
No problem, fuckingkangaroos.
