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MeanwhileOnGrad
"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
What is a Tankie?
Alternatively, a detailed blog post about Tankies.
(caution of bias)
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 or any variation of Tankie Ideology. There is no justifying Genocide.
Revisionism — Downplaying or denying atrocities past and present will result in an immediate ban.
If you're violating instance rules, you'll typically be warned. Continuing poor behaviour after being warned will result in a ban or removal of your comments. Bans typically only last seven days, but repeat infractions will have longer sentences. You may ask to be unbanned.
So is lumping Tankies in with the left.
Tankies are authoritarians who pretend to be leftist. They are often anti-progress, as much so as right-wingers (because they secretly are, they just root for a different authoritarian)
Authoritarianism is basically apolitical. I've read it boiled down to state/regime monopoly over industry, how you get there, left or right, is almost just a detail once you're there.
The origins of the terms left and right were explicitly authoritarian vs democratic.
The right has spent the centuries since trying to pretend that the left can also be authoritarian and still be the left.
Hell, the economic left, communism, was only relegated to the left, because it was a democratization of the economy. The goal of every man being truly equal. You labor, but you also partially own the factories you labor in.
Lenin took this dream, and betrayed it. He turned communism from a force of equalization into a new feudalism. You labor for the good of the state and own little to nothing of it. Stalin then stepped in as a new despotic king.
This makes the communism of Lenin and Stalin a very right-wing thing. Both of them actually snuffed out true communist movements, first Lenin in Ukraine, and then Stalin in Hungary, Which is how the term Tankie was born, the Tankies supported the soviets sending in tanks to put down the communist uprising in Hungary. The people just wanted to be able to vote, which is key to actual communism.
Then you had Mao. He was not as petty and cruel as Stalin, but made up for it with gross incompetence. His brain-dead orders caused millions to starve, all while he never had an empty stomach. Because while all animals are equal, some animals are more equal than others.
Mao also put down actual communist movements as a threat to his power.
Basically, why we can't have nice things.