this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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Just throwing out the word tankie is pretty much meaningless at this point. It might as well be “woke”. If you have specific issues explain that rather than just trying to shut down a conversation with a word. Some users might be a bit too sympathetic too China but I’ve typically seen them more come from a reasonable non US propaganda viewpoint and have been open to actual criticism about China. Some of it can seem like whataboutism but to be fair a lot of the complaints I see about China are shit the US does as well so it can be a fair point.
In terms of the "tankie problem", it's mostly supporting Russian aggression in Ukraine pretty much solely to "own the libs" and "get back at the evil NATO". Most "tankies", a term that has become effectively meaningless from overuse, are more accurately political contrarians who care less about things getting better for more people and more about Owning The Libs.
There's honestly a good chunk of them on most fediverse instances just due to the general community vibe, with Hexbear having more than, say, lemmy.world, but less than lemmygrad. Hexbear stands out moreso to being the successor to Chapo Trap House, a community notorious for being so utterly vile to interact with that nobody wants anything to do with them.
I appreciate you actually explaining your position behind the use of the word. I have a lot of issues with NATO and some with Ukraine but I agree that Russia is the aggressor in this situation. I have noticed that some of their users are pro-Russia but most of what I’ve seen is more anti-NATO which I can understand. As I said in another comment I definitely see some of the users troll more than I agree with and I personally prefer to deal with things in a different manner but overall I’m fine with being federated with them.
Do your think Ukraine and NATO are above reproach?
No, but they're absolutely the lesser of two evils here. I'm generally not sure how people justify a war of territorial expansion to stroke the ego of a geriatric dictator in Ukraine, then turn around and get angry about a war of territorial expansion to stroke the ego of a geriatric dictator in, say, Afghanistan.
It's hypocrisy. You dronestrike a children's hospital in Kabul and everyone acknowledges the evil of it, but Russia dronestrikes a children's hospital in Ukraine and suddenly it's justified as "retaliating against western imperialism". Sure, and Iran had nukes Uncle Sam needed to find, too.
For me, I don't support what Russia is doing. I just don't want to further empower the US military industrial complex. Every couple of years there needs to be a new evil enemy for us to be scared of so that the money can keep flowing into weapons and so that we have excuses to extract value out of other countries in conflict. It's obvious we don't do this for humanitarian reasons or we wouldn't be allies with countries like Saudi Arabia (or see the entire history of US intervention since WWII). Whether Russia wins or loses the war, people in Ukraine aren't winning, they're just seeing which imperialists are going to be exploiting them for the near future.
In the abstract I don't oppose assisting countries against imperialist aggression with military force. But playing into US warmongering doesn't really do that and in the process is further making the world a worse place.
A good deed done for the wrong reasons is still a good deed. The reason why NATO is the lesser of two evils in this sense is that between two brutal authoritarian regimes, NATO is significantly more hands-off and more open to being manipulated by civilian interest than the more brutally right-wing Russian regime. One of these exploitative imperialists will probably let you get gay married, the other one will kill you for it. The US military industrial complex will pick a target regardless. It may as well be a target that ends up counteracting Russian imperialism; I'd rather have those bullets in Russian corpses than, say, whatever country Saudi Arabia has decided needs bullying this week.
Anyways, the core of the issue is that it takes a LOT of hand-wringing and "b-but both sides" to justify active warfare to sit back and let an imperial power shit hellfire down civilians' throats. Anyone who actively supports pulling out of Ukraine is, bluntly, just kind of an idiot.
Nato has killed magnitudes more people though, they go to war much more often and much more vigorously than Russia.
Do you think Ukraine deserved to have Russia invade?
Lesser of two evils? Please. How old do you think I am, ten? I’m not at all sure they’re the lesser of two evils, but then I’m pretty critical of things like imf, World Bank, allying with Saudi Arabia “ccp bad” garbage. Humans are animals and I’m here to learn and the western narrative is rather sanitized so no thanks.
You are a political contrarian if you think invading a sovereign nation is justified by "the western narrative is rather sanitized". You don't care about people's lives or welfare, you care about Being Special and Being Better Than Other People.
To be blunt, you disgust me with your callous disregard for the lives of innocents solely to be cool and edgy on the internet.
Nah, you’re just trying to bully me to agree with you, with zero sense of irony in a thread ostensibly about the same behavior; unless that’s not why you’re upset with that behavior, per se.
I don't particularly care if you agree with me or not. What I find interesting is that what motivates your political positions are effectively identical to, say, an American christofascist. Disdain for the mainstream media, performative cynicism, conspiratorial thinking. If it goes counter to The Mainstream, it must be good. The idea that people may be harmed by your position doesn't matter to you at all. People """are animals""", after all, and they matter to you only as props in your self-aggrandizing personal narrative.
I'm genuinely not sure how you're intending to sell your position of "Empathy is for losers, the only thing that matters is Being Right On The Internet" as anything other than repulsive, or how you're not demonstrating why people dislike hexbear users (i.e. spitting on the concept of basic human empathy due to political contrarianism).
What? You just made a bunch of knee-jerk accusations of which nothing I said could reasonably lead you to conclude.
Take every claim you made and prove it like you went to high school English classes because frankly, you just made up claims attacking me, personally, because I dared say I want to hear what someone else has to say and form my own opinions. And accused me of being “just like the Christofascist” with zero sense of irony.
Also, please let me know when humans aren’t in the animal kingdom. How old are you? Ten?
Equating communists you disagree with with fascism is holocaust trivialization, according to mainstream Jewish scholars of the holocaust.
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
Well apparently Kbin has some political contrarians too, who'd have thought.
There's always at least one. I just hope that it's more of an edgy-rebellious-phase thing.
Contrarian? Hardly. I’m just aware that Western Europe and the USA have their own agendas, engage in propagandizing their own citizens, to greater or lesser extent. Pretending otherwise is disingenuous. Notice how lacked the behavior, not the person, without knowing more? Try out sometime.
So trying to frame this as "which is worse" is just a bad argument.
Put some effort into proving your position.
You also seem pretty condescending, why should people respect you if you don't respect them?