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Yea, I'm with you ... the most "annoying" think about tankies is all of the noise about them as though they're some degenerate scum bringing down society.
It's not hard to move past a political opinion you don't like, or a big and hairy political debate you don't have time/energy for. But it doesn't mean a whole bunch of people have to be shunned/exiled because they happen to trigger your inability to do so ... or that you have to whine about their presence all of the time.
People who support the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the CCP's violations of human rights ARE degenerate scum bringing down society.
I am never going to stop whining about their presence.
Funny, you sound just like my uncle. Do you have confederate flags hanging up in your room too, like he does?
Shrugging off extremist views as "just a political opinion" that should be ignored if you don't like it is like the #1 way to normalize and spread extremist views. You do not, and should not, politely ignore extremist. Doing so is explicitly allowing and inviting more into your community. Tankies can fuck off and I will continue to say so.
Well, the way I see it is that tankies are pretty much a minority without any power in the west, and, at least the ones I've seen around here, aren't actively organising any sort of violent revolutionary behaviour or anything ... which means their views tend to always be critiques of the powerful western governments and mainstream cultures form the perspectives of minorities, and often in ways that many in the mainstream find unpalatable, and therefore unconvincing. So, even if "extreme" (whatever you mean by that exactly) in some way, it's a "punching up" kind of "extreme" that I'm open minded to hearing, however agreeable or disagreeable I tend to find their opinions.
Do you really think tankies are convincing? This thread, at least, indicates otherwise. So much "extremism" are they going to be spreading? IMO, the sort of "extremism" much more likely to spread is the sort of stuff driven by hate of some sort of "other" weaker and smaller than the mainstream as a scapegoat, not least because it's more amenable to the worldview(s) of the larger and more powerful majority.
The "extremist views" I'm talking about is the support for authoritarian regimes that use draconian laws and excessive military force to enforce the law. Tankies often do support the subjugation of people they deem "lesser", but unlike extremist on the far right, they often keep that part quiet.
The fact that you're downplaying the extremity of Tankie talking points is a perfect example of how they are able to normalize their opinions by being allowed a voice in groups where their opinions should be shunned and shamed.
This is a great breakdown of the exact thing I'm talking about.. The video focuses on these tactics and how they are used by the alt-right, but this is not something exclusive to the right and is exactly what tankies are doing on lemmy.
If they're in your comments saying it's a good thing civilians are being tortured to death and bombed because they were born in the wrong place then that's not just political differences.
Their goal is explicitly to silence others by sheer volume of bullshit.
I mean, who disagrees with you here ... that's the sort of stuff moderation and blocking is for.
But I can't help but suspect (perhaps naively) that that's your read of someone else's opinion and not what they actually said or even intended to say, largely because it seems you're projecting consequences onto a difference of principles/interpretations.
I have an entire conversation on here where the majority of Lemmy users told me democrats should start killing people.
Also, what fucking moderation?
It is kinda bs that republicans kill people constantly but democrats never do. The solution is ideally that republicans stop killing people though. I don't think suddenly becoming just as murderous is a good idea unless we break out into literal civil war.
I gotta ask for receipts for that one. Also ... what do you mean by "democrats should start killing people?"
Well however ineffective some may find it, moderation does occur on lemmy. But beyond that, my point was that an awful statement is an awful statement and should be dealt with accordingly. But it doesn't necessarily mean that an entire political position thinks the same way and to infer as much without more would really just be prejudice.
No they're actively supporting it in a literal sense. Tell them Russia needs to stop killing civilians and they'll say something about corruption needing to be purged (as if killing civilians will do that), or something about denazification (implying all Ukrainians deserve to be killed), or deny it's happening despite all evidence
Some of them have a real thing for saying the Tiananmen Square massacre never happened and there's no evidence, too. I guess I just hallucinated those news reports at the time with screams and gunfire in the background.
Hmmm ... I think I might have seen a statement or two like that. Though, in my cases, it seemed a lot more like moving the goal posts or not arguing so well their general anti-western sentiment ... I don't think I've seen anyone go so far as to support the killing of civilians (in fact, I saw opposition to the deaths of civilians).
Do you have any receipts?
And, FWIW, my general position here is that I'm not a "tankie" or whatever and don't necessarily like everything they have to say around here, but, by default I lean toward having access to a wide set of opinions so long as I have the option of walking away or ignoring them when I need to. The thing that disturbs me about a lot of the "anti-tankie" sentiments is that it looks a lot like an aggressive enforcement of a political bubble against any hardline critiques of the west. I, for one, am happy to hear said critiques even if they are off-base most of the time, in part because I have no doubt that we are all living in sometimes petty political bubbles.
That, of course, doesn't excuse being awful ... it's just that I haven't encountered the degree of awfulness that many speak about and whenever I've gone looking (which, admittedly isn't deeply or often) I have struggled to find what has been accused. Because of this, I'm always curious to see what "anti-tankies" are talking about.
I have zero problems with critique of the west. The problem is those people only want to allow criticism of the west and nothing else
Yea, and that'd probably be something I diverge from them too. Though, from what I can tell, their whole thing is very ideological, so if they believe there's nothing salvageable in the west because of its basic ideology (ie, liberalism and capitalism), then I'm not sure they can logically be very open minded about positives in the west, and I for one am happy to hear out ideological critiques, even if it can get silly or superficial in any particular argument, not least because many arguments on social media are pretty silly and superficial.