this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2025
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MeanwhileOnGrad
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"Oh, this is calamity! Calamity! Oh no, he's on the floor!"
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Documenting hate speech, conspiracy theories, apologia/revisionism, and general tankie behaviour across the fediverse. Memes are welcome!
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I never heard of tankies until I got to lemmy.
The first thing that I ever saw from them was a meme about how Joseph Stalin had very little in the way of material things when he died, despite the position he held.
And I was like Bitch, I care about Stalin's earthly possessions in the exact same way that I care about Hitler's painting with watercolors skill set.
This got me thinking about my western canadian upbringing through the back half of the Cold War. A steady stream of western indictrination and perspective. I recall zero words spoken about Joseph Stalin's personal life or spending habits.
So who the fuck was that meme aimed at? Who is out there, just wanting to love Stalin, but can't on account of thinking he lived in opulence? Who is out there heaping scorn on Stalin for what he owned or didn't?
That's when I realized that tankies are just a combination of Flat Earthers/Sovereign Citizens. It’s all bullshit, and the point is to be exceedingly difficult to talk to.
There are actually plenty of tankies on Reddit, but with Reddit you have to pretty much seek it out because of the massive user base
Legend goes that dessalines actually started Lemmy because their Reddit main got perm banned because he went a lil too tankie
I remember a huge dustup maybe 4 years ago where tankies infiltrated and tried to take over a bunch of left leaning subs within a few weeks. They do it regularly too. I've noticed quite a few db0 accounts that are around 9 months old spewing the usual tankie shit.
We've been noticing the same. your thoughts?
Hey dessalines, care to chime in on why you are the way you are?
Tankies never venture into this community, despite this being a place where they can freely discuss their viewpoints. It's because they know their positions don't hold any weight, and they're afraid of being scrutinised.
Funnily enough, for all of the prominent Tankie talk about not wanting to be an echo chamber and welcoming debate, .ml actually has this comm instance-blocked LMAO
Yeah. They’re as bad as MAGA with the snowflake hypocrisy.
i call them mirror image of conservatives. inverted image of conservatives.
alot of tankies probably got banned from reddit for the same reason they are getting blocked/defederated here. plus we get conservatives too trickling from time to time.
Same here, never heard of them before Lemmy. I was shocked by their illogical statements and behavior. I couldn't believe anyone could hold such inconsistent beliefs and not just melt their brain, by so many mental gymnastics and plot holes. I still can't. It just makes way more sense that they are all done kind of weird Russian ai experiment.
They kind of betray each other a lot of the times where some say that tiananmen square massacre didn't happen and others saying that they are color revolutionaries and absolutely deserved it.
I personally know a born-and-raised Chinese person who's loyal to the regime. Not even he denies the Uyghur genocide. He just admits that he thinks china should be an ethnostate. I think about that every time I see some keyboard warrier say the genocide is western propaganda.
asians are pretty hardcore conservatives, at least for the older generation. vietnam, china,,,etc. thats why you seem them "rallying" with right/white supremacists quite often, also older millennials(35+) tend to gear towards conservatism more than progressivism/left leaning ideology. Or at the most they support some left leaning, but does not like things gay marriage,weed,drugs,,,,etc. i know people that are this way. also notice asians that have at least some religious upbringing, either christianity or buddhism(funny enough) and left the religion partially, but became more right wing when trump came around. i knew someone early in college that was a vietnamese immigrant, he was very PRO-BUSH,war. and yes i am asians.
you're vietnamese or?
I've found it very curious how Tankies will apply a coat of liberal paint to authoritarian states like China, Iran and Russia. They don't realise that diversity and the freedom of self-expression they so love are all largely suppressed in these states.
very much a chickens for KFC scenario.
I've seen them saying it was fine because the students wanted to be killed. Insane
I was willing to listen to them until I was the target of completely unfounded censorship. I figured, meh maybe they have a few nuggets of wisdom. They called me a racist and a xenophobe for a meme I made that neither contained racism or race.
That's all they do, is engage in name-calling. Nothing actually productive. They're just a bunch of name-callers.
i wish all the stupidity i see in the world was the result of russian misinformation, but that's almost too optimistic a position to hold in my eyes...guess we'll see if/when russia collapses from fighting ukraine, if it all just dries up.
putin is funding the troll farms personally, i think it will be the last to collapse before russia does unfortunately.
I too, have never heard of tankies before joining lemmy.
Imagine my surprise, when i, a guy from a post-soviet country, where the fans of soviets are endangered species, see them all fanboying over dictators of the past century over here lol
The best part they're from countries that never even remotely experienced soviet horrors. The lead tankies are from Netherlands and many other appear to be from flyover states of the US lol
and obvious it's invaded by ruzi bots
This is so relatable. I'm from a former communist country. The first time I encountered a large group of tankies was on Reddit around the TikTok ban. It was stunning. It had me thinking "My god, the far-right will put us all in the same boat as these weirdos and sink the boat"
sorry you have to experience that
It's interesting how almost all Tankies come from the US
Here's my 2¢ on how that kinda post might've been effective propaganda on me if I just saw it in the background long enough.
I grew up in America in a conservative area and everyone saw wealth as success and legitness. I now find myself beliving that if you live in excessive luxury that you are part of the problem. I can see how learning Stalin didn't have much when he died would appeal to a certain leftist in me and changes the emperor tone I originally picture him with.
I have other issues with Stalin, but maybe if I'd've lived on .ml long enough those kinda posts could've slowly changed what comes to mind when I think of him.
Conservative estimates state that Stalin was directly responsible for twenty million deaths.
There is no charm offensive that will "slowly change what comes to mind" when thinking of Joseph Stalin.
Well I'm no historian. I didn't have that number. My point is that I don't think about Stalin that much, and, without grounding, posting about how minimalist Stalin was sounds like a decently effective way to change how I view him.
It sounds like you've got a much more detailed understanding of Stalin than I do.
Anyone my age range or older would have no excuse for not knowing what kind of monster Stalin was. Anyone who has spoken to survivors who escaped his regime would never have the fucking audacity.
By comparison, Pol Pot was responsible for the killing fields in Cambodia. His murder spree is just a rounding error in Stalin's body of work.
Kind of likewise; coming from Reddit the political weirdos were American conservative types, "Jesus needs more guns to shoot the gays and the poor and the blacks" sort of folks. The idea of fervent fucking Soviets on the English speaking internet was new and instantly boring.
There is a funny story about the real currency of power that involves Stalin. The story goes that Stalin and his party officials came upon a beggerwoman on the side of the road. She asked them if they could spare some money. In a rare moment of generosity from Stalin he went for his wallet, only to find it empty. He asked the officials if they had any money, but all of their purses sounded empty.
Those in power do not need money, as everything they ever want will be given to them.
I envy you. I live in Hungary, and for a long while the only leftists I knew about were tankies. They're just as annoying offline as online.
My first interactions on lemmy here were with a large pod of tankies on memes of all places.
It was not clear to me they were anything but super politically correct Americans so I argued with them for like a hundred different replies before one of them told me, then they kept brigading me and following me on to other posts and such.
Then my phone started acting wonky and I got afraid I was getting hacked by them so I made a new account, I do not know if they can find you from Lemmy but I still have both.
Modern tankies are likely a spook psyop... Both foreign and domestic. They serve a useful purpose for both sides within the online eco systems
Based on how fucking bad they are at peddling their shit, my alternate theory is that they've been funded by some western democracy foundation, with the brief of making anything that is Warsaw Pact scented as unpalatable as humanly possible.
Like PETA working overtime to get people to hate Vegans.
tankies seems to boost conservatism idelogy more than they do for the "left". because they have the same messaging and values.
Some people have made arguments that the leadership of the USSR simply replaced the old capitalist/aristocratic class and had access to their wealth through the levers of state power. I have not investigated the truthfulness of this claim, but I’m guessing this was a response to that talking point.
If they don't have their name written on it, just use the estates and other expensive things all their life it's technically not theirs. This is the tankie argument
“The people’s presidential ballroom”. Funny how well aligned out current capitalist leaders and the so-called communists can be.
Some people go as far to say that US is literally repeating USSR arc in some ways...
For example COVID is Chernobyl as it exposed that we are essentially ruled by nepo imbeciles. And people with any degree of independent thinking and competence get side lined.
Food prices and over all stagnation of the working people. Young people who have zero faith in the regime.