Lots of people who are seeing top-level postings about Hexbear. Net are probably confused about what has been going on and I want to give an SRD-style overview of the whole thing.
Note: As a user of Blahaj.Zone, I am not a neutral party in this and I do not pretend to be. This is how the whole thing has played out from my perspective.
Hexbear. Net is another Lemmy instance that had relatively recently started to federate with Blahaj.Zone and other Lemmy instances. It had previously been known as Chapo.Chat because it began as an instance for fans of the podcast ChapoTrapHouse.
Recently users from Blahaj.Zone (as well as other Lemmy instances) began to complain about the behavior of Hexbear users. The complaints were about rude, obnoxious behavior: Hexbear users calling people “libs” as an insult, denying crimes of Russia and China, denying the crimes of Stalin,…
Such behavior was not necessarily forbidden on Blahaj.Zone, but certain sub-Lemmys had their own rules on these subjects.
One of the threads about Hexbear: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/1854795?scrollToComments=true
After an ever increasing number of users calling for defederating from Hexbear. Net, Ada (admin of Blahaj.Zone) opened a thread to talk about it. The thread was quickly inundated with Hexbear users, complaining in turn about being called out in this way. Though many of their comments exploited a current bug in the Lemmy code which resulted in emoji’s being embedded as pictures which results in lots of image spam.
Ada responded by removing top-level comments in the thread which were not from Blahaj.Zone’s users, because she wanted to get the feedback of her own community, not from anybody else.
This happened originally in this thread: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/1959801
The discussion on Blahaj.Zone was a back and forth: Lots of people calling for “leftist and queer unity”, others complaining about getting harassed by Hexbear users.
Meanwhile, elsewhere: Lemm.ee, a Lemmy instance operated and managed by someone from Estonia, also opened a discussion about Hexbear - at least partially motivated by the admin’s increasing unease of the rampant denial of soviet atrocities and the occupation of Estonia by the Soviet Union. Russian propaganda in regards to the war in Ukraine was also an issue.
Lemm.ee was largely encountering similar problems as Blahaj.Zone, though the Lemme.ee admin admitted that the Hexbear admin was generally responsive to reports and complaints.
The thread on Lemm.ee: https://lemm.ee/post/4543536
The thread was also flooded with comments from Hexbear users. The admin of Lemm.ee also responded by hiding most of the comments from Hexbear.
https://mastodon.social/@brooklynman/110911292961470110
Back on Blahaj.Zone, a tangent opens up: A Hexbear user complains about c/196, the new home of Reddit’s r/196 which had relocated to Blahaj.Zone and has been its biggest community ever since. The Hexbear user complains about their comments being removed, comments that called out the use of the r-word and other call-outs. The user posts pictures of the removal notices.
Blahaj.Zone’s admin Ada steps in and intervenes on behalf of the Hexbear user, having a stern word with the c/196 mod responsible for the removal of the comments.
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2136643
A Hexbear admin also gets involved and sends a message to the mods of c/196 demanding the removal of the sub-Lemmy’s banner, because it contains “fuck tankies²”, arguing that tankies is a slur. The c/196 mod refuses and publishes their message.
[²"Tankies" is a pejorative term for authoritarian socialists in the vein of Stalin and/or Mao.]
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/1961004
While the discussion if Blahaj.Zone should defederate from Hexbear is still ongoing, the Hexbear admins defederated from Blahaj.Zone without warning from their side, because of…
unaddressed ableist removals from the /c/196 moderators, defense of chasers, no-quarter rules regarding our users, leakage of good-faith DMs from our admin team, and a general lack of initiative to punish these behavior
In her a response to these events, Ada points out in a comment that she never had the chance to adress the ableist incident (she was in bed) while other issues had happened in the past and had been adressed at the time. Thus she could not react before Hexbear defederated.
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2135406
TL;dr: Blahaj.Zone’s users complain about ill behavior of users on Hexbear. Net. A discussion about defederation begins on Blahaj.Zone. Meanwhile Hexbear users complain about Blahaj.Zone in turn and Hexbear. Net defederates instantly and without warning.
“Liberal” is the name that supporters of liberal capitalism use to refer to themselves. It has a precise and accepted meaning.
“Tankie” has no defined meaning, which is why it is not used by communists. In its vagueness it is used to associate Marxists with crypto-fascists and non-Marxist ideas, and to obfuscate the meaning of Marxism. And in so far as it associates the kind of people who died to liberate Auschwitz with the kind of people who built that place, it is offensive.
If there is no malign intent behind the term ‘tankie’, then why does anyone use that term instead of communist? Why doesn’t 196 have “fuck communists” in their banner instead of “fuck tankies”?
Removed by mod
Yes, it is an obscure historical term that fell out of use for decades and has no relevance today. No communists use the word ‘tankie’, including communists who do not support the Soviet Union (eg Trotskyists) or modern China (eg certain Maoists). It is a term used by anti-communists, and “communists” whose understanding derives from Wikipedia rather than Marxist theory.
That is in part what makes it so malign. It is a term of propaganda and obfuscation. People who would fall under the term of ‘tankie’ include: Malcom X, all members of the Black Panther Party, Che Guevara, Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russel, Jean Paul Sartre, Nina Simone, etc. In other words, all communists. 196 should be open about their political position instead of hiding behind vagaries and disinformation.
The concept of class warfare is fundamental to Marxist theory. To quote the man himself, ‘When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror’. We are not Utopianists, and we accept that the Bourgeoisie must be destroyed in order to free humanity from exploitation.
For a term that’s fallen out of disuse I’ve heard and seen it a lot. Probably because that sort of people are still around.
Words go in and out of fashion as need arises.
Ironically, I’ve heard more communists use narrow, historical definitions of words (e.g. liberal, authoritarianism) that fell out of common use 100 years ago. While getting upset people understandably assume they’re using the widespread contemporary meanings of the words.
“Liberal” is also the term that westerners who oppose authoritarianism have adopted in response to right wing authoritarians who claim to support liberal capitalist policies applying the label “liberal” to anti authoritarians. It has multiple accepted meanings.
I’ve only ever seen “tankie” used to refer to a pro authoritarian communist. Someone who thinks the actions of Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Erich Hoenecker were reasonable and justified.
Why doesn’t 196 have fuck communists? Because a lot of the people posting there are communists. But they hate authoritarian communism. And Lemmy has some prominent tankists (including the lead devs). Putting “authoritarian communist apologists not welcome here” front and center is a very intentional choice.
As far “tankies” is a slur goes, I find that laughable. Slurs are about things you can’t control. What’s the color of your skin? Where were you born? Do you have any mental or physical disabilities you have to work through to get through your day ("Everyone is disabled. My disability is just a little more visible than everyone else’s " - Jim Abbott)? Who are you or aren’t you sexually attracted to? Your political beliefs are not, and cannot, be part of a protected class. They are something you have come to believe over time, and which you are motivated to share and cultivate with others. If your political beliefs are particularly heinous, such as denying the Holodomor, the deaths of the great leap forward, or the genocide at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, other people have every right to tell you to fuck right off
honestly as someone whos a communist (like the ones mentioned in this comment) ive never liked the term “authoritarian communism” because by definition, actual textbook communism cannot be authoritarian. as soon as you add that in, you might as well remove the communism part altogether.
The term Tankie has a clear usage pattern, and it refers to both the action and defending of the action of authoritarian regimes using military assets (such as tanks) to systematically inflict violence upon civilian populations.
It first came into use after an authoritarian government sent troops and tanks to overturn the election of a candidate they didn’t like (in Prague 1968) and the vapid simps of that authoritarian government clapped like seals in mindless automatic support of it.
Other events that follow this pattern:
When the Communist Party of Kampuchea purged over a million people between 1975 and 1979 because “reasons” (usually paranoia),
When on 1989-06-04 the Chinese government declared martial law, deployed troops and tanks to occupy Tiananmen Square and slaughter the hundreds of student protestors there (that figure according to the Chinese government; other parties allege higher casualty numbers),
When Petro Poroshenko shelled his own cities in 2014 and bragged that he intentionally wanted to maim and terrorize the civilians there for the mere “crime” of living in the same municipality where rebels allegedly lived, while not commonly associated with the term, definitely fits the bill
If you don’t LIKE that people refer to these recurring patterns of state-actualized brutality (and the rhetorical support and defense thereof) as “Tankie”, WELL that sounds like a skill issue. GIT GUD.
So if someone doesn’t support all those things they’re not a tankie and you’d be the first to correct someone mistakenly calling them a tankie?
Amazing how sea lions can use computers these days
Yes, someone calling a non-tankie communist a “tankie” should be told to fuck off.
Incidentally that’s almost exclusively a right wing thing – it’s rare that a leftist will call a non “pro oppressive authoritarianism” communist a “tankie”.
That is precisely where the line needs to be drawn.
Unless someone is in the process of defending/excusing military action taken against civilians, or supporting a regime that does it, they simply do not fit the definition of being a tankie, and someone calling them a tankie would be simply wrong.
I understand there are people who toss that word around without even caring about what it’s supposed to refer to, let alone even possessing a consistent understanding of what they’re trying to say.
Words used without a consistent understanding of what they mean have no utility.
And you know what, here’s a hot take: anyone defending or excusing Barack Obama’s drone strikes against civilians, despite the fact that it could be argued that the united states “isn’t authoritarian”, could almost accurately be described as a tankie too - and if someone called such a drone strike simp a tankie, I’d be more inclined to agree because it’s not even really ABOUT the economic philosophy of the regime, just the fact that the regime is inflicting systematic mechanized violence on civilians. How “authoritarian” that regime is doesn’t end up making that much of a difference to the shrapnel-dismembered corpses of entire families.
This shit happens too much for us to not have a word to describe it or call out the people who simp for it, doesn’t it? Take the word back. Wrench it out of the mouths of people who use it blindly and indiscriminately. If its meaning can’t be pinned down then it’s meaningless.
because tankies arent communists…? they arent communists in the same way that china isnt a communist a country. sure china is run by the chinese communist party, but theyre fascists. sure the nazis were called the national socialist party, but that doesnt mean they were socialists. they were fascists. its almost like governments are capable of lying about being progressive to get into power or muddy the name of actual progressive systems to further their own agenda.
“Liberal” does not have a precise and accepted meaning. If you ask three people on the street to define liberal, you’ll get three different definitions and none of them will be how hexbear users use it. It also varies wildly across the globe.
Sure it does: support of authoritarian pseudocommunism, such as was practiced by Stalin and Mao.
Because tankies are pseudocommunists. They don’t care about the interests of the proletariat, which makes them the opposite of genuine communists.