this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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Tankiejerk

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Dunking on Tankies from a leftist perspective.

A tankie is someone who defends/supports authoritarian or even totalitarian regimes who call themselves "socialist". The term originated from people supporting the 1956 invasion of Hungary by the Soviet Union. Nowadays they are just terminally online, denying genocides, and falling for totalitarian propaganda and calling such regimes "true democracies". remember to censor usernames when necessary.

Please be sure to obscure usernames on posts to prevent doxxing.

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Alt text by username transcriptionist down from the comment section: Image Transcription:

A post on Ask Lemmygrad by user Cyber Ghost titled "What are the reasons why Russia attacked Ukraine?"

Below is the comment by user @cfgaussian reading: "The Nazi Kiev regime attacked the ethnically Russian Donbass for eight years intending to commit genocide in their quest for an ethnically pure Ukraine and Russia finally came to their aid after it became clear that the Minsk agreements were never going to be honored. Also, NATO was turning Ukraine into a hyper militarized threat to the integrity and security of Russia itself. Refusal of the US and Europe to negotiate on a new inclusive security framework, refusal to stop NATO expansion eastward, and the relentless and violent anti-Russian psychosis that has gripped Ukraine since the Maiden coup that triggered a civil war in a country in which half or more of the population are essentially Russian became intolerable."

User Summertime Soviet has replied to the comment saying "It's a shame we can't pin comments on posts, because this one would get a pin from me.

so instead, have this Farmer_Heck seal of approval"

[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for ease of use. Thank you. πŸ’œ]

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[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 232 points 1 year ago (3 children)

"They had to invade! Ukraine forced them to!"

Great argument.

[–] themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works 140 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Isn't this the literal reason the Nazis, as in, the actual Nazis, gave to justify their invasion of Alsace and Lorainne? That their friendly ethnicities were being discriminated there, and that they had to invade to save them?

[–] MindSkipperBro12@lemmy.world 74 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Same with the Sudentland in Czechoslovakia.

[–] yata@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 year ago

And same with Poland. The nazis dressed up some convicts in German border guard uniforms, then killed them, took photographs of their corpses and used as one of their excuses to attack (they also blamed Poland for murdering German ethnicities in Poland of course).

[–] mustardman@discuss.tchncs.de 34 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Do not compare any glorious people's republic to Nazi Germany otherwise you get called a Holocaust denier.

One of the Hexbears spazzed out at me when I said the NKVD, like the Gestapo, did horrific things. I was genuinely confused...

[–] PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh God you said it. If the name that shall not be named is repeated twice more, thou shalt summon thy horde!

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[–] MindSkipperBro12@lemmy.world 49 points 1 year ago (1 children)

β€œHow could you blame him? Look at how she’s dressed!”

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[–] Dicska@lemmy.world 48 points 1 year ago

Does that mean that seeing satellite images of Russia grouping forces along the border would give a perfectly acceptable reason for Ukraine to invade Russia, because Russia turned the border into a hyper militarized threat? Using their own logic on them.

[–] blazera@kbin.social 139 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Sounds like the China fans with Taiwan. 'They actually want to be part of the PRC they just dont know it yet'

'Those ukrainians are basically already Russian so its fine'

[–] sushibowl@feddit.nl 102 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is a screenshot from lemmygrad. Those people are the China fans you're referring to, it's all the same group of people.

[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 60 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Had a, uh, discussion with lemmygrad where apparently wanting high speed rail without secret police and genocide is a controversial take. It was a post kind of half celebrating the atrocities of communist regimes. Only for lemmygrad users to turn around and tell me that those things never happened, but they were totally justified and ought to happen again, but communists don't do that kind of thing and it's all made up propaganda, unless you're a capitalist or a liberal or [someone else who deserves it]. There were a few interesting and intelligent lines of thought in that whipping circle I found myself a part of, and I was glad for those, but generally the ideological spin was going so fast, you just about had to slap a tail rotor on it.

[–] BarrelAgedBoredom@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

State socialists have some reasonable explanations for the authoritarian aspects of the USSR and sometimes China but they're so easily provoked (online) it's hard to find them in the flood of reactionary dumbassery going on around it. Don't take this as a defense of state socialism. It's not. But their logic has some merit if you believe a state is a necessary institution in a socialist/communist society

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[–] chaogomu@kbin.social 64 points 1 year ago (4 children)

No no, they're ethnically Russian. Just don't ask why they're ethnically Russian.

A hint or two.

There might be a few more reasons why Ukraine really wanted to join a defense alliance against Russia...

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[–] samus12345@lemmy.world 98 points 1 year ago

This is a great answer if the question were "What are the false reasons Russia gave for attacking Ukraine?"

[–] AnyProgressIsGood@lemmy.world 85 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Lol the Jewish president elected by Nazis. Nazi party literally never broke like 6% of the vote in ukraine.

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[–] Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com 78 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Do they realise they use the same exact excuse Hitler used to occupy czechoslovakia?

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 39 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No of course not because not a single one of them has a clue what they're talking about, and has never studied history or politics.

To them everything is black and white. You are either an insane tanky or you're an evil Nazi, and there's no other option. There's definitely no normal people, since they see themselves as the normal people.

[–] IEatAsbestos@lemmy.ml 28 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I think most of it is chronically online 17 year olds that have had their brains so borked by the american two party system and political climate being so volitile. They've grown up in a world where its us vs them, im always right you're always wrong, I can do no wrong and you can do no good, etc. So when they learn that the USA kinda (really) sucks, it fucks with their head and they start thinking "the other side" is right.

Yes, the USA government is grossly corrupt by corporate money and the media is compliant, has taken part in imperialist conquest, and has lied about its own history. But that does not make Russia/China ANY BETTER.

I would rather live in the USA than Russia/China in a heartbeat, even with USA's problems (there are a lot) because at least I can say "Fuck the usa, death to America" without being erased from the timeline by secret police.

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[–] WiildFiire@lemmy.world 67 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Your mistake was looking at anything related to lemmygrad

[–] hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not gonna lie I do sometimes read it for brain fucking fun lmao

[–] Narrrz@kbin.social 16 points 1 year ago

you have a very different idea of fun to me πŸ˜…πŸ˜¬

[–] Jaysyn@kbin.social 61 points 1 year ago

That's a lot of Copium.

[–] FellowEarthling@lemmy.world 43 points 1 year ago (1 children)

More ethnic russians in Germany than in Ukraine, this is clearly an overreach by NATO

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[–] FireTower@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago (4 children)

OG OP actually asked a good question. Aside from regional cultural claims and geopolitical military perks Ukraine also holds massive significance for its ports, grain production, and the oil pipeline that crosses from Russia to Western Europe.

Not condoning Russia's actions, from it, but if they had managed to get away with it they'd be in a vastly better position on the world's stage.

[–] hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 33 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah it's a good question, but asking it in lemmygrad it's like asking the meaning of life from a dog. At best you get unintelligible barking.

[–] CMLVI@kbin.social 31 points 1 year ago (5 children)

That's what I don't get. All these tankie morons are hiding behind the flimsiest of "Nazi persecution" lies. Ukraine is just flat out amazing for Russia strategically, it's very clear what they wanted. Not to mention some fat ore reserves they have parked in the ground for burgeoning industries.

But no, it has to be Nazis and Western agendas while they bomb schools and residential neighborhoods with these extremely accurate bombs they possess but choose not to use...

[–] seejur@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Because propaganda dictates that you need to the moral high ground in war. Else its very difficult to sell to your soldiers the idea of dying in foreign land.

And that propaganda seems to be awfully effective, judging from lemmygrand and hexbear comments (even though I am pretty sure some of those users do not really believe it, but are paid to write those comments)

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[–] Philolurker@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Also worth mentioning, in addition to those things, the relatively recently discovered oil and gas deposits in Ukraine, much of which is off the coast. Before the first invasion (where they took Crimea), Ukraine was getting ready to tap into that and compete with Russia for western energy money.

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[–] JustZ@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] JudahBenHur@lemm.ee 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

isnt it donbass or something?

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[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 26 points 1 year ago

~~Blah blah blah…~~

What being an agent for the Russian state on social media does to your brain.

ftfy

[–] bleepbloopbleep@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What... did I just read? 😳

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[–] Siegfried@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There is no way this isn't sarcasm

[–] vodka@lemm.ee 65 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It sadly isn't. That is a post on lemmygrad.

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[–] yata@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 year ago

I see you are unfamiliar with tankies.

[–] Transcriptionist@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Image Transcription:

A post on Ask Lemmygrad by user Cyber Ghost titled "What are the reasons why Russia attacked Ukraine?"

Below is the comment by user @cfgaussian reading: "The Nazi Kiev regime attacked the ethnically Russian Donbass for eight years intending to commit genocide in their quest for an ethnically pure Ukraine and Russia finally came to their aid after it became clear that the Minsk agreements were never going to be honored. Also, NATO was turning Ukraine into a hyper militarized threat to the integrity and security of Russia itself. Refusal of the US and Europe to negotiate on a new inclusive security framework, refusal to stop NATO expansion eastward, and the relentless and violent anti-Russian psychosis that has gripped Ukraine since the Maiden coup that triggered a civil war in a country in which half or more of the population are essentially Russian became intolerable."

User Summertime Soviet has replied to the comment saying "It's a shame we can't pin comments on posts, because this one would get a pin from me.

so instead, have this Farmer_Heck seal of approval"

[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for ease of use. Thank you. πŸ’œ]

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[–] DarkThoughts@kbin.social 24 points 1 year ago

Funny considering that our former Wagner chef himself said that the whole 2014 pretext was bullshit. Also funny because one of the groups that Russia used since 2014 in that region is Rusich, a very obvious neonazi group. So Ukraine was fighting Nazis all along.

[–] magnetosphere@kbin.social 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

β€œviolent anti-Russian psychosis”? Psychosis? Really?

The majority of the time, I try to understand the perspective of my opponents. Unfortunately, there are times (like now) that I’m afraid attempting to understand will only expose me to hatred, ignorance, and false information. For example, I have no idea what the β€œMaidan coup” allegedly was, and I refuse to look it up. It might even be a real historical event documented by reputable sources, but I’m not wasting my time finding out. (That isn’t a dare. I don’t want anyone reading this to search it, either.)

[–] tburkhol@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maidan revolution/coup was a real thing. In 2014, protests against then-President Viktor Yanukovic's decision to abandon a legislative agreement with the EU and instead join Russia culminated in Yanukovic fleeing to Russia and a number of definitely-not-Russian soldiers storming into Crimea. It really can be considered the flashpoint that started the current round of Russia-Ukraine hostilities.

Wikipedia gives the Ukrainian version https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity

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[–] hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

"Maidan coup" or better known as euromaidan. Very short summary is that elected president turned coats to lick Putin's shoes and got replaced.

Tankies refer to this as a coup organized by NATO or CIA or something lmao

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[–] ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I mean... That's certainly a world view.

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[–] NukeminHerttua@sopuli.xyz 15 points 1 year ago

Yeah, believing that really requires some mental gymnastics, intellectual laziness and lack of common sense..

[–] nao@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do these people live in one of the affected countries or are they looking at it from the outside? Are they serious or are they just trolling?

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