MeanwhileOnGrad
"Oh, this is calamity! Calamity! Oh no, he's on the floor!"
Welcome to MoG!
Meanwhile On Grad
Documenting hate speech, conspiracy theories, apologia/revisionism, and general tankie behaviour across the fediverse. Memes are welcome!
What is a Tankie?
Alternatively, a detailed blog post about Tankies.
(caution of biased source)
Basic Rules:
Sh.itjust.works Instance rules apply! If you are from other instances, please be mindful of the rules. — Basically, don't be a dick.
Hate-Speech — You should be familiar with this one already; practically all instances have the same rules on hate speech.
Apologia — (Using the Modern terminology for Apologia) No Defending, Denying, Justifying, Bolstering, or Differentiating authoritarian acts or endeavours, whether be a Pro-CCP viewpoint, Stalinism, Islamic Terrorism or any variation of Tankie Ideology.
Revisionism — No downplaying or denying atrocities past and present. Calling Tankies shills, foreign/federal agents, or bots also falls under this rule. Extremists exist. They are real. Do not call them shills or fake users as it handwaves their extremism.
Tankies can explain their views but may be criticised or attacked for them. Any slight infraction on the rules above will immediately earn a warning and possibly a ban.
Off-topic Discussion — Do not discuss unrelated topics to the point of derailing the thread. Stay focused on the direct content of the post, rather than engaging in unrelated arguments.
Brigading — If you're here because this community was linked in another thread, please refrain from voting, commenting or manipulating the post in any way, this includes alt accounts. All votes are public, and if you are found to be brigading, you will be permanently banned.
You'll be warned if you're violating the instance and community rules. Continuing poor behaviour after being warned will result in a ban or removal of your comments. Bans typically only last 24 hours, but each subsequent infraction will double the amount. Depending on the content, the ban time may be increased. You may request an unban at any time.
view the rest of the comments
There are multiple experiments which show pretty clearly that humans are wired to organize into "tribes" and then will go to war with a pretty shocking level of vigor against the enemy "tribe."
https://www.simplypsychology.org/robbers-cave.html
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/lesson-of-a-lifetime-72754306/
I think maybe it should be kind of a "separation of church and state" thing that the instance administration and defined "correct culture" for any Lemmy instance should be separated from any kind of tribal identity. I think it is abundantly clear at this point that all the instances that are organized around a particular tribal identity inevitably become senselessly dark and combative with other instances, who they perceive as "enemies" because they are allegedly not with the received wisdom and correctness of the tribe.
Fairly interesting and no doubt i've done a bit of that by banning the dbzer0 admin from earlier.
But why should we give Tankies liberal fairness when they despise liberalism?
Because it's an important way that people who are confused by that tribalism can get un-confused. There is a strong impulse to "fight back" against the "enemies" or dunk on them, which I'm guilty of plenty of times, but also, I do think that being normal and reasonable with people helps to defuse that "all your enemies are Zionist neoliberal CIA NATO Hakeem Jeffries supporters" propaganda.
A big part of the .ml echo chamber is really emphasizing to each other what their opponents believe, so they won't have a chance to hear what the actual "enemy" point of view is and they won't believe it when they hear it. I think that is such an important part of the propaganda specifically because if they get to hear what the actual viewpoint is, it makes a lot more sense and undoes that "they are horrible and enemies on purpose because they hate you" worldview.
A lot of the "deprogramming" that you hear about from tribal identity comes from direct personal interaction with the enemies, and realizing that they are just people with sort of reasonable ways of looking at things. That's not what they were raised to believe about the enemies, it can be powerful to undo it.
I disagree, I find it doesn't matter what our point of view or actual opinions are, because they just make it up and circlejerk around that. You also can't change their opinion on anything, they will never budge since extremists didn't reason into their position, their position is entirely based on their emotions. So long as they have their safe spaces, they'll never actually engage, consider other points of view, or even realise they may be wrong.
It also doesn't matter what you say or do, they've already made up their minds about you, and nothing will change that.
It's not just about the person you're talking to, though. For every comment, about 99% of the people reading it will be different from the person who you're "officially" talking to.
Yeah, true. Outside this community I try to be more analytical and approachable, too bad I'm banned from most comms lol