I think it may be referring to the people who blame all social ills on “corporate greed” and think that belong leftist is exclusively being anti-capitalist. I think this may go along with some pro-Putin/pro-Xi viewpoints, possibly because they believe that “the west” is bad and capitalist, Andy anyone who opposes it is anti-capitalist and good.

I’m glad I know who these people are, so I can be more careful of them. Both here and on Reddit it felt like I was trapped in a bubble with these guys.

[–] FaeDrifter@midwest.social 39 points 2 years ago (28 children)

Tankies are politically incomprehensible, because they claim to be queer-friendly communists, but support insanely queer-phobic bourgeois dictators like Xi and Putin.

They are vulnerable to the same online radicalization as alt-right bubbles. They say things that get increasingly insane, because it gets them more and more internet points and attention, until they start believing their own outrageous hyperbole.

For example, I have one tankie currently trying to unironically argue with me that the UK is a vassal state to the US Empire. Like we're living in Star wars and he's the rebel alliance that is bringing down with evil empire with lemmy shitposting.

[–] geophysicist@discuss.tchncs.de 23 points 2 years ago (2 children)

At this point we need to assume they're Russian shills and the queer-friendly stuff is a ruse to have a fallback to always claim the moral high-ground

[–] FaeDrifter@midwest.social 18 points 2 years ago

I 100% believe there's Russian shills in the mix, but I think most of them are normal people who are frustrated with the status quo, and vulnerable to aome targeted manipulation. It's also exactly how Russia targeted the alt-right.

[–] oatscoop@midwest.social 16 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

They accused the blahaj.zone admin of "defending a transphobe" and their instance "unsafe for LGBTQ+" people.

The admin in question is trans and blahaj.zone is named after an IKEA shark plushie that's become an icon of the trans community.

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