Nadya

I mean if you want to get academic about it - I suggest you talk to some people in academia. Nearly all of those who say "Fascism is different." self-describe themselves as Marxists or are Stalinist apologists - such as Michael Parenti or Sheila Fitzpatrick. Gee, I wonder why Marxists would want to distance Communism (and more specifically - Stalinism) from being compared with other fascists regimes like the Nazis. Maybe they don't like how it makes them look bad?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nazism_and_Stalinism

No really - read the above link and anyone who is cited as saying Stalinism isn't fascism check their wiki profile. Without a doubt they're a self-described Marxist. They're quite literally the only people who deny that Stalinism was a form of fascism and play apologists for all the atrocities that took place.

A disturbing amount of Communists see attacks on Stalinism as an attack on Communism and so make all sorts of mental gymnastics to defend Stalinism.

Edit:

I much prefer the "That wasn't real Communism!" brand of Communists over the "That was real Communism and here's why the mass murder they did was justified or never happened (despite being well-documented by the Stalinists/Maoists themselves)!" brand of Communists.

Tankies isn't a cute catch-all term for Communists who do have various goals, beliefs, and methodologies of how to transition to, create, and maintain a Communist state. They're Stalinists and/or Maoists who deny well-documented genocides and claim that everything against their ideology is a Western conspiracy theory and the only correct sources of information come from Russia and/or China. In a similar way that Neo-Nazi's claim everything is a Jewish conspiracy theory and the only correct sources of information come from their biased as all hell Alt-Right/Neo-Nazi sources like Stormfront.

This is the exact type of ignorance that I'm talking about when I say people defend Tankies because they were taught the Holocaust in school but never taught about the Holodomor.

E: "The US government is evil so the people the US says are the bad guys must actually be the good guys and are undoubtedly correct about everything. There is no such thing as CCP or Soviet propaganda - that's propaganda from the CIA. Read this article from the CCP explaining it all."

That does seem to have changed since I last cared to look. As dannoffs pointed out - it seems lemmy.ml was unlisted from the join-lemmy.org instances page where previously it was listed as #1 for the Popular section. They also removed the ## users / month metric so the list is no longer guaranteed to be sorted by popularity.

Just last week - lemmy.world was reporting as 87 users/month and lemmy.ml as 1.6k users/month:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230608170721/https://join-lemmy.org/instances

This has of course changed - and unlisting the instance so that it isn't the most popular instance likely has a lot to do with that. That seemed to happen sometime in the last week - I cbf checking every wayback timestamp to see exactly when.

I've been using Kbin myself so haven't been following Lemmy very closely. Only whatever happens to reach my page over on kbin.

Another phrase for Tankie ideology is Red Fascism.

I'd specifically like to highlight that someone who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp - so has firsthand experience with a fascist regime - described the Soviets as the following, emphasis mine:

Kurt Schumacher, who was imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, but survived WWII to become the first post-war SPD opposition leader in West Germany, described pro-Soviet communists as "red-painted fascists" or "red-lacquered Nazis"

So in what ways exactly is a tankie not a fascist?

a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

that exalts nation

"We did not hesitate to shoot thousands of people, and we shall not hesitate, and we shall save the country." - Vladimir Lenin

often race

https://www.britannica.com/event/Holodomor

that stands for a centralized autocratic government

The State

headed by a dictatorial leader

Lenin;Stalin

severe economic and social regimentation

Five year plan

forcible suppression of opposition

Cheka secret police.

If Tankies are not fascists - then neither were Nazi's.

r/InformedTankie

I'm dying of laughter at this oxymoron.

This completely ignores the influence that flagship instances have.

People don't become Neo-Nazis without spending time among other Neo-Nazis listening to Neo-Nazi talking points. People don't become Tankies without spending time among other Tankies listening to Tankie talking points.

People are more likely than not to join the flagship instance than any of the smaller instances and significantly more likely than starting their own instance. Some of them will realize the kind of people they have found themselves surrounded by and leave. Many more won't - especially due to general ignorance about Tankies (see this entire thread and the absolutely bizarre common defense of Tankies not being equatable to Nazis when they absolutely are and have resulted in more deaths and suffering than the Nazis ever have or will.) The people who stick around might start thinking the Tankies make some good points. This is how you end up with more Tankies. More Tankies is always a bad thing just like having more Neo-Nazis is always a bad thing.

Most people have a good sense to not surround themselves with Neo-Nazis. That good sense appears to be missing when dealing with Tankies.

Well of course they aren't genocide deniers. You can't deny something that never happened. Also note that they did not deny being Tankies - they denied being Fascists. Tankies don't recognize themselves as Fascists and will vehemently deny that they are. Here's another phrase for Tankie for the uninformed: Red Fascist

Here is one of the Lemmy devs denying that the Uyghur genocide in China is happening:

https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/xq49ct/deleted_by_user/iq954mu/

The Uyghur genocide is as real as white genocide. - Source

Here they are again denying it:

https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/xq49ct/deleted_by_user/iq951cv/

The holocaust was a genocide that actually happened, with all the evidence that goes along with it. There is no Uyghur genocide.

Do you believe in anything as soon as the word "genocide" gets attached to it? What about "white genocide"? Are you a white genocide denier? - Source

And just so nobody can deny that parentis_shotgun is a Lemmy dev: - "I'm one of the devs of Lemmy"

Direct links to the posts will not work but still exist on the user's profile page: https://old.reddit.com/user/parentis_shotgun/ - hold PgDn until comments stop loading then Control+F. In fact feel free to peruse their history in general - it's quite interesting.

One of my favorite posts is their defense of the government of North Korea in /r/AskTankies: https://old.reddit.com/r/asktankies/comments/tb1836/okay_but_dprk_seriously/i04d1wu/

Now ask yourself why would someone who is not a Red Fascist Tankie piece of shit be answering questions on behalf of Tankies in /r/AskTankies while defending a totalitarian regime? Is it... perhaps because they're in support of such a regime because they are in fact a Tankie piece of shit?

They also lied about the "single user on Mastadon not providing sources". They did provide sources. The source were things said straight out of the dev's mouth.

Let's play a game of spot the difference between fascists (nazis) and fascists (tankies).

Nazis: Fascists who are directly responsible for the deaths of an estimated 12,000,000 people. Deny a genocide ever took place despite evidence to the contrary (Holocaust). Antisemites who forced minority ethnic groups to work in forced concentration and labor camps and starved them to death. These concentration camps began in 1933 and ended in 1945 lasting for a period of 12~ years. Had a secret police known as the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo) whose job it was largely to suppress political opposition by any means necessary including execution of dissenters and spy on behalf of the Nazi party. Torture and execution were common - including that of women and children.

Tankies: Fascists who are directly responsible for the deaths an estimated 26,000,000 people. Deny multiple different genocides ever took place despite evidence to the contrary (Holodomor being the most well known). Antisemites who forced minority ethnic groups to work in forced concentration and labor camps and starved them to death. This Gulag network of death prisons began in 1919 and only ended after Stalin's death in 1953 lasting for a period of 34~ years. Had a secret police known as the Чека (Cheka) whose job it was to suppress political opposition by any means necessary including execution of dissenters and spy on behalf of the State. Torture and execution were common - including that of women and children.

Oh it certainly can rub both ways. I've been publicly out as trans since 2015 and am quite outspoken against the modern LGBT community (and banned from half the spaces at this point anyway). That certain grifters and power hungry individuals have figured out how to game the modern moral system doesn't mean that there is never any legitimate harassment towards LGBT individuals.

"Listen and believe" is quite possibly the dumbest thing to become a mainstream argument. As if nobody would ever figure out they can abuse this policy to lie or have ulterior motives or want to air petty drama or want to paint a target on someone for their followers to harass. Minorities are to be treated as God reincarnate and can do and say no wrong. Want to be the shittiest, most toxic person on Earth? Go ahead! Just be sure to say you're trans so anyone who calls you an asshole is being transphobic. It's OK to do vile things like spam child porn on a forum you don't like in an attempt to get it shut down or seized by authorities. The ends justify the means after all!

I'm well aware of AHS's bullshit over the years and the many, many, many times they've tried to shut down subs I browse.

I'm sure there would be zero abuse of this functionality to harass pro or publicly out LGBT moderators and remove them from their positions.

Read my post in its entirety. I specifically gave a shout to Mullvad at the end there. :P

It can make such broad claims because it's entirely based on facts. VPN's are a trust-based system where the only evidence they don't keep logs prior to getting a court order is "Trust us bro" and, historically, more of these services have been found to actually be storing records (or legally must store 30/60 days worth depending on their country of origin) than not.

If you would like a more in-depth and thorough explanation as a technical breakdown for non-technical people there is this blog post or even this blog if the "TL;DR" explanation didn't cut it for you.

Regarding profit motives of VPN's - see also:

• https://www.skadligkod.se/vpn/the-trustworthy-of-vpn-review-sites-and-how-affiliate-programs-affects-their-opinion/
• https://restoreprivacy.com/kape-technologies-owns-expressvpn-cyberghost-pia-zenmate-vpn-review-sites/

Here's a real fun one!

This site: https://thatoneprivacysite.net/choosing-the-best-vpn-for-you/ was purchased and now redirects to this site: https://www.safetydetectives.com/best-vpns/

Safety Detectives was purchased by non-other than drum roll please. Kape Technologies. How do I know this? Well let's take a look at the Wayback Machine for TOPS.net.

What was the original claim?

You may have started your search for a VPN by looking for “VPN Reviews” in your search engine of choice. if you had, you would have gotten page upon page of what seem to be harmless review sites, top 10 or blog style reviews of different VPN services. You may even be coming here for confirmation of what you were told on those sites. The sites making these recommendations are, in almost every case, paid by the services they review and recommend.

Who owns PIA, ExpressVPN, and CyberGhost? The "best 3 VPN's" recommended by safetydetectives.com? Kape Technologies.

Why should this concern you?

We'll start with PIA's owner, Kape Technologies. Kape Technologies was formerly known as Crossrider before it was acquired by one Teddy Sagi, an Israeli billionaire that has spent time in jail for insider trading. Crossrider itself never had that great a reputation itself, what with their primary product being a development platform through which they were frequently used by third parties to invade ad platforms to serve up malware, but whatever. Once acquired, the entire leadership structure was hollowed out, and the new Kape Technologies went on an acquisition spree. All of Kape's purchased review sites suggest Kape owned VPN's with "some consideration" given to Nord and Proton to maintain some kind of pretense at neutrality.

In short: Sagi is shady, his business is shady, and his business moves are shady, which makes the whole thing shady from top to bottom. Kape Technologies isn't the only company to go on an acquisition spree for VPN's either. Ask yourself why there is interest in consolidating VPN providers and how that data might be useful.

Every single modern VPN is a honeypot until proven otherwise. Mullvad is one of the few that has been able to prove otherwise.