The DM was a DM asking us to change our no tankies policy and remove the fuck tankies banner as it was apparently upsetting hexbear users. Apparently tankies view the word tankie as a form of slur. The admin wants us to ally as a form of “left solidarity”

    • VinceUnderReview
      30•11 months ago

      A person who praises authoritarianism with a communist bend. Think people who like North Korea and it’s great leader, but live somewhere like the USA.

      • sapient [they/them]
        9•11 months ago

        Lmao I really do not like Vaush and also do not like tankies for their authoritarianism (which is not “more left”).

          • sapient [they/them]
            5•11 months ago

            Did I ever claim that capitalism is not authoritarian? I certainly consider it to be authoritarian >.<, and more specifically I consider the USA (varying by state and location) to be pretty authoritarian in a lot of ways, though they have decent press freedom (even if there are pretty severe issues with copyright and larger media conglomerates being owned by investment corpos), which is kind of an anomaly given many other things like drug laws and police militarisation and such :/ (many other things too)

            I could go on a whole thing about hierarchy & subjugation, organisational structures, top-down coercion, incarceration, prescriptivism and more rigid societal role-setting (including micromanagement and control of personal behaviour in particular, and government promotion of a culture of snitching and general obedience), information suppression usually by more violent means, and centralised governance often associated with strong cults of personality, but this would take ages and I have other things to do.

            These are all aspects of and related to authoritarianism and constitute a cluster of concepts I would consider a definition ., though lots overlap with each other nya, and I don’t really feel like digging down rn to get an exact phrase.

            It’s more than just about distribution of resources (though that is an aspect often used to enable it and one of the reasons I consider universal access to certain things the bare minimum on the route to true liberation), and related to the degree to which systems and ideologies micromanage people and prescribe roles and behaviours for them, as well as the degree to which there is concrete and direct influence of people on social structures and consensus building, plus high transparency in decision making processes ., and the less coercion involved in anything the better (and if there is coercion, transparency, scrutinisability, and routes for avoiding poor outcomes (as well as consensus based methods to alter any use of such) reduce the authoritarianism). There’s more but this is a start.

            It’s related to hierarchy and coercion, but it’s not just that but also accountability, transparency, and consensus building without undue influence from smaller groups of individuals, plus lack of micromanagement and prescriptivistic roles and paths ;3. As well as encouraging people to think critically and come to their own conclusions (though this applies especially to people claiming to be “free thinkers” while parroting bullshit).

            I could also talk about groups becoming a new ruling class while claiming to liberate, or several other aspects too.

              • sapient [they/them]
                1•11 months ago

                US has no freedom of the press because all media is privately owned and even state media is privately financed. The entire 4th estate is literally just an appendage of the ruling class.

                This is not the same as jailing “unapproved” journalists. The point is you can start your own paper/report/etc. without central approval of what you can and can’t produce. The US is still a capitalist and authoritarian nation which causes some hindrances to this sometimes (see the recent police intimidation of that local newspaper), and makes it harder (but NOT impossible) to start things like coop newspapers.

                Secondly, I generally don’t buy into viewing people’s and organisation’s behaviour in this sort of way, at least not exclusively. It’s too oversimplified and highly reductionist, even if I do think class is an important aspect of behaviour.

                Refusing to acknowledge the differences doesn’t mean they don’t exist ., even if most are capitalist most of the time, they promote very different things and engage in different behaviours (and then there was that one Financial Times oped promoting the end of capitalism which was hilarious ;3, but it illustrates my point that these organisations are distinct).

                It also provides more routes for important information about abuses of power to get out, which is the most important aspect even if capitalism does seriously get in the way of this due to private accumulation of media corpos.

                Furthermore, the US generally doesn’t censor social media most of the time, and in particular has very loose libel laws which make it harder for billionaires (other than the ones that own a specific social media platform) to shut people down, like JKRowling recently did to people calling her a TERF on twitter who live in the UK >.<

                Freedom of the press isn’t private ownership of the press, it’s independence and democratic oversight over the press, something that exists in no capacity in America.

                What I consider is “degrees of freedom”. Private ownership of the press is somewhat more free because it isn’t directly controlled by the government, but it is still much less free than autonomous and independent cooperatives or collectives or other groups taking part in the press, and capitalism also reduces the ability for journos to report on certain stuff in certain ways. The important aspect is that people can form new outlets autonomously and they usually can’t get shut down easily .

                The fewer outlets, the less “free” the press becomes, and the harder it is for new, independent outlets to form, the less “free” it becomes, and the more hierarchical each individual outlet becomes, the less “free” it becomes ;p (which is why private and especially capitalist ownership and class dynamics do have pretty significant issues of press freedom) - really the thing I value is information freedom and transparency, press freedom and universal access to an open and anonymous internet are means to that end.

    • Wugmeister
      18•11 months ago

      If the person saying it is a leftist, they mean authoritarian leftists, the sort of people who unironically praise Mao and are very positive towards modern-day China. If the person saying this is more right-wing, replace “tankie” with “commie scum” when you’re reading and you’ll get what they mean just fine.