Not great that this requires a new account on a service most people won't already have :( I tried logging in with GitHub and it did that thing that I really hate federated logins doing where they go "yeah go ahead log in with your credentials from another site SIKE YOU HAVE TO TELL US YOUR EMAIL ANYWAY"
Honestly dude start a Patreon or something even if you only do it for temporary. I would chip in $5/month for a while to pay for server costs if it means getting a stable site and a viable alternative to Reddit.
It's also useful because it allows monthly flow, which is way more useful for planning than just a lump sum and ??? on what you'll get in a few months.
Whatâs the evidence that Lemmyâs developers are tankies?
Just to be very clear by the way, a âtankieâ is, at the very least, someone who sincerely and unironically believes that Stalin was a heroic do-gooder, that North Koreaâs âJucheâ ideology will soon unleash utopia, and that China under the CCP is the very model of a communist society.
Furthermore, a tankie is someone whose gospel is Marxism-Leninism, i.e. Leninâs extremely conservative spin on communism. A tankie will claim supreme knowledge about what Marc âreallyâ said and boldly proclaim that dialectical materialism is pure science.
Organisationally, tankies tend to insist that all activist groups must be strictly hierarchical, with all decisions made by a Central Committee. âActivistsâ are merely the minions whoâll do the Committeeâs bidding (btw, now how this is basically how Reddit is run). Theyâll normally try to monopolize social movements into the banner of the local Communist Party of their region.
Socially, tankies also tend to actually be conservative, because their dialectical materialism dictates class reductionism. This means that, strictly speaking, queer issues are secondary to class issues (for example). There are definitive tropes of toxic masculinity, militarism, possibly even nationalism, in tankie discourses.
Now, in my opinion, a tankie is not someone who âmerelyâ defends, say, the success of public health in Cuba, the fact that China has seen dramatic reductions in poverty since the 60s, or that Indiaâs most literate state (which, btw, just announced free wi-fi for those in poverty) happens to be under Communist rule for a few decades now.
Iâd also say (and this as someone who personally knows people involved with XJ) that âmerelyâ questioning whether thereâs an ongoing genocide in Xinjiang also doesnât make youâre a tankie. Jeff Sachs, whatever else you think of him, has this position, and yet heâs as far from a tankie as you can get (the guy literally enforced hardcore capitalist âWashington Consensusâ policies in Latin America).
Furthermore, a âtankieâ is also not someone who talks about NATOâs role in the ongoing Ukrainian War. In fact, even the best Ukrainian scholars (e.g. Volodymyr Ishchenko) agree on this point, and again, theyâre as far as you can get from tankies.
Just to be clear, Iâm not saying that these views arenât problematic. China is obviously a totalitarian state (as is Cuba) and the situation in Xinjiang is obviously hideous, but this is nowhere near saying that China/DPRK/USSR are/were communist utopias. These are individual claims that many people hold.
Lately, the âtankieâ label has been a gift for chiefly Western hawks whoâve used it to silence anyone who speaks of Western and non-Western war crimes in the same breath. They do so because itâs in their interest to paint themselves as honest, freedom-loving liberals.
I think itâs best if we wise up to this sleight of hand, and donât do Western overlordsâ biddings for them, for free.
And while weâre on the topic, I personally donât think a Devâs political beliefs matter when it comes to their platform, unless thereâs clear evidence that theyâre using their platform as a tool to attack those who donât hold the same views. This is why I ask: could you share evidence that 1) Lemmyâs Devs are tankies and 2) Even if they are, that theyâre throttling non/anti-tankie discourse on Lemmy?
To take another example, Alexandra Elbakyan is the creator of Sci-Hub, perhaps the single biggest gift to scholarship worldwidein the 21st century. Sheâs also a hardcore Stalinist. That doesnât stop me from using her platform, since her platform benefits me everyday. I find her views loathsome, but Iâm also grateful for her work.
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