Too many tankies. All of them saying people shouldn’t vote, while offering no solution and celebrating Russia as a good country.

  • We had a short discussion about this on discord and were all in agreement to defederate from lemmy.ml. In general if there are other requests for defederation, please feel free to surface them by creating threads like this or talking about it on discord.

  • t3rmit3 ( t3rmit3@beehaw.org ) 
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    9 hours ago

    Look, I dislike tankies as much as the next anarchist, but I don’t know if lemmy.ml is bad enough to need defederation from. Once you learn their shtick, it’s easy to ignore their more dogmatic users. Part of “bee-ing nice” cannot just mean “build smaller and smaller fences until no one you think isn’t nice can be seen anymore”. We also have our own propaganda to deal with here, including the “vote blue no matter who” brigade that disappear the moment elections are over. You can block them yourself if you don’t want to see their posts, but my vote for defed’ing would be ‘no’.

    • aldhissla ( aldhissla@piefed.world ) 
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      8 hours ago

      Now try substituting your references to tankies with nazis. Would you talk coffee with someone showing as jewgasser88@hitlerfan.nazi? Would you argue against defederating from them using the same arguments?

      • t3rmit3 ( t3rmit3@beehaw.org ) 
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        5 hours ago

        No, and my other comment below addressed this, so I’ll copy the relevant portions:

        When you’re talking about toxicity, there are a couple different areas that manifests in written content. One is toxic behavior, i.e. how you convey your ideas, and another is what you say, i.e. the ideas themselves.

        Moderating out toxic behavior is much easier, in that someone being actively rude or advocating direct harm or prejudice is often fairly cut-and-dry. Moderating out toxic beliefs is much harder, because that requires setting a baseline of what constitute a toxic belief in the first place (and even beyond that, an unacceptable to express toxic belief).

        Nazism and other rightwing “belief systems” have harming others at the core of their structures. As misguided as it is, Marxist-Leninism doesn’t. I think that’s at least a clear enough line to draw in my mind for why they merit different treatment.

        Your hypothetical kind of proves my point, even, because what hypothetical username would be the tankie equivalent of

        CW

        “jewgasser”

        ?

        • A_be_seedy ( A_be_seedy@beehaw.org ) OP
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          5 hours ago

          Here’s a commonly cited wiki site on Lemmy.ml and its about page:

          https://web.archive.org/web/20220805151259/https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/ProleWiki:Principles

          The moderation and userbase celebrates Putin due to his defiance of NATO. Of course, theyre not consistent in their beliefs, because if they felt NATO was such a threat, then they would be celebrating Trump for doing more to hurt NATO than any other individual in NATO’s history.

          • t3rmit3 ( t3rmit3@beehaw.org ) 
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            5 hours ago

            That did not address my question. I don’t like Putin; he is attacking Ukraine. I don’t like Biden; he supplied Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. Neither of them are intrinsic to their respective ideologies.

            Of course, theyre not consistent in their beliefs, because if they felt NATO was such a threat, then they would be celebrating Trump for doing more to hurt NATO than any other individual in NATO’s history.

            This is a silly argument. Trump is not hurting NATO because he believes it’s a Western Imperialism power projection tool like they do, he’s hurting it because it did not kowtow to his demands. He is a capitalist authoritarian, and they’re anti-capitalist.

              • t3rmit3 ( t3rmit3@beehaw.org ) 
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                5 hours ago

                If NATO kowtowed to his demands it would have also been significantly weakened.

                I’m not quite sure what this is responding to either; my point was that disliking NATO because you view it as a capitalist project, and also disliking an authoritarian capitalist who wants to control it, are consistent beliefs.

    • t3rmit3 ( t3rmit3@beehaw.org ) 
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      9 hours ago

      When you’re talking about toxicity, there are a couple different areas that manifests in written content. One is toxic behavior, i.e. how you convey your ideas, and another is what you say, i.e. the ideas themselves.

      Moderating out toxic behavior is much easier, in that someone being actively rude or advocating direct harm or prejudice is often fairly cut-and-dry. Moderating out toxic beliefs is much harder, because that requires setting a baseline of what constitute a toxic belief in the first place (and even beyond that, an unacceptable to express toxic belief).

      To me, neoliberalism is a toxic belief system that is either too feckless to oppose rightwing authoritarianism, or largely complicit in the desired outcomes without wanting to admit it. But I don’t want every neoliberal “centrist” banned from Beehaw, I want to (when politics does come up), actually point out the issues with their beliefs. Same for tankies; I have (as you can check my comments to see) had a lot of fun explaining how Lenin bastardized Marxism and how they’re just Statists who don’t like the name.

      Nazism and other rightwing “belief systems” have harming others at the core of their structures. As misguided as it is, Marxist-Leninism doesn’t. I think that’s at least a clear enough line to draw in my mind for why they merit different treatment.

      • A_be_seedy ( A_be_seedy@beehaw.org ) OP
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        3 hours ago

        Nazism and other rightwing “belief systems” have harming others at the core of their structures. As misguided as it is, Marxist-Leninism doesn’t. I think that’s at least a clear enough line to draw in my mind for why they merit different treatment.

        Nazism and Tankies have echo chamber tendancies, bot infiltration tendencies, brigading, and most importantly are belief systems that are based on the destruction of society. Fascism is detrimental to society, and giving fascists a voice leads to the spread of fascism.

        Lemmy.ml gives off similar energy to r/the_Donald 2016ish era. It didn’t seem that serious, it was memes. And at first no one though r/the_Donald was a sub for MAGAts, they thought it was to dunk on Trump. Then it became serious Trump supporters and brigading and helping to influence the rise of fascism in a very tangible way.

        I have no problem with genuine or misguided Marxists, in the same way that I have no problem with genuine or misguided Republicans. Because I believe like you, that it is possible to talk them down. When a community swarms and acts like a hive, like Lemmy.ml does, then it becomes really problematic. It uses group think to silence other ideas.

        I’ve been around long enough to know not to fuck with propagandists that encourage others not to vote or otherwise usher in fascism.

        • t3rmit3 ( t3rmit3@beehaw.org ) 
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          2 hours ago

          Nazism and Tankies have echo chamber tendancies, bot infiltration tendencies, brigading, and most importantly are belief systems that are based on the destruction of society. Fascism is detrimental to society, and giving fascists a voice leads to the spread of fascism.

          First off, are you asserting that tankies are fascist?

          Secondly, what do you think about Marxist-Leninism relies on “the destruction of society”? Are you talking about revolutionary ideology in general?

          When a community swarms and acts like a hive, like Lemmy.ml does, then it becomes really problematic. It uses group think to silence other ideas.

          Well, they can’t silence you if you’re not posting in one of their communities, by definition, because they don’t have moderation capabilities outside of lemmy.ml. I have never seen a Beehaw post be “silenced” by tankies.

          I’ve been around long enough to know not to fuck with propagandists that encourage others not to vote or otherwise usher in fascism.

          Which is funny, because in my view the VBNMW propagandists are (and demonstrably have succeeded in) ushering in fascism by discouraging people from voting for anyone but the most milquetoast, do-nothing, two-steps-right-one-step-left candidates, and discouraging actual democracy where people make their own choices.

          But you know, clearly it’s the tiny contingent of Lemmy tankies who ushered in Trump, not the mainstream media centrists like NYT with nation-wide reach, who shouted down and shamed anyone voting for Bernie instead of Biden, or anything…

    • A_be_seedy ( A_be_seedy@beehaw.org ) OP
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      10 hours ago

      Honestly, I feel like its easy to slip through.

      I’m fairly new to the fediverse, I started on hexbear, that was a mistake lol. Generally Lemmy.ml isn’t that bad, but its been the past month as we’ve gotten closer to elections that I’ve noticed their anti-voting shit pop up. They otherwise seemed on good faith maybe misguided but not too bad. But I’ve read they’re pretty cyclical. If it’s not called out during an election, they probably go back to normal.

  • TehPers ( TehPers@beehaw.org ) 
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    13 hours ago

    FYI you can block instances on Lemmy yourself if you don’t want to see anything from them anymore. This isn’t the same as defederating of course, but could be a solution for now.

      • Tankies are pro-authoritarian communists (on paper), they support communism to such an extent, they forgive the genocides and the horrible practices that enabled some historic regimes, and often even celebrate them. (Mao, Stalin, etc).

        For instance, they often posit the Holodomor famine and genocide was justified.

        Ignorance and naivete aside, they either have migrated to (or been coopted by) Russian propaganda networks to such an extent that the circles are just overlapping at this point.

        The joke is that the political spectrum is a horseshoe, and they went so far left they’re essentially adjacent to the far right. Either way, authoritarians are going to authoritarian.

        (inb4 I get brigaded when the russian bot farms come back online)

        • For instance, they often posit the Holodomor famine and genocide was justified.

          I think this is an unfair representation of their views. They think that there was a famine that was exasperated by Kulaks that were mad their farms were being collectivized, and that there was no intent on the USSR side to cause a famine, pointing to aid that was sent to the region or a letter from Stalin(?) being taken aback that the local admin hadn’t been communicating this earlier and demanded that large efforts to alleviate the (impending?) famine go into place immediately

          • Ugh, I’m really not getting into this, and I disagree that I’m misrepresenting. I don’t care if it’s your views or you’re just stating tankie views, it’s incorrect regardless. This is my last reply.

            I will agree it’s contested whether it was a genocide or not, but I’m not aware of any respected viewpoint that puts the Kulaks at any kind of fault. Claiming they had a hand in it is bullshit propaganda.

            They were the target of a literal “liquidation campaign” at Stalin’s hand. Forcing a population that has owned and farmed land for generations to choose between collecitvised agriculture or death is monsterous.

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

            He killed entire generational populations, fathers, women, children, because they resisted communism. That’s monstrous. That’s why tankies are monstrous. And the result of his direct action was a famine that killed 5-8 million people.

            And to preempt a retort of “they were wealthy abuuuusers of common folk”:

            The definition of “kulak” was arbitrary and elastic; official criteria were vague, and in practice the label was applied to middle peasants (those of average means who were not considered exploiters), those who resisted collectivization, clergy, former tsarist officials, and others deemed politically unreliable. One 1930 (Soviet secret police) report found that only 55 percent of those classified as “kulaks” in one region were actually peasants who met even the nominal economic criteria.

        • Tiresia ( Tiresia@slrpnk.net ) 
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          11 hours ago

          Anarchists are far-left but don’t curve back around to the right. Horseshoe theory only makes sense if you’re locked into state power as the medium for change.

          • KitB ( KitB@feddit.uk ) 
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            9 hours ago

            I would go so far as to say horseshoe theory only works if you look at very specific groups and assume “left Vs right wing” is an actual linear thing instead of a very stupid oversimplification (that is nevertheless a useful shorthand a lot of the time)

            Most would probably describe me as very left wing but no version of my beliefs could be taken to an extreme and end up as tankie beliefs.

    • ProdigalFrog ( ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net ) 
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      12 hours ago

      Lemmy.cafe is defederated from all three, I believe.

      Though as you are on a piefed instance, I believe you can fully block an instance and its user’s comments, unlike on Lemmy where a user blocking an instance still let’s comments from that instance through.

    • I don’t mean this is a rude way at all, but it looks like you have a username from a different instance and you’re commenting on this post? We de-federated from lemmygrad and I think Hexbear specifically, and then a few of the larger instances that had open signups because we were getting flooded with spam and users who were ignoring our rules, but we’re still federated with plenty of instances.