/kbin meta

What's the evidence that Lemmy's developers are tankies?

Just to be very clear by the way, a "tankie" is, at the very least, someone who sincerely and unironically believes that Stalin was a heroic do-gooder, that North Korea's "Juche" 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. Lenin's extremely conservative spin on communism. A tankie will claim supreme knowledge about what Marc "really" 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. "Activists" are merely the minions who'll do the Committee's bidding (btw, now how this is basically how Reddit is run). They'll 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 "merely" defends, say, the success of public health in Cuba, the fact that China has seen dramatic reductions in poverty since the 60s, or that India's 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.

I'd also say (and this as someone who personally knows people involved with XJ) that "merely" questioning whether there's an ongoing genocide in Xinjiang also doesn't make you're a tankie. Jeff Sachs, whatever else you think of him, has this position, and yet he's as far from a tankie as you can get (the guy literally enforced hardcore capitalist "Washington Consensus" policies in Latin America).

Furthermore, a "tankie" is also not someone who talks about NATO's role in the ongoing Ukrainian War. In fact, even the best Ukrainian scholars (e.g. Volodymyr Ishchenko) agree on this point, and again, they're as far as you can get from tankies.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that these views aren't 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 "tankie" label has been a gift for chiefly Western hawks who've used it to silence anyone who speaks of Western and non-Western war crimes in the same breath. They do so because it's in their interest to paint themselves as honest, freedom-loving liberals.

I think it's best if we wise up to this sleight of hand, and don't do Western overlords' biddings for them, for free.

And while we're on the topic, I personally don't think a Dev's political beliefs matter when it comes to their platform, unless there's clear evidence that they're using their platform as a tool to attack those who don't hold the same views. This is why I ask: could you share evidence that 1) Lemmy's Devs are tankies and 2) Even if they are, that they're 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. She's also a hardcore Stalinist. That doesn't stop me from using her platform, since her platform benefits me everyday. I find her views loathsome, but I'm also grateful for her work.