I think it may be referring to the people who blame all social ills on “corporate greed” and think that belong leftist is exclusively being anti-capitalist. I think this may go along with some pro-Putin/pro-Xi viewpoints, possibly because they believe that “the west” is bad and capitalist, Andy anyone who opposes it is anti-capitalist and good.
I’m glad I know who these people are, so I can be more careful of them. Both here and on Reddit it felt like I was trapped in a bubble with these guys.
Tankies are politically incomprehensible, because they claim to be queer-friendly communists, but support insanely queer-phobic bourgeois dictators like Xi and Putin.
They are vulnerable to the same online radicalization as alt-right bubbles. They say things that get increasingly insane, because it gets them more and more internet points and attention, until they start believing their own outrageous hyperbole.
For example, I have one tankie currently trying to unironically argue with me that the UK is a vassal state to the US Empire. Like we're living in Star wars and he's the rebel alliance that is bringing down with evil empire with lemmy shitposting.
I 100% believe there's Russian shills in the mix, but I think most of them are normal people who are frustrated with the status quo, and vulnerable to aome targeted manipulation. It's also exactly how Russia targeted the alt-right.
It's funny to trace rhetoric back a few years before the Russia-Ukraine war, when there was so much Internet and social media hype over Russia as a superpower, their military overtaking America:
Then suddenly there's the invasion, and suddenly it's revealed that the hype was all fake, Russia was bluffing on its military, they are mostly poorly trained, with ridiculously outdated equipment.
And suddenly tons of internet media commentators do a massive 180, and there's so much rhetoric about how being a global superpower is bad.
Is being a global superpower bad, or do people say it's bad just because Russia isn't one after all?
It’s bad. It would be bad also if Russia were the sole global hegemon and the imperial power that controls the whole world, but it isn’t and also never has been. What a bizarre thought process you have that you think Americans who live in America and have to put up with its bullshit all day are getting their talking points from a country they don’t live in and have nothing to fucking do with. What a deranged conspiracy theory.
What a bizarre thought process you have that you think Americans who live in America and have to put up with its bullshit all day are getting their talking points from a country they don’t live in and have nothing to fucking do with. What a deranged conspiracy theory.
I'm gonna blow your mind, Grandpa. Americans consume more internet media than social media.
But damn that’s a cool feature. Can you run a search on Ukraine + Nazis prior to the invasion to say what western reporting was saying about it back then?
Then suddenly there’s the invasion, and suddenly it’s revealed that the hype was all fake, Russia was bluffing on its military, they are mostly poorly trained, with ridiculously outdated equipment.
Do you live in an alternate reality where NATO is winning this war? Lmfao
I’m rubber your glue, now you have to explain why Russia is hilariously incompetent and weak and simultaneously managing to brainwash people 5,000 miles away inside Americas own borders with a tiny fraction of America’s own media and propaganda power