cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/55370711
cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/55370708
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in a remote Siberian prison two years ago, was almost certainly poisoned with a deadly toxin found in South American dart frogs, five European governments said Saturday.
A joint statement from Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands said they were “confident” Navanly had been poisoned after an analysis of samples taken from his body “conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine,” and that the Russian government was the likely culprit.
“Russia claimed that Navalny died of natural causes. But given the toxicity of epibatidine and reported symptoms, poisoning was highly likely the cause of his death. Navalny died while held in prison, meaning Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to administer this poison to him,” it continued.
The five countries said they were reporting the case to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, alleging Russia violated the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Russian authorities had previously claimed Navalny, 47, died of natural causes while serving several sentences totaling more than 30 years at a high-security prison above the Arctic Circle.
“Scientists from five European countries have established: my husband, Alexei Navalny, was poisoned with epibatidine—a neurotoxin, one of the deadliest poisons on earth. In nature, this poison can be found on the skin of the Ecuadorian dart frog. It causes paralysis, respiratory arrest, and a painful death,” she said.
“I was certain from the first day that my husband had been poisoned, but now there is proof: Putin killed Alexei with chemical weapon. I am grateful to the European states for the meticulous work they carried out over two years and for uncovering the truth. Vladimir Putin is a murderer. He must be held accountable for all his crimes.”
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the poisoning shows that “Vladimir Putin is prepared to use chemical weapons against his own people to remain in power. France pays tribute to this opposition figure, killed for his fight in favor of a free and democratic Russia.”
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper added: "Only the Russian government had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to use that toxin against Alexei Navalny in prison. We are here today to shine a spotlight on the Kremlin’s barbaric attempt to silence Alexei Navalny’s voice.”
Russia announced Navalny’s death on Feb. 16, 2024, just as that year’s Munich Security Conference opened. On that day, Navalnaya delivered a speech, pledging that Putin “would pay for what they have done to our country, to my family, and to my husband.” After a weeklong dispute over custody, Russia released Navalny’s body to his mother.
I read that the first time as “Dog Fart” toxin.
All western propaganda and coincidence, I’m sure, as our tankie friends will point out. And he was a corrupt western plant anyway.
Just like how Prigozhin‘s private jet inexplicably exploded mid air, not far from Putin’s Estate, after Wagner’s definitely-not-coup-attempt. Happens all the time. And the Wagner boss was definitely a plant too, oh yeah.
One might think it’s odd that Putin critics die exotic deaths with such… regularity. Could there be some reason for that?
Nah, that’s just the US hegemony talking.
What I don’t understand about tankies is how do they square supporting Russia with being leftists? How does supporting an explicitly nationalist and extremist right wing country fit into a leftist world view? Like, they themselves explicitly say that they’re for all those things, you don’t have to listen to CIA plants on Lemmy or whatever, just read what people in the Russian government or eg Dugin say about what they think Russia is, and it’s very much exactly the opposite of what you’d expect a leftist to want or like
Because the focus is on the enemy.
Whoever’s pointing the finger is idealized. They’re the protector, the rebel, or whatever you want them to be. The focus is on “them.” That’s why every other breath of a tankie (or Trumpster, or liberal extremist or whatever) is whataboutism.
That’s how authoritarian nationalism works. Same thing’s happening in the US, and Europe. The US Army depicted it quite well:
https://archive.org/details/DontBeaS1947
Unfortunately, with current social media, that trick works very, very, very well. Algorithms are literally built to tell you what you want to hear (including Lemmy to an lesser extent), so it’s easy to fall into these spirals.
I’ve thought that it’s some sort of “residual Sovietness” that they attribute to Russia. Because the Soviets were “anti-imperialist” (they weren’t, but they said they were and stupid people believed them), so being the rightful heir of the USSR, Russia is also “anti-imperialist” and therefore good. Also, anything negative said about Russia is a NATO CIA Nazi reactionary lie (apparently even when the Russians themselves are saying it)
Just don’t ask them why are USSR’s borders are so suspiciously similar to those of Russian Empire’s and what Esd Army was doing in the 1920s.
They were liberating people from not being in gulags and the oppression of self-determination, of course
Tankies will be the first to tell you Russia isn’t communist and isn’t anywhere near being Communist. We have to say that because Russophobia constantly conflates Russian with Communist and switches between them seamlessly. It’s usually the rabid right wing chuds that think Russia is still full of commies.
Anti-imperialism is not an attribute, it’s a movement. It’s not something you are, it’s something you do. When Russia acts against the EuroCentric world order, it is acting in an anti-imperialist mannerby default and there would need to be some additional analysis to establish that this action against the imperial world order is somehow imperialist in itself.
This debate over whether the annexation of Crimea and the invasion 7 years later constitute imperialism hinges on one’s position on Russian security concerns. Those who see Russia’s actions as anti-imperialist believe that Russia’s claims of national security concern are real and salient. Those who see Russia’s actions as imperialist believe that Russia’s claims of national security concern are both totally not real and also cynical cover for imperialist ambitions.
We don’t have to have that debate here, but you should understand the position of your opponents at least as well as they understand yours.
Also, anything negative said about Russia is a NATO CIA Nazi reactionary lie (apparently even when the Russians themselves are saying it)
There’s a lot of history here, particularly around Stalin. There are many things said of Stalin that are both Western lies AND ALSO were said by the Soviet leadership. Both things can be, and are, true. But that requires an understanding of Kruschev, his program and ideology, his political ambitions and goals, and how it was received internally and internationally.
NATO being a Nazi reactionary body is a claim that comes from a couple places. First and foremost is the fact that the US selected Nazi officers to run NATO when it was formed. Second is Operation Gladio, the NATO program of funding, arming, training, organizing, and coordinating Nazi, neo-nazi, and adjacent reactionary movements all over Europe in the hopes they could use them to run revolutions anti-communist revolutions.
But anyway, tankies spend a lot of time understanding your positions in order to argue against them. You should do the same if you’re going to try to argue against them.
I haven’t noticed particularly enlightened, or well reasoned arguments from the defenders of Russia and China that purport to be left and reject all westerners because our governments are mean, what you call tankies.
If you talk to them, you can agree on, well the people in power are a problem, doing x, which is bad. You might say, which is why we need to do y, to mitigate the damage. The tanky will say no, y won’t help, the entire system is fucked, only wholesale revolution will help, (as if somethng better would result in our circumstance gtfo,) and fuck you I hope you all eat shit and die (their attitude,) for being a resident of a country with a mean government.
So the conversations don’t go anywhere productive, they are a waste of time, on any such subject. We can still find common ground on a lot of foreign policy stuff though. We both disagree on war with Iran for instance, disagree on restarting the cold war style coups in latin america like they are with venezuela, like they did when they made a de facto military coup, which agreed to give up the president and a few of his loyalists, and stand down and let US helicopters not be shot down, which they could’ve done.
The US wouldn’t have attempted that operation without the agreement of the generals, not the least in one of the most protected areas in the country in a mobilized venezuela. Helicopters are vulnerable to numerous ground weapons that the US couldn’t reliably take out, not just anti aircraft batteries, but shoulder fired weapons like rpg’s, machine guns, including those mounted on trucks, manpads, other russian made small arms, etc. The military is the de facto puppet governor of Venezuela, and when they start exporting the oil wealth, there will be resistance, the army will mobilize against it, and the CIA will use black market drug and weapon sales monies to fund paramilitaries to run death squads to collectively punish villagers. Because that’s the template the US is working off of, and they are rotten, incapable pieces of shit with no vision.
I haven’t noticed particularly enlightened, or well reasoned arguments from the defenders of Russia and China that purport to be left and reject all westerners because our governments are mean, what you call tankies.
Then you’re not looking for them. There are plenty of well reasoned arguments.
If you talk to them, you can agree on, well the people in power are a problem, doing x, which is bad
You’re already off the path. The problem is very rarely the individuals in power, as we see because we replace those people and the same things happen and get worse. The problem is class society and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
You might say, which is why we need to do y, to mitigate the damage. The tanky will say no, y won’t help, the entire system is fucked, only wholesale revolution will help, (as if somethng better would result in our circumstance gtfo,)
Yes, harm reduction strategies can be quite limited in their effectiveness. Attempting to stop flooding with sandbags, while a valid harm reduction strategy, does nothing to address rising sea levels.
and fuck you I hope you all eat shit and die (their attitude,) for being a resident of a country with a mean government.
Are you 12 and talking to other 12-year-olds?
So the conversations don’t go anywhere productive, they are a waste of time, on any such subject
Sounds more like a you problem, to be honest. I have plenty of productive conversations with tankies.
We can still find common ground [… unsolicited analysis of the attack on Venezuela implicating Venezuelan military leadership]"
Cool cool. Have a nice day.
So we’re gonna pretend Putin isn’t an imperialist dictator? If anything, Putin is as imperialist as his Western peers. And he’s a dictator.
Getting tired of this hypocrisy. You can be a leftist and condemn Western imperialism as well as Russian imperialism. Condemn it as a whole ffs. It doesn’t always have to be “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
Fuck the US. Fuck Russia.
You’re using words in a meaningless way. Dictators rule by dictate. Russia is a functioning bureaucratic republic. Putin, by definition, is not a dictator.
Individuals are not imperialist except in so far as they support imperial ideology. Imperialism, as a historical phenomenon, is still fundamentally dominated by the same handful of countries that dominated 80% of the world - Spain, France, Portugal, Britain, and The Netherlands - all seated and combined with the economic and military might of their former colony America. NATO is predominantly armed by these same countries for the most part. Russia has always been a target of the Western imperialists, even when it was a lesser imperial power under the Tsar. But today? No. Russia is not imperialist. It literally does not have the capabilities to be imperialist. In so far as it is in fighting with the US via the US’s proxy of Ukraine, it is an inter-capitalist war, but not an inter-imperilaist war.
Despot is the word you’re looking for. Putin is a despot. He uses the legal bureaucratic power of the state in ways that make people miserable, that hurt people, that enrich his friends and advance his own interests. He’s a corrupt despot but not an imperialist dictator. The Pope is more of an imperialist dictator than Putin is.
I never said that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. It’s not hypocrisy. My assessment of the situation is that Russia has legitimate national security concerns. In so far as Russia is in involved in an armed conflict with the imperial core, I hope Russia wins. But I do not support Russia creating colonies or neocolonies, engaging in debt entrapment of third world countries and exploiting their resources to their detriment, or using its monopolies to engage in collaborative management of the world’s natural resources with imperial partners. These things that I just described are the things imperialists do, and they are things done today by USA, Britain, and France, predominantly (although some other former European empires still do to a lesser extent). Russia does not do these things.
Does Putin secretly harbor imperial ambitions? I don’t have access to his pillow book so I can’t say. What I can say is that he tried to join the imperial club when he first took office. He worked closely with the US and Western Europe, built trade relationships, built military alliances, and petitioned multiple times to become part of the club. But the imperialists kept expanding NATO, kept developing it specifically to counter Russia, and eventually told him to go pound sand. And since then, I would say it’s very clear that not only is he not an imperialist, but even if he was ideologically, there is no path for Russia to become imperialist. Their challenge as of the early 2000’s went from “rebuild capitalism in Russia and join the rest of the capitalists” to “survive the inevitable onslaught of the West as they attempt to extract every single ounce of wealth from Russia up to and including through full military invasion”.
And honestly I think the West almost did it. If it wasn’t for China becoming an economic super power and using that position to build BRICS, I think Russia would have been a neocolony of the USA by 2050 at the latest.
But today? Today we watch Russia fighting for its future and we condemn the US for its use of Ukraine as a proxy, for putting the lives of Ukrainians at a lower priority than strategic expansion of Western military dominance over Asia, and we call for it to stop being an existential threat to so many nations in the world. And if Russia is going to help stop that expansion by fighting against US interests, we offer critical support. We are critical of Russian use of cluster munitions, of their handling of civilians, of their destruction of civilian infrastructure, of their repression of their own people inside Russia, of their violation of law and of human dignity. We are critical, yes, but we do not call for military intervention to stop them. Their crimes do not rise to the level of the crimes of imperialism, which is the primary threat to all human life on earth today.
Russia attacked Ukraine. Putin thought it would be easier, though, but now faces the consequences of his hubris. I, as a European, can not support this. Period. Same thing with Trump wanting to take Greenland.
There’s two despots, Trump shoving more towards that definition every day, wanting to expand their borders by force. Just look at Venezuela.
You state that “you really hope Russia wins”. That it wins what, exactly? Ukraine? What’s their next step, then? Restore the former borders of the USSR?
Honestly, fuck that. Fuck leftists supporting Russia because they once were anti capitalist. I’m sick and tired. Be a conscious leftist and condemn both. What one was, is not anymore.
You’re critical towards their repression, but not towards their invasion of another sovereign country? I can’t rhyme that together.
Crimes of imperialism are terrible. Crimes of Russia as well. I know of no leftist calling to arms to take military action towards Russia because of their repression. I do know of criticism towards their attack on Ukraine, and rightly so.
Be reasonable. Call out any bad side, be it USA, NATO, Russia, North Korea …
Tankies will be the first to tell you Russia isn’t communist and isn’t anywhere near being Communist.
That’s great because I never said anything about modern Russia being communist?
I’ve thought that it’s some sort of “residual Sovietness” that they attribute to Russia. Because the Soviets were “anti-imperialist” (they weren’t, but they said they were and stupid people believed them), so being the rightful heir of the USSR, Russia is also “anti-imperialist” and therefore good.
I cannot think of another interpretation of “Residual Sovietness” other than “residual communism”.
Sounds like a “you” problem
Because they are more concerned with relitigating the cold war that actual politics and statecraft. The failures of socialist states cannot merely be failures of socialist leaders, or socialist ideals, or the lack of material conditions for implementing socialism - it is the collective effect of western imperialism keeping socialism down. As such, the first order for international socialism is to subvert western imperialism, at which point socialism will be able to rise from the ashes.
Like many things, there is some truth to these claims, but to the extent that it prevents them from confronting their own historic failures, it is one of the most toxic aspects of leftist thought, and is typically rejected or at least heavily qualified by most actual academics. However, because of the nature of online spaces, this idea tends to be overrepresented in discussion forums, where authoritarian leftists are able to sustain combative and pushy behaviors which are not tolerated in the real world, which tends to push everyone else out of the bubble.
typically rejected or at least heavily qualified by most actual academics
This is more of a continuation of the university system being a tool of empire than it is representative of which ideas are worthy of merit. We cannot forget the role that American medical colleges, like Harvard, played in the propagation and development of race “science” to justify slavery, nor can we forget that these academic institutions not only have not engaged in full truth and reconciliation about their past but actively fight against any such movement.
We see today the university system fighting against pro-Palestinian movements and we think somehow that they are bastions of independent thought after a century of not merely purging their ranks during 2 red scares and a yellow peril but actively engaging in the development of academic anti-communism, academic Russophobia, and academic yellow peril?
Zizek is a really good example of the way Western academia and anti-communism work together to control what is considered “valid” discourse. Zizek is promoted as a “leftist”. Meanwhile, he was a literal anti-communist in Slovenia. But, in American academics, he styles himself as a lefist. How are we to interpret this? Well, through his conclusions, which always support American and European imperialism, no matter how brutal, and always oppose any movement that is against the interests of the West.
This is the state of academia. Where someone like Michael Parenti could never secure a position but Chomsky can. What are the major things that separate Parenti and Chomsky? 1) Chomsky was a linguist and Parenti was a historian 2) Chomsky critiqued empire but sided with it while Parenti critiqued empire and did not side with it 3) Epstein.
Western academia is not separate and apart from Western empire. On the contrary, it’s an integral part of the maintenance of empire. Revolutions, generally speaking, do not come from academia, they come either from the military or the masses. And when they come, academia goes through a purge precisely because it is a tool of the ruling class.
Truth is most “tankies” don’t care about Russia.
Go touch grass. Speak to your local collectives or join an organization.
Im not a tankie but I do talk with them a lot IRL and I’ve yet to hear a single one talk about modern-day Russia. This is a lemmy boogieman.
You haven’t spent much time on their instances then. Your instance might have defederated from theirs given their penchant for trolling people, brigading them onto other instances, making alt accounts on other instances to troll them, etc. Russia, and China both are held up as exemplars, despite the fact that both are fascist, and Russia is supporting fascists taking over the west, and has been wildly successful, toppling the US which is now helping and will see liberal democracies fall like dominoes to a far right that will be led by the US and Russia to fix elections and the systems so they never lose power.
The death of “democracy,” such as remained of it in the throes of plutocratic rot, 50 years into mainstream parties all being captured by the super rich, in all but name. One group, a selection of the worst people in their respective countries, being put in permanent control over their countries, with elections fixed and for show, like in Russia.
It will get ugly, there isn’t enough time in the day to hash out how it will progress, but it won’t end well for anyone. And thanks to Russia’s bullshit, and their support to our own illiberal fascist big monied oligarchs, we the western world is going to be thrown back into feudalism, right when global warming upends everything faster than we were led to believe because the truth would require us to change our behavior, and we can’t change anything when entrenched interests profit from the way it’s done now, because of that plutocracy.
Oh we’re now pretending that tankies aren’t pro-Russia?
No, that’s just not true, I moved from ml to world because I made one fucking comment about Russia being a right-wing authoritarian country and some asshole followed me to every thread calling me a capitalist pig, even on shit like dog photos and memes. There’s no getting Lemmy to critical mass while ml is the flagship.
Edit: Yes, I know I could’ve also made a new account on ml to shake them off, but at that point it became a question about the ethics of indirectly supporting the people there.
Same here, made a comment about them turning us into an eastern style government. First few days on lemmy, given their pronouns stated, I thought they were super politically correct westerners (an insufferable group in their own right,) or I would’ve not chosen those words, and I got buried, over a hundred replies from 12 different people or more, until one explained they were tankies, I made nice with a couple and ignored the rest. But they followed me onto other threads on other instances for weeks, I called a few out after checking when suspicious. But I had other instance trolls follow me around, and I noticed at least one was started right after my offense, and had only a few other comments not trolling me. Pretty sure it was an alt account.
Turns out they are rather known for that, it’s why half the instances defederated from them, they chase away new users. I’m not delicate, I just thought it was pathetic they put that much effort into trolling me, and still defend my statement.
Eastern governments their leaders have always told bold faced lies and the subjects would pretend to believe. In the west we extracted a little more honesty out of our leaders, from the ancient days on and off and then the enlightenment again. We did not call our leaders gods, and when the roman republic fell and the emperors took over, they called themselves god for the eastern subjects, and were mocked in the west for it. Just as a for instance. We are losing our ability to disagree with our government, a right we extracted from our governments and are now surrendering. Fuck anyone that has a problem with me saying that.
Yeah, this is some racist bullshit. You deserve the harassment you get for believing this shit.
Anyone that claims that America is their “enemy” is an honorary communist and must be unconditionally supported.
Even though the US and Russia are currently the closest of allies.
The entire concept is called “critical support” for the precise reason that it is NOT unconditional.
You really don’t understand anything about the people you claim to oppose, do you?
I’ve never seen a tankie deny that the Russian government kills its opponents. It’s well documented. Everyone’s aware. This particular article is a little strange because it’s openly anti-Russian governments making an anti-Russian claim, and we wouldn’t generally accept that in journalism if the tables were turned, but it’s honestly not an extraordinary claim and certainly in line with Russian intelligence MO. It’s even been analyzed that they do things like use rare and exotic poisons to signal that it was their intelligence that did it (although that gets dicey with copycats).
Tankies will say he was a corrupt Western puppet any way. That’s pretty normal, though. Just like Machado, Guaido, Pinochet, al-Julani/al-Sharaa and so many others. The US has puppets in nearly every single one of its targets. This is not a specious claim.
The same is true of your strange take on the tankie position on Prigozhin’s death. There’s two possible takes, none of which make your strawman. Either Prigozhin was compromised, acting against Russia for anti-Russian interests (like the US) and he was assassinated for his actual coup attempt. Or Prigozhin was Russian counter-intelligence and cultivated a relationship with anti-Russian influences to smoke out sleeper cells through a managed coup, at which point he was either extracted and his death faked, or he was burned.
Calling Prigozhin a “Putin critic” is a little silly though isn’t it? The man ran tanks against the capital. At face value, that’s a traitor. It’s a legit reason to kill someone. The fact that he was killed in the way he was killed had far more to do with the impact it would have on the reality of the networks involved in the coup attempt than some sort of personal vendetta.
the people you claim to oppose
This is exactly what I’m talking about in another reply. Its what I was trying to make fun of in the original comment.
“The people I oppose.” Us vs them, the enemy. This thread immediately going to a bunch of shit the US did (which, to be clear, they absolutely did) is “How to think like a tankie 101.”
Putin is an open murderer, and I’m not veering off into whataboutism to paint him as some kind of unfairly treated victim.
“The people I oppose.” Us vs them, the enemy.
Uh. You literally set this up as “tankies” versus whatever you identify as. You set up the othering from the jump. You clearly oppose tankies. But you also clearly don’t understand anything about their positions.
This thread immediately going to a bunch of shit the US did (which, to be clear, they absolutely did) is “How to think like a tankie 101.”
Oh look, you did it again.
You ignore the all of the content of the debate and you argue against its FORM. Your demand that everyone just ignore history when passing moral judgment is a major problem here. The reason “tankies” constantly raise up the history of what the US did is because it provides explanatory context for why certain actions are being taken by certain actors. When why plantation owners strung up uppity slaves, they all said things like “I can’t understand why that slave would have done something like that”, and then turn around and sell babies to rapists and torturers. A slave killing their master is open murder, but the context, I’m sure you would agree, actually matters.
If you require that no one ever talk about history or context so that you can pass pure moral judgments, people are going to disagree with you. Your solution to that disagreement has been to other the people who disagree with you by giving them a derogatory name, dehumanizing them by reducing their intellectual agency, and then dismissing the entire category of people as irrelevant.
Obama is an open murderer. Truman was an open murderer. Reagan was an open murderer. Both Clintons are open murderers. Thomas Jefferson was an open murderer, rapist, and slaver. Trump is an open murder, rapist, and slaver.
We’re not talking about whataboutism. We’re talking about a conflict between open murderers where claiming one of them is a murderer doesn’t actually provide any moral clarity whatsoever. If everyone’s an open murderer, and you oppose Russia because Putin is an open murderer, than you must also oppose the US and NATO because they are run by open murderers. That’s the only consistent position.
I do not care. He was an asshole and he would not be a better leader than Putin. He was pro invading Georgia and Ukraine. He is a nationalist just like Putin. You all should never forget that Russia only had one democratic election in its entire history. KGB installed Putin. The entire Russian society do not want democracy. Stop being naïve and think that Navalny would have been a democrat.
You can admit that Navalny’s politics weren’t good, without being indifferent to Putin murdering his political rivals. Otherwise the implication is that if someone isn’t nice it’s OK to poison them, which is not far from how Putin thinks.
In my opinion, I think he would have done the same. Unfortunately, we will never know what he would do. As a German I am biased about these type of politicians. I also think that it is not bad if bad persons die naturally or forcefully. If you want to live in a democracy than you have to fight the opponents of the system with their own rules. These are not democratic. Goebbels showed us how stupid the democratic system is if it comes to defend itself. Goebbels: “This will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy, that it provided its mortal enemies with the means by which it was destroyed. The persecuted leaders of the NSDAP benefited as deputies from immunity, diets and the free ticket. As a result, they were secured from police access, were allowed to say more than ordinary citizens, and were also allowed to pay the costs of their activities by the enemy. The democratic stupidity was able to make excellent capital.”. Now Putin and his entire KGB rubbish needs to vanish as soon as possible. Putin wanted to kill the German CEO of Rheinmetall just saying. You can have a different opinion about human life.
Holy shit my brain is broken…I read the title as “Navalny Poisoned With ‘Dog Fart’ Toxin, Europeans Say”
My dog could have killed with what came out of his butt.
I love how the top comment is about non existent tankies in this thread and everyone just joins in the circlejerk. Can yall get an anti-tankie circle jerk instance or even a sub going and satisfy your urge to self-fallate there?
So an opposition leader is poisoned in an authoritarian state which has not even pretended to be socialist in checks watch more than 30 years and I should be concerned about tankies in the comments.
Anyways how’s that userbase growth going lemmy? Surely could not be related.
probably to obfuscate from the actual tankies in the thread.
Yeah I noticed that too. Yeesh. Do you think it’s authentic (albeit self-absorbed) commentary, or deliberate well-poisoning?
I have used Lemmy for years and only very infrequently run into anyone who could be called a tankie, yet some people seem to imagine tankies are everywhere and preemptively argue with them. I see that on Lemmy far more than actual tankies.
Go browse political subs on .ml, hexbear.net and lemmygrad and you’ll see plenty.
Just because you’re ignorant of them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
I’ve been on Lemmy a few months and I have seen more than enough.
The neat thing about Lemmy is that if you don’t like a community you don’t need to subscribe to it. So why hang around there? It’s like hanging around a conservative community and complaining that it’s full of conservatives.
I don’t, I have them all blocked. I was just correcting you. Nice imagination though.
