this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2025
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MeanwhileOnGrad
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"Oh, this is calamity! Calamity! Oh no, he's on the floor!"
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Meanwhile On Grad
Documenting hate speech, conspiracy theories, apologia/revisionism, and general tankie behaviour across the fediverse. Memes are welcome!
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I never heard of tankies until I got to lemmy.
The first thing that I ever saw from them was a meme about how Joseph Stalin had very little in the way of material things when he died, despite the position he held.
And I was like Bitch, I care about Stalin's earthly possessions in the exact same way that I care about Hitler's painting with watercolors skill set.
This got me thinking about my western canadian upbringing through the back half of the Cold War. A steady stream of western indictrination and perspective. I recall zero words spoken about Joseph Stalin's personal life or spending habits.
So who the fuck was that meme aimed at? Who is out there, just wanting to love Stalin, but can't on account of thinking he lived in opulence? Who is out there heaping scorn on Stalin for what he owned or didn't?
That's when I realized that tankies are just a combination of Flat Earthers/Sovereign Citizens. It’s all bullshit, and the point is to be exceedingly difficult to talk to.
Same here, never heard of them before Lemmy. I was shocked by their illogical statements and behavior. I couldn't believe anyone could hold such inconsistent beliefs and not just melt their brain, by so many mental gymnastics and plot holes. I still can't. It just makes way more sense that they are all done kind of weird Russian ai experiment.
i wish all the stupidity i see in the world was the result of russian misinformation, but that's almost too optimistic a position to hold in my eyes...guess we'll see if/when russia collapses from fighting ukraine, if it all just dries up.
It's not just Russian troll farms now. Russia, China and Iran have combined their troll farms, and it's just steamrolling through social media.
I too, have never heard of tankies before joining lemmy.
Imagine my surprise, when i, a guy from a post-soviet country, where the fans of soviets are endangered species, see them all fanboying over dictators of the past century over here lol
The best part they're from countries that never even remotely experienced soviet horrors. The lead tankies are from Netherlands and many other appear to be from flyover states of the US lol
and obvious it's invaded by ruzi bots
There are actually plenty of tankies on Reddit, but with Reddit you have to pretty much seek it out because of the massive user base
Legend goes that dessalines actually started Lemmy because their Reddit main got perm banned because he went a lil too tankie
I remember a huge dustup maybe 4 years ago where tankies infiltrated and tried to take over a bunch of left leaning subs within a few weeks. They do it regularly too. I've noticed quite a few db0 accounts that are around 9 months old spewing the usual tankie shit.
We've been noticing the same. your thoughts?
Holy shit does this make a lot of sense.
This so explains why people who at first glance appear to be reasonable/somewhat aligned, start spouting off some vague nonsense about how you should have done the mandatory readings of this and that manifest to understand what you clearly are missing.
I've been racking my brain but it just being angsty alt people who thrive on being in that outcast group, so they can feel they've discovered some powerful secrets other people just don't get.
That said, this community has suspiciously strict rules too, so its kinda seeming like lemmy is only better than reddit in that it hasn't been around long enough to be enshittified and that there will probably always exist at least some sane instances.