It seems there’s two big rabbit holes online.
“Do COVID vaccines have side effects?” leading to thinking abortions should be illegal, atheists are the devil, Trump is your saviour, and that Russia is justified in invading Ukraine.
“Is capitalism unfair?” leading to tankies, thinking communism would be good for the proles, and thinking Russia is justified in invading Ukraine.
Almost like Russia is spreading both trails of bullshit.
I know I could Google it, but I’ll ask here, because others may be afraid to ask: what is a tankie? I’m seeing that phrase a lot, but I guess I’m getting old, because I missed the rising of that phrase.
I’d assume it’s someone who supports communism. It’s likely a reference to the infamous Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, when the Chinese government used tanks to suppress protestors in the square.
The reason it’s prominent on Lemmy is because the main dev of the software used to run Lemmy apparently supports communism.
It should be noted, though, that that last sentence ultimately doesn’t matter since the the software is open-source. Should the software become an issue, someone else can simply start developing the Lemmy software instead. Additionally, because it’s open-source, everyone can create or join a Lemmy instance instead of using the dev’s own lemmy.ml instance.
Not really, it’s more people who identify as Marxist-Leninists or leftist in general who deny, downplay, or outright praise the genocidal actions of totalitarian regimes like the USSR, the PRC, etc, and/or who today will support countries like Russia in the ukraine-russia conflict (explicitly or more overtly) simply because they hate the US and NATO.
The origins actually predate Tiananmen square, but I can’t exactly remember if it was people who praised the actions of the USSR during the Prague spring or the Hungarian revolution.
