@cyborganism @GammaGames There’s a particular category of “leftist” who, to put it gently, have a greatly simplified view of the world in which “the only war is class war.” They regard social issues such as anti-racism, feminism, queer liberation as distractions from the “true” cause of bringing about a new economic system - unimportant at best, active interference invented by the ruling class at worst.

Basically, they’re narrow-minded bigots.

The horseshoe theory applies to them

Yeah, I spoke with them.

This is in fact what Russian bot factories are actually doing. And not just around trans activism, but around everything they can use to increase hatred and decrease social cohesion in the west. Here’s one source that talks about this problem: https://www.amazon.com/Putins-Trolls-Frontlines-Russias-Information/dp/1632461293

They’re doing it pretty well. As a practical example, a lot of the discussion revolving around this topic is powerfully pushing me towards distrusting trans activists, and somewhat towards distrusting trans people in general. There’s something deeply irritating about the fundamentalism of it all – it reminds me of the kind of religiosity that we had to fight against a lot in the 1900s and of course earlier.

I need to remind myself constantly in these threads that trans rights are human rights and that it’s the discussion that’s fucked, not the people.

That is a false equivalence as I did not state hate speech

Their reply prior to the borgeoise rant was downright odd, you’re right about that.

Authoritarianism is a mental disorder. You can never expect reasonable thought from them

Yeah kind of buried the lede, you don’t need to unpack political ideologies to understand the hatred in the first response.

Bruuuh it frustrates me to no end how capitalism creates a culture of emptiness by scooping out of us all sense of community, compassion, and humanity. It takes everything worth living for away from us and holds it hostage from us, telling us we can have it if we spend the money, give it to the capital holders.

The actual claim was to keep these people on that instance to make defederation easier. Which doesn’t work, but AFAIK no one ever claimed to be “free speech absolutists”.

That’s because they’re not leftists. Most of the tankies on Lemmy probably aren’t. I’m sure some of them are people who get swept up in the tide of favoring mockery over patience and compassion while actually believing leftist political positions, but it’s pretty clear what the bulk of them are doing.

They’re corporate or authoritarian government plants trying to break the coalition of left and center. They’re doing everything they can to make both look unreasonable and unhinged in the eyes of the other. Demotivating leftists from endorsing centrists who lean their way, while making centrists feel targeted and derided by the left.

It’s way easier to break coalitions and sew chaos than it is to drive engagement and unity. It literally takes less thinking, less precision, and less strategy.

I just found out that beehaw is not on their list of Servers. Does anyone know why? Today the list is not called recomended instances anymore.

edit: found this

Tankie associates with tankie