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iegod ,

Delusional. Lemmy is better off without them or hexbear.

TheBlue22 ,

They be really calling us genocidal and fascist huh.

Ok, redfash

randint ,
@randint@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz avatar

I’m not sure what Lemmygradders were trying to achieve with that post, but I’m pretty sure it would only solidify lemmy.world’s admins’ decision.

SwallowsDick ,

Very sane, very normal

RoyaltyInTraining ,
@RoyaltyInTraining@lemmy.world avatar

There is no way these people are real. I refuse to believe anyone can keep that psychological dissonance going.

paris ,

Leftist wall of text incoming

In my experience, a lot of tankies are former conservatives who grew up brainwashed by their evangelical parents. When you realize everything you’ve ever been taught is a lie, you search for something to anchor yourself to. Lefties who properly shed their right-wing tendencies tend to anchor to data. It’s a lot harder to slip back into right-wing tendencies when you follow the data.

But brains like shortcuts. They’re just built like that. And when you’re searching for something to anchor to, sometimes you find a shortcut there too. I think a lot of tankies anchor to the shortcut “america and its allies bad, everyone against them good.” It’s a comically simplistic worldview, but it’ll get you surprisingly far, especially when you look to history and our involvement in Latin America.

But being a shortcut, it doesn’t always work. That worldview breaks down (or rather, leads you to draw bad conclusions) whenever America & allies aren’t the bad guys (Ukraine) or even sometimes when they are (Israel).

Brains like to understand stuff. Sometimes they find it easier to pretend they do than to actually understand something. We see this in religion and astrology — abstract the world into something that’s easier to grasp. Doing that and dealing with the resulting cognitive dissonance is often easier than properly getting your head around something. There’s no moral condemnation here; brains just work like that.

Anecdote time

When I started becoming a tankie at 17, the cognitive dissonance was pretty heavy. Tankies were the first leftists I could interact with when I was shedding my conservative evangelical upbringing. It felt like I was learning how the world actually worked but part of me was reserved about the way things were presented by them. Overall I was genuinely learning and understanding the world more though, so I kept listening to tankies.

That part of me that was reserved decided to start watching Vaush since they seemed to really hate him for reasons that I felt didn’t scale well to how vitriolic they were. The way he presented things felt a lot more grounded in reality and I didn’t have to upend as much of my existing knowledge or worldview to “make it make sense.” I was worried at the time that that might be me taking a mental shortcut, so I still mostly listened to the tankies I hung out with online.

The thing that really shattered the illusion for me was realizing how detached tankies actually are when they called me a pedo for not denouncing Vaush and calling him one. I had been watching him for a little bit at that point and had gone through the Vaush Bad Masterlist™; he didn’t seem at all like the picture they painted of him. I realized that they were just as dogmatic as the religion I was trying to shed, just less absurdly wrong about some key stuff — but still absurdly wrong about other key stuff.

I left the discord server then and there and haven’t looked back.

Conclusion/tldr:

These people are real, and the cognitive dissonance does hurt. I think the best way to help tankies escape is to offer alternative narratives grounded in reality and let the people who can get out find their way out. Don’t waste your time debating tankies all day. Plant some seeds and let them grow. You can’t force progress.

Also a lot of tankies are just teenagers who haven’t finished growing up. “You’re arguing with a minor online” became a meme for a reason.

dramaticcat OP ,

Horseshoe theory in action

zaphodb2002 ,

Hey thanks for this, this is a very well thought out and insightful comment. As someone who grew up in progressive leftist environments, I have never understood how someone could get to AuthLeft. Your story helps me to personalize it. Good on you for thinking critically when presented with dangerous ideology. Hopefully I can empathize more the next time I get angry at tankie comments.

Rhoeri ,
@Rhoeri@lemmy.world avatar

The point of defederating was so we wouldn’t have to see their dumb shit. Stop helping them out by posting this.

dramaticcat OP ,

Do you know where you’re at?

YeetPics , (edited )
@YeetPics@mander.xyz avatar

If they wanted to defederate why wouldn’t they do it on their own? These people are fucking insane.

Big “I didn’t even want to win” energy from this post.

Godric ,

“Scratch anyone who disagrees with me, a Fascist bleeds”

-Lemmy.ml

spiderplant ,

I mean if you’re antifascist then that’s true

meliante ,

That reeks of neckbeardism.

Atomic ,

I mean… pretty expected. Funny how so many seems to think Palestine = Gaza.

Yes, Gaza is part of Palestine. But there is more to palestine than just Gaza. Israel is not at war with Palestine (officially). They’re at war with Hamas. Which have been governing Gaza kind of like a city state for quite some time now.

Also, regardless of what you think about the situation. I think you’d have to be pretty optimistic, if you don’t think this will end with Gaza being reduced to rubble.

NightLily ,
@NightLily@lemmy.basedcount.com avatar

I’m optimistic only 95% of gaza will be reduced to rubble myself.

_Sprite ,
@_Sprite@lemmy.world avatar

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/5f2a5601-6315-4eb8-bcc2-e23a6209e373.jpeg

OssotSromo ,

Thanks for this. I’m brand new to Lemmy in general. So I saw the notice they were cut off but wasn’t sure if I ended up on the correct side of the divide.

I did. I very much did.

yuri ,

So hilarious that their concept of education seems to include highschools and independent research. That’s it.

I guess if you coast through hichschool to the point that you come away thinking “They didn’t teach me anything!”, independent research would be the highest form of education possible. You’d also probably be a huge narcissist, but that’s a different, stickier wicket entirely.

Cethin ,

To be fair many people do come out of high school thinking they know “the truth” about the world. They really don’t, and it will require individual research (whether that’s while working on your PhD on Russian history or something else) to learn everything there is to know. There’s always more to learn, and many educational things purposefully leave out context or misconstrue information.

That said, anyone talking about the USSR in the modern day is fucking stupid. This person seems to not realize the USSR doesn’t exist anymore. I surely don’t trust their opinion on the subject.

YeetPics ,
@YeetPics@mander.xyz avatar

Lol delusional sacks of shit, all of them.

JokeDeity ,

Totally sane. I like the part where even they realize they will eventually be defederated by everyone. 😂

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