I'm foreign so I'm keeping out of the inevitable political arguments. Just be mindful of the rules and report those who break em
MeanwhileOnGrad
"Oh, this is calamity! Calamity! Oh no, he's on the floor!"
Welcome to MoG!
Meanwhile On Grad
Documenting hate speech, conspiracy theories, apologia/revisionism, and general tankie behaviour across the fediverse. Memes are welcome!
What is a Tankie?
Alternatively, a detailed blog post about Tankies.
(caution of biased source)
Basic Rules:
Sh.itjust.works Instance rules apply! If you are from other instances, please be mindful of the rules. — Basically, don't be a dick.
Hate-Speech — You should be familiar with this one already; practically all instances have the same rules on hate speech.
Apologia — (Using the Modern terminology for Apologia) No Defending, Denying, Justifying, Bolstering, or Differentiating authoritarian acts or endeavours, whether be a Pro-CCP viewpoint, Stalinism, Islamic Terrorism or any variation of Tankie Ideology.
Revisionism — No downplaying or denying atrocities past and present. Calling Tankies shills, foreign/federal agents, or bots also falls under this rule. Extremists exist. They are real. Do not call them shills or fake users as it handwaves their extremism.
Tankies can explain their views but may be criticised or attacked for them. Any slight infraction on the rules above will immediately earn a warning and possibly a ban.
Off-topic Discussion — Do not discuss unrelated topics to the point of derailing the thread. Stay focused on the direct content of the post as opposed to arguing.
You'll be warned if you're violating the instance and community rules. Continuing poor behaviour after being warned will result in a ban or removal of your comments. Bans typically only last 24 hours, but each subsequent infraction will double the amount. Depending on the content, the ban time may be increased. You may request an unban at any time.
The women, immigrants, trans and minorities of the US thanks you Hexbear! You've shown those damn liberals how to make the world a better place! Jeffrey Epstein's closest friend will be saving Palestine any day now, just watch him.
Don't give a single fucking shit about anything but performative ideology.
I have very little time for the sort of oik that treats reality like something they view from an emperor's box.
"I don't really believe in voting"
I know.
You believe in "left leaning" authoritarian military dictatorships that pay lip service to communism or whatever alternative political ideology you espouse, where the only left leaning thing about them is telling the people that their practical enslavement through disciplinary labor measures is necessary and good for them all.
They prop up whatever the Russian troll factories prop up. You can tell by what's unsaid, how much less of a problem they have with Trump.
"There wasn't a no genocide option, so I decided the more genocide option was fine."
The lives of minorities aren't worth a handful of minutes to tankie fucks.
"I'm white and don't care, so what's the difference between one genocide and three?"
Millions of lives.
But drag, how can we pretend to be superior to other leftists, if we aren't enabling greater amounts of genocide? /s
Don't blame at all trumps voters, nooo, you need guilty somewhere else 🙄🙄.
Don't put a vote system, if you can't choose your favorite candidate 🙄🙄...
Look, I also thought the whole "don't vote" schtick was kinda annoying, but personally, I place most of the blame on:
a) those who actually pursued this outcome (fascists)
and
b) the DNC for their limp-dicked campaign strategy of being the Republicans-but-less-so while appealing to institutionalist values within an extremely populist cultural zeitgeist
They think they are for some higher value but in the end they're just like this:
"stupid idiot victim of the system. why don't you commit politically motivated violence like a cool person"
«I actually punched a sexist at a concert once, I'm doing infinitely more for the cause than your bullshit 'voting'.»
This was my ex. A single issue voter about a war another country is waging. Fuck Israel but got damn letting Ukraine die because of your fuckin morals is ridiculous.
Lefties suck, they don't have their way and don't vote. This is why no progress happens.
Pretending that Shitface winning the election is good for Palestine is also just mind boggingly moronic. Zero sympathies, they brought this onto themselves.
I wouldn't call people like that a leftist. Left is progress, Right is conservatism. Their choices led to less progress so they're not lefties.
The primary contradiction (settler colonialism)
It's not just grad and hexbear. Beehaw is doing it too.
Positive vibes only space, my ass.
Update: I never wanna hear anybody talk about how cool drag is ever again
"Don't you remember how hyperbolic we were about McCain and Romney?"
No, I remember exactly what I said about Romney. That I feared his administration would bring in decreased workers' rights, a damaged economy, and damage positive US influence on the world stage.
God, I hate these fuckwits trying to play 'Trump is just another Republican' games. In 2016, maybe it was forgivable in a stupid kind of way. Not now.
Update: I never wanna hear anybody talk about how cool drag is ever again
I mean...drag is correct. The American fascist party has captured all three branches in entirety and announced that they will be ending democracy and committing genocide. So, I don't see where you're having a problem with drag's statement, unless you're trying to avoid self-reflection and taking responsibility for your own actions.
I like not killing people. Especially not civilians. Not killing civilians is cool.
We agree entirely there.
But, people are currently dying and will likely still be in larger numbers due to "allies" who care more about there own egos and performative leftism than other people. We've got a fascist party that has achieved, as of January, full control of the federal government and has stated that they're going to do some genocide. The reasonable thing is to believe them.
That's true. And yet, somehow, committing politically motivated murder remains pretty high on my list of things to not do.
I think that, perhaps, you're not understanding. I didn't read that as drag calling for politically-motivated murder. It was drag acknowledging that, if the fascists do a fraction of what they've promised, trans rights, women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights, among many others are over in this country for the lifetimes of everyone currently living and probably several generations more.
This wasn't just another "4 years until the next election". Democracy and human rights are not going to be restored in this country through political means. That shit's over because of non-voters and everyone else that refused to take it seriously.
Trump’s reign will only be ended by violence. We aren’t getting centrists’ and moderates’ help with that. They are the enemy. They are the complicit citizens of a nation we are going to war with. Some of them will try to stop us, and we need to be prepared to kill them.
Tell me how else I am supposed to interpret this, please.
Tell me how else I am supposed to interpret this, please.
I'd recommend reading Dr. King's letter from Birmingham Jail. Drag is coming to terms with the fact that Dr. King was right but his statement also applies to the plight of all marginalized people.
In addition, once they're in power, fascists do not voluntarily leave while they are still alive. I'm not personally calling for violence but, non-voters have helped to remove the ballot box as a tool for any meaningful change for anyone currently living or coming generations. The courts are gone along with any hope of free and fair elections. That's something that you need to understand. A lot of people are in complete denial of that and will remain so as the pressure ramps up.
People who remain moderates and centrists are going to be those who inform on their trans and immigrant neighbors in order to try to keep out of the line of fire and keep pretending that everything is "normal".
I'm reading/skimming the letter now, and while I'm definitely not going to read the whole thing (good grief that sucker is long), what I am reading, I agree with quite enthusiastically. Especially the parts about how everyone needs to be concerned about injustice, not just the people it directly affects, and how nonviolent protests that break a law to demonstrate that the law is unjust can be effective.
Yet still, somehow, politically motivated murder remains what Drag was pretty explicitly calling for when Drag said “we need to be prepared to kill them”, and what Dr. King was pretty explicitly talking about not doing when he said “We began a series of workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves: ‘Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?’ ‘Are you able to endure the ordeal of jail?’”,, and something I'm pretty expicitly still not on board with.
Dr. King was a firm believer in non-violence, true. His non-violence was counter-balanced by MalcomX and the Black Panthers. The powers in charge had to choose.
Drag was not stating that people should go out and murder their neighbors. Drag was saying that, in resistance to fascists that want to murder LGBTQ+ people, moderates and centrists have proven again that they are not allies to the oppressed (like Dr. King stated just over 60 years ago) and will likely be among those collaborating with the oppressors in order to maintain a new status quo.
While I don't agree with violence in most cases, I'm not trans and what we're seeing is not most cases - it's not even The South under Jim Crow. It is much, much worse. I don't see the country isn't coming back from this, even if they implement only a fraction of what they have stated that they want - the courts are not correctable through any political action in the lifetime of anyone currently living. The highest court in the country that can override all others has signaled that they would like to revisit decisions allowing same-sex and inter-racial marriage as well as transforming the presidential office into a kingship.
LGBTQ+ people who want to live are going to have no choice but to use violence to defend themselves. Because, as drag pointed out, they have been betrayed by both moderates/centrists AND far-left anti-electoralists/accelerationists who were overjoyed to sacrifice them for their political ends. Neither can be counted on as allies.
LGBTQ+ people are already dying because of this election: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/blog/the-trevor-project-shares-post-election-day-crisis-contact-volume-data/
The goal from here ... start a revolution. Trump's reign will only be ended by violence. ... we are going to war. ... we need to be prepared to kill them.
Seems clear.
Mmm, that link doesn't say what you say it says. All it says is that The Trevor Project has gotten an increased call volume about election-related things after Trump won the presidency -- what a shock. It does not mention anything at all apart from this, even the things I would have expected it to mention, like how many of the new callers were contemplating ending their own lives.
Additionally, I'm not sure how Drag could have made it more clear what Drag wants us to do about the fact that moderates are not our allies. And I'm not sure how much more clear I can make it that I still don't really want to commit a felony in the name of politics. Punching people in the face, sure, fine. Pepper spray, why not. But I don't like murdering people in the streets, especially not people whose only crime is being white, uneducated, and afraid of anything they don't understand. Or just more scared of the police than they are of the rebels.
Lastly, I'm truly shocked by how easily you can insist that you think politically motivated violence is bad and not something that someone like Drag would advocate for and insinuate it is necessary in the same breath. You've been doing it this whole conversation, but you actually said both things that time.
I'm definitely not going to read the whole thing (good grief that sucker is long)
Expand your horizons. Sometimes reading long things is worth it
Blocked that annoying drag attention seeker long ago. But damn that’s incredibly violent comment and especially in beehaw
The tide is sure as fuck going to be shifted. They got that part right.
If you want a preview about how any of these dummies that are actually in the US are going to behave, look for the reaction of the civilian Germans after World War 2. For the most part, it was, "This is awful and unfair, I can't believe they would be so mean to us, when we didn't even do anything."
Except not like germany because American Exceptionalism
I struggle to understand how they're so delusional about their number of potential fighters.
We did it, Patrick! We saved Gaza!
They helped genocide Palestinians!
Tankies have blood on their hands.
At least trump will curb stomp all the domestic tankies 🤷