• azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      People, observe the rhetorical devices of tankies. They do not engage in meaningful discourse. They answer with non-sequiturs framed as innocent questions. They present themselves as free speech defenders, yet they use this free speech to defend the most oppressive regimes in the world, though most often implicitly as their whole thesis becomes an obvious sophism were it to be explicitly stated:

      America bad, therefore Russia/China/NK good.

      It’s the exact same rhetorical devices that /r/The_Donald used during the '16 election, only with a different goal. It’s the methodology of people actively working against their own self-interest, shitting all over rational discourse because they found themselves in a self-reassuring echo-chamber of anticonformism.

      • bungalowtill@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 months ago

        Well, if you are calling for people not to engage with these groups, then you are compliant in creating these echo chambers. Yours and theirs. This is what happened with the disenfranchised people at The_Donald. Framing them like idiots, with some collective nefarious goal is laughable at best. While you don’t approve the way they communicate, they are still pretty good at exposing liberal hypocrisy. If you pretend that doesn’t exist and just want to shut up growing factions of society, you are working against your self interest all the same.

          • bungalowtill@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            5 months ago

            what is it with the poo, man?

            15 days old poo, mind you.

            I mean, it‘s pretty unimaginative to label these guys Putin shills. These guys are fed up with the way the Western world is run. They are fed up with the hypocrisy of liberal politics. And maybe there’s something to it, no? The way all others are preaching nationalism, the sanctity of our markets and success, hexbear to me really feels like a bit of fresh air.

            • Blu@sopuli.xyz
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              5 months ago

              I kinda don’t want to dip my toes in this, but here goes:

              I agree that it’s occasionally a breath of fresh air. The issue I’ve always had with Hexbear is they’ve more or less replaced one version of American (and to a lesser extent European) exceptionalism with another. Where American nationalists consider America to be exceptionally great, Hexbear considers it to be exceptionally evil. They routinely attribute domestic incidents in different countries to American meddling–regardless of evidence–even when those events either achieve nothing for American geostrategic goals or actively harm them. America as the “great Satan,” etc.

              Just an example because I remember it: Imran Khan lost an internal power struggle in Pakistan. He was probably the most west-friendly candidate left there, but Hexbear blamed a CIA coup https://hexbear.net/post/186331

              In the same vein, they permit or even encourage Chinese aggression against the Philippines, within the Philippines’ own exclusive economic zone. You can’t substitute one form of imperialism for another. It’s a trap I see a lot of leftists fall into.

              I think most of 'em are alright. Just growing into leftist thought still and grappling with the moshpit that is international politics. Also they’re funny lol