They support communism - so China, Cuba, the old USSR and the modern Russia that is slowly reverting back to communism. So they are supportive primarily of the system no matter how it affects actual chinese, russian or cuban people. The people are of far, far less importance than the system and the more extreme their belief the more they’ll deny the reality of how these regimes treat their people.
That’s not to say it’s all bad - Cuba has some very progressive laws for example but sadly for most of these regimes, dissent amongst the population is not tolerated.
They’re most certainly not Russian or Chinese communists on Lemmy or Reddit as those people wouldn’t be able to access these communities without breaking the law in their countries. That said, my interpretation of who they are as a group is only my opinion based on interacting with some of them.
As you’re discovering, Leftism isn’t a universal thing, there are sub-groups ranging from (US) Democrat/ (UK) Labour all the way through to individualistic anarchism. There are a lot of stopping points on the journey, none of which are the same as the others - socialism, communism etc and even within those sub groups there are sub-sub groups.
So the the word you’re questioning ‘tankie’ is a term applied to communists who deny that communist regimes are capable of, or indeed have, committed acts of violence on individuals, groups or entire ethnic groups/populations. The word originates from the Tiananmen Square massacre, where the ruling communist party murdered protesting people using tanks. ‘Tankies’ deny that this happened, or if it did happen it wasn’t as bad as the West claim, or if it was, that it was a justified act. They say the whole thing was made up/exaggerated by Western media. They do this because they’re living in denial.
Most of the Lemmy (and Reddit) based tankies I’ve encountered seem to belong to a youngish American, probably middle-class population. Possibly they’re rebelling against some element of their upbringing or are seeking some kind of group identity or validation. Believing in something that extreme is also an easy thing for someone to do - if you support a political system that is never ever going to assume power where you live, that abdicates you from any responsibility of engaging with the political system in your country to try and make the reality you actually live in any better.
Historically, we’ve always been pretty awful to each other. A lot of our cutting edge science has revolved around ways to hurt and kill each other since the first human realised it was easier to kill the person pissing him off with a rock than their hands.
In the last 100 years or so however, those weapons have become powerful enough to end us as a species and I think you’d be hard pressed to find a type of weaponry that, once invented, hasn’t been used and I’m not sure we’ve evolved enough empathy to prioritise not killing all of us over not killing the country/group who are currently annoying us.
It’s pretty understandable therefore to have a realistic fear that there’s a very good chance we’ll bring about our own end.
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Things to bear in mind: totally anonymous domain purchasing means you have no real control over it as it can’t be proved you are the owner. If the registrar fucked you over, you lose the domain.