How so?
Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies"
Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 day ago
as soon as I expressed that I was sympathetic to some of the political views of the so-called “tankies”, I never got a reply.
Makes sense to me. It’s not worth continuing to argue with someone who admits to being in bad faith.
Cricket@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Imagine you’re talking with someone about science, and after a while they say they believe in a flat earth.
At that point, it’s understandable to end the conversation. Because flat earth discussions have all been had, and anyone who believes in a flat earth in 2025 doesn’t believe in science. You’ve identified a fundamental principal on which you disagree, and there can be no productive discussion.
Cricket@lemmy.zip 12 hours ago
I get the argument you’re trying to make and I appreciate you doing so, but it sounds like you’re trying to say that being anti-Western capitalist hegemony is equivalent to believing in a flat earth. Is that what you really believe, and if so, why? All evidence completely debunks flat-earth theory, so I understand why someone would disengage from debating with someone who believed that. On the other hand, most evidence makes Western capitalist hegemony look very bad, so why is it invalid to be against that?
owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca 1 hour ago
I wasn’t trying to say that being open to tankie arguments is the same as believing in a flat earth. I was only making the comparison to explain the sense of futility and exhaustion many people feel when they encounter an argument they’ve had so many times. There’s a point where you recognize a fundamental difference in worldview, and that any further discussion is pointless.
Personally, I think western capitalism is bad and needs to be replaced. But I also think that anyone who denies the genocides recognized by the majority of the world is being willfully ignorant. Many people seem to have a very limited ideology of “everything western = bad” and believe that brutal regimes elsewhere are somehow perfect utopias, despite well-documented evidence of the contrary.
As I understand it, the term “tankie” specifically refers to people who deny or defend the brutal tactics used by communist leaders, often denying genocide. If someone tells me they agree with tankie ideology, I don’t have much confidence that conversation about it will do anyone any good. So in that regard, I empathize and understand why the person you were talking to went quiet after that.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 11 hours ago
You believe that all the anti-West countries are secretly the good guys, and are working together. We believe that’s crazy, and any open-minded read of real history and news will illustrate that.
It’s less crazy than flat earth, but mostly because physics is less fuzzy and easier to pin down. In both case the point seems to be to go against the consensus, not find the truth.
Objection@lemmy.ml 12 hours ago
One of the worst thing the right has done is be so fucking stupid that they make liberals assume anyone who disagrees with them for any reason must also just be stupid.
logicbomb@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Cricket@lemmy.zip 12 hours ago
I have the same question for you that I just asked Kolanaki. What do you mean by bad faith? How exactly was what described bad faith?
logicbomb@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Kolanaki downvoted your comment asking what they meant, but didn’t even respond. That was what my link showed. I don’t think their initial comment explained itself, and so downvoting a simple question without responding to it is simply arguing in bad faith.
Basically a comment downvote is an attempt to silence the person who wrote the comment.
My personal opinion is that every comment downvote, outside of comments that deserve to be removed by mods, is done in bad faith. A comment downvote is for things you are sure are spam or trolling. That sort of thing. Using it as a “disagree” button is a bad faith use.
I think most people are unaware that comment votes are public information, and so if you look at how they vote, often, all of their hypocrisy will be laid bare.
Cricket@lemmy.zip 11 hours ago
I agree with you, even though I sometimes succumb to the desire to downvote comments that I think are stupid or that I don’t agree with. I’ve downvoted a few here, but generally not for disagreeing with me but for comments that seem in bad faith or that don’t seem to contribute anything to the conversation. What you’re describing is essentially what I recognize as the (old?) Slashdot moderation guidelines, but very likely older than that. I wish that votes information were more public so it would be easy to see it at a glance.
Cricket@lemmy.zip 12 hours ago
I forgot to ask in more detail: what do you mean by bad faith?
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 11 hours ago
As far as I can tell bad-faith means exactly nothing at this point, despite being used both in the anti-cm0whatever rant and here.
Cricket@lemmy.zip 10 hours ago
How was bad faith used in either that or this thread? I genuinely would like to know what people think is bad faith in either because I certainly don’t think I used bad faith here.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 9 hours ago
I explained elsewhere here. We’ll keep it in one place.