(everything not in parentheses is ported from my original thread over on Mastodon, minor edits made for clarity and to compensate for the change in format. Posting here as a follow-up to this post)
(For context, this was after a very frustrating several months where I had to unfollow some people and mute shares from others over there because tankies were targeting my mutuals. It is BAD over there, there were tankies out on May 4th trying to minimize/deny Tiananmen when the Chinese government itself brags about the horrific shit they did. And it's not just China or North Korea either, they are trying to babygirl Russia as well over there with just NONSENSE fucking shit takes. I saw a claim saying that people "can't criticize Russia" "because of what Israel is doing in Palestine" like ???? Both are terrible and it's dehumanizing to everyone involved to make this into some sort of gotcha???)
People really, really, and I mean fucking REALLY need to stop carrying water for other imperialist colonialist violent regimes just because "well, they're not the U.S. one!"
Many violent oppressive regimes can exist actually and it is FUCKED UP for people to sit there and deny the dehumanization, displacement, and murder of real people in these other authoritarian states so that they can "choose sides", when we can actually condemn them ALL. Instead of switching the boot, stop licking. Fucking think for one second about the real, actual, human victims of these regimes and about the atrocities that these regimes THEMSELVES brag about doing. The enemy of your enemy isn't always your friend, sometimes there are just lots and lots of fucking enemies.
"I am no longer drinking from the well of US propaganda! Now I shall unquestioningly chug propaganda from the OTHER top propaganda machines in the world! I have progressed!" is the same issue that happens with people who were raised in right-wing households when they first learn that bigotry is bad, actually: They change what they were raised to say, but don't question how they were raised to think, so they easily fall into traps of repeating the same harmful behaviors under a different banner. This applies not just to this situation, but to many others.
I think (hope?) for the people who are just shaking free of US-exceptionalist indoctrination, it can be helpful to hear what I'm saying. I know there are people who actually care about people and who really do want to do better and work towards anti-imperialism, they're just being targeted by tankies who want to take advantage of that instinct for compassion and justice.
Btw, apparently the tankies are back at the "pretending tankies don't really exist" stage which is hilarious considering at one point a couple years ago (from my anecdotal observation) they were trying to say "we tankies are the only true activists actually" or whatever.
