Not that I like this guy he deserves to rot in the same cesspit as Trump and Netanyahu (and more). But this post looks like rage bait.
Empire’s been attacking these people for at least a century.
This post is verified shit, yes.
Dedicated his life to spiritual fulfilment.
Killed by a country that rapes little girls and a country that murders little girls.
lol wow, we’re pretending this dude was a good guy now?
Like a brainwashed American would know anything about him. other than Zionist / Pahlavi propaganda about how evil he was.
He was a spiritual figure to millions. A poet and a scholar.
I should add he was the only obstacle, through his Fatwa, to Iran pursuing a nuclear weapon. Thats now history thanks to Netanyahu and his paedophile puppet President
The Ayatollah is the spiritual leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Jeffery Epstein is the spiritual leader of the 2025 USA regime
these morons don’t think iran had a plan if their 86 year old leader died?
These morons dont understand martyrdom because their lives are spiritual vacuums.
The morons orchestrating these attacks are doing so to distract other morons from the sex and child trafficking crimes they committed.
Morons all the way down. Unfortunately these morons have access to ballistic missiles.
Well the Orange Jackass sure as hell doesn’t have the well-being of Iranians in mind.
Added benefit but the main reason is oil.
Not going to defend him, but a Pedophile led nation executing/kidnaping foreign heads of states and bombing schools is not a good thing.
All of a sudden this bothers you? lol your terrorist nation has been doing this non stop forever. You guys bomb my country, treat my people with racism, you leave us the mess and move on, and pretend it never happened. Then you turn around and criticize other nations. It’s a big facepalm seeing so many young leftists acting like this is new
you’re making a lot of assumptions about me, I’ve been protesting almost every week for years, local antiwar org I work with has been organizing weekly protests since 2003.
this bs aggression isn’t new, but I refuse to desensatise myself.
the way my Iranian friends have put it as they celebrate the death of the head of the regime and brace themselves for the impact of the new regime is that when you live under opression all your live, you learn to celebrate the small stuff, even as you know what’s coming will also be bad
regardless of regime changes, nothing good comes from American interventions
I mean this regime is a continuation of a regime change that was also installed by US and UK about 40 years ago. And more recently in any place where US has been involved in a regime change (Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt and Syria among others), the country is left to the mercy of religious cults or warlords after a great proportion of civilian infrastructure is bombed out of existence.
So yeah, I agree.
Imagine your neighbor is an abuser who beats his wife and children, and you want to help them. so you kick their door, beat the husband, beat the wife, kill one of the kids, and set their house on fire.
in the grand scale absolutely. nothing ever good comes from foreign interventions. a people must be given the tools to liberate themselves rather than have it decided for them what is best
So long as they don’t democratically elect a socialist. Otherwise they’re getting a Western-backed far-right dictator forced on them instead to “prove socialism doesn’t work.”
the US doesn’t want to liberate jack shit, they just want a puppet state
exactly
your “iranian friends” are pretty stupid for celebrating a war against themselves.
By this logic, then no one should celebrate the death of a serial murder if they are killed by a rapist.
One bad person is dead. That’s good no matter how you cut it. Just cause the shit isnt over and there’s still bad people doesn’t mean we arnt happy things have improved.
If you only ever settle for perfection then you might as well just let the pedos go uncontested. Cause you can’t stop all of them in one go.
one bad person mostly westerners hate is dead, but now the biggest imperialist force is directly bombing, and want to regime change them. also reminding you their second target was schoolchildren.
this is not like it’s kissinger dying of old age, or mussolini being lynched. this is fucking war.
There’s already a war against them by their own government that’s killed over 30,000 Iranians since late December. Civilians are being slaughtered either way, but this way means that maybe the Ayatollahs won’t be in power at the end.
why would anyone celebrate any of this at all though.
their government went nowhere, and there is now a foreign superpower bombing them.
i will not tell them how to think or feel. the old regime killed their families. the new regime will likely finish the job. iran, israel, the united states. none are working or fighting on behalf of the Iranian people. i will help them as they work to survive, but i will not moralize to them that they’re wrong to feel how they feel about things that impact them directly
especially considering that over 100 schoolgirls were murdered in the process.
if a bomb killed 150 children and also took out Trump, I wouldn’t celebrate it
I would celebrate Trump death but not the 150 children. Gotta learn to compartimentalize and all that, in a complex world.
you shouldn’t compartmentalize that operation Epstein has slaughtered 150 schoolgirls. you should be furious.
This world is full of evil, we have to be willing to take in what little good we can get for what it is until people start doing really better. If Operation Epstein kills 150 schoolgirls and Trump, I of course won’t be celebrating that 150 schoolgirls are dead, but also I’m not going to lie or omit that Trump dying is the only good thing coming out of that. What, you want me to lament that Trump is dead?
The deaths of children will forever prevent america from being a hero here. So we’ve just created a new enemy, likely a more cunning one than the last.
that’s the point. make sure there are always people who hate America with all their soul. so there’s always a justification for the US to be a military state.
this is largely how we know i live in a terror state. america needs enemies to justify its continued imperial project so it will go out and manufacture them
when I say, cruelty is the point, this is why. that’s why they do family separation, what’s why ensure people suffer, both domestically and internationally. it’s an investment in future targets
The fun thing is your statement applies to both the US and Iran.
has Iran kidnapped and murdered foreign heads of state lately?
Good for him.
Warms the cockles of the heart.
Fuck him. And also fuck the US and Israel. As an outsider this is just all villains fighting each other.
this is just all villains fighting each other
…and civilian collateral damage, unfortunately.
Unfortunately there’s also civilian collateral damage when they aren’t fighting each other.
With innocent, normal people caught in the crossfire. If those cunts would simply kill each other, fine. But it’s always other people getting hit too.
I am sure the hundred schoolgirls were also villains fighting each other
To Iran they were just going to be new protestors to kill.
Fuck all 3 of these authoritarian shit stains.
are you justifying a warcrime against a school because they could have died in the future???
If you get murdered, is the murderer innocent because it is possible someone else would have murdered you later?
Shitlibs logic
How did you misread that so badly?
you can’t preemptively murder children because in your fan fiction they die later on
You agian missed two very important words that OP wrote
To Iran
That means if you were Iran then you would be having those thoughts. Not someone normal.
wait, being Iranian means it’s ok for USA/Israel to kill Iranian schoolgirls?
if someone else wants to kill you, does that give me the moral right to kill you first?
I have a list of world leaders whose death’ll make me happy. These are people that make the world better by dying.
didnt ran like the rat netanyahu lol
He did, as much as he could once he learned shit was going down, but it turns out Iran’s intelligence, air defense and operational security all suck so he died in his bunker. He’s killed almost as many Iranians in a couple months of protests as Netanyahu has killed Palestinians since the Oct 7 attacks. Bibi is absolute trash, but to pretend like Khamenei was better in any way is insane. They’re both completely evil cowards.
They’re both completely evil cowards.
Perhaps more than one person or side can be bad at the same time.
Lemmy reaction : 16/14
Iran has been terrible at everything so far. I keep joking that they put huge arrows you can see from space with the naked eye showing where all their leaders, scientists, and generals are.
Iran must know they’re infiltrated from top to bottom by Israel, no? Especially after those “abandoned trucks” filled with drones thing?
he’s killed almost as many Iranians in a couple months of protests as Netanyahu has killed Palestinians since the Oct 7 attacks
Sure buddy, thats nice opinion, did epstien give it to you?
If you use Israeli sources on amount of Palestinians killed and American sources on number of Iranians killed it might just be around the same no? /sarcasm
What could possibly go wrong?
Man, defrag your badges for fuck sake
How’s Libya doing these days? Is it good?
I forget this fuck’s name. No, don’t google it, its totally fine.
Let’s call them all “Epstein files”
Nice! Now do Putin, Trump and the rest of the dictators
Can we include the plutocrats and oligarchs? That seems to be the root of the problem.
don’t forget the bilionaires!
So easy to take care of Iran, but so hard to take care of Russia.
Seeing the USA waltz in dropping bombs over literally nothing but ignoring the Ukraine is pretty bizarre.
And don’t forget to nuke Isreal to green dust!
Now watch all the tankies praise him as a honorary socialist
They do already. “Respected leader” one post over there said.
He literally was respected by people in Iran, not everyone there is against the government and the biggest problems with the government were not him specifically it is the sprawling layers of republican bureaucracy that runs Iran and does a bad job. The Supreme Leader there isn’t really like an absolutist dictator, the Ayatollahs are like the Supreme Court of the Islamic Republic and he was like the Chief Justice.
It is wild seeing USAmericans with no information talking about a topic they only received messaging about from their government. Before you call me an apologist please understand my family had to escape Iran in the back of a van and get dumped on the border of Turkey with nothing to get out, I’m not making excuses for them.
All dictators have support, otherwise they wouldn’t exist. The majority of Iranians did not/do not like the current regime.
Was he respected by the up to thirty thousand protesters he had massacred?
I am trying to get someone to explain what tankie means. People call me tankie from time to time, but I have no love for the iranian goverment.
Tankies are apologists for “communist” leaders such as Stalin, Mao and Kim. They love Russia, China and North Korea and will swear those countries can do no wrong. “Left” authoritarians… bootlickers.
Mostly cringe american kids who confuse authoritarianism for socialism.
Tankies exist around the world, I don’t know why you’re making it an american thing. It’s not limited to just americans.
Yeah but closer to the eastern bloc you’re likely to hear the term “vatnik” used instead.
Tankies and vatniks have a lot of overlap.
From my understanding, a vatnik is specifically someone who is shilling for the russian government. Not necessarily under a veneer of leftism (because the kremlin is far-right-wing).
A tankie may or may not be directly shilling for the kremlin, but it’s always an auth-comm under a guise of leftism.
Tankie vatniks exist of course, but they’re just the center of the venn diagram.
Because I sometimes get curious and find out who they are. Either americans are less privacy conscious, or most tankies are american college kids, often with some neuropsychological disability kids like to flaunt nowadays.
A decade ago, it was “as a black man in america…” Now I suppose it’s “as an autistic person in america…”
Still the same troll farms operating out of russia.
The number of Chinese Marxist-Leninists alone vastly outnumbers us Western tankies. The vast majority of “tankies” live in various countries outside of the imperial core.
Even in the US, the most prominent and successful “tankie” organization was the Black Panther Party.
Assuming you’re not a tankie, I would guess it’s your instance, which is the main one where all the tankies hang out lol
Which is funny because this was just the main instance when I (and many others) learned about Lemmy. I’ve been called a tankie because of my instance when I’m pretty sure tankies would call me MAGA as I’m somewhere between a leftist, a liberal, and libertarian
That’s the thing, how would I know if I am tankie, if I don’t have a clear definition. If it is defined by wether or not I am oppossed to military moving into Budapest 70 years ago. I am probably not a tankie, but I say probably, because everyone writing about seem so biased I find it difficult to see the truth of it. But my moral compass tells me it is always wrong to use military against civilians. Always.
At the end of the day the deeds define the word, not the other way around. Not everyone will use the word correctly or appropriately. It’s why only you yourself can truly categorize as such, but at that point you must come to terms with what that means, positively or negatively.
The bias thing is a real problem, but also sometimes not. It all depends on the context. Some people with unreasonable opinions will absolutely waste your time by never accepting difficult realities and talking around it, so identifying a mindset that’s immune to self reflection can be useful. But similarly if a label is all that’s needed to dismiss an opinion also is not very reasonable. But it’s how some people operate. So sometimes not standing behind a label can be more fruitful as not to entice those presuppositions.
There is another problem. People use slurs to derail the discussions. Calling people “libs” or “tankies” left, right and center removes focus from whatever is discussed and make people crawl into their foxholes. It is an easy way to devalue people’s opinions or simply derail discussions. I think I will keep on questioning when people use the word “tankie”, because once the word is on the table, the discussion has already been derailed one way or another. And maybe one day it will lead to better discourse.
Are you in some way pro Putin, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Kim ? Then you might be a tankie.
If you think they are/were despicable mass-murderous dictators then you’re not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
And if one points out Wikipedia (while very imperfect, yes) is just Western Propaganda, well, that’s a pretty good indicator, too.
Thank you for sharing the wikipedia article. I hadn’t read it. A lot of people find Wikipedia controversial for various reasons. But it is one of the most precise encyclopedias on the planet. And you can check out editing history etc. What I am most interested in, is the use here ofcourse. Because it seems to me people use it as a vaguely defined slur to slander people they deem to leftist.
Yeah, there’s all sorts of crazy political purity tests on Lemmy, and associated misuse of slurs.
And on Wikipedia:
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On one side, my MAGA-adjacent family is starting to question it as “liberal biased”… as they leave Fox News blasting in the background.
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On the other, tankies and some different leftist extremist leftists dismiss it as propaganda.
That’s a good sign, to me. Its never been perfect and has problems, but extremists trying to tear its credibility down is a sign of just how valuable it is.
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“Tankie” was originally a British slang term from the 50s.
In 1956, when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary, the British Communist movement was split over whether this action was cool, or sucked.
The people who thought it sucked derided their opponents who thought its cool, as “Tankies”, because the images in the newspapers featured lots of photos of Soviet tanks rolling into Budapest.
After this, it stops being used for the most part, until it started being reclaimed by socialists online as a tongue-in-cheeck insult to throw at each other. Because, let’s be real, it’s a silly sounding word that’s fun to say, and silly words are among the UK’s biggest cultural exports.
Eventually though, Tankie breached containment and started to be used by people who had zero connection to any kind of socialist movement or history, and its meaning began to warp.
I’ve seen Marxists, even those think the Soviet invasion of Hungary was bad, called tankies. I’ve seen Anarchists called Tankies, I’ve seen right wing guys who love trad russian Orthodox Christianity called Tankies.
It’s a word that doesn’t mean much anymore. It’s like when your grandpa calls Joe Biden “Pinko Scum”
Thank you. I had an idea, that it was something like that. It seems that on lemmy it means everyone left of poster (or OP), the poster disagree with.
That’s usually how the tankies try to convey it, but otherwise I haven’t seen that argument.
So people are “tankies” if they define “tankie” as slur meaning “left of poster”? That once again sounds like the way MAGA use “woke” about stuff they don’t like.
Not at all, and you’re not the first that tries to denaturate or change the definition of the word tankie.
A tankie is pro authoritarian, but instead of being pro fascism its being pro those who called themselves left like stalin lenin etc
So it describes the “left” Maga if you want.
I sure do understand why tankies would want to make believe the “tankie” is just like “woke” but it isn’t, it’s calling them out, showing that they are not leftists but authoritarians (so again, basically fascists).
You have a child’s understanding of the world
It’s basically a term people on the left use for people on the extreme outer-reaches of the left, typically unthinking, uncritical, and unreasonable supporters of bolshevism and authoritarian communism, and pretty much any oppressive regime that considers itself “anti-west.”
They love putin, jinping, kim, assad, khamenei, etc.
They stylize themselves as “Marxist-Leninists” and your instance is full of them, so if you signed up unknowingly and aren’t a tankie, people might just assume based on the “.ml”
But yeah, most people on lemmy are tired of arguing in circles with tankies, who typically rely on ad hominems, strawmen, sealioning, and other bad faith or uncharitable arguments to bully you into exhaustion. Some of them have to be bots or russian trolls, cause no one can honestly be so dense. It can feel like arguing with someone from r/conservative, just with the opposite opinions.
That is a pretty vague definition, and that is probably what irks me about the term. It can be used as a slur for anything you don’t like. Like “woke” for conservatives. I switched home when I found out .world blocks instances they don’t like. Lemmy.ml seemed the to be the broadest, left accepting instance and they block out porn by default, win-win in my book. Infact I like the fact that I can be an anti-imperialist in places like hexbear, without being called a tankie. Being against killing school children does not mean I support the iranian goverment. I hope you take this answer in good faith. It is written in honesty.
It’s not that vague if you’ve ever encountered one in the wild. You would know exactly what it’s referring to. And it’s nothing like conservatives using “woke.” They use “woke” to describe anything mildly progressive. Tankies aren’t progressives, they’re accelerationist armchair militants. They call democratic socialists fascists.
Even if your opinion aligns with them on most things, it doesn’t automatically make you a tankie. If you’re not an auth-comm intent on bullying everyone who disagrees with you the slightest bit and labeling all nuance and critical reasoning as capitalist imperialist propaganda, then you’re probably not a tankie.
That’s also different from critiquing actual imperialism and capitalism. But tankies’ overuse of those terms and others like “fascist” waters down the meanings and obfuscates the terms, making it harder for good-faith communicators to actually discuss these topics critically.
You can be anti-imperialist all you want, but tankies use western imperialism as an excuse to justify supporting imperialist regimes like Russia. They’re full of cognitive dissonance.
Go ahead and disagree with someone slightly on .ml or hexbear and see what kind of response you get.
I’ve yet to try those kinds of response, when I discuss with people. Then again I haven’t been going into discussion about Yemen for instance. Mainly because my actual knowledge is simply to small to contribute. I do support anti-imperialist struggles, even by regimes I don’t like. But that does not mean I waiver my right to call out they in turn tyrannize their populations.
And yeah, I have a feeling we have a lot of online cosplayers here in the fediverse, but I will keep treating people as if they are real, when I interact. That however also mean I will keep asking people for definitions. I.e. what do you mean when you say “fash”, “tankie”, “lib” and so on. People use the slurs to hide behind and everyone loves if we can make everything black and white.
But I am a socialist and I have been called a tankie several times and I’ve even been banned for a couple of sub because I asked about that definition. I don’t mind people not liking what I say, but I will not take being slurred without questioning it. If that means a ban, well I am happy for getting out of another echo chamber.
Mainly because my actual knowledge is simply to small to contribute
See, an actual tankie would never admit to having limitations on their own personal knowledge and understanding.
But I am a socialist and I have been called a tankie several times
I’m a socialist too and tankies have called me a fascist because I believe in democratic-socialism instead of bolshevism. They clearly don’t know what fascism is.
Lol you’re not a socialist, you’re a liberal.
Tankies are basically maga but for “socialism”
They don’t have any actual values or morals and will happily support the most disgusting and heinous people that opress people, are racists wexist homophobic, that murder civilians and even commit genocide as long as they say they hate capitalism, and western imperialism.
Doesn’t the term come from the Tiananmen Square massacre when the army drove tanks over students?
Laughing at all the tankies getting butthurt in the comments
Somebody shared this link. It helped me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
this isn’t 1995 man, you can just watch the full video of that not happening anytime you like
Oh, because we all know that the entire event was caught on video and it was so easy to smuggle film out of china at the time.
(Context: the video of tank man was hidden in a toilet while the authorities searched the man’s apartment after he was spotted filming from his window).
But denying massacres of civilians is so in character for someone from .ml, so nobody is surprised, really…
“Tankie” is just a derogatory term for anyone to the left of the person saying it
You guys are easy to spot these days.
You can see from the very question that poster asked that, whatever clear definition about authoritarianism or whatever you think it has, that’s just not how people are actually using it. Centrists will use it for Mamdani supporters, DSA-types will use it for Marxist-Leninists, and anarchists will use it for almost literally anyone.
“Tankie” is just a derogatory term for anyone to the left of the person saying it
anarchists will use it for almost literally anyone
Great logic. Almost as if you’re speaking shite, unless anarchists are on the right now…
No, I’m just accusing them of throwing around words that mean nothing and thinking everyone is authoritarian. Just a little joke.
Kinda like how tankies think everyone is a fascist (except for other tankies, of course)?
Can you show an example of people calling Mamdani supporters tankies please?
Can’t, because it didn’t happen.
Sorry, I don’t save links to random stupid internet comments
You should probably start doing that if you’re going to use them as core components of your online arguments.
anarchists will use it for almost literally anyone
I mean, yeah? Like the most basic understanding of anarchy is that hierarchy is a bad thing, so it applies to a lot of political philosophies
No one calls Mamdani a tankie, but I have seen tankies calling Mamdani a fascist. They clearly don’t know what fascism is.
Centrists also don’t use the term “tankie.” If anything they call everyone on the left a socialist (as if it’s a bad thing) or a communist or a radical leftist.
“Tankie” is specifically a word people on the left use to refer to auth-comms.
“If they don’t lick bolshevik boots, they’re a fascist” -average tankie
I find it very interesting that you get downvotes for this comment. My experience is that this is the way most people use the term and they get so angry, when you point that out.
Exhibit A:
Not even a little bit, but typical tankie rhetoric is to call anyone who isn’t at least as far to the left as them (read: approaching infinity) a fascist, so I’m not surprised to hear this from an .ml account
Oh, come on now, they’d never call Putin a fascist.
Oh true, I forgot to add that they’ll complain about literally anyone except for actual fascists…
There!
Every so often I am reminded Reddit liberals (who just weren’t honest enough to stay there with their MAGA friends, who are closer to them than they are to anyone outside of the Western sphere) also came here. Oh well.
This shit is no joke, man, the US backed a coup and when it wasn’t successful enough they murdered people, and this is not even the first time in the span of a year (in this country). And American imperialism is always, always, on the wrong side of history and ethics, because they’re amoral geopolitical moves made to enrich Western aristocrats, loss of life is not even part of the equation. Stop it already, you don’t have to be Greta but at least you can understand this is nothing but violence for the sake of control by the usual villains, and not make fun of it all.
Nah, the guy was a piece of shit and I’m glad he’s dead and fully supporting people meming in him. I’m not giving some opressive dictator that does all the same shit I hate people like Trump for, just because he also hates America.
Genuine political change has to come from the people who live under it. If Trump got blown up tomorrow, it would no more change US politics than this is gonna do anything for Iranians. If you want a people to rise up against their “dictator” give them space to decide the best course of actions for themselves.
Why should Iranian citizens look on this as a good thing, take it as an opportunity overturn the system, when the country that bombed and ransacked their neighbors for 20+ years is looming like a vulture?
Your heart seems to be in the right place but you’re largely misinformed, or taking things in a vacuum. Regardless, is it America’s place to bomb yet another country, yet another group of people who haven’t attacked them first, for whatever reason you might think?
Sounds like he was 86 and wasn’t hiding
