For anyone reading this who might be scratching their head as to what “tankie” means, you can find descrriptions of its history a number of places, but for all intents and purposes here on the fediverse, it simply refers to the people who have the most education in history and socioeconomics. Since reality is in direct contradiction with most of the prevailing narratives pushed by the powerful beneficiaries of the dominant systems (the most obvious of these systems being capitalism), there will always be a contingent of true believers in the dominant narrative who are shocked to find that there are others who openly reject those narratives. The former will clutch their pearls, aghast that the propaganda they’ve believed all their lives is being questioned by these… these… muckrakers! And so a pejorative is used (hence the word “tankies”) to otherize and sequester the individuals best able to challenge those narratives, individuals whose presence tends to trigger the uncomfortable feeling of cognitive dissonance in those who aren’t yet ready or able to put their beliefs to honest questioning.
In short, if you have no problem with seeing and reading perspectives that might make you question your own perspective, then you should have no problem with the “tankies.” And as for those who would actively defederate from those vile tankie instances so as to avoid having to confront even the possibility that their own beliefs are riddled throughout with deep misconceptions, well that should tell you something about the priorities of those tankie-fearing communities.
I see someone already listed a bunch of hexbear comms, maybe as a half joke, but seriously some of them are the most active and fun if you’re a lefty. But a couple non-hexbear comms worth suggesting are
!piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
&
!privacy@lemmy.ml
Perhaps also !memes@lemmy.ml if you want not just leftist memes but also the drama of indignant, sometimes enraged libs (even an occassional frothing chud) coming into the comments and usually proving the accuracy of the meme they’re upset about. It’s one of the best
comms for that reason.
If you want great news analysis I would also suggest not just a news comm, but more specifically the newsmega thread at hexbear. It will change url every week since its a single post thread, not a comm. But it stands on its own so well I think its worth mentioning along with entire comms or instances. Hexbear has a certain reputation, some of it deserved (much of it not), but the bulletins and international news thread (aka newsmega) is, regardless of what you may think of the rest of the instance, one of the best places on the internet to get serious leftist/anti-imperialist analysis of current news and events as far as short form “reddit-like” (I hate to phrase it that way but you know what I mean) commentary and discussion.