"In the United States, previous elections were falsified through postal voting ... they bought ballots for $10, filled them out, and threw them into mailboxes without any supervision from observers, and that's it," Putin said, without providing evidence. Putin's opponents say the March election in Russia is no real contest as the president wields unchallenged power and his main rival, Alexei Navalny, is serving more than 30 years in jail on charges that Navalny says were trumped up. They say the use of electronic voting creates scope for authorities to manipulate the vote in Putin's favour without detection.

(Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin, running for a new six-year term in an election that his opponents say is a parody of democracy, said on Tuesday that past U.S. elections had been rigged by postal voting.

“In the United States, previous elections were falsified through postal voting … they bought ballots for $10, filled them out, and threw them into mailboxes without any supervision from observers, and that’s it,” Putin said, without providing evidence.

  • FlorianSimon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    4·
    10 months ago

    Looking for the truth on the USSR and Russia’s socialist period is absolutely fine. What I don’t want to see here or anywhere is people making excuses for genocide under the pretext that the atrocities have been committed by reds or ex-reds. That shit is unacceptable.

    The word tankie can absolutely be misattributed, yes. But it’s not a significant problem. The criticism mostly comes from good-faith, actual leftists, who have nothing to gain from smearing campaigns and know what they’re talking about.

    The existence of people on Lemmy (aka tankies) cheering when innocents die because they happen to be born in the wrong country is revulsing, and a bigger issue.

    • rockSlayer@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      10 months ago

      I consider it’s misuse a much bigger problem than actual tankies. Tankies are a vast minority in leftist spaces, even on the Internet. They are a totally irrelevant faction to anything, especially national politics. I suppose we won’t see eye to eye here.

      On the rest, I absolutely agree. I’m the active mod of [email protected] and our top rule is no genocide denial. Every comment I’ve removed on the subject has been in support of Israel killing civilians, so I don’t think it has anything to do with tankies in the first place.

      • FlorianSimon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        If you hadn’t replied to PugJesus, this would have remained a comment among many others, and reduced the visibility of antitankie comments. Now, you’ve made this a whole thread.

        Just let it slide. Don’t jump to their defense. Let the actual tankies marginalize themselves into oblivion and you’ll help solve 2 Lemmy problems at once: tankism, and abusive antitankism (since there won’t be a need for genuine antitankism anymore).

        What could have been a quick “aye, fuck tankies” is creating entire threads, and makes us talk about it.