Roll in the Tanks! Measuring Left-wing Extremism on Reddit at Scale

Abstract

Social media's role in the spread and evolution of extremism is a focus of intense study. Online extremists have been involved in the dissemination of online hate, mis- and disinformation, and real-world violence. While the majority of research has focused on right-wing extremism, recent real-world incidents have highlighted the potential for far-left extremists to engage in violence and cause real-world harm as well. In this paper, we present the first large-scale measurement of left-wing extremism on social media. Analyzing 1.3 million posts from 53,000 authors from tankie subreddits, we focus on ``tankies,'' a left-wing community that first arose in the 1950s in support of hardline actions of the USSR and has evolved to support what they call ``Actually Existing Socialist'' countries, e.g., CCP-run China, the USSR, and North Korea. Among other things, our analysis reveals that these groups occupy the periphery of the broader far-left community on Reddit, and their discourse distinctively focus on state-level politics and support for authoritarian regimes, rather than on social justice issues. Finally, we show that tankies have high toxicity scores and use pejorative language, mirroring toxicity patterns reported for other online extremist communities. Our findings provide empirical evidence of the distinct positioning and discourse of left-wing extremist groups on social media.