There is now exactly one good thing about Tennessee, two if you can separate the beautiful landscape from the people.

If you aren’t American: Depicted are American civil war reenactors with the flag of the Confederacy which seceded from the Union of the United States in the 19th century due to built up tensions regarding slavery. The Confederacy were ultimately fighting to keep slavery as a government institution.

The target of the joke are tankies (described briskly above), which we will see on Lemmy, often see any action taken against the US or the EU (the West) as praiseworthy, blatantly disregarding or downplaying equivalent or worse actions from non-western nations.

The subversion of expectation here is that a tankie would see the pro-slavery Confederacy as praiseworthy because they’re fighting the US government, despite the Confederacy’s blatantly immoral cause.

Caveat - I say this with bias as someone explicitly against authoritarian bootlickers, like tankies.

Agreed. I find the people in my life who blindly support Israel know nothing of the history of Zionism prior to 1948 and think Palestine was given to Israel just because of the holocaust, almost universally omitting that there were already people there and the responsibility of all western governments (I’m considering Russia “west” here) in the oppression of Jews in the years leading up to, and after, the holocaust.

The Behind the Bastards episode on Bibi Netanyahu talked about how he really got his start in the US as a lobbyist for the state of Israel and the media blitz Israel utilized to get both American parties to unconditionally support Israel. Most Americans are just propagandized af.