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Lol I get called a tanky for criticizing the Democratic party and Israel and that’s literally the only time I’ve ever seen it used.
Conflating it with supporting a government that hasn’t existed since I was 3 is downright hysterical.
I get called a tanky by people who literally support the group using tanks.
Okay then why am I accused of it while not qualifying. Seems like that’s not how it’s used by liberals, almost like this isn’t the colloquial definition
incredible that people can see an actual genocide livestreamed for 13 months on every social media platform available, and STILL think anything comparable to that is happening in China. absolutely mindboggling.
Damn, its almost as if China does everything in its power to block the media. As if they had some kind of way to silence their critics who live in China. As if they had some kind of control over their internet and all news sources…
As if this has been going on for a decade now, yet its still not an “actual genocide” for you people. Absolutely mind-boggling.
do you think Israel, with one of the most advanced security apparatuses in the world, doesn’t also have methods to censor evidence? and yet, all of this evidence still flows. insane, China has 1.4 billion people, all with cell phones, all with access to TikTok and VPNs, and there’s not a single picture or video of mass graves or camps or starvation campaigns or religious persecution. is China just uniquely good at censorship? is every Chinese citizen just brainwashed and can’t think for themselves?? or are you just repeating cold-war style CIA think-tank talking points about a geopolitical rival because you refuse to investigate for yourself?
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Do you deny the genocide happening in China or in Ukraine? Then you are a tankie.
Do you believe that claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence? Then you’re a tankie.
Some people have this idea that if a claim involves genocide, then it gets to bypass the entire process of investigating a claim, because it’s technically “genocide denial,” so like if someone said “France is committing genocide against Belgians!” you’d just have to accept it without question. In fact, it’s the opposite, more extreme claims require more solid evidence.
Since we’re on .ml though, we don’t have to deal with such absurd censorship standards, and I’m free to point out the fact that the whole “Uighur genocide” narrative is just unsubstantiated propaganda, coming almost entirely from one crackpot named Adrian Zenz. And at this point it’s largely outdated propaganda, since the narrative has largely quietly disappeared from the news after the claims about it couldn’t be verified.
You’re welcome to prove me wrong though. You know, just show me the bodies. How long has it allegedly been going on at this point? We can see what an ongoing genocide looks like by what’s happening in Gaza. Strange how there aren’t any similar images coming out of Xinjiang, isn’t it?
I mean, you are aware that genocide doesn’t have to involve mass-killing of a population, right? Causing them serious bodily or mental harm with the goal of destroying that separate culture, i.e. in reeducation camps can still fulfill that definition.
Has there ever been a genocide in history where no one was killed?
Honestly, if we’re going to use such standards and definitions that a “nonviolent genocide” is possible, then I’m not sure I understand what makes such a thing wrong. In Japan, the number of people who believe in and practice Shinto is in decline, and more and more people are paying for Western style weddings, so temples are struggling to keep their doors open. Is that an inherently bad thing? Is that genocide? How about in the context of the Allies pressuring the emperor to renounce his claims to divinity, undermining a major aspect of Shinto beliefs? Because it seems to me like that did more good than harm. Does that mean I support the (mostly) “nonviolent genocide” of Imperial Japanese culture?
Or perhaps a better example: After 9/11, there was a wave of hate crimes against Muslims, the US extrajudicially detained people (primarily Muslim) without trial and subjected them to numerous human rights abuses, and there were many people talking about how, “Islam is a religion of violence,” and about “Turning the desert to glass,” and the country started two wars with Muslim countries in which about a million people were killed. Did that constitute a genocide? Why or why not?
Honestly, if we’re going to use such standards and definitions that a “nonviolent genocide” is possible, then I’m not sure I understand what makes such a thing wrong. In Japan, the number of people who believe in and practice Shinto is in decline, and more and more people are paying for Western style weddings, so temples are struggling to keep their doors open. Is that an inherently bad thing? Is that genocide?
Come on, you can do better than that.
People changing their culture on their own volition is obviously different from people being forced to by those in power.
How about in the context of the Allies pressuring the emperor to renounce his claims to divinity, undermining a major aspect of Shinto beliefs? Because it seems to me like that did more good than harm. Does that mean I support the (mostly) “nonviolent genocide” of Imperial Japanese culture?
That’s a slightly better point. The main argument for genocide though is, that a whole population is forced to erase their culture. The population of japan could have chosen to ignore the obviously forced statement and continued to believe in their faith. And it seems like they did if shinto is still a thing, even if it is struggling like many other religions are.
Oh, you mean like what the Ukrainian coup government was doing to the people in the east (Donbas) for years before Russia even entered the conflict? Yes, there is a strong argument to be made that genocide is the term we should use with regard to what Ukraine was attempting to do to the Russian-speaking population in their country.
You know what, I’m going to refer you to your fellow .ml comrade and you can discuss whether this is or is not genocide. If what happenend in Eastern Ukrain was genocide, then what is happening to the Uygurs is definitely also genocide. But if what is happening to the Uygurs can’t be genocide, then what has been happening in Ukraine also can’t be genocide. Please keep me updated on any results you two produce :)
https://lemmy.ml/comment/15069887
Has there ever been a genocide in history where no one was killed?
Honestly, if we’re going to use such standards and definitions that a “nonviolent genocide” is possible, then I’m not sure I understand what makes such a thing wrong. In Japan, the number of people who believe in and practice Shinto is in decline, and more and more people are paying for Western style weddings, so temples are struggling to keep their doors open. Is that an inherently bad thing? Is that genocide? How about in the context of the Allies pressuring the emperor to renounce his claims to divinity, undermining a major aspect of Shinto beliefs? Because it seems to me like that did more good than harm. Does that mean I support the (mostly) “nonviolent genocide” of Imperial Japanese culture?
Eastern Ukrain was genocide, then what is happening to the Uygurs is definitely also genocide.
Except in Ukraine people did die and their heritage and language were being actively suppressed, etc. We know this because it is documented all over, even in pictures on the net. These specific things are readily confirmable. It was even a large impetus for a broader war, as hopefully you’re aware. There is zero question that Ukrainian nazis were shelling Russian-speaking civilians in the Donbas and that Ukraine as a state was passing laws detrimental to Russian speakers.
In Xinjiang, no such evidence exists because nothing of the sort happened. It’s based on a lie dreamed up by one Christian fundamentalist Adrian Zenz. Every source on this “genocide” traces back to him, and none of the claims are confirmable. Even to the UN! In fact you, yes, even you if you have the means to travel, can go there today and see for yourself that the Uyghur population is thriving and they will laugh if you tell them they’re being genocided. I’ll leave the academic discussion for exactly where to draw the line for the definition of the term genocide to others for now. But based on how you were defining it, Ukraine was committing genocide, but no, China was doing quite the opposite by encouraging ethnic diversity. Again, go see for yourself like this person did: Oh yeah, just look at all that genociding going on!
You may call me crazy but this doesnt sound like it all traces back to just one guy
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-22278037
Several countries, including the US, UK, Canada and the Netherlands, have accused China of committing genocide - defined by international convention, external as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.
The declarations follow reports that, as well as interning Uyghurs in camps, China has been forcibly mass sterilising Uyghur women to suppress the population, separating children from their families, and attempting to break the cultural traditions of the group.
The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, has said China is committing “genocide and crimes against humanity”.
The UK parliament declared in April 2021 that China was committing a genocide in Xinjiang.
A UN human rights committee in 2018 said it had credible reports that China was holding up to a million people in “counter-extremism centres” in Xinjiang.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, external found evidence in 2020 of more than 380 of these “re-education camps” in Xinjiang, an increase of 40% on previous estimates.
Analysis of data contained in the latest police documents, called the Xinjiang Police Files, showed that almost 23,000 residents - or more than 12% of the adult population of one county - were in a camp or prison in the years 2017 and 2018. If applied to Xinjiang as a whole, the figures would mean the detention of more than 1.2 million Uyghur and other Turkic minority adults.
The UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said the files contained “shocking details of China’s human rights violations”.
Earlier, leaked documents known as the China Cables made clear that the camps were intended to be run as high security prisons, with strict discipline and punishments.
People who have managed to escape the camps have reported physical, mental and sexual torture. Women have spoken of mass rape and sexual abuse.
Also, yes I am aware of the reasons putin brought forward to start an attack on ukraine with the goal of erasing that country from the landmap. Go ahead and tell me he wouldn’t pass laws “detrimental” to the people of Ukraine if he succeeds with his invasion.
And if someone supports the American government which is committing a genocide in Gaza right now?
“support the American government” is not what I see around Lemmy
Try saying Joe Biden is committing genocide on lemmy.world and you will find a plethora of apologists.
I think you’re confusing electoral lesser-evilism with genuine support. I’m as fed up with ‘Israel can do nothing wrong because history’ types as the next guy, but they’re hardly a majority
If you are demanding everyone vote for the people bypassing Congress to send more bombs to the obviously grotesque war criminal country, people are gonna think you support them, because you are.
Do you see me demanding anything? I’m literally only describing what has been my experience around Lemmy, and that your widespread genocide support is just your twisting of what people are actually saying. I think your hostile comment proves my point
I was using ‘you’ rhetorically rather than accusing you of anything. IDK how you see that as a hostile one. I’m just explaining why people get rubbed the wrong way by the the vote blue brigade.
You tend to see it more on Lemmy.world, less so on instances dominated by Leftists.
But then again, ‘instances dominated by Leftists’ are also filled with tankies who I also despise 🤷♀️ (inb4 calling me a lib)
I understand that you hate Marxists, and yes, you’re most likely a liberal. It isn’t a coincidence that leftists tend to have similar stances to each other, when working from the same theoretical framework similar conclusions follow.
Called it
I mean that would mean I believe that they’re imperialists supporting the case of white supremacy - I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to claim that most USA supported conflicts have the purpose of benefitting the western world, which is based on white supremacy - and most likely are either politicaly illiterate and are unaware (willingly or by ignorance) of what USA is doing, or are sociopaths. They’re not tankies by virtue of not being pro post soviet dictatorships, but when it comes to the callousness towards loss of innocent human lives, they’re uh… Pretty bad. I’m not making a comparison though, I feel that’s like asking which of two shits stinks worse, and we can clearly see that both defecators had varied and distinctive diets.
In that case the term Tankie could not be applied to China as the original meaning of the word Tankies could only apply to the Soviet Union.
What I have always understood to be the implication is “people justifying and usually denying war crimes from a government or group which aligns with their political ideology”.
Most often those people do not care about the war crimes. They think a government and/or government ideology is awesome and therefore will excuse any war crimes because it is for the greater good/lesser evil.
That’s not relevant to being a tankie as the US, Israel, and other states backing Israel, aren’t claiming they’re building communism or are the successor state to another which claimed to be building communism. It’s the part where communism is an excuse that means the bad things didn’t really happen and would be fine even if they did that makes tankie-ism its own distinct thing.
So apologizing and supporting war crimes is fine as long as it is not communism?
How does supporting one genocide stop the other? Who said that I somehow support the US? Who says I am even american, and not someone who personally has to deal with the consequences of tankie horseshit?
Your definition conveniently exempted America and countries such as Germany or the UK.
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That is true. What the west is doing in Palestine is worse.
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Russia does bomb regularly bomb infrastructure such as energy plants. But Russia is not mass bombing schools, hospitals and refugee camps. Every time they do it it is front page news because 2 people died. Meanwhile Israel bombs a school killing 20 people every single day.
If Russia did what America and Israel are doing in Gaza, the front page of newspapers would be filled with sob stories and gore. And Hamas would be praised as brave resistance fighters against the modern Nazis.
Summary of this comment: “Do you recognize reality and not believe the ocean of NATO propaganda we’re all awash in? Then you’re a tankie. Do you reject a bunch of bullshit I made up using fascist-invented terms like “red fash” and “totalitarian”? Then you’re a tankie.”
Ok, I’m a definitely tankie then. It must suck not to be one and be stuck in these pitiful, childish delusions, and labeling people “orks” and ascribing people who value truth with what you think is an epithet. Some grade A fuckin’ cringe right here.
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Behold, fellow lemmy browsers: here^ we see the scratched liberal as their mask starts to slip. Not unlike the “UHMUHRICA! Love it er LEAVE it!” style of chud. They have a similar simplistic and deeply uncurious faulty view of the world, a view desperately clung to even when they are shown it is undeniably false, for self reflection is too frightening a concept for them even to consider.
You provided not a single shred of evidence, redfash. Hilarious to tell me I have no self reflection, when your daddy dictators do unspeakable crimes against humanity, yet you support them and call yourself a leftist.
Please do call me a liberal. It’s very funny to see, after beating the shit out of local nazis in our counter rallies more times that you have felt the touch of a woman.
Unlike you, I felt the consequences of your favourite dictatorships, I’ve lost friends and loved ones to it.
It’s always funny to me how the go-to examples of like, “See, they just blindly support anything the regime does!” tend to be relatively minor events after the state in question has considerably chilled out. Like, Stalin and Mao did much worse things compared to Khrushchev/Hungary and Deng/Tienanmen. The problem being, communists are generally willing to criticize things like the Great Leap Forward, because, surprise surprise, we don’t just blindly support anything they do. The reason for this is that the word tankie isn’t meant to describe someone who blindly supports everything a communist country does, as it’s claimed to, but rather, someone who supports anything any communist country does.
The fear Western leftists had that led to the term being coined was that people who had previously been critical of Stalin and Mao would respond positively to the countries moving away from their approach, and so they had to create a label to discredit such people and associate them with the previous leaders. It’s one of the reasons Khrushchev’s approach was questionable, because no matter how much you try to distance yourself from someone like Stalin and paint yourself as “one of the good ones,” you’re still never going to appease the Western left that demands absolute perfection, let alone the West in general.
The biggest irony of our times is blood thirsty liberals who are cheering for as much war as possible running around calling people tankies.
Iraq war supporters calling anyone a tankie, should be immediately flattenned by a tank
Those fucking bloodthirsty tankies don’t want us sending more tanks to nazis
Let’s bracket the “was the USSR in the right?” question, and let’s ask the “how brutal was the Soviet clampdown on these two uprisings?”
- 1956 Hungary: 2000-3000 killed by the USSR
- 1968 Prague: 137 killed by the USSR
How does this compare to clampdowns by NATO countries (excluding the US)?
- Indonesian National Revolution against the Dutch: 100 000 Indonesians killed by the Dutch
- Algerian War of Independence: 250 000 killed by the French (French estimate) - 1.5 Million (Algerian estimate)
- French War against Vietnamese Independence: 200 000 dead
- Portuguese Colonial Wars: 70,000–110,000 civilians killed by Portugal
- Mau Mau Uprising against the UK: "Officially the number of Mau Mau and other rebels killed was 11,000, including 1,090 convicts hanged by the British administration. The Kenya Human Rights Commission has said 90,000 Kenyans were executed, tortured or maimed during the crackdown, and 160,000 were detained in appalling conditions. "
This is a non-exhaustive list with estimates. The actual brutality is not conveyed. The war crimes are often comparable to the Waffen SS.
You get the idea: the colonial powers were incomparably worse.
Off topic: It’s times/comments like these that I wish people kept in mind when they start clamouring for defederation
this is the most appropriate “both sides” argument i’ve ever seen.
“Both sides” is when you equivocate two things which are not equal, you’re looking for “whataboutism” which is not an actual fallacy, claiming “you’re doing whataboutism” was a PR tactic first used by British colonizers when Irish people brought up British violence in response to anti-IRA propaganda.
it get that they’re both bad faith ways to shut down discourse and i can see how whataboutism fits; but i was referring to the false equivalency placed between the nato’s atrocities and that of the soviet union’s in the comment
when it’s “both sides” is brought up to shutdown arguments that the democrats have done some of the same things that the republicans did; they’re likewise implying that the democrats have fewer of such incidents than the republicans and therefore the argument is invalid.
this was my half snarky way of saying that this comment is a “both sides” example can be applied in the opposite direction where it neuters the effect that “both sides” has with liberals.
Sorry, I often fail at snark perception
i think it’s better that you say something if it’s not clear for the people who lurk through all the interactions.
Im not the person who replied to you but I picked up on what you meant
fwiw, I suspect Hexbear users expect snark more. It’s basically the default mode in a bunch of comms.
i keep forgetting to use <snark> </snark> tags.
I would submit that sometimes “whataboutism” can be related to the issue of topicality in a debate, though. If not addressed properly topicality issues will inevitably derail a discussion as is their nature.
tankie to the rescue
While your points are true, here is an interesting and recommended reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
Oh, i liked this section
According to lexicographer Ben Zimmer,[13] the term originated in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. Zimmer cites a 1974 letter by history teacher Sean O’Conaill which was published in The Irish Times where he complained about “the Whatabouts”, people who defended the IRA by pointing out supposed wrongdoings of their enemy:
I would not suggest such a thing were it not for the Whatabouts. These are the people who answer every condemnation of the Provisional I.R.A. with an argument to prove the greater immorality of the “enemy”, and therefore the justice of the Provisionals’ cause: “What about Bloody Sunday, internment, torture, force-feeding, army intimidation?”. Every call to stop is answered in the same way: “What about the Treaty of Limerick; the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921; Lenadoon?”. Neither is the Church immune: “The Catholic Church has never supported the national cause. What about Papal sanction for the Norman invasion; condemnation of the Fenians by Moriarty; Parnell?”
— Sean O’Conaill, “Letter to Editor”, The Irish Times, 30 Jan 1974
Good example of how claims of whataboutism are used to try to remove actual important context from a discussion.
1614 is the older term in English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
And you are using it again. Because the term was coined by English oppressors, than it shouldn’t true… Always the same answer to everything, my beloved dictator/political system/whatever is not really terrible, because I can point to something even worse
Let’s see, “colonials are not as terrible, because what the Nazis did, and Jews were white people” Same as your reasoning.
Whataboutism is only sometimes tu quoque.
And you are using it again. Because the term was coined by English oppressors, than it shouldn’t true…
Christ- this is deeply unserious. Do you understand how the British used it to deflect from the idea that IRA violence and British colonialism were connected? The British were saying “it is a logical fallacy to talk about our violence that creates the resistance, we are talkng about how the resistance is using violence and how that means they’re bad”
Always the same answer to everything, my beloved dictator/political system/whatever is not really terrible, because I can point to something even worse
Do you see all violence as divorced from other violence?
Let’s see, “colonials are not as terrible, because what the Nazis did, and Jews were white people” Same as your reasoning.
The Nazis were a colonial power, Jesus Christ, Mary, and Joseph, did you learn nothing about fascism in school?
By the holocaust Germany lost all their colonies, after WW1, so again, I don’t how this is related here. Jews were living within Germany for centuries. And the point was it doesn’t matter in relation to other attrocities.
Russia was also a colonial power, and one of the last which is still one, ask a Yakut guy or someone from the northern Caucasus. So it should be also added there?
You do understand the whole fascism thing relied on getting new colonies, right? They even did the whole manifest destiny thing.
And the point was it doesn’t matter in relation to other attrocities.
The point is that they’re in the same bucket as other colonial atrocities
Russia was also a colonial power, and one of the last which is still one, ask a Yakut guy or someone from the northern Caucasus. So it should be also added there?
Weren’t you the one complaining about whataboutism? Also yes, we can view the Russian empire and the Russian federation as imperialist projects.
“Yes, the USSR performed atrocities, but the fact that the west has as well excuses that.”
It’s not like those are the only two instances of human rights violations by the USSR, and they’re infamous for lying about numbers.
Misery is not s competition. You don’t have to pick sides. There can be more than one violent authoritarian regime in the world, they can all be bad, and you can oppose all of them. There’s really no reason to defend any imperial powers.
“Yes, the USSR performed atrocities, but the fact that the west has as well excuses that.”
I don’t think that’s what Kieselguhr was trying to say.
As I see it, they are simply pointing out that, when ever the USSR does something bad the west are quick to let you know all about it and how EVIL the USSR is, but when the west does something bad or worst, they don’t seem so eager to let you know about it. It’s not that the west did something bad, it’s that they usually don’t tell you anything about it, but at happy to show the atrocities the others have committed.
But I’m not them so I guess we could ask them to clarify.
I actually support the side which is magnitudes less violent. And there is a difference between killing fascists like the Soviets did and killing anti-colonial freedom fighters but mostly civilians like the colonial powers did.
You can only oppose everyone if your opposition doesn’t actually do anything. If you’re actually affecting things your opposition of one will strengthen the other. You have to be against the US empire and for multipolarity or against multipolarity and for the US empire. There isn’t a third option.
Deeply unserious and reactionary reply. Accomplished with signature feigned stupidity to fully sidestep the point being made.
For context: these are the original lines
For whatever reason, I’ve seen fascists try to claim they are not fascists because they haven’t done anything yet or are not close to the levers of power.
The first time I saw this word being used was here on Lemmy, when I arrived during the reddit exodus. I’m not a native English speaker though.
It was used on Reddit, but not widely. Mostly by insufferable ‘enlightened centrists’ who didn’t want to engage in good faith argument.
It’s now a blanket term for “anyone left l politically left of me” used by insufferable liberals who don’t want to admit that trying to curry votes from Republicans lost them the election.
For a time it was being used to describe actual Chinese and Soviet sympathisers, but given how quiet that particular group has been after the election, I suspect it was interchangable with state sponsored bot accounts.
Exactly this! I’ve never seen the term used by anyone but liberals to taunt, attack or divert a debate.
nowadays tankie just means someone who shills for china/russia with a communist background
That’s in theory. In practice it’s only used by liberals to insult leftist when they criticise the US or liberalism.
Yet again begging liberals to understand what the word “shill” means.
Define liberal please because I don’t like being called one.
In the same way that some people will shill for billionaires or for some billionaire-owned company, aka a corporate shill. People who fail to see that (capitalist) companies are just a way to extract profit. In the same vein, some people fail to see that nation states are just instruments of power. Some are better than others in different ways of course, but I get real itchy when people jump to defend a nation at the first smidgeon of criticism. I hate nationalism.
Define liberal please because I don’t like being called one.
Liberalism is the dominant ideology of capitalism, it is a wide set of social and political views that serve capitalism through the absorption of bourgeois attitides and its primsry vehicle of political legitimacy is bourgeois democracy, like parliamentarianism. Every person living under capitalism has absorbed some liberalism, including every anarchist and communist. But those who critically engage sufficiently can shed the label because they understand the system sufficiently and work against it.
You are repeatedly exoressing a litany of thoughts rooted in unexamined liberalism. One that is usually retained by baby leftists in Western countries is racism and xenophobia. They will see the value of organized labor and social justice but cannot tie it to imperislism and fall in line with who the Capitalists tell them is their enemy
What do you think of people who say it’s hypocritical for queer people to support Palestine? Because to a socialist you sound like that when spreading imperialist pinkwashing against China.
In the same way that some people will shill for billionaires or for some billionaire-owned company, aka a corporate shill. People who fail to see that (capitalist) companies are just a way to extract profit.
A shill is someone paid to profess to have views other than their own. People shilling for a product makes sense, it is an old salesman tactic.
Who do you think is paying me to be right about China all the time?
In the same vein, some people fail to see that nation states are just instruments of power.
On the contrary, every communist that has ever existed knows this. We write about it all the time. Projecting this liberalism onto communists is just telling on yourself.
Some are better than others in different ways of course, but I get real itchy when people jump to defend a nation at the first smidgeon of criticism. I hate nationalism.
Existing in the real world as we do, your “anti-nationalism” is really just nationalism in favor of Western powers, despite your professibg to be against them. You repeat their talking points! What do you think the outcome is of uncritically repeating sinophobic or russophobic falsehoods? Why do you think we are even talking about those two countries? It is because US empire has decided to focus on them as targets of derision and marginalization.
What, exact, nationalism are you pushing back against? What is making you itchy? Because all I see are people defending China against piss-poor talking points.
You say liberalism is dominant in capitalism, you say it has a wide set of mechanisms that serve it, you say everyone in a capitalist country absorb them. You do not elaborate on what those specific mechanisms are, you just say there are mechanisms. This is not a definition of liberal. This is you telling someone liberalism exists in, and is important to, capitalism.
Liberalism is the dominant ideology of capitalism,
gonna stop reading right here since I’ve stated I’m anticapitalist and it feels like going in circles. sorry but can only answer so many of these huge comments in a day. If there’s an argument you really want me to engage with please let me know
I can only echo what @[email protected] said.
No investigation no right to speak. And yes you’re a fuckin lib.
Holy fucking shit what a coward you are. This person @[email protected] has done more in good faith to actually educate you about things no leftist should be ignorant about than you deserve. You have this tremendous opportunity to genuinely learn from someone with a wealth of knowledge and actually deepen your understanding of the world and even the ideology you claim to subscribe to, but instead you plug your ears and pretend there’s nothing to be gleaned from this generous education you’re being offered all because it conflicts with your preconceptions, your misconceptions which is cognitively uncomfortable. But that really does just come down to cowardice. I hope one day you can recognize this, recognize the importance of and necessity for self crit. If not, you’ll forever be stuck as you are, the proverbial useful idiot for the same empire you claim to wish to see an end to.
gonna stop reading right here since I’ve stated I’m anticapitalist and it feels like going in circles.
Anyone can call themselves anything. Are they always correct?
If you deigned to keep reading, condescending liberal, you would find that I explained how this works.
sorry but can only answer so many of these huge comments in a day. If there’s an argument you really want me to engage with please let me know
No. You can reply to what I said if you want to discuss this topic or you can acknowledge that you aren’t ready to discuss these things. This is not asking very much. I’m not asking you to read a book. It is about 3 average-sized paragraphs worth of text. I am not holding you to a deadline, either. But you can’t just dance around in bad faith and expect patient responses.
It’s not shilling, it’s nuance. American main stream thinking is full of lies about both China and Russia. And both conservatives and liberals HATE when people don’t fall in line.
Your second and third sentence are true. I have definitely seen plenty of shills though.
In my experience I’ve only seen the word tankie be used by leftists. Libs and conservatives don’t even know what a tankie is.
Anyone who uses the term “tankie” unironically to disparage other leftists is a lib. Anyone who uses the term ironically to make fun of those who don’t is a leftist. But you’re right, conservatives don’t know what it means, they also don’t know that they are libs as well.
Communists support the PRC as a Socialist state run by Marxist-Leninists, yes. No Communist supports the Russian Federation outright, however, only reserved, temporary, and highly critical support for Russia’s anti-US Hegemony stance, which it only adopts for its own survival and not out of any moral superiority. No Communist “shills” for the Russian Federation.
If China is a socialist state worth supporting then I’m a donkey with a laser dick :P But I’m more anarchistically inclined so different perspective.
I see your point though. What I’m saying is not that communist = tankie, on the contrary. I’m saying that tankies claim to be communists but spend all day parroting their favorite Russian or Chinese state propaganda because they believe everything else is clearly controlled by Obamna™ himself. They rarely actually talk about communism, they just roam Lemmy all day calling everybody who disagrees with them a liberal :D
The thing is that in a polarised world you support one side or the other, and the sides are the US and China. US is certainly not better deserving support than China, but liberals will call tankie anyone who support China in any way, shape or form. For a liberal it’s completely inacceptable to say that China is doing anything better than the US.
Per the origins of the term, a tankie is a communist that supported the Soviets wuelling the Hungarian 1956 uprising. It was an insult concocted by British Trotskyists, who also consider themselves communists.
The modern use of the term is just a liberal sentiment leveled against anyone that doesn’t fall neatly in line with US Empire’s vilification campaigns. If you dare to say that Russia has material motivations that are a counter to those of the US rather than being a kingdom run by a madman that just loves killing, you are a tankie. If you don’t want Ukraine used as a proxy for the US to hurt Russia, regardless of how many Ukrainians die, you are a tankie. If you treat the PRC as country filled with normal people living normal lives rather than the dystopian nightmare it’s falsely depicted as, uou are a tankie. If you know anything at all about Dengism, you are a tankie.
Really, the liberal position on both countries is premised on orientalism and it is never a surprise when the criticisms inevitably turn into vague tropes. And when this laziness is called out, well, it’s time to deploy a tactical tankie reference. I definitely don’t care about being insulted, these situations are really just a way for the other person to give themselves an excuse to stop thinking or engaging.
Those are some valid arguments actually. I guess some people do throw the term around too liberally (heh).
I’m very critical of American imperialism but I fail to see how the US is using Ukraine to hurt Russia.
The fault always lies with the invader, Russia did this to itself. If I see someone getting stabbed and throw him a knife, implying I’m using him to hurt the other person attacking him is silly. Russia can leave anytime.
I do agree tankie is thrown around far too much, I’ve been called one myself just for talking shit of the military, even though I never mentioned an other country or a political idealogie.
The spread of the word as well as the constant villainization of China seems like prep for red scare 2.0, so we can have the population support bombing villages full of civilians (again).
I’m very critical of American imperialism but I fail to see how the US is using Ukraine to hurt Russia.
The US and its proxies have constantly escalated using Ukraine as a proxy for over a decade and since the war started they have continued this pattern. There is no path to victory for Ukraine. If the RF wanted to end it they could run mass bombing campaigns like NATO members do. They are making the opposite calculation: that the status quo of a military meat grinder for Ukraine is better for the RF. Given that one of their goals is a demilitarized Ukraine, there is some logic to this idea.
It has been painfully obvious that Ukraine cannot win from the beginning. Nobody trying to escalate, provide Wunderwaffe, etc really things Ukraine will win, that is just not what any serious person thinks. This is also why there is such an intense and absurd propaganda campaign to say that Russia is losing more people and equipment, with the source nearly always being Azov Batallion, the UA MoD, or a combination of the two. They need to sell the public on the idea that Ukraine just needs your support and dang it they mogjt pull this thing off!
So then, if UA can’t win and the heads of state know they can’t win, what is their logic? What is the angle on who benefits? Well, the singular common thread of brinksmanship with Ukraine as proxy has always been to try anf peel Europe away from economic integration with Russia and to instead keep it in the EU bubble, with more American integration. And, lo and behold, look at how Europe has destroyed its own industry and made itself even more dependent on the US. This has the added effect of isolating Russia from Europe. While Europe still buys their fossil fuels from Russia, trade overall is way down.
In addition, there is the simple calculus that it requires manpower and productive capacity to wage war, capacity that could be directed elsewhere. Iran would likely have more and better air defense systems if Russia weren’t focused on Ukraine.
At no point does the suffering of the Ukrainian people enter the equation. There are no anti-war voices on the mainstream media about this aside from self-serving right wing “this is not our problem” rhetoric.
The fault always lies with the invader, Russia did this to itself. If I see someone getting stabbed and throw him a knife, implying I’m using him to hurt the other person attacking him is silly. Russia can leave anytime.
There are few countries thst tolerate a civil war on their border targeting the ethnicity of your own country, let alone an encroachment of the primary aggressor military force around the world couping them, let alone that neighbor remilitarizing despite agreements and not honoring their agreements. This is geopolitics, not a bar fight. War does not occur in a vacuum, it has a material basis. One does not need to justify war in order to understand that this did not occur in a vacuum and there is blame to go around.
I do agree tankie is thrown around far too much, I’ve been called one myself just for talking shit of the military, even though I never mentioned an other country or a political idealogie.
Yeah it’s really just a way for national chauvinist liberals to quiet their own cognitive dissonance. I also think it’s extra funny when a Trotskyist gets called tankie, since they invented the epithet.
The spread of the word as well as the constant villainization of China seems like prep for red scare 2.0, so we can have the population support bombing villages full of civilians (again).
Yes the US is trying to decouple on its own terms. Its constant attempts to provoke the PRC with Taiwan is also similar to what they did to Ukraine. To have the consent of their population to sacrifice their own well-being and justify whatever military action might occur, they will needs to be more racist and xenophobic towards China. It may not be Taiwan. It might be Korea or Myanmar. But constant escalation and provocation is the US game. Maximalist, relentless foreign policy pushing towards war and death.
Russia entered a conflict that was already in progress, a civil war where the Ukrainian coup government was attempting to ethnically cleanse the Russian speaking population in the east. This coup was orchestrated by the US (this was obvious, admitted to in recorded phone calls, and was rife with high US politicians (John McCaine for example) going there to celebrate. The US/NATO also funded the training and arming of openly neo-nazi militias like Azov Battalion, (and others) many of whom were the ones shelling the people in the East long before Russia intervened. All of this was done by the US to exert pressure on Russia. And this is just scratching the surface. So no, Russia did not “do this to itself” and your framing of it is naive and simplistic and just plain false.
I am genuinely glad to see you reognize the villainization of China, but please also apply those same critical thinking skills to what you have been told about Russia in the Ukraine conflict and do some digging into the history that doesn’t rely on western propaganda.
Do you have any links?
Has the thought ever occur to you, that maybe Russia can just leave Ukraine be? Just maybe another country that is resisting wants to keep it’s sovereignty? Maybe the Tankie word is for people that fails to have any critical thought?
The Russian Federation did leave Ukraine be. It was only after Western meddling, a coup, a civil war, not implementing agreements, toying with NATO membership, and resuming a civilian shelling campaign that the RF invaded.
The imperial core Western powers poked and prodded and used Ukraine as a pawn until the RF hit its limit.
Given that you likely live in one of the countries doing the relentless escalation, why not work against them doing so?
This is the reality of language.
Both definitions are now correct. The change isn’t a fight you can win.The reality of language is that people like op rely on the negative connotation of the definition I just gave.
Imagine of they just said, “advocating for” instead. Wouldn’t have the same impact, right?
Yup.
You say that like it’s mutually exclusive. Nobody gets to choose how other people use language. Definitions are whatever people agree that they are, even if you’re not one of the people who agrees with it.
You can dislike that definition of tankie all you want, the fact that they used it in this way and that you understood it means that it was used correctly.The evolution of language may hurt people, but denying the reality of evolving language hurts nobody but yourself. The etymology and history is good to know (and the meme relies on it), but the new definition is still a correct alternate definition.
Oh I misunderstood and thought we were talking about a different word. This makes this discussion even sillier.
You say that like it’s mutually exclusive. Nobody gets to choose how other people use language. Definitions are whatever people agree that they are, even if you’re not one of the people who agrees with it.\
How do people agree what they are without telling other people their meaning explicitly or implicitly? What about people that intentionally misuse language to deceive? What about language that is self-descriptive due to selective use?
I’m aware of prescriptivism vs descriptionism but this conversation isn’t actually about that. In fact, I am already following a descriptivist line of reasoning, if you will review my earlier comment. I am saying how tankie is used nowadays.
You can dislike that definition of tankie all you want
What definition? Which one do I dislike? I don’t know what you’re talking about.
the fact that they used it in this way and that you understood it means that it was used correctly.
The way I understood it is, “anyone defending a target of US empire in any way from the left that I would like to stop listening to before my brain breaks”. Seems spot-on to me.
The evolution of language may hurt people, but denying the reality of evolving language hurts nobody but yourself. The etymology and history is good to know (and the meme relies on it), but the new definition is still a correct alternate definition.
What on earth do you think you’re replying to?
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anarchistically
True anarchist stance is when your geopolitical opinions about the US’s rivals coincidentally align perfectly with that of the US State Department. It’s always the other side that is propagandized.
Stop with the strawmen. When did I say I agree with US propaganda? When did I say that I consider myself on the same side as the US?
tankies claim to be communists but spend all day parroting their favorite Russian or Chinese state propaganda
Tell us how these “tankies” are “parroting” propaganda and we’ll tell you exactly how your geopolitical opinions align with the US State Dept.
When did I say I agree with US propaganda?
For starters, right here where you showed your whole ass and said: “If China is a socialist state worth supporting then I’m a donkey with a laser dick”
You do seem to be quite a donkey but clearly it’s just overconfident false advertisement about the laser.
If China is so great then why does it feel the need to dictate over Hong Kong and Taiwan? Does China have gay marriage? Trans rights perhaps?
I’m not saying China is as bad as the West claims it is. I’m just saying it’s not something to get wild about. It’s a nation state (a far too big one at that), which are by definition tools of oppression.
If China is so great
Are we having a discussion of geopolitics or a schoolyard gossip fight?
then why does it feel the need to dictate over Hong Kong
Why do you have strong opinions about this topic when you clearly do not know any history about China?
China, more specifically the Qing Dynasty, was colonized (mostly by the British) through a series of imperialist ventures thst included the Opium Wars. The result was the designation of Hong Kong, already an existing Chinese city, as a British imperial trade hub where resources and wealth extracted from the rest of the country was traded, as well as later serving as a finsncial hub for the rest of the imperialized region. But, to put it simply, the British stole Hong Kong in 1841-1843.
When China threw off all of its imperial masters in its national liberation fight against the Japanese, it then had a civil war due to the KMT attacking the communists. Obviously, the communists won. As part of this, they reclaimed Hong Kong just a little over 100 years after it was stolen, but using the legal definition that had been imposed by the British, who had given themselves a 100-year lease that ended in 1997.
Hong Kong is a Chinese city that was colonized by the British and is being reintegrated, as yiu would expect from a sovereign country. You claimed elsewhere that you are against Western hegemony, but this is a crystal clear example of anticolonial action and you’re siding with the colonists that write breathless propaganda about how unfair it is that China is governing a Chinese city.
and Taiwan
Again, just basic history. When the communists were reconsolidating their country, they were also expelling KMT forces. At the end, the KMT looted wealth and cultural artifacts and fled to Taiwan, where they set up a military dictatorship and began oppressing the indigenous people there. The PRC was set to invade Taiwan and finish their civil war, but the US set up a blockade and the PRC opted to vow a later return rather than force the Americans out. The first question you should have is why the US was meddling in their civil war.
Both the PRC and the KMT have long held that the civil war has never ended, with the PRC claiming Taiwan and the KMT claiming all of msinlsnd China and also Mongolia. The PRC holds a consistent line of reunification being the end goal.
The US uses Taiwan to harass the PRC and wants to use it to escalate tensions. It may even try to turn it into another Ukraine, doing everything it can to push China over red lines militarily until it finally decides that Taiwan is an intolerable threat just a few miles off its coast and very close to Shenzhen. If that happened, would you yet again go after the target if US imperialism like your masters tell you to, calling it an unprovoked aggression? Would you have new names for people that correctly blame the US for using their proxies as puppets to harass other nations? The US is already trying to derisk from Taiwan by exportinh its chip production facilities but it isn’t going well because the US is so finsncislized that it can’t barely build productive capacity at even 10X the cost of elsewhere.
Does China have gay marriage?
This is another example of why someone would call you a liberal. Pinkwashing imperialist takes. What is your logic on what is permitted to be done to other countries if they don’t have a legal recognition of gay marriage? On what basis do other cultures need to mirror your own preferences in order for them to be free of your chauvinism? Any real county will have reactionary elements, some old, some new. Your country, and you, have reactionary elements.
There is a populsr struggle for gay marriage in China and it is going pretty well. It is mostly jist old people who are against it. You should exoect to see it legalized in the next decade or so. But you will have had nothing to do with thst, as your contribution here is to sneer at the entire country for not doing what this Westerner baby leftist demands.
Incidentally, if the CPC did force through legalized gay marriage and it elicited some negative response, like protests, you can be certain this would be characterized as an authoritarian overreach and how dare they disregard the will of the people. Some “socialists”, huh!?
Trans rights perhaps?
China has better trans rights than your country, most likely. It has less transphobia to begin with, had major out and truly popular trans celebrities before the US did, and provides gender-affirming care of all kinds in a way that is truly accessible for the vast majority of people. Compare this to the US where trans kids are often exiled by their families and given no support, leading to high rates of homelessness, hard drug use, and death.
China does not have the same culture wars as the US, it doesn’t have the same need for capital to create and maintain marginalization to distract from material decline. China is materially advancing and ending extreme poverty.
I’m not saying China is as bad as the West claims it is. I’m just saying it’s not something to get wild about.
But you don’t seem to know anything about China. Why have an opinion at all? Why not hold your tongue until you have done some reading or talked nicely to Chinese people?
It’s a nation state (a far too big one at that), which are by definition tools of oppression.
Sure, but what of it? Do you think we are in a position to have a societu free of oppression, including nation states? With you and whose army?
Socialists must build revolution in the real world, with what is materially in front of us. Tell us how you would, say, end China’s status as a nation state without it just getting immediately recolonized, probably by the country in which you live, work, and to which you contribute.
The nuances of the PRC’s desire for a One China policy largely stem from the Marxist theory of Nations, along with a desire to throw off all western colonizers. Without understanding the depths of the “century of humiliation” you can’t hope to understand the desire for a unified China.
Secondly, the PRC’s process means social change comes slowly, but it has been improving. Notably, Xin Jing, a transgender woman, is one of China’s top celebrities. Change is slow, but is happening at different rates across different sections of the PRC. Social change comes from improvements in productive forces and focusing on people as a priority.
Thirdly, nobody is saying the PRC is Anarchist, but your insistence that everyone agree with you saying the government is by definition a tool of oppression despite 90%+ approval rates stands at direct odds with the people themselves. Like it or not, you must face the reality that it is Marxism that has brought great improvements to China’s conditions, and these improvements are continuing at a rapid pace, and thus has widespread support.
If China is so great then why does it feel the need to dictate over Hong Kong and Taiwan?
It doesn’t. Taiwan and Hong Kong ARE China. If anything the high level of autonomy that China allows reactionary regional governments to have is what should be criticized.
Does China have gay marriage? Trans rights perhaps?
China allows for civil unions for LGBTQ. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1162943.shtml It made civil unions legal across the nation before USA made gay marriage legal in every state. Like all places in the world (some more than others) China has a long way to go on LGBTQ rights. But that’s just it, China is improving along those lines, while the US is rapidly regressing. China is improving with trans rights and has been punishing companies that violate them. So yes, we should absolutely support China in continuing to move in the correct direction.
It’s a nation state (a far too big one at that), which are by definition tools of oppression.
Lol, by whose definition? A state is only as good or bad as the ruling class that wields it. A bourgeois (capitalist) state will always be oppressive. As a socialist state (and China is a socialist state), the CPC uses its power to suppress the constant attempts of the bourgeois to oppress the working class.
Alright, please elaborate on your critical stance on China that is different from what is mainstream in US politics & journalism.
That is the dumbest argument ever. Hitler liked dogs, liking dogs doesn’t make you a nazi. That’s not to say I agree with the US stance on China, but why would this even matter
again, do some self crit
the point was that many anarchists are indistinguishable from centrists when it comes to actual geopolitical issues, because they have internalized western propaganda about the West’s rivals
propaganda is not just lies (though some of it is actual lies), but emphasis
nothing you’ve written in this thread is a genuine engagement with people who try to refute western propaganda about the west’s rivals, and you’ve written nothing that would indicate that you’re not a liberal who just likes anarchist aesthetics with a vague handwavy criticism of “nation states”
The conversation around China will take a minute, so I’ll skip ahead to your second paragraph and circle back to do your statement justice.
The people you describe as “tankies” do not exist in any reasonable number. You are extending a belief in some aspects of anti-western sources as full blind dogmatism. Secondly, in order to even consider oneself a Communist in a western-dominated website means exposure to constant western-narrative, the idea that eastern propaganda is much more effective is more of a smokescreen to avoid discussing hard topics than anything else.
As for the PRC, they absolutely aren’t Anarchist. They are, however, Marxist-Leninist, and Socialist. They have a Socialist Market Economy. Their Public Sector has supremacy over the direction of the Private Sector as key heavy industries the Private Sector relies on are entirely State Owned, and the Private Sector itself is trapped in a “birdcage model” whereby the CPC increases ownership and control as Markets naturally form monopolist syndicates.
This is entirely in line with Marxism. Marxists believe that markets naturally centralize and form monopolist syndicates ripe for central planning, and thus are more efficient vectors for growth at earlier stages in development, but that as they centralize this becomes less efficient and public ownership and central planning takes priority.
I recommend the article Socialism Developed China, Not Capitalism.
The people I’m describing as tankies are people I’ve interacted with myself. I’m sure they don’t exist in huge numbers, but they are more concentrated on .ml, they are loud, and they are impossible to converse with. I still like it here because most people here, like yourself, are smart and offering interesting perspectives I haven’t explored before.
I agree that the idea of only Eastern propaganda being dangerous and pervasive is wrong. Western propaganda is everywhere too and also dangerous.
One thing that is different is the lack of government-critical sources available from China, also Russia. Freedom of Speech in the West is wobbly, but in China and especially Russia it is even worse (from everything I’ve read).
This is a lovely segue into our China sidequest, and while I agree on the definition, I have doubts on how public the public sector really is. The way that national election results look and the way vocal dissidents or political opposition are treated does not give me the idea that the people truly have all the power here.
Capitalism concentrates power in the capitalist class. This class can then subvert democracy, resulting in oligarchy. In a similar way, central planning concentrates power in the central government, which actually makes it even easier to abuse that power. Chinese government is not transparent nor federal enough for me to call it democratic or owned by the people.
One thing that is different is the lack of government-critical sources available from China, also Russia. Freedom of Speech in the West is wobbly, but in China and especially Russia it is even worse (from everything I’ve read).
What have you read?
Your freedom of speech is tolerated in the West to the extent thst it doesn’t threaten ruling class interests. The ruling class already owns all of the papers and TV channels and think tanks, they drown you out. You can never hope to push socialism through their apparatus. That is how effective their cemsorship already is: you’re told you have freedom of speech and then deplatformed. If you get a little louder, you might get a platform on occasion, but will then will still be drowned out by “competing” views.
And if you fly too close to the sun, you will get direct government censorship. Ask Germany how “free speech” is going with regards yup Palestinian solidariry. Ask comrades in the US how free speech is going with Samidoun declared a terrorist orgsnization. Ask a former Black Panther for free their speech was while being soued on snd martyred by the feds and cops.
If you actually do anything that matters, if you truly challenge the ruling powers in the West, you will need to be realistic and expect oppression. The idea that you have free speech is just pure propaganda.
Re: China go on Weibo you will find plenty of criticism of the government. The idea that you can’t criticize the government in China is xenophoboc propaganda.
Re: Russia: okay, but what is your point? There are bad things that happen in Russia so… their role against US imperialism is bad? Because that tends to be the only thing supported by “tankies”. The Russian Federation is a capitalist project created by capitalist revanchist shock therapy on the USSR that killed 7-10 million people. The West created the RF, its “oligarchs” are hust centralized capitalists like in othet countries in Europe, except the West continued to exclude Russia from the imperisl core, attempting to force it into the periphery (extraction snd poverty). What you see today is a regional capitalist power that is respinding to that. One where the national bourgeoisie are dominant rather than the international bourgeoisie, due to circumstances imposef on them. As a consequence, they often align against Western imperislism.
This is a lovely segue into our China sidequest, and while I agree on the definition, I have doubts on how public the public sector really is. The way that national election results look and the way vocal dissidents or political opposition are treated does not give me the idea that the people truly have all the power here.
Which is to say, you don’t actually know anything about it. Public means state-owned, by the way. Do you believe they aren’t actually owned by the state?
Capitalism concentrates power in the capitalist class. This class can then subvert democracy, resulting in oligarchy.
This has the false premise that the historical course of capitalism is to enter spaces that were already “democratic” in the bourgeois democratic sense. This is not true. Instead, capitalism itself gained power through the replacement of feudalistic giverning powers (like monarchies) with structures they could control, compatible with their ideas of “progress”. In short, they created bourgeous democracy. They were already in control. The question of concentration of capital changes the words but not the fact of who is in control.
In a similar way, central planning concentrates power in the central government, which actually makes it even easier to abuse that power.
In countries run by socialists, central planning is an exercise of power that already exists. The power is maintained through the oppression of competing classes and, traditionally, party bureaucracy.
I don’t know what it could possibly mean to say it is “easier to abuse that power”, it is so vague and decontextualized thst it just sounds like something you’re makinh up on the spot. Socialists endeavour to speak in terms of concrete realities and draw conclusions from them. What is your standard of abuse? Of power? How are you comparing these things?
btw central planning is not unique to countries run by socialists. Highly concentrated capitalism also has central planning aspects, as do their governments in times of emergency. But it is, in that case, central planning for bourgeois interests.
Chinese government is not transparent
How so? Tell me how the Chinese system works for, say, someone working to get a hospital built in their town.
nor federal enough
This sounds like America-centrism. There is nothing inherently democratic about federalism and it is often antidemocratic. If you are in the US, do you applaud the electoral college?
for me to call it democratic or owned by the people.
Tell me which other peripheral countries hsve done so much for their people. Tell me who has alleviated so much poverty, built so much infrastructure, and by their own hand rather than imperialism and capitalist ventures. The proof is in the doing.
I’m genuinely apologizing because I’m only skimming this as I’m getting sleepy. and it’s a lot to go through. I can tell you took effort so apologies.
Re: West also bad, at times worse
I know and I agree!
btw central planning is not unique to countries run by socialists. Highly concentrated capitalism also has central planning aspects, as do their governments in times of emergency. But it is, in that case, central planning for bourgeois interests.
And in the case of China, it is for CCP interests. Holding elections every now and then doesn’t translate to the dictatorship of the proletariat as envisioned. By that logic, US democracy would be a dictatorship of the proletariat as well, since they hold elections every now and then.
This sounds like America-centrism
I do not consider america really federal, since there is massive power concentrated at the top. Same for other “federal” states like Germany
I’m genuinely apologizing because I’m only skimming this as I’m getting sleepy. and it’s a lot to go through. I can tell you took effort so apologies.
No worries, I am not holding you to a schedule. Please take any amount of time to reply. I also won’t take it personally if you don’t reply.
It actually isn’t much effort, I am very fast at writing.
Re: West also bad, at times worse
I know and I agree!
Well that isn’t what I said, though. What I said about the West is that there is addressing the false perception of greater “free speech” in the West, which is, again, largely just chauvinism. You do not enjoy greater speech, you are just such a non-entity in terms of threatening the ruling interests. This is because those ruling interests keep you, along with the wider public, weak, docile, and hating their same enemies.
I am also highlighting the ruling interests, not the government. This is because in these places with allegedly more “free speech”, international capital is dominant and has control over your everyday lives. It controls whether you can house and feed yourself and it censors on a constant basis. Restricting yourself solely to government censorship is a rhetorical trick used by capitalists to pretend that corporate control over life doesn’t count as oppression. Where is the comparison to private censorship, where the “free press” is actually a corporate-censored press? Have you done a comparison between the accuracy of claims from the SCMP and NYT? Just pick Palestine, see how it serves you.
And in the case of China, it is for CCP interests. Holding elections every now and then doesn’t translate to the dictatorship of the proletariat as envisioned.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is not specified as anything other than the proletarian class oppressing the bourgeois class because they gained power through revolution. The PRC regularly executes billionaires and uniquely reroutes funds to its people, and its poorest, to build material well-being for all, not just the richest, and certainly not just the higher-ups in the party.
By that logic, US democracy would be a dictatorship of the proletariat as well, since they hold elections every now and then.
The dictatorship of the proletariat does not have any governing structure specified whatsoever. It is something predicted by Marx to have certain attributes that are more about political economics, like using monopoly industry that is already centrally planned and wielding it for the good of the proletarians. Something that China has often done and is the explicit communist logic behind their conveyor belt strategy for requiring companies to have more party and government participation as they grow larger and more monopolistic.
I do not consider america really federal, since there is massive power concentrated at the top. Same for other “federal” states like Germany
Then I have no idea what your meaning is.
One thing that is different is the lack of government-critical sources available from China, also Russia.
Do you speak Chinese or Russian?
No, and that’s a good point actually. Although I think the state of political opposition both in Russia and China speaks volumes.
This might be a hard pill to swallow, but Putin is largely popular among Russians for assisting with throwing out the Western Capitalists that bought the various slices of the former USSR after “Shock Doctrine” killed 7 million people with the re-introduction of Capitalism, and the CPC has an over 90% approval rate. Political opposition is largely limited because both governments have more support among their citizenry than Western governments do.
I appreciate you calling me smart and trying to have a conversation, however I want to stress something you said:
I’m saying that tankies claim to be communists but spend all day parroting their favorite Russian or Chinese state propaganda because they believe everything else is clearly controlled by Obamna™ himself. They rarely actually talk about communism, they just roam Lemmy all day calling everybody who disagrees with them a liberal :D
What you are seeing is one aspect of people, and moreover the ones with “favorite state propaganda” that distrust all western sources as liberal propaganda don’t exist. Even just seeing people debating endlessly on Lemmy.ml is just one aspect, people frequently have different accounts or discuss Communism on different threads than the ones they get into debates in.
Additionally, I encourage you to look beyond the western veil. There are plenty of Russia-critical sources and China-critical sources in the east.
With respect to China, I encourage you to look into processes like Whole Process People’s Democracy, State Owned Enterprises, and other aspects to see how Socialism with Chinese Characteristics works. I encourage you to read the article I linked, as well. Additionally, while I know you said you are an Anarchist, your point on centralization being a bad thing goes directly against Marxist understanding. I recommend the article Why Public Property?
Capitalism concentrates itself and centralizes, which prepares the productive forces for the mechanisms required to centerally plan them after folding them into the Public Sector. Central Planning is the only way to truly democratize production in the eyes of Marxists.
It’s always hilarious to see how the most ignorant libs are always the most confident. You might as well believe you’re a donkey with a laser dick as it makes as much sense as everything else you believe.
hehe Yogthos I was actually thinking of you when I mentioned China stans :P no offense
I really don’t like being called a liberal though :( what makes me come across like a liberal? Is it my anarchism? My hatred of capitalism, colonialism and western hegemony?
It is your repetition of radlib talking points to punch left.
Anarchists are liberals who like LARPing as leftists. You share the same ideology and focus on individualism above all else.
Okay we might have a different definition of liberal. (ironically under a post where I’m arguing about the definition of tankie lol). I’m talking about people who think capitalism can work or can be made to work. People who conflate capitalism and the fake meritocracy sold by the American dream with actual freedom.
If liberal just means somebody who believes that freedom is important, then yeah I’m a liberal. But maybe you have a different definition? (genuinely asking, not trying to be standoffish)
You have a misconception about anarchism being about individualism though. Anarchists focus on community and communes. Most anarchist theory I’ve consumed laments the individualism that capitalism tries to sell because it destroys culture and community.
Liberalism is fundamentally an ideology of private property ownership and that’s why it always inevitably devolved into fascism in times of crisis.
Therefore, whenever economic liberalism finds itself under threat from “populism”, it quickly jettisons the principles of political liberalism to which it is theoretically tied.
In other words, these “principles” are not principles at all, just convenient postures designed to cloak the unpleasant reality of the economic liberals’ capitalist system.
https://orgrad.wordpress.com/articles/liberalism-the-two-faced-tyranny-of-wealth/
Anarchists talk a lot about community, but reject actual practical way to organize communally and combat capitalism. And the argument for rejecting practical means is that these approaches restrict individual freedoms. Anarchists place their individual freedom above collective good, and thus align with liberal capitalists in action.
I’m curious, where do you think so many westerners are exposed to Russian propaganda? Because there are apparently so many victims of it these days, can’t turn a corner without someone decrying all these damn Russian and Chinese shill everywhere. So where do we all come from? What exactly did we get exposed to? I know this is the part where you handwave the question away with a “Heh, they got exposed to devious foreign thought on the freaking internet
” but I’m not letting you off that easy. Tell me what you think the actual specific vectors are for all this “Russian and Chinese propaganda” you see everywhere, and how it was apparently able to easily penetrate the absolute haze of American propaganda that all of us in “the west” have been force fed our entire lives.Please account for this gaping hole in your social theory. Why so many tankies, how, and why only now?
Funny, I was just telling @Cowbee about how the tankies I see on here are insufferable & impossible to converse with.
But I’ll bite. First of all, I don’t appreciate the strawmen. I’m not saying that there is a lot of tankies, nor that they are here now suddenly. I’m not denying that US/Western propaganda doesn’t exist, nor that it’s dangerous and pervasive.
I’m just saying that I, myself, in my own experience, have seen people shilling for China or even Russia, acting like it’s a fucking utopia. Russia an oligarchy, just with a different structure than most Western countries. China is a government that rules over billions of people. That is, by definition, evil. No amount of America Bad makes China or Russia good.
In terms of propaganda sources, for example just take a look at Russia Today.
Funny, I was just telling @Cowbee about how the tankies I see on here are insufferable & impossible to converse with.
I would say the people here are being very patient with you, as you are spreading xenophobic views out of ignorance and recycled imperialist think tank talking points while also being condescending. You don’t get pushback on that by liberals because they agree with you but anyone on the left would be embarrassed to be associated with it.
The appropriate response for someone not generously giving you their time would be to call you, among other things, a liberal and then go on with their day.
But I’ll bite. First of all, I don’t appreciate the strawmen. I’m not saying that there is a lot of tankies, nor that they are here now suddenly
Liberals suddenly learned the word tankie. Why do you think that is? Rather than a straw man, I understood this as a fact we could all accept.
I’m just saying that I, myself, in my own experience, have seen people shilling for China or even Russia, acting like it’s a fucking utopia.
What tankies have you seen that treat Russia like a utopia? What tankies have you seen that treat China like a utopia? I think you are just revealing your owm straw men, and all you have seen is people appreciating asoects of either country. And by the magic of chauvinism, any praise for any aspect of “the enemy” is an uncritical endorsement. Liberals going down this path will often throw in some homophobic ibsults about Putin or Xi.
Russia an oligarchy, just with a different structure than most Western countries.
Russia is capitalist. It is only called an oligarchy because Westerners are racist towards them and need different words for the same thing when the Slavic brainpan does it. This is you uncritically absorbing that racism. They control our thoughts through language, framings, and what is discussed vs. not discussed.
China is a government that rules over billions of people. That is, by definition, evil.
It obviously is not.
No amount of America Bad makes China or Russia good.
America Bad both describes the position of the US as the globsl seat of capital and imperislist power and is intended to get people like yourself to have sone persoective, as you are deeply propagandized towards America-centrism.
In terms of propaganda sources, for example just take a look at Russia Today.
RT is, generally speaking, more reliable that the NYT. So what of it?
Again apologies for skimming, you are writing a lot.
I would say the people here are being very patient with you
I agree
Russia is capitalist. It is only called an oligarchy because
You misunderstood me. I’m saying that the US is an oligarchy as well.
you are spreading xenophobic views out of ignorance and recycled imperialist think tank talking points while also being condescending
the first part is your opinion, and the second part is not true. I’m not being condescending, and I’m being equally patient replying to people who are just trolling
RT is, generally speaking, more reliable that the NYT
If you have to compare RT to the NYT, that says more than enough
You misunderstood me. I’m saying that the US is an oligarchy as well.
Every capitalist country is an oligarchy. The term is used selectively for Russia, and you have specifically focused on its use re: Russia in this discussion.
the first part is your opinion
My correct opinion. Do you believe you are the first baby leftist I’ve come across that harbors these kinds of views? I am always part of the political education group in any org I am in. We have to root people out who are very confident in their chauvinism and isolate them from the others in some way, as they are very disruptive on top of being wrong. This is also why various baby-leftist-only spaces are so completely useless, they spend their time chasing phantoms and fighting people that do good work. This is also why the feds have historically supported Trotskyists and certain anarchist formations.
and the second part is not true.
It is true, I know where these claims come from. I recognize them.
I’m not being condescending, and I’m being equally patient replying to people who are just trolling
You are repeatedly broad-brushing “tankies” with bullshit and placing yourself in a position to argue with others despite clearly not doing the work of learning about the topic first. A cool guy once said, “no investigation, no right to speak”.
If you have to compare RT to the NYT, that says more than enough
I don’t know what that means.
China is a government that rules over billions of people. That is, by definition, evil.
Funny how 95% of the Chinese population approves of and rates favorably this terrible “ruling over” they are being subjected to.
New theory just dropped, everyone: The more people a government represents, the more evil that government is.
New theory just dropped, everyone: The more people a government represents, the more evil that government is.
lmao. I unironically believe this though. The more you concentrate power, the harder it is to keep bad actors from abusing said power.
Funny how 95% of the Chinese population approves of and rates favorably this terrible “ruling over” they are being subjected to.
Most Americans approve of capitalism. Does that make it good too?
lmao. I unironically believe this though.
The more you concentrate power, the harder it is to keep bad actors from abusing said power.
What makes you think the power over those billion+ people is all “concentrated”? Could it be (gasp!) that the power is largely distributed among those people who overwhelmingly support that government? This is just capitalist-realism-brained misunderstanding of how communist parties work.
Most Americans approve of capitalism. Does that make it good too?
No, but that’s certainly not what makes it bad.
Most Americans approve of capitalism. Does that make it good too?
because “capitalism” and “communism” are loaded words
consider this though:
A year before the presidential election, three-quarters of Americans (76%) believe the country is headed in the wrong direction and the leading Democratic and Republican candidates are viewed broadly unfavorably, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll. Only 23% of Americans think the country is headed in the right direction.
When asked whether things in their country are heading in the right direction, or are they off on the wrong track, 90 percent of the respondents from China taking part in this Ipsos survey said they were heading in the right direction.
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Nobody believes Russia is a Utopia.
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Nobody believes the PRC is perfect, but on the right track, and especially nice in Tier 1 and 2 cities.
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The CPC has over 90% support, the fact that China has a government does not mean that is “evil.”
90% support makes the whole thing more suspicious to me than anything.
I’m sure a lot of the policy that the CCP has put forward are great, especially if compared to the US counterparts, but that doesn’t justify violence and oppression.
90% support makes the whole thing more suspicious to me than anything.
True democracy is when a president has a 37% approval rating.
Alright I’m just joshing with you, but since you’re an anarchist you do agree with me on the following, right?
- The Western hegemony is dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. It suppresses voices that dissent from neoliberal dogmas and the military brinkmanship of NATO. It often violently clamps down grassroots movements like BLM or the Free Palestine protests. The Western parliaments consist of different flavours of neoliberalism, neoconservatism and fascism, and not a real representation of an actual “marketplace of ideas”, just a theatre of so-called politics.
Why does it make you suspicious? Do you have legitimate grounds for this? Under the CPC, extreme poverty has been eliminated, and China went from being one of the poorest countries on the planet to a rising superpower in less than a century. When you look at the real, material change in people’s lives in as short a timespan as this, it’s understandable why they have a high approval rate.
Secondly, I don’t know what you’re referring to as “justification for violence and oppression.”
Widespread public support for a government is alien to the mind of the liberal
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acting like it’s a fucking utopia.
I don’t appreciate the strawmen.
China is a government that rules over billions of people. That is, by definition, evil.
Wait what? You’d prefer to Balkanize China into a several million anarchist direct democracy communes? Or what? How would that work in 2024?
You’re implying that I’m the one setting up a strawman by claiming that people are acting a certain way. This is from my personal experience. I’m not accusing you or everyone here of being a tankie but it seems like everybody here identifies as one. Maybe we have a different definition of the word. I was trying to clarify my definition.
You’d prefer to Balkanize China into a several million anarchist direct democracy communes? Or what? How would that work in 2024?
No, and I don’t think any smart anarchist is advocating for some crazy revolution involving a coup or whatever. I advocate for building strong local communities, that are heavily interconnected. “Communes” as such are kind of impossible since most people live in cities anyway. We need to build resilient networks that can slowly replace oppressive centralized power. Personally I also don’t subscribe to only 100% anarchism, my ideology is also influenced by socialism, syndicalism and marxism.
We need to build resilient networks that can slowly replace oppressive centralized power.
hmm, maybe a truly massive party with many cadres around the country? perhaps? maybe?
I advocate for building strong local communities, that are heavily interconnected.
Are you 100% sure there’s nothing like this in China?
so how to do this neat leftcom kind of stuff, without some kind of centralization, when also you simultaneously need to
- modernize your country, literally everything from agriculture, to healthcare and heavy industry and so on
- defend yourself from antagonistic countries
- defend yourself from giant multinational corpos who’d jump at the chance to plunder your resources
- defend yourself from fascist/monarchist elements inside your country
I mean in actual practice in a real historical scenario?
In terms of propaganda sources, for example just take a look at Russia Today.
You think Russia Today accounts for the massive worldwide upswell in communist and anti-imperialist sentiment over the last few years
My guy, you clearly just listed the first Russian news outlet you could think of. In the very last sentence too, after like a paragraph of tangential whining, as if anybody asked. It’s such a transparent attempt to bait my attention away from your inability to defend your dumbass theory, and then you top it off with “uhh anyway, millions of people around the world suddenly got hooked on Russia Today.” Deeply unserious. I assume you can pull up google trends and verify this massive spike in readership, right?
Yeah man, it’s not the warmongering, the lies, the genocide, the complete capitalist destruction of any social fabric, hope for the future, international peace or survivable environment. It’s just the sinister Chinese and die Russich swine working to sow dissent among us freedom loving people.
You are a dipshit, a liberal, and a useful idiot for fascism, but I repeat myself. One thing you are currently not is any kind of leftist.
You think Russia Today accounts for the massive worldwide upswell in communist and anti-imperialist sentiment over the last few years
No? When did I say that? You seem to think I’m calling everybody here a tankie (or my definition thereof). I’m not.
as if anybody asked.
I was literally asked
Yeah man, it’s not the warmongering, the lies, the genocide, the complete capitalist destruction of any social fabric, hope for the future, international peace or survivable environment. It’s just the sinister Chinese and die Russich swine working to sow dissent among us
Jesus Christ I cannot make this any more clear, I am not saying that China or Russia are the top threats and that we need to save liberal democracy lmao. I criticize China, you immediately assume that I’m a liberal and your enemy. You argue in bad faith, pellet me with strawmen and make 100 assumptions about what you think my opinions are. Which is exactly the kind of behavior I’m talking about.
At least most of the other people replying to my comment were interesting to speak to and argued in good faith. I might learn something from them. I won’t learn anything from you and you aren’t interested in learning anything from me.
You have proven my point :)
Weird way to say has at least modicum of understanding of geopolitics and doesn’t support the genocidal western empire.
Or someone who slightly disagrees with a republican
Or even a democrat. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been called a tankie, by liberals, for simply not adhering to status-quo ideology.
I have actually found the “tankie” moniker to be useful IRL:
Tell someone you’re a Marxist-Leninist and you just get a blank stare.
Tell someone you’re a socialist and they think you mean you’re simpatico with AOC and Bernie.
Tell someone you’re a communist and they will just shut down and not hear anything else you say.
But “tankie” seems to convey enough truth - that you support past and current efforts from AES states to build socialism - to be useful.
The use of the word “tankie” these days is so over-used it has become synonymous with “left of the DNC.” I’ve even seen Anarchists described as “tankies,” it’s getting ridiculous. Still, the word “tankie” is most often used by liberals against Marxists, though they won’t admit to having an anti-Marxist bias, mostly because they think they agree with Marx generally but are unfamiliar with Marxist analysis.
Really, more people need to read theory before having an opinion on it to avoid speaking past each other. I wrote an introductory reading list for Marxism-Leninism if anyone wants to get a better understanding of Marxism.
thank you for that and the “what is socialism” post; but i’m encountering that theory is somehow still a HEAVY read for someone like who me has been inside the leftist sphere of influence for his entire life; there’s needs to be some sort of sound-bite-able way of sharing these messages and i wish that ml’s had the capitalists’ deep pockets that guarantees a deep bench of talent that could figure something like this out.
it reminds of my own own experience of going from technical support to software engineering by simply reading. your ignorance makes it daunting as first and you have to put in A LOT of effort to understand it when you don’t even know the basics and you’ll get there eventually if you stick with it; but most won’t stick with it and if you’re REALLY knowledgeable at it, it becomes difficult to understand why it’s difficult for other people.
We need to make more parentiwave tbh, we’ve been slacking on that
i’ve never heard of parentiwave, but it sounds perfect if it’s anything like vaporwave
Of the few tracks, this one’s my favorite
it looks like vaporwave; i subscribed.
Vaporwave but with Parenti speeches 😎
i just saw an example and i wonder if it can be leveraged somehow.
Sharing it! Or just jamming
my family calls it complaining and so do i despite my therapist’s efforts to get me to stop calling it so; i bet that guy WISHES he could roll his eyes as hard as my family does every time i do it. lol
It’s certainly difficult, but when in doubt I love sharing this person’s articles as more bite-sized bits of theory and soundbites from Michael Parenti speeches, haha.
even more material to “read”; now i’m wondering if i’ll ever be finished with any of it. lol
Haha, if you want the most bang for your buck I stand wholeheartedly behind my introductory reading list. I truly put a lot of effort into it and several comrades helped tremendously.
i’m starting there because i’ve learned that audio books are the best way to cheat at “reading” lol
Thanks! Feel free to ask questions 🫡
We’ll never be finished with bourgeois theory: it’s what we’ve been fed our entire lives, usually without even realizing it. It’s just common sense.
i’m convinced that if i had fewer vulnerable identities that i would never have been able to see through practice all the “common sense” bullshit levied against me all my life and i also think that’s the only reason why i try when others with identical backgrounds, like my family, don’t bother; i’ve learned the hard way that ignorance will hurt me long before it will hurt them.
That does help. After all it was black Americans who invented wokeness, before white liberal Americans co-opted it and perverted its meaning. The marginalized have always experienced the fascism that’s been baked into the American project since the beginning.
i suspect that facism is going to force me to move back into the country that my parents immigrated from if trump gets his way and in the same way that incidents like operation wetback deported millions of american citizens.
Back when I used reddit it seemed like everyone threw around Fascist in a similar way. Lemmy seems to prefer Tankie. For a lot of people the thinking doesn’t go any farther than “I disagree with you, therefore you are ________ist” or whatever.
It is what it is.
It varies from instance to instance. The main users of the word “tankie” are blahaj.zone, lemmy.world, and sh.itjust.works from what I’ve seen, most other instances generally aren’t as bad about it IMO.
The devs are tankies and there are some notorious tankie instances, like Hexbear and Lemmygrad, so they’re a lot more visible here than on reddit.
Probably because there are a lot of tankies here. 🙃
but I- oh wait I do have an opinion on Soviet use of tanks to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring uprising. My bad, continue.
I do love tanks.
Yep, and unfortunately a lot of fascists on Reddit.
I do like how whenever a conservative Lemmy pops up, it has more trolls than users and the mods abandon it within a few weeks.
As I said in another comment, Tankies are often in support of the modern Russian state and the modern CCP. These are not positions that are “left of the DNC”.
Supporting the PRC is absolutely a Leftist position, as a Socialist country and a rising superpower it’s the current best hope for Socialism, whether you agree with all of the CPC’s actions or only some.
Critical, reserved support for Russia’s temporary and strategic anti-US Hegemony stance does not mean Leftists critically supporting Russia agree with the Russian state or support it.
Support for Russia’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine in no way supports anti-US hegemony stances. They’re literally stealing children and indoctrinating them-the same thing the US did while committing genocide against the First Peoples.
Just opposing the US doesn’t make Russia the good guys.
Not believing in blatant right-wing propaganda is a leftist position. Parroting right-wing propaganda is a right-wing position. You are parroting right-wing propaganda. Please stop doing that, especially if you consider yourself on the left.
Genocidal invasion
The US is doing an actual genocide in Palestine, but thanks for telling everyone you don’t know what words mean
They’re literally stealing children and indoctrinating them
Let’s say there’s a war going on, and let’s say there are war orphans, or children who were already orphans before the war
Let’s say these children are also native Russian speakers, like many many people in Eastern Ukraine-
What should the Russian government do? Send these orphans to orphanages far from the front?
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Or: put them on the bus and send them to the Ukrainian government where they ban the Russian language and there are Bandera pictures everywhere?
Do you seriously believe this is the same as what the Canadians did to the natives?
I think the extreme version of this, “stealing children”, is on the same level as the “Gaddafi ‘supplies troops with Viagra to encourage massremoved’”
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t “genocidal,” what would be closer to genocidal is the West’s intention to fight Russia to the last Ukranian standing. Several times, Russia has tried to reach a peace deal, only for the UK and US to step in and tell Ukraine not to take it. The “stealing of children” is taking orphans from warzones and making sure they don’t die.
Russia’s goal isn’t to ethnically cleanse Ukraine, nor is it to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. Russia’s goal is to totally ruin Ukraine’s military capabilities as a means to prevent further extension of NATO encirclement around it’s borders. This is a consequence of the 2014 Euromaidan coup, and goes all the way back to the dissolution of the USSR. When the USSR was sliced up and sold to the West for profit, 7 million people died, and a Nationalist movement led to domestic Nationalist bourgeoisie reclaiming industry from the West, beginning a long series of NATO expansion and encirclement to force Russia to open themselves up again for the West to profit.
No, Russia are not the “good guys.” No Communist believes Russia has morally just intentions and is here to save everyone. Communists believe Russia is acting in its own material interests, and those interests happen to align against US-Hegemony, which Communists see as the primary block for progress.
Communists have as such advocated for both countries to negotiate a cease-fire since the beginning of the invasion. An ideal situation would be a cessation of NATO expansion and no bloodshed, but Communists have no real control over that.
nor is it to “de-Nazify” Ukraine
I think they do want to do this, since the Nazis are extremely hostile to Russia, so it’s crushing the opposition. Obviously this is pretty different from the historical de-Nazification efforts whose corpse Putin cynically puppets as cover for his actions.
If there are meaningful factions of Greater Russia Nazis in Ukraine, he’d obviously be fine with those as he is fine with them in Russia.
Sure, there is some element to that, but the mover and pusher is a removal of threats, not out of any anti-fascist dedication, hence why like you said Putin is fine with “Greater Russia” Nazis.
Staying ignorant is cool, you heard it here first folks.
This one isn’t just staying ignorant, they’re loudly proclaiming their ignorance as if they’re proud of it. Yikes.
Cool 👍
I’m sorry if I’m misunderstanding but are you in support of the CCP?
Generally yes, I support the CPC. I’m a Marxist, and their dedication to developing Socialism, eliminating poverty, developing green energy, and presenting an alternative for the Global South should be admired. The PRC and CPC aren’t perfect, not by any stretch, but among the major world powers they are the least problematic and present the greatest potential for Humanity moving forward.
I cannot take you seriously if you think the CCP is anything other than an authoritarian spy-state
I cannot take you seriously if you willfully swallow the firehose of US propaganda about how cHiNa BAD ebil aUthOrItArIaN when it’s a country whose government has the enthusiastic approval of over 90% of the population, the country that lifted 850 million people out of abject poverty, the only large country doing anything significant about the mass extinction event that is climate change, the country that… well, I could go on. But no, keep believing those lies like a good lil western capitalism enjoyer.
Why do you say that? First of all, the CPC is the party in charge of the PRC, not the PRC itself. Secondly, which of the things I said do you disagree with? We can discuss them if you want, but otherwise I can’t really take you seriously either if that is your response to me answering your question honestly.
I, for one, haven’t seen people over-using the word “tankie”, I haven’t seen people getting called tankies for the reason alone that they are leftists or even communists.
However, I’ve seen many tankies insisting that the word is meaningless or that it just means anybody on the left.
People I’ve seen using the word tankie have been surprisingly consistent about who they call a tankie: supporters of authoritarianism, especially Putin and the CCP.
They’re using the same playbook as the fascists, insisting the word is overused and meaningless while painting themselves as victims. It’s actually fascinating how similar hexbear snd the_donald feel.
The only Communists that don’t support the PRC are Maoists, generally, Marxists and Marxist-Leninists consistently support the CPC. None of them support Putin, only critical, reserved support for the Russian Federation’s temporary and strategic opposition to US Hegemony, which Communists see as the primary obstacle in the way of Socialism across the world.
Oh I know quite a few communists who would absolutely not support the PRC. They wouldn’t shill for the US either. Nor for Russia nor the USSR for that matter.
Are these Communists members of any Communist orgs, or just online people?
These are people I know personally. So no, not online people. And some are organized, some were, it varies. They are at best ambivalent on China. The idea that if you identify as a communist, talk like a communist, or are member of a communist organization, you should automatically support China would be frankly absurd in my circles. A strong minority of communists were at best ambivalent on the USSR even back in the day, so this is not new. And yes there are also those who will identify with and feel the need to support any regime that is in name or in some of its practices “communist”. Whereas others will take a more critical stance. I am in Europe by the way, this may matter, I find that the way words are used across the pond sometimes varies. Even within Europe, in much of Eastern Europe I understand that “communist” and “Russophile ” are thought to go hand in hand. Not so in my country, not necessarily. Anyway, it’s complicated.
Marxism and Marxism-Leninism are not the same, and should not be treated as the same. One is an economic theory/philosophy, one is an ideology. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which is which.
Marxism is broken up into 3 major components:
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Dialectical and Historical Materialism
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Critique of Capitalism via the Law of Value
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Advocacy for Revolutionary and Scientific Socialism.
Marxism-Leninism carries these 3 foundations forward, and analyzes Capitalism as it reaches Imperialism, as well as numerous expansions on the foundations of revolutionary theory and practice.
They are not “the same,” but the vast majority of Marxists are Marxist-Leninists, because Lenin’s application of Marxism to higher stages of Capitalism are invaluable to Marxism.
Marxism-Leninism was not actually thought out by Lenin, but by Stalin. The Stalin.
And how invaluable were Lenin’s ideas about violently suppressing opposition, resistance, and unwanted societal classes?
Stalin synthesized Marxism-Leninism, yes. He did so on the basis of Lenin’s theoretical advancements on Marxism. Stalin himself wasn’t that much of a theoretician, hence why it’s Marxism-Leninism, though Stalin has a few works under his belt. Yes, the Stalin. You’re free to read my introductory reading list if you want to learn more about Marxism.
Secondly, you have no idea what you’re talking about if you’re pretending Lenin came up with the idea of revolution and using the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to suppress fascists and the bourgeoisie. Such ideas came from Marx and Engels, who always advocated for revolution. From Marx:
“We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.”
I suggest you take the advice of @[email protected] and read up on Marxist theory and history before speaking nonsense from a pedestal.
That quote is extremely hinged on context in which it was made, and it would serve you well to internalise that context before throwing this quote around pretending it to have been something Marx lived by.
Secondly, you have no idea what you’re talking about if you’re pretending Lenin came up with the idea of revolution and using the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to suppress fascists and the bourgeoisie.
That was not my claim, but thank you for so generously misinterpreting what I said. Lenin implemented the violent oppression of dissenters and opposition in a socialist system. That was carried further by Stalin, under whom ‘counter-revolutionary’ became an extremely malleable term that could mean anything not fully aligned with his ideas. The fact that you think political violence and terror is a core tenet of Marxism tells me that you’re the one who might need to brush up on their history a little bit.
In fact, authoritarian socialism - as practiced in virtually every single Marxist-Leninist country that ever existed - was completely counter to the ideals of Marx and Engels. The people we have to thank for creating the violent authoritarianism that pervaded communist countries in practice are Lenin and Stalin. “Dictatorship of the proletariat” may have been a phrase used by Marx, but he never fully elaborated on what that should or could look like. And fascism as created by Mussolini and unleashed upon the world by Hitler didn’t even exist during Marx’s lifetime. Even Marx’s views on religion were a lot more complex and multifaceted than what Marxist-Leninist governments turned them into.
I don’t know if either of you have ever lived in a Marxist-Leninist country (as in lived, not just visited). I was born in one. I lived in another for five years. I’ve seen the before and after, first-hand. That’s my pedestal. How’s the weather up there on yours?
That quote is extremely hinged on context in which it was made, and it would serve you well to internalise that context before throwing this quote around pretending it to have been something Marx lived by.
Correct, Marx wasn’t just randomly terrorizing people. He was referring to the Proletariat making no apologies for revolution and taking up arms against the bourgeoisie and their enablers, something Lenin and the people of the USSR carried into reality. Lenin descibed what you’re doing to Marx and Engels right now quite well:
“What is now happening to Marx’s teaching has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the teachings of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes struggling for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their teachings with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to surround their names with a certain halo for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time emasculating the essence of the revolutionary teaching, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it. At the present time, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the working-class movement concur in this “doctoring” of Marxism. They omit, obliterate and distort the revolutionary side of this teaching, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social-chauvinists are now “Marxists” (don’t laugh!). And more and more frequently, German bourgeois scholars, but yesterday specialists in the annihilation of Marxism, are speaking of the “national-German” Marx, who, they aver, educated the workers’ unions which are so splendidly organized for the purpose of conducting a predatory war!”
- Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution
That was not my claim, but thank you for so generously misinterpreting what I said. Lenin implemented the violent oppression of dissenters and opposition in a socialist system. That was carried further by Stalin, under whom ‘counter-revolutionary’ became an extremely malleable term that could mean anything not fully aligned with his ideas. The fact that you think political violence and terror is a core tenet of Marxism tells me that you’re the one who might need to brush up on their history a little bit.
Lenin implemented the world’s first Socialist state, and this state violently oppressed the bourgeoisie, fascists, the White Army, rebels, and so forth. The fact is, political violence is often sadly necessary against those who would crush the Socialist state, like the 14 Capitalist countries that jointly invaded the USSR after its founding. A Marxist project that rolls over and dies the second fascists and the bourgeoisie fight against it isn’t Marxist. Blackshirts and Reds is a good quick read on the tangible benefits AES states achieved despite brutal opposition from the outside.
In fact, authoritarian socialism - as practiced in virtually every single Marxist-Leninist country that ever existed - was completely counter to the ideals of Marx and Engels. The people we have to thank for creating the violent authoritarianism that pervaded communist countries in practice are Lenin and Stalin. “Dictatorship of the proletariat” may have been a phrase used by Marx, but he never fully elaborated on what that should or could look like. And fascism as created by Mussolini and unleashed upon the world by Hitler didn’t even exist during Marx’s lifetime. Even Marx’s views on religion were a lot more complex and multifaceted than what Marxist-Leninist governments turned them into.
This is nonsense. First of all, what separates “authoritarian” Socialism from “non-authoritarian” socialism? All Marxist-Leninist states practice democracy and allow more participation in the way society is run than Capitalist states for the average person. Soviet Democracy by Pat Sloan is a good resource on this. Secondly, the idea that Marx and Engels never had a clear idea of what the Dictatorship of the Proletariat would look like is further nonsense - Marx described the Paris Commune as the first implementation of the DotP in reality. Marx and Engels knew quite well that violent suppression of bourgeois elements was required.
Furthermore, whether Marx or Engels really observed fascism is utterly irrelevant, unless your point is that they would not have been anti-fascist, which is nonsense.
I don’t know if either of you have ever lived in a Marxist-Leninist country (as in lived, not just visited). I was born in one. I lived in another for five years. I’ve seen the before and after, first-hand. That’s my pedestal. How’s the weather up there on yours?
A non-sequitor. Spending early childhood in an AES state does not mean you know how it works, nor what it deals with on a daily basis. Even people who live their entire lives in Capitalist states go without knowing how they function.
In fact, authoritarian socialism - as practiced in virtually every single Marxist-Leninist country that ever existed - was completely counter to the ideals of Marx and Engels.
Do you mean the Engles who said this:
[T]he anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?
Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don’t know what they’re talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction
…or is there some other Engles I should know about?
I don’t know of any person called Engles who would be significant in this context, so I can’t tell you if there is one you should know about. The Engels who said what you quoted above, also said - literally in the sentence preceding your quote:
Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society.
As always, context matters. And I’ll trust the context created by the words and interpretations of respected historians way more than I’ll trust some randos on Lemmy who only excel at selective quoting.
I don’t know if either of you have ever lived in a Marxist-Leninist country (as in lived, not just visited). I was born in one. I lived in another for five years. I’ve seen the before and after, first-hand.
Could you please name those countries? And share your experiences, if possible? Were they not Marxist?
The countries were the German Democratic Republic, where I was born; and Cuba, where I lived from 1985 to 1990.
And what are experiences? By all accounts what I grew up in was normal, because I didn’t know any different. We grew up like any kids really, playing, riding bikes, watching TV, getting up to mischief. I have a lot of good memories from both the GDR and Cuba, and even getting started on them would take me hours.
Sure, we knew about the West. Some of my friends had relatives in the West and occasionally got packages with sweets and other things. We watched Western TV and were exposed to Western toys, comics and music, to a degree. In Cuba there were a lot of Western movies and series on TV. But we also knew that you could get into trouble for being too open about that.
But after it all came down, we learned a lot about what went on. The oppression, the secret police, the lack of basic freedoms.
Once in art class, we were tasked with drawing something we had seen or experienced. Just a short time prior to that, we had gone to see a well known boat lift east of Berlin. The boat that came through the lift was a freight barge flying the West German flag. So that’s what I drew. Only years later my parents told me that they had subsequently been summoned by the school and had to explain that it was nothing more sinister than that - a child drawing a picture of something they had seen.
Another thing that struck me as odd at the time was this. Most of the socialist countries we knew as ‘friendly’ had state-run youth organisations. Ours were called the pioneers. Once there was an afternoon activity with a little quiz, and one of the quiz questions was ‘name three friendly youth organisations’. So I named three that I remembered from my pioneer calendar - and one of them was Finnish. My quiz came back with the correction ‘friendly youth organisations’.
I will always remember and defend the good aspects about the countries I grew up in. By the same token I will always vociferously criticise the bad things, and anyone who wants to try them again.
7·11 hours agoUnless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Isn’t that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense. Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak? Quite a few comrades always keep their eyes shut and talk nonsense, and for a Communist that is disgraceful. How can a Communist keep his eyes shut and talk nonsense?
It won’t do!
It won’t do!
You must investigate!
You must not talk nonsense!
When you get anywhere near making a point, just send up a flare, ok?
-
If you don’t have an opinion on it, you might when you learn the fascists were putting chalk marks on the doors of communists and jews
As somebody who isn’t much on social media, I often have to look up slang terms I don’t use. It’s actually kind of relatable when an explanation doesn’t convey the nuances people feel when these terms are just part of normal speech. Also tbh the general idea of mocking people for not knowing things doesn’t really seem that cool.
/acc in name
Worse than tankie tbh
i’ve only ever seen tankies complain about the word “tankie” being over used. i guess us non-tankies just don’t hear it very often.
there’s also this false dichotomy i’ve seen many tankies present where they try to argue that people are either liberals or tankies. it is possible to be a leftist and not support authoritarian governments.
I’ve seen Anarchists, Marxists, and progressive liberals all called “tankie” before, so either you aren’t looking or you consider them to be “tankies.” Secondly, I don’t know what you mean by “supporting authoritarian governments,” leftists don’t support the US Empire.
I thought tankie was for any government that used tanks on their own people? So many others should be included, China is missing, I think the Phillipines maybe? There’s more. I’m open to being corrected.
The word “tankie” originated as the OP describes, referring to members of the Communist Party of Great Britain that supported the USSR putting down the color revolutions in Hungary and Prague Spring. Nowadays, it is used as a catch-all pejorative for anyone to the left of the DNC.
That’s not entirely accurate. I’m sure some use it that way, but it’s not “left of the DNC” to support the modern Russian state and its actions, which is the problem most people have with Tankies.
The word “tankie” isn’t solely applied to people who critically support Russia in its temporary anti-US Hegemony stance. Again, the lack of unity behind the usage of the term means some may use it in a more reserved and restricted manner, but in reality it is used by liberals of all stripes against leftists of all stripes.
Examples? Seems like it’s used for Russians that fail to stand up to or actively support their government to me.
You can see quite a few instances in this thread of such accusations. Actually, maybe not, you aren’t federated with the major leftist instances as far as I know.
Oh, we can see them alright. Haven’t seen so many tagged profiles in a long while.
What do you use for tagging? I need a way to start doing that
Boost.
Somehow supporting colonial aggression by a totalitarian state is a left cause.
Unsure what you’re referring to, specifically, moreover the use of the word “totalitarian” betrays a lack of understanding how the USSR functioned in reality.
Not talking about the USSR there skipper.
You keep saying that people are called “tankie” for being “left of the DNC” but the only people I see being called “tankie” are folks who think a lot more people aught to be dying from polonium poisoning.
So, nobody? You really don’t see anyone being called a tankie? Interesting.
