this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
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I know that one. What's a "tankie"
A faschist with a red flag.
The term origenaly referred to lefties that supported the Soviet Union rolling tanks into nations protesting for democracy.
Modern tankies defend historical "communist" states and their successer states like Russia. They can often be seen glorifying dictators and denying genocides.
Well described, actually. And most of the tankies can be fought with actual knowledge of Marxism and socialism, since they try to pass themselves as all-so-knowledgeable of them and then spew the worst kind of misunderstandings of the socialist theories. Pseudo-intellectual edgy teenage-minded dumb-dumbs, in a nutshell
I discovered you can score extra points where you deconstruct their argument to the point where they'll call you a "debate pervert" and ragequit the fediverse
Thing is, they'll have so much unread communist literature around their home they're bound to come back. Much easier to jump back into the bearbubble than read those big, big books
You don't even need the big big books. All you need is both Marx and Engels to knock their bad understanding out of them.
My favorite cope that they invoke is that Lenin and Stalin's communism wasn't real communism. My tankie, according to Engels, they actually followed the "state capitalism" scenario to the letter, by having the state hold monopoly over the means of production, planning themselves like a corporation and owning the markets, the only difference being that the soviet states did not run on profit. Engels
I love getting fashsplained that I would surely understand Lenin's points more clearly if I only read more Chomsky.
Not really, cause any comment you make towards them, they just deflect and focus on something else.
Like typical conservative agents.. There is no debating with them, because you will never convince them that you are right. that they are wrong, or that there is any middle ground (and even if you did concede a middle ground, it would be their victory) They will just amuse themselves exhausting you, and declare themselves a victor when you give up.
Its literally no different than trying to wrestle pigs in shit.
Only the pig is wearing a red shirt with hammer and sickle on it, while saying Putin is saving the world from Ukraine.
Well put. They're another online cult where you just have to scratch your head and wonder how the hell they came to certain conclusions.
Found the reactionary tankie!!!!!⬆️
The further you travel to either side, you eventually run into the same brand of nuts.
I was on a ChapoTrapHouse post that was saying how it's US's fault that Putin decided to do a genocide in Ukraine.
and then I was told Ukraine should be destroyed at all costs.
They are not the same indeed, they are just fascists too, but in denial about it.
Seriously lemmygrad is bull of people just saying that bullies like Russia would just be happy if we let them take Ukraine cause they clearly want it more than the people lving there. And a few million deaths is just the price to pay for "better" government.
Those people are such scared authoritarian dick suckers who would throw anyone else under the bus if they thought it would make their lives better
Yes.
Authoritarian leftists. Stalinists, basically. The kind of people who look at protests being crushed by tanks and say "Good, those reactionary civilian pigs deserved it!"
Authoritarian Leftists seems to be an oxymoron
Edit: I meant sounds like; I'm super dumb lol. Thanks for educating me on what it actually means :)
Liberalism and authoritarianism are opposites just like progressivism and conservatism are.
For historical (and arguably nefarious) reasons Western society has largely lumped liberalism and progressivism into "Left" and authoritarianism and conservatism into "Right".
But this ignores the reality that you can have progressive authoritarians (Stalinists/Maoists), and liberal conservatives (Libertarians).
Either you’re using a definition of “progressive” that doesn’t relate to progressivism, or we’re looking at some very different definitions of Stalinism.
Stalinism was never about improvement of human societies. One could argue that Trotskyism was at least pretending to (it’s incredibly hard to attribute real humanitarian intent to anything bolsheviks did, once you look closer at their methods), but Stalinism was unabashedly explicit about seizing control and shutting down dissent. It embraced Russian Empire’s secret police approach and was closer to early Muscovite monarchism, with a despot deciding who gets to enjoy privileges and control, than to anything progressive.
What you're talking about is the "authoritarian" part of the progressive authoritarian equation.
As the opposite of conservatism, progressivism is about societal advancement, elevating the average well being in the country, which on it's face Communism is explicitly about. Or are you arguing that Stalinist Communism was conservative, trying to uphold the values of the historical ruling power structures?
Authoritarianism explicitly opposes political action, attempting to eradicate it entirely. Progressivism is rooted in it.
Conservatism is not defined by “upholding the values of the historical ruling power structures”. A dog being wet doesn’t make everything that’s wet a dog.
Stalinism in practice was extremely backwards, ironically anti-communist, and conservative with its strict vertical power structure (traditional for Russian empire) and promotion of Russian nationalism (Stalin explicitly names Russians as “elder brothers of soviet people”). Stalin’s authoritarian approach also agrees with conservatives’ preference for strict social order models. Political activism was persecuted under Stalin in the same manner - and often by the same people - it was persecuted in Russian empire.
The founding myth of the empire - “Kyiv is the mother of Russian cities and Russia is the Rus” was not only preserved, but actively maintained through any means possible. Can’t get more conservative than that.
I think the history of the 20th century proves otherwise.
I'm too tired and busy tonight to make a case here, but I would just point out that lemmy.world has defederated from anyone who can explain to you what a tankie believes and why, and you are only getting one side of the story in this thread.
I think most Americans who lived through the Iraq war are aware that America lies, but still not aware of the extent of it. The main targets of those lies are socialist states. When the intent of the lies is to make socialist states look monstrous, anyone who claims otherwise gets smeared with the same brush: a defender of monstrous states. It's a rhetorical firewall.
If you want to know what tankies believe and why, you should ask them. Whether you find them persuasive or not, you'll at least have learned what a subset of the human population believes and it will round out your perspective on the world.
The two main lemmy instances where you can find tankies are hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml. Hexbear is larger and more active, and their range of perspectives is a little broader because they include anarchists. Hexbear's list of federated instances is here https://hexbear.net/instances, and lemmygrad's is here https://lemmygrad.ml/instances.
What centrist liberals call anyone who criticizes US imperialism.
FTFY
just say you don't know what imperialism is (it's not when countries resist the largest imperial sphere in the history of earth), i can recommend some reading material