this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
548 points (84.9% liked)
Political Memes
5452 readers
2892 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What is a TERF and what is a Tankie?
Terf: trans exclusionary radical feminist (self explanatory)
Tankie: left wing extremists and authoritarian apologists
tankies are actually right wing extremeists
Lmao. Not the ones I very frequently come across.
Look at how much they care about worker enfranchisement in the totalitarian regimes they idolise.
They're just red fascists.
Fascist =/= authoritarian.
People use the words interchangeably but they mean specific things. North Korea for example is authoritarian but not facist.
Tankies tend to point to the USSR, China, and DPRK - I'd argue all of them fit Umberto Eco's widely used definition of fascism pretty well.
In this context, it's a distinction without a difference. What difference does this even make?
I can’t address that because idk what they think about it.
They use left wing populism to hide their authoritarianism (right wing). The literal Nazis did the exact same thing. We even see it in their names.
If you are simping for Putin/Russia or China, you don't care nor know what communism is.
Tankies are 💯 right wing.
No they aren't. Some shady fucking people here playing opposite day or something.
Your political ideology can use whatever leftist symbolism it wants to, but if the system you enact is an authoritarian, top down hierarchy that supresses the will of the masses in favor of a privileged elite, then you aren't on the Left.
Even Marx and Engels at their most statist wouldn't be in the same zipcode as Lenin et. al.
To be on the left means being for democracy from the bottom up and being agaisnt the concentration of money and power in the hands of a few.
In the real world, authoritarians exist across the political spectrum.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34383522/
Not actually true if we mean left as in ownership by the people and the right means ownership by capital.
Authoritarian or totalitarian are not the same as right.
There is an argument that tankies aren't exactly ownership by the people.
Like you don't look at the USSR and think "oh yeah the people really had ownership over their means of production*.
Ownership by the people implies the people have a say.
They are revolution fetishists. That's why orthodox MLs repeatedly fail at actual statecraft - because they study revolution, and often get angry when that fan service gets interrupted by conversation about policy.
It's not "right wing"
It's just totalitarian fascism.
We need to let go of this stupid idea that only right wing politics ends up in totalitarian fascism.
ANY FORM OF IDEOLOGY OR BELIEF CAN LEAD TO FASCISM.
"Love thy neighbour as thyself" can lead to totalitarian fascism.
No matter how benign the belief, someone can turn it into fascism.
As far as I can tell, your intended meaning is absolutely correct, but you have some of the terminology wrong: fascism is an explicitly right wing form of oppressive authoritarianism. The extreme left can be authoritarian and oppressive, but never fascist.
Stalinism and the ideology of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge are notorious examples of tankies: left wing fanatics who engage in oppressive authoritarianism and violent persecution of anyone different from their narrow definition of the ideal citizen, often using arbitrary metrics just like fascists do.
Is the end result the same for an LGBTQ+ person, a pacifist or anyone else demonised by all forms of oppressive authoritarianism? Yes.
But that does not make the ideologies identical and the distinction is important because the differences mean that different tools are more effective in combating one than the other.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarian_personality
I see where some confusion lies. There is a discrepancy between the psychological and political definitions. I’m largely interested in why people think x and is they make it make sense, discard/set it aside until it does. I didn’t account for that and it’s on me.
What definition is that? Authoritarianism is independent of right and left
From Wikipedia: in psychology, the right-wing authoritarian (RWA) is a personality type that describes somebody who is highly submissive to their authority figures, acts aggressively in the name of said authorities, and is conformist in thought and behavior.[1] The prevalence of this personality type in a population varies from culture to culture, as a person's upbringing and education play a strong role in determining whether somebody develops this sort of personality.[2]
The right-wing authoritarian personality was defined by Bob Altemeyer as a refinement of the research of Theodor Adorno. Adorno was the first to propose the existence of an authoritarian personality as part of an attempt to explain the rise of fascism and the Holocaust, but his theory fell into disfavor because it was associated with Freudian psychoanalysis. Altemeyer nonetheless felt that Adorno was on to something, and so developed a more scientifically rigorous theory.
The RWA scale was designed to measure authoritarianism in North America. It has proven to be similarly reliable in English-speaking countries such as Australia, but less effective in other countries such as France due to cultural differences and translation issues.[3]
No i didn’t, i just realized where part of the problem lies. That you don’t know anything about communication being a two way avenue is your issue abcs you’reas obnoxious as the people you criticize. Nothing changes anything about what I’ve already argued, and your arguments are lacking since they’re only insults.
Well you seem to know what you're talking about...
Yes.
(Trans women don't take testosterone)
"us normies" lol...
You can be a communist without being a tankie, just can’t simp so hard for Putin is all!
It's funny you mention neoliberalism as a argument for being a Tankie, even though most ML states have adopted neoliberal policies. The market based reforms of China following the death of Mao were based around neoliberal principles to gain power in the system of global capitalism. It was a more nationalist approach, but neoliberalism has its tendrils all over many modern ML states.
I have no idea what point you're trying to make here. The only coherent complaint fascists have about China is that they're the enemy nation. I don't give a fuck what they think, because most fascists don't realize they want a ton of the same shit as current China.
It's confusing that you claim to be a Tankie, yet don't defend China. What do you actually think a Tankie is? A Marxist-Leninist?
Tankies don't oppose. Then they wouldn't be tankies, just edgy MLs. If you support the government crushing attempts to fight against the system, you're effectively just the liberals who denounce anything beyond peaceful protest.
Actually, now that I think about it, you'd be worse than liberals, because voting is more useful in liberal democracies and legally protesting isn't even allowed in ML states.
The nets are a wasteful expense. Just let people jump if they want to, it's their own life.
But it hasn't been a failure.
When was the last time you actually read anything pro capitalism?
I bet you never haven't.
So you read some 50 year old books and then you've heard some conservative TV hosts?
Shit man, then I'm more than happy for you to turn the entire global financial system on its head.
www.google.com