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[dude with glasses in a communist t-shirt, arguing] I'm the only leftist here, your opinions are TRASH
[dude holding a theory book on smug, arguing] Read theory you losers, you're all WRONG
[dude in an anarchist hoodie, arguing] Nuh-uh, I'm the only leftist here, you're SHITLIBS
[the three dudes are now caught in a cartoon fight, glasses gone flying, punches everywhere, while a firing squad of nazis are targeting them with rifles]
[a confused nazi asks] Why… why are they still arguing?
The antidote to infighting in my experience is organizing in ideologically diverse spaces. I've organized with liberals and all types of different leftists. It has left me with the perspective that all these people are good people that just want better for the world. It's hard to get angry at them once you know them. Per usual the solution is to touch grass.
Grass is dangerous, specially if you have allergies. My advice is to never touch grass!
LOL as someone with significant autoimmune issues this rings to true.
The antidote to infighting in my experience is organizing in ideologically diverse spaces.
You are saying (correctly) that we need to organize in ways that appeal to more median voters, moderates, liberals and even conservatives around much broader initiatives that appeal to more populist ideas like wealth inequality, social programs to help poor neighborhoods, rebuilding infrastructure and creating more livable communities.
But people who read this are going to translate it as:
"They're saying I should reach out to the Green/Primitivist Anarchists I banned from my discord server" or "Maybe we should include the Orthodox Marxist–Leninists even though we hate them"
Or even worse: "HOW DARE HE SUGGEST I COMPROMISE WITH MY OPPRESSORS I WILL RIP THROATS OUT"
We all have to live next to each other even if we get the best policy results and I think everyone on either side forgets this. This isn't centerism, this is understanding that we have to rebuild together even if we don't share objective realities, we have no choice in the matter. I think too many people get stuck in their algorithmic ideology bubbles and think "the revolution/race war is coming, and everything will be great after."
Nobody is coming. Nobody is going to make it better. There is no secret cabal or underground movement, there will be no socialist revolution. What we see is what we get and if we want it better, we need to get a LOT better about getting our shitty emotions under control, learning to socialize and using our energy wisely.
It's why ranked choice is the only sane voting approach. First past the post heavily favors right wing authoritarians.
Hell yea I would love to vote for the people I actually want to vote for
“Voting is actually bad” Tankies 🤝 Nazis
"My own entitlement and vindictive emotional state is far more important than broad policy measures to make the best outcomes for the most people." - Tankies 🤝 Nazis
edit: I will forever smirk that over a third of the people who read this felt "Well they don't understand that MY emotions are special, the unrealistic things I want are more important than any of those other things! How dare they equate my feelings with those of nazis, those creatures weren't even human, unlike me!"
Ranked-choice voting is a decent choice for uninominal elections.
Proportional elections are a popular alternative, and they are arguably fairer than even RCV because they are not susceptible to gerrymandering or votes otherwise being weighted by geography (i.e. your vote still matters just as much as anyone's if you live in Redneckville, Mississippi). They do have other downsides though.
Unfortunately here in Belgium we do proportional voting and the Prime Minister is nonetheless a far-right separatist in charge of a right-wing coalition so, uh, maybe FPTP is not the only thing that stands between the citizenry and a communist utopia lol
The only thing that matters is policy, I'll work with anyone as long as it's toward an egalitarian society with wealth redistribution.
Labels are nice for classifying, but not for executing. I don't care if you identify as leftist, or liberal, or progressive; I care if you support good policies.
The idea that all "leftists" should just work together is stupid.
Leninism, Anarcho-primitivism and Social democracy (for example) are not different approaches to "leftism" that ultimately want the same things; they are completely separate ideologies that naturally come into conflict. The people who follow them disagree with each other because they want and value completely different things. If they were to put aside their differences there would be nothing left.
That doesn't mean arguing on the internet about ideology is meaningful, or that there can't be common goals or enemies, just that you should give up the idea that all "leftists" are somehow natural allies, because it doesn't make any sense.
I believe you are missing the forest for the trees. First, I acknowledge your examples are separate ideologies.
That concept also applies to the right... social conservatives, right-libertarians, and neoliberal ideologies are equally separate. However, those practitioners have no qualms about banding together to suppress dissent (or until such time they are the only voices).
Where the left leaning practitioners are unable to do so, they will be forever tyrannized by the banded majority.
To put it more succinctly, the enemy of my enemy is my friend (when freedom is on the line).
I'm anti authoritarian and anti right. Tankies are leftists that I have no interest in getting along with. They are just as excited to be holding the gun in this comic
Yes, leninists are nominally on the left. Nominally. However throughout history most similar ideologies have consistently exterminated executed and oppressed everyone that ever disagreed with them. Allies or not. Left or right. Which makes them authoritarian and untrustworthy first. Left at their convenience.
As an anarchist, I have no major beef with actual communist. While I will disagree a lot with demsoc or socdems. I have no issue allying with them where we agree. Because even though we disagree, on the things we agree on. I know they are just as committed, and won't turn on us the moment it's convenient.
But I'm all too familiar with the type that behave like the comic. I think we all are. Anyone using the term shitlib or blue maga for instance.
This is what happens when hyper-individuality becomes a core of your (western) society. It’s also a byproduct that inadvertently benefits the ruling class. They want division and leftist pockets are already doing it themselves in a lot of cases. Purity tests can fracture communities and needlessly push away potential allies.
It’s why I tend to quote Fred Hampton often. He correctly understood that it was a working class versus ruling class situation and that arguing amongst ourselves was detrimental to organizing. It’s a vertical fight and horizontal attacks waste energy. You can still point out errors in what a comrade says. Criticism, self-criticism, and debate are all components of democratic centralism.
The problem lies when one particular set of "leftists" thinks the best way foward is to have a literal capitalist state with a red flag and execute anyone who could even be a minimal obstacle to that.
bLuE nO mAtTeR wHo unless it's an actual progressive 😮💨
People, people, people, we can kill each other AFTER the fascist are gone, please and thank you.
I think the premise here is flawed. It assumes infighting is the reason why we can't coalesce around a single candidate but the real reason why that isn't happening is because the DNC keeps backing right wing candidates who don't represent any of us. Too many people are under the false belief that being a Democratic politician makes one the "good guy" in the face of "evil Republicans" when in reality we've just been given two Republican candidates to choose from at the ballot box for quite some time now. They all work for the same masters and don't give a shit about fixing this broken country. They aren't two different sides, they're all on the same side against the American people.
I'm not from the USA and I'm tired of US politics 🥺
The current rise of the far right in my country started two decades ago, in part because of leftist infighting. I'm not going to point any fingers, I was guilty of infighting on that day too. It was so unexpected, nobody thought the far right could beat any of the leftist candidates… many lessons were learned that day.
this is terminally online behavior. Marxists I've run into in actual organizing work are generally pretty chill and more interested in the work than trying to tell me I have the wrong opinion.
Anyone complaining about "tankies" when there's actual Nazis around is doing their work for them.
No. I've seen marxist-leninists, maoists, and anyone in that area of thought arguing the following:
If you think ANY of those arguments are valid for leftism, then I'm sorry, but I don't want you around me.
You're from .ml, your opinion on tankies is coming from inside the house.
Frankly history has shown what happens to leftists who side with tankies. I for one will never be making that mistake again.
Yeah, pretty much this.
Going over the comments I already see boat loads of people completely missing the point where right wing extremism is taking hold thanks in part due to the constant bickering.
I don't care what someone calls themselves as long as they oppose fascism and understand that the only place where Pedophiles are welcome is the inside of a wood chipper.
This thread keeps popping up and it just clicked and I had to ask:
Is the guy in the red shirt supposed to be Vaush?
Would be funny considering how much Vaush hates Marxism-Leninism.
It's the factory preset look for these pseudo-tankies that show up in my local activism group every now and then.
Always the big earring, unkempt beard, this specific shape of glasses, and the cheap aliexpress t-shirt with a political message on it.
Not my fault Vaush stole the look!
pseudo-tankies
I'm not even sure whether this is supposed to be an insult anymore. Is a "tankie" better or worse than a "fake tankie"?
In a thread complaining about leftist infighting, there's a special irony in liberals singing out a leftist who is simultaneously too far left and not far left enough.
It's a specific type of leftist we have in my country, french communists are a… special breed, let's say.
In the 1980s our communist party bulldozed a migrant worker dormitory because they hated migrants that much. Red MAGA or something. The party recovered from that era, but french communists are still chauvinistic, xenophobic, and strangely not that much into anti-imperialism (which is meant to be the redeeming quality of tankies). They do however share with tankies the traits of applying "class first" logic to a lot of conversations, which makes them deathly allergic to intersectionality, and being terminally online and way into infighting. Thus they usually end up booted from actual activist groups, since they tend to hold us back and prevent us from actually getting shit done in the streets.
Hence me calling them pseudo-tankies because it's hard to label them. We just call them tankies here: they're members of a party that supported the crushing of the hungarian uprising with soviet tanks, and is ambiguous about tienanmen (no denying it happened but very alt-history about it), so pro-tanks they are.
I have an easier time getting along with the average online american tankie than with our local communist party's members.
The party recovered from that era, but french communists are still chauvinistic, xenophobic, and strangely not that much into anti-imperialism
Yeah, that's been a problem in the US as well, under "Patriotic Communism". But it's also largely artificial - a product of party decay to the point that fascists can sock puppet the leftist labels without actually pursuing leftist policy.
Hence me calling them pseudo-tankies because it’s hard to label them.
One problem that really does plague leftist organizing is state espionage. It has become almost a running joke that half your local DSA meeting is going to be NYPD and FBI informants fighting for front row seats.
But that's also more a legacy of Nixon/Reagan Era COINTELPRO, with the modern state security forces scrambling to invent incidents to thwart from whole cloth.
What I see labeled "Tankie" in the modern moment is anyone championing AES. For some reason, the greatest betrayal of any kind of revolution is... winning? So every socialist politician from Fidel Castro to Hugo Soto-Martínez is doing authoritarian stateism by being inside the halls of power, rather than outside waving a paper placard.
I have an easier time getting along with the average online american tankie than with our local communist party’s members
That's a shame.
I looked it up, and yep, looks like the PCF abandoned Marxism-Leninism in 1979 and adopted Eurocommunism, which is a vulgarization of Marxism that upholds western imperialism. MLs would consider them to be patsocs, same as the American Communist Party which espouses "MAGA Communism."