this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
44 points (92.3% liked)
Memes
45550 readers
1355 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Being anti-tankie does not make you anti-communist.
"Being anti-woke doesn't mean I'm conservative!"
When people say "anti-woke", they actually mean that they are anti-doing anything about the awareness of systemic inequality that wokeness indicates. By definition, someone who is against change/progress is a conservative, so when someone says they are anti-woke, they are by definition expressing a conservative stance. That is, wanting to do something about systemic inequality is synonymous with having a progressive stance on systemic inequality.
Being a tankie, on the other hand, is not synonymous with being a comunist. Tankies are just one form of communist (militant).
And when people say they are "anti-tankie", they actually mean that they are anti doing anything about the awareness of systematic inequality that tankie indicates. By definition, someone who is against change/progress is a conservative, so when someone says they are anti-tankie, they are by definition expressing a conservative stance. That is, wanting to do something about systemic inequality is synonymous with having a progressive stance on systemic inequality.
Other way around: communists are just one form of tankies, the word is also used to refer to anarchists and some soc-dems.
You're spun around, flipped upside-down, and confused as can be.
Tankie is a term that specifically refers to one particular kind of communism; namely, the kind that supports authoritarian regimes that try to impose communism through the use of force to repress dissent.
You can be a communist and not be a tankie. You cannot be against progress and be a progressive.
Nope, tankie originally referred specifically to British labor party members supporting the USSR's actions against the coup in Hungary, and today is used to refer to any anti-imperialist leftist, regardless of tendency. Of course all of you claim otherwise, but these claims are provably empty, as nobody who uses the term today, including you in this thread, bothers to check for the actual political views of the people you call tankie, you see something that may go against the state department narratives that are spoonfed to you by V*ush and the reddit front page or whoever else has done this pseudo-leftist brainworming to you and you start yelling tankie at the top of your liberal, western-chauvinist lungs. A good number of the people posting on hexbear are anarchists and DemSocs, but you will label all of them tankie as long as they critically support China or question the narrative on the new forever war in Ukraine, which to you equals "thinking today's Russia is true communism" and similar nonsense. Your understanding of politics is damaged beyond repair by being socialized as a smartass debatelord who has become entirely incapable of forming judgements not based on learned reflex and of engaging in good faith conversations. I would pity you if people like you wouldn't be such a disaster for the Western left and for anybody in the Global South suffering from the continued imperialism you help enable by fighting the last genuine critics of genocidal US policies that are left in the West. You CIA tool, you psyop casualty, you neocon bootlicker.
I don’t call someone a tankie based on where they post, but in what they post. If you don’t want to be called a tankie, then don’t post tankie shit.
If showing solidarity with victims of Amerikan imperialism makes me a tankie, i'll prefer that over being a white supremacist warmonger who justifies the bombing of brown people in "shithole countries" like literally everybody who calls people a tankie online.
No worries, that’s not what makes someone a tankie
So what if i say "China is far from perfect, but the people there are a lot happier with their government than the Amerikans, they are much less of a threat geopolitically, maybe we should leave them alone because it's honestly none of our business how the Chinese govern themselves"? Is it the usual 50 cent wumao genocide denier tinaman square then?
That's not how the world works in the year 2023. Isolationism just isn't a conceivable possibility. All countries are interconnected, and what's happening in one country influences what's happening in other countries in major ways.
Isolationsim isn't "let's not act hostile towards this country" you absolute ghoul.
A ghoul isn’t “an attractive and intelligent person” you absolute pumpkin.
I'll take being a beloved halloween decoration over being a chauvinist warmonger.
nato narratives only please
Very compelling, but have you considered
spoiler
No, it's used to refer a wide, vague blob of vibes, just like the word woke. The people who use it can can do use it to refer to all kinds of communists, most anarchists, and anything to the left of Elizabeth Warren in general.
As opposed to the kind of communism where you ask nicely for revolution? Have you actually read any Marx? I guarantee he was not a pacifist.
By your own definition you cannot, let alone by a definition of tankie that describes how libs actually use it.
You deliberately misquoted me by cutting off the end of that sentence so you could have a nice soft strawman to swing at. The full sentence said
Forceful revolution by the workers against the capitalist class is a completely different matter from forceful repression of dissent by the state against students and professors.
So you're pro tanks against capitalists?
That doesn't change the context at all. Dissent from the capitalist class is still dissent.
All societies impose force to repress dissent (other than anarchist communes I guess, where force is mediated by norms)
what the fuck do words even mean anymore, read marx jesus christ
I used to think that Marx was overrated because I never needed to read him but holy shit it's clear that 95% of the populace cannot form coherent ideologies without being taught them
Tankie usually refers to Marxism-Leninism (as well the ideologies that derived from it such as Maoism). But there are communist ideologies that don't derive from ML such as Orthodox Marxism, trotskyism, libertarian Marxism, bulshevism, etc.
no it usually refers to whatever the fuck the person posting it seems to think it is, there is not a coherent label for it.
Oh cool, which societies use those?
Why are you letting libs define everything? You and I both know they're dumbasses and shouldn't be taken seriously.
Anyone could have said the same to Marx about communism at any point in his life, as he died before the October revolution.
Yeah I'm sure everyone in the lemmyverse is using the word tankie to refer to those of us who support the 1956 Soviet intervention in Hungary /s
the difference is you named a bunch of dead ideologies that will never be revived, ML is literally the only form of marxism still flourishing
Speculation and also not relevant.
how is that speculation, its material; Im only interested in ideologies with proven merit.
Im willing to take a chance of a synthesis on a new idea, but it has to actually offer people something.
It's speculation because you don't know what the future holds. And just because you're not interested in a particular ideology or don't think it has merit doesn't make it any less communist.
My only point is that words do in fact have meaning, Marxist-Leninism is not synonymous with communism. Therefore, one can be anti-tankie without being anti-communist.
You can be, but that would be called 'idealism' and no one outside of western liberal spheres will take you seriously.
"Orthodox Marxists" can hardly be said to exist, because the classical formulation of Marxism has long been empirically refuted, hence the need for new schools. Even Luxembourgists are more respectable than "Orthodox Marxists".
have you confused the internet for a court room?
Nope, just trying to have a rational, good faith discussion.
Your position is idealist and neither rational nor good faith - don't expect others to meet you with merits your position lacks.
I don't see how acknowledging that other branches of communism and Marxism exist is idealism, bad faith, or irrational.
That's not what you've done, though, is it? If you're unable to describe your own arguments, how can you possibly hope to engage with other people?
Because you only advocate for ideas that dont exist in reality, and deride actually existing marxism as 'tankie', you can continue to advocate for idealist positions, but it requires you to build a coherent movement around it otherwise its just masterbation and contrarianism.
Omg read theory dammit!
Telling someone to read Marx to understand modern day socialism is like telling someone to read Newton to understand modern day physics tbh.
Yeah, you're right. It's also important to read Lenin's works on imperialism to understand modern socialism. It's important to study Mao as well.
I mean yeah, if you want to understand the devolopment of physics you are required to understand the foundations it was built on, this is basic study.
Its like telling someone they should read the bible if they want to be christian, or telling someone they should read the instruction manual if they want to actually know what the terms they are using mean.