- cross-posted to:
- 196@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- 196@lemmy.world
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Just removed like 40 comments and banned a buncha people.
holy shit they kicked the tankies out of 196
based
Based mod team
I do my best :)
based. also hiii moss :3
Hiiii :33 howru
im good! glad u got made a mod here as well!
I am too! I love contributing to communities that I like!!
thank u for ur service :3
lmao I moderate a website I’m not a firefighter
x3 small deeds still matter
I got banned from lemmygrad for saying acab means all cops lmao
Meanwhile anarchist organizing doesn’t have cops, it has Agents of Community Defense who definitely aren’t cops!
I have nothing against anarchists, but you need to see past slogans to be anything but a useful idiot to neoliberals.
I mean any person or entity that enforces oppressive laws is a bastard. The government of China is far from some sort of benevolent state.
they yearn for the glorious people’s boot
500 years ago these mfs were the pro monarchy serfs
based
How a lot of you sound
No one is suggesting that the states the authoritarian communists replaced were good or functional, just that they failed to actually uplift and make people’s lives better. There’s nothing to admire about one oppressive state being replaced by another.
Removed by mod
Oh so ‘line go up’ is suddenly a valid way of determining a country’s quality of life now? Guess America must be a paradise then.
Life expectancy in the US is currently dropping for the first time in decades. “line go up” isn’t always a valid way of determining quality of life, but in the instance of life expectancy, I would say it is. Also, America is getting worse in basically every metric we can use to measure quality of life. Is “line go down” not a valid way of assessing quality of life either?
You beat me to the punch regarding the US life expectancy rate lol, but I kinda agree with both of you right now. Life expectancy can imply quality of certain aspects of life; like medical care and availability, but it isn’t the end all be all to a quality life. To me it’s just a factor, not a determining factor.
That’s more or less what I was attempting to highlight. It doesn’t paint the whole picture, but something as big as life expectancy shouldn’t just be dismissed so flippantly in discussions like this.
For transparency, I’m not nearly informed enough to have a valid opinion on the greater topic of this thread. I’m still learning about socialism in all of it’s varieties
Oh I’m so glad with same page. There’s definitely a lot to learn with life expectation, especially when seeing a supposedly developed nation dip, that’s unprecedented. But don’t worry, this is the kind of stuff one never stops learning. I have a degree in political science, I still feel like I have no idea what I’m talking about, but we can try right
b b b b b based
Literally just made an account and am just a Reddit pleb. What exactly are tankies and what is 196? Guessing it’s a Lemmy server but otherwise unsure
196 is a shitpost sub where you must post something when you vist
a tankie is a authoritarian that believes they’re a communist. they support the imperialist invasion of Ukraine, and they deny the tianaman square massacre, where the CCP ran tanks over college students protesting the authoritarian government. they deny a bunch of other atrocities as well, these are the only two i can think of right now.
a lot of tankies are going to be posting an essay by Engles that defends authoritarianism, asserting that authoritarianism is compatible with communism. which, while sure, isn’t ideal because one person having power always ends in genocide. well, it doesn’t end in genocide, genocide just… happens under authoritarianism.
I forgot about that famous picture/video of a tank running over a lone man. Oh wait, the tank tried to go around and eventually stopped when the man wouldn’t get out of the way
Citations Needed
Citate deez nuts in your mouth
Why are you threatening me with a good time
i made it up
Tankies are far left Marxists/Communists that are so anti- USA/West that they gladly defend almost anything that opposes the USA. Even authoritarian states like Russia and China. To be clear not every Communist is a Tankie through. And if you critizises on of this countries for horrible stuff, the Tankies will see you automatically as a USA chill. Because, from my online interactions with them, they see the world in black and white.
Huh, thanks for the info. I’ve never heard that term before nor have I ever run into any of those people on the internet though I guess platforms like this attract people like that more because of the lack of any central moderation team
A tankie is a leftist who doesn’t agree with mainstream geopolitical opinions or shows any interest in nuance
Tankies [1] don’t usually believe that Stalin or Mao “did nothing wrong,” although many do use that phrase for effect (this is the internet, remember). We believe that Stalin and Mao were committed socialists who, despite their mistakes, did much more for humanity than most of the bourgeois politicians who are typically put forward as role models (Washington? Jefferson? JFK? Jimmy Carter?), and that they haven’t been judged according to the same standard as those bourgeois politicians. People call this “whataboutism” [2], but the claim “Stalin was a monster” is implicitly a comparative claim meaning “Stalin was qualitatively different from and worse than e.g. Churchill,” and I think the opposite is the case. If people are going to make veiled comparisons, us tankies have the right to answer with open ones.
The reason we “defend authoritarian dictators” is because we want to defend the accomplishments of really existing socialism, and other people’s false or exaggerated beliefs about those “dictators” almost always get in the way — it’s not tankies but normies [4] who commit the synecdoche of reducing all of really existing socialism to Stalin and Mao. Those accomplishments include raising standards of living, achieving unprecedented income equality, massive gains in women’s rights and the position of women vis-a-vis men, defeating the Nazis, raising life expectancy, ending illiteracy, putting an end to periodic famines, inspiring and providing material aid to decolonizing movements (e.g. Vietnam, China, South Africa, Burkina Faso, Indonesia), which scared the West into conceding civil rights and the welfare state. These were greater strides in the direction of abolishing capitalism than any other society has ever made. These are the gains that are so important to insist on, against the CIA/Trotskyist/ultraleft consensus that the Soviet Union was basically an evil empire and Stalin a deranged butcher.
Tankies [1] don’t usually believe that Stalin or Mao “did nothing wrong,” although many do use that phrase for effect (this is the internet, remember)
Fair enough. Though I do disagree that they don’t usually deny their shortcomings but both sides of that claim are pretty hard to prove so I concede.
We believe that Stalin and Mao were committed socialists who, despite their mistakes, did much more for humanity than most of the bourgeois politicians who are typically put forward as role models (Washington? Jefferson? JFK? Jimmy Carter?), and that they haven’t been judged according to the same standard as those bourgeois politicians.
Ok you can make that argument
People call this “whataboutism”
“Tankies” do often use whataboutism, that’s irrefutable. Is this specific claim whataboutism? I’d say borderline, but I can see why it’s still a point worth bringing up.
but the claim “Stalin was a monster” is implicitly a comparative claim
No, it’s not - or at least not in the way he’s implying. The claim is overly vague (how do we define a monster?) but it’s not comparative. Whether Churchill committed atrocities (he did) and whether Stalin committed atrocities (he did) have no bearing on one another. All we have to do is define a monster - then we can measure whether a given leader was a monster. The only comparison needed is between the leader and the definition.
If people are going to make veiled comparisons, us tankies have the right to answer with open ones.
Sure, that’s true. Except like I said that “Stalin was a monster” is not comparative. If someone says “Stalin was worse than Churchill” than Churchill is relevant. But if someone says “Stalin committed atrocities” then it is whataboutism to answer “So did Churchill.” Churchill’s atrocities bear no relevance to Stalin’s.
A tankie is a leftist who doesn’t agree with mainstream geopolitical opinions
This is a stretch. Leftism, by and large, doesn’t agree with “mainstream geopolitical opinions” so this doesn’t properly distinguish them from other Leftists.
A tankie is a leftist who… shows any interest in nuance
Laughable. Tankies originate from Leftists walking the party line so claiming that all non-tankies lack “nuance” is a very… interesting accusation.
“Really existing socialism” of course meaning “a system wherein workers have zero effective political power.”
Just because it’s true that the ML movement was an essential part of decolonialization, and because it isn’t true that the USSR was some evil empire, doesn’t mean that the ideologies that underpin(ned) those societies aren’t deeply flawed.
The USSR was not an evil empire, no, but the political structure of a hierarchical, command-based politic lead exactly where critics said it would lead. The “ultraleft”, as you call them, including Luxemburg and Anarchist communists warned Lenin exactly what would go wrong in the USSR, and Lenin did not listen.
That’s why Lenin is a counter-revolutionary by deed if not by intent. By his actions, the power of the people’s and worker’s soviets were shattered and replaced with corrupt bureaucracy.
Also, hey, go tell a Tartar, Kalmykk or other displaced ethnic group who were victim of Stalin’s genocides that he wasn’t a deranged butcher. Maybe if you survive you can tell me what you learned.
To quote wikipedia
Tankie is a pejorative label for communists, particularly Stalinists, who support the authoritarian tendencies of Marxism–Leninism or, more generally, authoritarian states associated with Marxism–Leninism in history. The term was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defense of the Soviet use of tanks to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring uprising, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions.
196 is the server you’re in right now, tankies is a slang term for the more authoritarian types of communists (like Stalinists and such)
can we please not let the discord brainrot spread here? this is a post on the
lemmy.blahaj.zoneserver, in the 196 community.
This post has literally 6 times the comments of the next most-comments post, jesus. Wonder what could have triggered this!
Why are Blanquists even in the Fediverse? The Fediverse is about decentralization while Blanquists are for the extreme opposite.
One factor is that the main devs of lemmy are marxist-lennists, so they are more lax in regards to tankie content. Another factor is that people fled to lemmygrad once genzedong was banned from reddit.
Imagine cracking open Bernstein to attack MLs
Honest question - what’s a tankie? I feel like I’ve seen them mentioned a ton on Lemmy but I’d never heard the term prior to a few days ago. From the image it looks like a maga/skinhead combo?
genocide denier and hard authoritarian. fash dressed in red, basically.
Originally, it was used to describe communists who followed the party line and supported suppressing Hungarian workers with tanks.
Today it means ultra-authoritarian marxist-leninist.
I mean there is a word for that that’s less derogatory: Stalinist
It’s not entirely the same though. Some of the “tankies” in the West seem to be Maoists more than Stalinists, as far as I can tell. Besides, some (many?) Stalinists also consider the term “Stalinist” derogatory, and prefer to call themselves “Marxist-Leninists”.
Ok but let’s not pretend that either Marx or Lenin envisaged their form of communism as what Stalin was doing
It’s no different to “free speech” suddenly meaning “free hate speech, but restricted speech on anything else”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
Basically, it’s Communists who support authoritarianism.
There’s a lot of abstractions in that link but I think the following action is a meaningful distinction to call out:
The term is also used to describe people who endorse, defend, or deny the crimes committed by communist leaders such as Vladimir Lenin,[7][8] Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Kim il-Sung.
what is “authoritarianism” to you?
heirarchy in any form
Then every social structure is authoritarian.
Anarchists usually distinguish between just and unjust hierarchies, by the way, and svoid the word “authoritarian” when describing just ones. Anarchists still need to organize themselves to have leadership and delegation.
You should read about anarchy before you speak on it lol
There are all kinds of organizational styles that are non heirarchical.
Look into horizontal organization
Also look up the zapatistas, while they do not call themselves anarchist. They use a non heirarchical form of government.
well that’s just childish isn’t it
do you consider that a rebuttal?
how is a small group of people commanding a big mass better?
at least over time there will always be power hungry asshole or just an idiot in position of power.no power for no one is the only concept that can really work over time. but you need self-responsible and educated people for that
edit: and yeah, it is a utopian idea, but one I believe it is worth working for
yes because it’s not anything intelligent enough to be thoughtfully argued against. a 7 year old could see the holes in such an idea
I oppose one more system of authority than you do, in the interest of ideological consistency, intellectual honesty.
are you taking the position of a literal child?
It’s an insult used by liberals to punch left. Because liberals, as a rule, don’t really read history or politics with any depth, they don’t use it consistently. Sometimes it is conflated with communist. Sometimes they throw it at liberals that are just a bit less racist and xenophobic than them.
Originally it meant communists who supported the 1956 invasion of Hungary, and was used by British communists to split up their own parties on the issue.
They’re communists, but not your every day “people should hold the power” communists. More like “tianenmen never happened, and if it did it wasn’t that bad” type
Which makes them no different from the western imperialists they hate so much.
exactly
From the image it looks like a maga/skinhead combo?
For context, the image originally said kick nazis out of punk.
Tankie was first used for that kind of communist supporter who kept singing Russia’s praises/defending Russia even when Russia was sent 5000 tanks to crush a popular uprising in Czechoslovakia (the “Prague Spring”) on August 20, 1968. Some people just couldn’t accept that a communist country could do something bad, so defended the action.
Nowadays, it’s used to refer to those that are strongly supportive of Russia, completely ignoring the awful things they do. Often these days there’s a lot of anti American bent to it. Like, anything anti America and American “imperialism” must be good - even blatant and awful Russian Imperialism.
These days they calmly explain how Ukraine just needs to come to the table and discuss peace (ignoring that Ukraine wouldn’t exist if they did so) and blame America for the war in Ukraine for… well… they’re America. The people who want war, or are causing the war, are those giving Ukraine weapons - not the country that is literally invading it.
I think a better term is “Campist” which is the trend within revisionist marxists to side with one imperialist camp to oppose another. it’s the same shit the SPD did during WW1
Careful, these liberals will attack Trotskyists the moment they offer any positive opinion on the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. It won’t get you anywhere trying to be One of the Good Communists, it will just give you a chance to be a useful idiot for liberals who don’t actually support you.
Vaush moment
What are some good actual communist lemmy communities that aren’t supporting the fucking capitalist imperialist russian invasion?
look for anarchists if you desire a classless, stateless, moneyless society.
communism has been coopted by auth apologists infatuated with the color red.
But what if I’m not an anarchist? I like Marx but not Lenin, so I can’t be an ML either.
anarchism acknowledges Marxist theory, but rejects the need for a state/beaurocratic apparatus, as it is considered to be fundamentally oppressive.
the state is an abstraction of capital, and cannot liberate the working class, as it exists to perpetuate its own hegemonic existence, our subjugation.
governance need not be heirarchichal; I promote collective mutual determination as an egalitarian system by which society can organize.
can’t dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools
I promote collective mutual determination as an egalitarian system by which society can organize.
In practice, direct democracy? Or, how would that work - how would we organize society? Positions would still need to be held, no? Roles appointed, decisions made, lines drawn. No one can be up-to-date on all matters in their local nor global environment. And certainly not at the same point in time. How would anything work with any cohesiveness?
Sorry to be so dismissive, I’m actually kinda curious on your thoughts. Only ways I see are AI governance or a hive mind. Not sure about either tbh.
governance need not be heirarchichal; I promote collective mutual determination as an egalitarian system by which society can organize.
I don’t. I don’t think all hierarchies are unjust, I evaluate them based on their effect on the world. If a hierarchy can solve a problem better, it’s the preferable solution.
Everyone believes they are capable of behaving reasonably themselves. If they think laws and police are necessary, it is only because they don’t believe that other people are. But if you think about it, don’t those people all feel exactly the same way about you?
But what if we all have a different idea of what behaving reasonably means?
Anarchists argue that almost all the anti-social behavior which makes us think it’s necessary to have armies, police, prisons, and governments to control our lives, is actually caused by the systematic inequalities and injustice those armies, police, prisons and governments make possible.
That’s silly. Systemic inequalities don’t make people park their vehicles on the bike path or murder their wife because they think she cheated on them. If anarchism is all about thinking people are angels unless bad, bad oppressive systems make them do evil things they couldn’t do on their own then I don’t think we’ll ever get along. It’s alternate reality and an incredibly naive way of looking at the world and human nature.
Edit: could you kindly not respond to this? I don’t have an option to silence this thread on my end, and don’t want to hear about it any further.
There are an infinite variety of flavors of socialism, at some point you gotta learn to find folks you don’t disagree with on anything too important. In my experience anarchists are generally chill.
communism has been coopted by auth apologists infatuated with the color red.
Which happened almost instantly. I don’t have much hope that other radical leftist movements will fare much better.
I’m on the FMHY instance and the only political ideology community that’s been showing up in my feed has been Anarchism, so it’s probably the instance to join if you’re libleft and don’t want to deal with Auth shit.
Based.
They already have lennygrad.
Honestly, I don’t think we need them here.
the have genzdong in there lol
Can we have something like tankiejerk here? I seriously liked browsing that sub after a bad day with the red fashs.
didn’t they have a problem with people doing alt-right dogwhistles about anti-white racism recently? and it got so bad that they had to make a mod announcement telling people to stop doing it and all of the users started trying to explain to the mods how it definitely wasn’t a right wing dogwhistle
that sub often tended towards outright anti-leftism
Anticommunism and fascism are the best of friends.
That’s the unfortunate thing.
Start criticizing the Soviet union and you’ll end up with a bunch of people left bashing in general.
“tankies” criticize the Soviet union, you know? They also criticize the ebil See See Pee but apparently there’s no room for nuance
What’s your definition of “tankie”? If you’re willing to call out Putin’s homophobic journalist murdering authoritarian bullshit and the Chinese government’s massacring of protesters and genociding of ethnic minorities you’re not a tankie imo, you’re just a communist.
call out Putin’s homophobic journalist murdering authoritarian bullshit
The US isn’t nearly as far away from any of that as liberals like to believe.
Why is the litmus test for Tankie-ism picking sides in a civil war on the other side of the globe, while governors and senators from my home state seem giddy about imposing Putin’s policies in my backyard?
You’re pro-Putin if you don’t scream Slava Ukraine loud enough. You’re pro-CCP if you don’t cheer for American destroyers every time they sail the straight of Taiwan. You’re pro-Taliban if you’re relieved to see a 21 year long brutal occupation come to an end.
the Chinese government’s massacring of protesters and genociding of ethnic minorities
Westerners slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for decades on end, and it was fine because we labeled them all terrorists.
We wrote country music songs celebrating the fact. We played those songs at the fucking Super Bowl while millions cheered.
But when a leftist says “Stop doing these wars! The wars are bad!” the blood drenched finger of the liberal finally finds a place to point and condemn genocide denial.
Incredible.
Westerners slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for decades on end, and it was fine because we labeled them all terrorists.
No, it wasn’t fine, that’s kinda the point… It isn’t fine when the west does it, it’s not fine when others do it too…
It’s pretty typical tankie behavior that we’re seeing.
When you say it’s bad that Stalin implemented genocidal policies such as against the Krim Tartars, Kalmykks and other ethnic groups, they come back with wHaT aBoUt aMeRiCa.
They know that both things can be bad, but they have similar incentives to right-fascists. That is to say they’re liars.
When you clap like a seal because the latest round of corporate flacks insist AES states are full of baby eating monsters, you end up endorsing the Kosovo War, the Iraq War, the Vietnam War, and the Korean War all over again.
“China killed all the Uighurs” is just this generation’s “Saddam murdered babies in their incubators” and “Those Nicaraguan nuns had it coming” of the 21st century.
I’m confused on your point.
Left-bashing tends to signal a green light for more left-bashing.
what with all the anti-communist fascists and all
Nah, I joined their Discord for a bit and everyone there was a leftist.
finds social media developed by tankies
looks inside
finds tankies
fr I’m down with having a good old purge eventually but noone should be surprised
tankies more like no thankies
