After seeing a megathread praising Mao Zedong, an actual mass killer, and a post about a guy saying “99% of westerners are 100000000000% sure they know what happened in ‘Tiny Man Square’ […] the reasons for this are complex and involve propaganda […],” I am genuinely curious what leads people to this belief system. Even if propaganda is involved when it comes to Tiananmen Square, it doesn’t change the atrocities that were/are committed everywhere else in China.
I am all for letting people believe what they want but I am lost on why one would deliberately praise any authoritarian system this hard.
Can someone please help me understand why this is such a large and prominent community? How have these ideals garnered such a following outside of China?
EDIT: Thank you to everyone who has responded! This thread has been very insightful :)
As a couple of poster here are already demonstrating, they discover that western nations have lied about communist nations, but they don’t learn the more fundamental lesson that they shouldn’t trust everything a nation says. So instead of adopting a nuanced view, they just counter believing everything a western nation says with rejecting everything a western nation says and instead believing everything a communist nation says.
Yep.
I’m perhaps older than some here, so I saw something similar after 9/11.
Western media, especially American media, were often blatantly biased in favour of the US government and the so called ‘war on terror’. Especially when stuff leaked out about torture, mass killings and abuses. People turned to alternatives and often found channels like Russia Today. And to be fair, at first glance Russia Today did (certainly at the time) appear to be far more nuanced than mainstream media. It was certainly and often justifiably critical of what the US and its allies was up to around that time. But people who spent a lot of time uncritically watching Russia Today, often ended up believing the Russian government propaganda mixed in with truths.
I think it’s also in large part due to the human tendency to simplify reality. Reality is often complex, but we prefer to thing in categories, like black and white. And so you often see people thinking in or blindly accepting false binaries. Side A bad, so side B
badgood. (e: brain fart)It’s surprisingly common. I mean, look how common it is to think of Germany as the bad guy in WWI, when the reality was far more nuanced. The British empire really wasn’t great.
And in WWII the nazis were obviously evil, but that doesn’t mean the allies were particularly good either. For example, Roosevelt didn’t do that much to stop the deportation of up to 2 million Mexicans and Mexican Americans, putting Japanese Americans in concentration camps wasn’t moral, America was still virulently racist, and contrary to what you may have been led to believe about the Soviets up to 1 in 4 rapes by allied troops were perpetrated by Americans. Churchill arguably helped kill up to 4 million Indians during the war. Etc. etc.
What’s an example of a piece of false Russian propaganda that you’ve seen blindly accepted by Western “tankies” (MLs) who watched Russia Today?
Off the top of my head?
The Russian line about Skripal, Litvenenko, or similar.
The idea that Russia and China are playing anything but a highly duplicitious role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Occasional strongly worded letters, some great propaganda, while close strategic and economic ties continue unhindered or even increase.
The idea that Russia is denazifying Ukraine or that Ukraine has a particularly big nazi problem. In the 2019 Ukrainian elections the far right got 2% of the vote. Meanwhile Putin has historically cultivated close ties with Russian fascists, skinheads and hooligans. He is also a fervent admirer of people like Ivan Ilyin, quotes him regularly and helped have his body repatriated to Russia . Ivan Ilyin, who was a self-avowed fascist, openly admired Mussolini and Hitler, and a virulent anti-communist.
Anyway, being a communist/ML and being a tankie aren’t synonymous. Actual communists realise tankies are cosplay communists. Actual communists don’t make excuses for anti-communists. They don’t make excuses for some of the richest people on the planet. They don’t make excuses for oligarchs and robber barons. They don’t side with fascists, because they happen to be anti-western. They don’t make excuses for authoritarian capitalist states.
That’s something tankies do. It’s embarassing.
If anything tankies are useful idiots for the far-right, because their nonsense and lack of critical thought helps undermine serious leftists, socialists and communists.
China’s opposition (or lack of it) to Israel is controversial among MLs. I’m not familiar with the specifics of Russia’s opposition to Israel or what RT has claimed about it, but I’ll grant you that it’s probably similar to China’s dynamic with Israel.
I strongly disagree with the characterization of everything else as false propaganda, however.
I’m inclined to side with people like Jeremy Corbyn, Aaron Maté, and academics like Stephen F. Cohen and David S. G. Goodman who all expressed skepticism over the Skripal poisoning. IIRC, he was supposedly exposed to poison on the doorknob to his home at a time when he wasn’t even in the city.
If the idea that Ukraine has a Nazi problem is Russian propaganda, then most Western media outlets prior to 2022 qualify as Kremlin propagandists. The Neo-Nazi problem is highly regional. Ukraine is a divided country, which is why it entered a civil war in 2014. You referenced the far-right party Svoboda’s mere 2% of the national parliament, however, in the Neo-Nazi stronghold of the western Lviv Oblast, where statues of Stepan Bandera are erected, that share rises to 34%[1]. Furthermore, their influence is outsized, because they’re highly organized. NATO armed and supported the Banderite Azov Battalion beginning in 2005.[2] Today, that group has been upgraded to encompass multiple brigades.[3] Ukraine is the only country in the world with a Neo-Nazi group formally integrated into its federal armed forces. Starting in 2014 under Poroshenko’s coup regime, after massacring leftists in an inferno in Odessa, these fascists began traveling to the east to ethnically cleanse Russian Ukrainians in pogroms.[4] Zelensky ran on a platform of peace with Russia, which is still the dominant position, but was powerless to rein in the NATO-backed far right in his country.
I don’t believe RT has ever claimed that Putin is a communist. Presumably you’ve enumerated his ties to Russian nationalists to suggest that he and the Russian Federation could not possibly be genuinely opposed to Nazis. But even Russian nationalists share the Federation’s immense pride in the victory of the Red Army in the Great Patriotic War, for which the country still holds huge annual parades. A guiding tenant of past and present Nazi ideology is a boiling hatred of Russians, which is why they exterminated 18 million Russian civilians in that world war. Nationalism is characterized by pride in ethnicity and nation, and so nationalists tend to dislike people who consider them subhuman and want to kill them. Thus, opposition to Nazis and concern for the security threat they pose make sense from the perspective of both the left and right within Russia.
Apologists for Ukraine and its endless proxy war on behalf of NATO which is decimating Ukraine’s population and propelling the entire world towards WWIII and thermonuclear brinkmanship are IMO the embarrassing, useful idiots for the far-right and their genocidal ambitions in the Donbass.
https://ukraine-elections.com.ua/en/vybory/result/11 Svoboda translates to “Freedom”, which is how it’s listed here ↩︎
Per Col. Larry Wilkerson ↩︎
https://azovlobby.substack.com/p/how-we-learned-to-stop-worrying-and ↩︎
It happens with other things. If you hear a new Linux user, a reborn Christian, a new WH4K player, … you’ll hear them say that the “new” thing they like is the best thing in the world and has no flaws. Then you find the flaws and can happen two things: either you grow up and admit it has flaws or you stay a child and ditch that thing for another “new” thing.
Not a tankie, but this kind of framing is reductionist and condescending. It’s possible for someone to study the spectrum of political ideology and rationally decide that Communism is the best system. It’s honestly disheartening that a non-falsifiable claim presented with zero evidence would garner this many upvotes on this platform.
It’s possible for someone to study the spectrum of political ideology and rationally decide that Communism is the best system.
Seems you’re assuming all communists are tankies, when they wrote about communist nations, ie, communist states which are all some variety of Marxism-Leninism, not general communism. Who’s being reductive here?
THANK you. I was considering saying something similar here, and did in response to another ignorant, self-assuaging user elsewhere in the thread. So I’ll just say the same thing I said to them, as a response to WatDabney above:
If you read the many comments in this thread, not to mention other threads on this topic, a significant chunk of western leftists who are ML arrive at Marxism Leninism only after going through a more anarchist phase, and only through a lot of examination of the world and themselves, coupled with a lot of study and reading, do they move from anarchism to come to recognize the undeniable accuracy of Marxism Leninism to reflect the real world and to offer an actually-working methodology for revolution.
Your fallacious description of people’s process towards becoming Marxist Leninists as being the same sort of way that poor, ignorant, emotionally needy people latch onto a cult, is ridiculous, and the kind of things liberals like to say of all of us on the anticapitalist left to comfort themselves into maintaining their simplistic “I’m right but they’re wrong” worldview and avoid having to engage with the many real reasons people become anticapitalists. But that’s what you’re doing. Don’t be like the liberals. Try to understand the real why of things, don’t make up nice little bedtime stories that ensure you don’t have to examine your own misconceptions.
And some of them just get born into it.
No one is born into Marxism Leninism, anarchism, or any other ideology, and saying that is a grotesquely anti-anarchist thing to say.
And to add to that, when first coming to realize the lies you’ve been told by the state you live under, it is a lack of nuance to immediately jump to the false premise that just because your state is bad, that must mean all states are bad. That’s just the easy and childish answer. That doesn’t make it inherently wrong, but it does make it the one that requires further examination and sometimes a hard look at ones misconceptions. MLs are the ones who have done that hard work, not the ones who have fallen for the easy, un-nuanced end point. As someone else here went into a lot of detail describing but I can’t find at the moment, the typical and more easy trajectory for a young leftist is to go from disillusionment at their own state to anarchism. It is only after a lot more learning, examination, and recognition of nuance, that a person comes to see that the understandable kneejerk reaction that “all of them are evil!” is naive, simplistic, and totally lacking the nuance these things need.
It takes more internal work to conclude that “oh wow, all these other things I assumed were just the flat truth, common knowledge, - like how evil the communist states were and how bad they were for their people - were actually just more lies I was being told for a reason.” Which is why we have so many young anarchists who over time become ML’s but only rarely the other way around. @WatDabney@lemmy.dbzer0.com has it exactly backwards.
Tankie is just the flavour du jour for the modern version of red scare. It’s easier to call someone a tankie when they disagree with the current narrative about the war in Ukraine or the Palestinian genocide than meet them at their argument and have an honest discussion. To this day nobody has been able to explain to me, if Putin elected Trump and the pedo is a Russian asset, why did Putler decide to invade precisely when his asset was not in power. Also, why did Macron and Scholtz beelined to Moscow to stop a war while Bojo and Biden went full hawk? An aggressor is always in the wrong, period. That said, if Mexico and Canada entered a military alliance with North Korea or China do you think the US would sit idly by? Is it so hard to believe that Biden, after the traitorous IRA (stealing industry from the EU), was all too happy to wreck the EU industry by just precipitating the war rather than collaborate on its avoidance? Nobody ever does the “qui bono” analysis before they chest thump about “DeMoCrAcY”. That’s why the name tankie exists, it’s too hard for the average hollywood consuming joe to understand the grey in international politics. They just understand absolutes, especially within the anglosphere, which if PISA is anything to go by, is fast losing reading comprehension and ability to process complex problems. If you go agaist the narrative you’re a tankie, even if you’re on the side of the victims of genocide or argue we should support Ukraine because it’s the only way to assure a positive outcome for the EU rather than “we’re the good guys”.
Uh, I don’t think you understood their point. Tankies aren’t communists, they’re authoritarians with a red paint job. We’re not talking about nuanced Marxist thinkers, we’re taking about people who think “Just line everyone who doesn’t accept my exact interpretation of communism up against the wall” is rational praxis.
There are plenty of ways to rationally arrive at Communism, but really the only way to get to Tankie is, as the top comment says, rejecting Western propaganda in favor of the propaganda of so-called “communists”.
Those people don’t exist. You’re making things up.
Unfortunately not, I have had conversations with them. And I know your next line is going to be “But they’re just trolling, no one really thinks that”, and I call horseshit. That “trolling”, when so religiously adhered to, inspires weak-willed onlookers into sincere belief.
Unfortunately not, I have had conversations with them.
Any examples? As it stands, you’re not beating the “I use a strawman as a club to terminate discussions” allegations.
This is just intellectual dishonesty. We both know that every side has its extremists, and to deny their existence simply makes you look like a liar.
Sure, so we can say the people OP is referring to in their post do not actually share the views described by the comment I replied to, if that makes you feel better. The people that get the word “tankie” thrown at them that actually meet that comment’s description are extremely few in number, perhaps a dozen on the entirety of Lemmy.
No, I don’t think they’re trolling. I think that you mistake any comment that is vaguely supportive of China or Russia or that contradicts the mainstream western narrative about those countries as wholesale support for anything those countries do.
Communists know that the theory and the real world are not the same and that people can see thing in different light.
Tankies and fascists can’t. And for the same reason: they see the world in black and white. “100%with me or you are the enemy”. Not the rival or the opposition. The enemy.
You’re making a semantic argument and wrapping it up with a “no true Scotsman” fallacy.
OP is making an assumption about his opposition with zero evidence to support his claim. It’s a claptrap for people who want to feel intellectually superior, even if it’s to a straw man.
Not really, no. Words have definitions. It’s not a "semantic argument’ to clarify the definition of a word. It’s not “no true Scotsman” either, that’s when you define a group by some unrelated or incidental quality. What I’ve referred to is the definition of a tankie. The quality described is neither unrelated nor incidental.
What I’ve referred to is the definition of a tankie.
Oh, I see, you’re the authority on definitions, so whatever you say goes. Even the term “semantic argument” will be bent to mean whatever is convenient for your argument. Can you define “bad faith argument,” lol?
Uh, no. I just have the ability to look up definitions. The word means what it means
You said…
Tankies aren’t communists, they’re authoritarians with a red paint job.
Per the definition:
Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists
So you have the ability to look up definitions, just not to read them, apparently.
You are right that we cannot know and understand the life of every individual in a group, but we may observe typical or aggregate behavior, and we may seek reasonable inferences.
Tankies express a general pattern of behavior that is bad faith.
They quote passages instead of explaining from personal comprehension. They attack individuals against an opportunity to discuss ideas. They defer to doctrine instead of reasoning independently. They anchor to absurd lies about anarchists. They lie and deny instead of admitting to problems. They rely on disingenuous rhetoric such as the motte-and-bailey fallacy.
Such observations converge on a pattern of anchoring to convictions for reasons that are unrigorous, prejudiced, and generally misguided.
Where are these tankies? Are they in the room with us right now??
Literally, yes, there are people in comment threads in this post doing the read theory meme. You not acknowledging their existence doesn’t mean they aren’t real. You make leftists look like fools.
They’re right, you’re fucking clueless, log off and read a book
“read theory” is never a valid response. Articulate the point to me or forfeit.
Telling someone to look into something is only a valid counterpoint in reference to evidence. Theory is not evidence.
The problem with your argument is that it relies entirely on anecdotal evidence and personal experience, which is heavily influenced by confirmation bias.
What has anyone here said that isn’t true? You are making an assumption that any of us are “trusting everything a nation says,” but that is not what is happening. If you browse any “Tankie” instance you will see plenty of debate and criticism about every communist leader and state, as well as many western sources backing up our claims
As communists we are materialists, we rely on evidence to form our perspectives. Not everyone is going to do this perfectly all the time but generally a communist just wants everyone to be liberated from capitalism and understands that we can only achieve that through evidence based systems, science and pro-social community building. There is no need to “trust everything a nation says,” there is plenty of evidence from all sides to form our opinions.
As communists we are materialists, we rely on evidence to form our perspectives
Nerds 😤
Quoting a different comment from this thread:
“Authoritarianism” isnt even real, its jus [sic] another CIA op from the 60s so they could label any bad scary commie country as it
That doesn’t sound to me like any kind of good faith argument as much as an excuse to praise the consolidation of power in one person, which I still have trouble understanding how anyone on the fediverse is for - doesn’t it go completely against everything decentralization stands for? How is it so easy to understand the corruption of business billionaires but impossible to understand that a single person in charge of the means of distribution could easily become corrupt and authoritarian?
When I think of a “tankie”, I do not think of a Marxist-Leninist arguing in good faith, I think of the people who praise oppressive regimes simply because they are communist, and hold no place for debating alternatives to or safeguards against giving one corrupt individual complete power over a nation. Authoritarianism is not synonymous to communism (see: fascism) and it seems crazy to me to believe that it does not exist, or that it is somehow good.
Perhaps you are not one of the people falling for everything certain nation-states say; in that case, I wouldn’t consider you a tankie. But those people absolutely do exist.
I’m not going to speak for that user but in general I think they are referring to a few things:
-
All states are authoritarian. The idea that communists are especially authoritarian to a point that it means they deserve to be attacked and defeated by “non-authoritarian pro-democracy” nations is essentially an ad campaign by the US and their allies to justify their cold war aggression against communists. We are talking about the British and US empires, during the jim crowe era, accusing the USSR and China of being authoritarians and themselves as democratic. You see how this is nonsense right? There is no way that the British empire, a monarchy with an imperialist bourgeoisie was more democratic or less authoritarian than the USSR, even if most of the lies about the USSR were true. The slave holding jim crowe indigenous genocide USA, with its colonial holdings all over the world, was more democratic and less authoritarian? It just can’t be so. The reality is that this word is essentially meaningless, every state has a monopoly on violence and is authoritarian.
-
None of these people had power consolidated to one person. Stalin, Mao, all of them had a lot of people involved in the decision making process. This is well documented and even admitted by the US in their internal documents about Stalin specifically.
But those people absolutely do exist.
I have been organizing in the real world with leftists of all kinds for over a decade, and unfortunately have seen a bit of the online left in that time as well.
A lot of people call themselves things and don’t even know what they mean.
I think calling them tankies is reductive and ignorant because it is misrepresenting every party involved and only serving to paint well meaning MLs as bad because people who are not actually MLs are being allowed to represent us.
-
How do people actually fall into the “Tankie” mindset?
The MLs answering in good faith despite the question being framed in bad faith have exceptional grace.
a post about a guy saying “99% of westerners are 100000000000% sure they know what happened in ‘Tiny Man Square’ […] the reasons for this are complex and involve propaganda […]”
Oh hey I know that guy. If anyone who wants to know more about propaganda & media literacy, please see also: previously.
Cool. I now have your account tagged properly.
Cool. Thanks for the firehose of downvotes, stalwart patriot.
Edit: The amount of conjecture and thought terminating cliches in this thread is through the fucking roof lmfao. Peak reddit.
A lot of tankies are actually posting how and why they believe what they believe. If anyone’s seriously interested in an answer look at this thread from https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/60633370?scrollToComments=true
There are 206 comments in total at this time.
My journey started here:
https://hexbear.net/comment/3763871How they piqued my interest:
https://hexbear.net/comment/5606499The reason I switched:
https://hexbear.net/comment/5355388It was a combination of them just not being horrible “redfash” monster everyone says they are, them being able to consistently back up their seemingly “obviously wrong” takes and me and seemingly no one else being able to come up with better answers.
In discussions tankies were the only ones who had good faith discussions, obviously they didn’t always, but if it wasn’t just an internet slapfight the tankies were the ones citing sources and having incredibly nuanced understandings while me and the other libs didn’t really. All I ever saw was a “nuh-uh” backed up by “obvious” claims that “everybody” knows like your “mao zedong was the worst mass murderer”.
There is a post I could make about this “black book of communism” statistic now, having read about these sorts of claims, but not on my phone.
I don’t think they’re redfash monsters, I just know most historians disagree with what they say, and as someone who is not an expert, I will trust the experts over the people I see post 18 paragraphs that the one time I looked into was not very relevant and often just cause more confusion. An easy example is china’s treatment of the uyghurs, I have yet to see a response that isn’t, as you say, a thought terminating cliché.
See that for me was quite the opposite. The people everyone was piling on as tankies had demonstrably better knowledge of not just both history and current events but could trace a lot of the claims levied against them, like the uyghur genocide hoax, to their source, in this case Adrian Zenz, and really completely decimate them.
Those contradictions kept piling on, tankies were rebutting “common knowledge” and backing up seemingly ludicrous claims in depth and clearly previously researched. Whereas the libs were just consistently out of their depth, either insulting, claiming without anything to back it up or in the best case throwing around tangentially related articles or wikipedia entries that were obviously just the first results from an ad hoc google search. Until just sort of all came crashing down and sent me reeling, my whole worldview coming undone. My family and especially my wife got really worried even, but it kind of tapered away and settled into a new approach to things that feels like I am actually able to take at all these complex and finally have the tools necessary to understand them if I invest the time to do so.
I do not know better than the united nations or several peer reviewed journals. The journal also has references to dozens of historians. It is possible some small group on the internet know more than they do, and are interpreting it better than people who do it as a job, I just find that unlikely. The UN believes it is a persecution if not a genocide. I am a layman on this topic and will defer to experts, because I know there is a lot of astroturfing and I have previously seen arguments that seemed flawless but were missing key details that an expert showed why they were flawed.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2020.1848109
The sources used in your link are sourcing Chinese tabloid Global times. I am fully convinced it’s astroturfing at this point.
A reuters article about some UN article. Not even the UN article itself.
And a journal article citing Zenz multiple times, Plus other citations that are however themselves based on zenz. it looks like zenz all the way down.vs
a whole historical rundown replete with sources
Yours is essentially an appeal to authority, davel obviously went through the trouble of researching the entire history behind the conflict.
Your rebuttal? “Wow you must be a paid troll actor”
And that’s how I became a tankie 😄
Thanks for the live demo
Brother this took me 15 seconds to find, this is very low effort astroturfing https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/22-08-31-final-assesment.pdf
e: also all the interviews with matching details https://www.npr.org/2018/11/13/666287509/ex-detainee-describes-torture-in-chinas-xinjiang-re-education-camp But again the entire UN agrees this is happening, and the only one who says it’s not is the country that benefits from saying it’s not.
Wow, one of the twenty-odd links isn’t from a Western source? Must be a foreign secret agent!
Deeply unserious.
No they are sourcing a Chinese tabloid which is governed by China to prove that China did not do something, while every other country’s reporting, including Chinese historians interviewed, says it is happening. This is the only link I checked to see if it was worth looking over the rest. I am using the most likely conclusion that either they did not care to see the source was from a Chinese tabloid because it confirmed what they already believed, or they are a foreign agent, which have been confirmed to exist on every social media platform. You should be wary I am one too. Either way it’s not worth anyone’s time.
I just know most historians disagree with what they say
Serious contemporary historians, not airport bookstore historians, do agree with much of what we say, because after the fall of the USSR, they got access to troves of Soviet government documents spanning decades, which dispelled much Western Cold War propaganda.
me and the other libs
Is this a parody?
No. The great majority of MLs on Lemmy were born, raised, and still live in the imperial core, just like most other people on Lemmy. We got the same education, indoctrination, and propaganda as everyone else, so most of us started out as liberals with largely the same beliefs as everyone else. We believed all the same Cold War propaganda as everyone else. Investigating and peeling away the layers of propaganda and lies is actually a long, slow, and not particularly pleasant, effort.
Speak for yourself, peeling off cold war propaganda is an incredibly liberating process for me. It actually gives me hope that revolution is possible and that not only things can potentially be done, but have already successfully been done.
At the time I was a lib even if I didn’t identify as such
So you support Russia invading Ukraine, China doing a genocide?
Because that’s literally what Tankies believe in
Lol what genocide
I didn’t support Russia until I learned the history of the region going back to 2013. Now I critically support it like most other marxists.
I used to condemn China for committing genocide until I learned that it actually isn’t. Even installed xiaohongshu and could see for myself.
That’s what I meant by
tankies were the ones citing sources and having incredibly nuanced understandings while me and the other libs didn’t really.
See this comment for an example of a typical debate between a tankie and a lib.
Ha ha “tankies” aka people who break through the empire wall of propaganda programming. So choosing to stop believing western propaganda rags and CIA psyops to answer your question
“Authoritarianism” isnt even real, its jus another CIA op from the 60s so they could label any bad scary commie country as it
“Authoritarianism” isnt even real, its jus another CIA op from the 60s so they could label any bad scary commie country as it
They’re referring to the fact that in contemporary discourse ‘Authoritarianism’ is a label applied by the western media to any government that bucks the ‘US led rules based international order’
is ‘Authoritarianism’ a thing? yes, but it has become a thought-terminating cliché and has lost all meaning in modern discourse
I assume you think that China is Authoritarian? I’d probably agree with you, the issue arises when people do not apply the same standards everywhere, is China authoritarian because it surveils its population and imprisons people?
Then why isn’t the US also labelled 'Authoritarian '? it also surveils its population , so much so that they have the highest percentage of its population incarcerated than any other country,
Its forces specifically target ethnic minorities often imprisoning them on spurious chargers , and for political dissention
The US drops 46 bombs a day on average , with a drone program is 90% inaccurate (They imprisoned the whistle-blower who revealed this) alongside other war crimes such as the first time a noble peace prize winner bombed another(Obama, MSF) and sexual abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo
China hasn’t been in a war for 46 years, not to say its perfect my any means it engages in the same severe human rights abuses any large state does and should be condemned for it, but when compared to the very literally Evil Empire than is the the US and its neo-colonialism you can see why people support this state that offers countries a lifeline outside of the usurious IMF world order
So while both states clearly meet the definition of being Authoritarian, one engages in mass killings globally, so you may see why so called Tankies critically support one of these two ‘Authoritarian’ states over the other
“Authoritarianism” isnt even real
It is difficult for me to imagine how someone could possibly convince themselves of this. What do you call it when a leader consolidates power around themselves, removing checks on their position and making unilateral mandates that are enforced through state violence against all who dare oppose?
I remember seeing this argument before. It’s something like all states are authoritarian, so you can’t call out any single state for being authoritarian. Like the label only exists for some states to de-legitimize others even though the ones doing the labeling are also authoritarian. It appears to me to be an intentional attempt to strip the word of meaning so that authoritarians can no longer be criticized as such.
All states are authoritarian, some moreso than others. It’s true that some states do cynically accuse others of doing what they do themselves to delegitimize them, but it is completely valid still to single out certain states that are particularly authoritarian, and to compare them to others.
This is why it’s necessary to investigate the nature of authority and the state. The state is simply the tool by which one class establishes supremacy, and the degree to which said authority is used depends on the conditions the state finds itself in, and not on any individual’s decision. Socialist states where the working class is in control have to develop instruments of state power to protect the gains of socialism, even anarchists do this as well in practice. Capitalist states where capitalists are in control oppress the working class to protect the free flow of capital and continuous circulation.
Trying to treat the level of authority employed as a policy choice, rather than a response to existing conditions, delegitimizes the use of necessary tools to defend the gains of socialism.
Trying to treat the level of authority employed as a policy choice, rather than a response to existing conditions, delegitimizes the use of necessary tools to defend the gains of socialism.
How you respond to existing conditions is a policy choice, and authoritarian methods are not necessary for defending the gains of socialism.
For example, one existing condition in the US is the fentanyl crisis. The US government has chosen to respond to this existing condition by continuing the criminalization of drug abuse and using the crisis as justification for imperialism in Venezuela. The US could have chosen to respond by funding addiction treatment centers and decriminalizing drug abuse.
Another example, an existing condition in China was population growing faster than their economy could keep up (ostensibly). China chose to respond with a one-child policy, restricting reproductive freedom. China could have chosen to respond by encouraging contraception and creating financial incentives and disincentives.
What you suggest is political determinism, implying that there is only one way that a state can respond to existing conditions, when in fact there is a vast range of possibility.
For example, one existing condition in the US is the fentanyl crisis. The US government has chosen to respond to this existing condition by continuing the criminalization of drug abuse and using the crisis as justification for imperialism in Venezuela. The US could have chosen to respond by funding addiction treatment centers and decriminalizing drug abuse.
Flip it around. The US Empire didn’t randomly choose to attack Venezuela, the imperialist system itself found justification for doing so. The mode of production takes priority over the what actions a system takes, its internal contradictions are what drives its change. The US Empire is in a state of decline, and thus needs to re-exert itself millitarily. The conditions are that imperialism is weakening, the outcome is the violent re-assertion of control. Had imperialism been working fine and Venezuela colonized by the US, it would not be attacking Venezuela right now, but the capacity for doing so already exists.
Another example, an existing condition in China was population growing faster than their economy could keep up (ostensibly). China chose to respond with a one-child policy, restricting reproductive freedom. China could have chosen to respond by encouraging contraception and creating financial incentives and disincentives.
In 1954, condoms and cervical caps were already promoted over abortions for family planning. They continued to promote birth control, in the early 1970s they sent “barefoot doctors” to the rural areas where birth rates were higher to teach about contraceptives and provide abortions if needed. It wasn’t until 1979, 25 years after they started promoting modern methods of birth control and incentives for lowering birth rates that they implemented the One Child Policy, exempting ethnic minorities. It wasn’t the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth tactic, but one finally employed after 25 years, over a decade and a half from the baby boom in the 60s. The state responded to crisis in increasing measure because simply promoting awareness of birth control and providing it for free did not work at the rates needed.
What you suggest is political determinism, implying that there is only one way that a state can respond to existing conditions, when in fact there is a vast range of possibility.
Not quite. My point isn’t that choice doesn’t exist, but that the extent to which measures are employed and the types of measures employed depends on the class character of the state and the existing material conditions the state finds itself in. Modern Germany doesn’t have a lesser potential for authority than Nazi Germany, it just hasn’t had the need to thanks to benefiting from decades of imperialism. Now that imperialism is crumbling, it’s trending to the far-right again. This isn’t because of any choice for authority, but the state responding to real conditions.
So China and Russia aren’t authoritarianisms?
Every state is authoritarian
What a crazy stretch just to avoid answering a simple question.
It isn’t a stretch, have you studied any leftist theory at all?
The idea that a state is inherently “authoritarian” is an introductory level concept.
The key difference between “tankies” and anarchists is that the former understands you need to change the economic substructure before you can change the super structure and the latter generally thinks what is essentially the opposite.
Let us begin with the most popular of Engels’ works, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, the sixth edition of which was published in Stuttgart as far back as 1894. We have to translate the quotations from the German originals, as the Russian translations, while very numerous, are for the most part either incomplete or very unsatisfactory.
Summing up his historical analysis, Engels says:
“The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from without; just as little is it ’the reality of the ethical idea’, ’the image and reality of reason’, as Hegel maintains. Rather, it is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, these classes with conflicting economic interests, might not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became necessary to have a power, seemingly standing above society, that would alleviate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of ’order’; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state.” (Pp.177-78, sixth edition)[1]
This expresses with perfect clarity the basic idea of Marxism with regard to the historical role and the meaning of the state. The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises where, when and insofar as class antagonism objectively cannot be reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable.
It is on this most important and fundamental point that the distortion of Marxism, proceeding along two main lines, begins.
On the one hand, the bourgeois, and particularly the petty-bourgeois, ideologists, compelled under the weight of indisputable historical facts to admit that the state only exists where there are class antagonisms and a class struggle, “correct” Marx in such a way as to make it appear that the state is an organ for the reconciliation of classes. According to Marx, the state could neither have arisen nor maintained itself had it been possible to reconcile classes. From what the petty-bourgeois and philistine professors and publicists say, with quite frequent and benevolent references to Marx, it appears that the state does reconcile classes. According to Marx, the state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it is the creation of “order”, which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between classes. In the opinion of the petty-bourgeois politicians, however, order means the reconciliation of classes, and not the oppression of one class by another; to alleviate the conflict means reconciling classes and not depriving the oppressed classes of definite means and methods of struggle to overthrow the oppressors.
Lenin, state and revolution
The keyword here is “theory”.
Adopting one theory as your one and only point of view, like a religion, is nonsensical.
I refrain from being dragged in such limited perspectives on reality, from politics to science. It’s always better to doubt of everything, especially about what people believe blindly.
Tell me that you have no clue what the word “theory” means without telling me.
Good lord, don’t they teach this stuff in highschool?
What you are thinking of is indoctrination and no, they didn’t do that in my highschool.
Instead they taught us about how different theories exist and how each is valid until it is not.
Me when a round earther tries to force their round earth theory on me
Are you saying you believe the earth is flat? Lol and lmao
They answered your question with an implied “yes” and provided relevant additional context by saying that so are all the other states. Their answer would only count as avoiding the question if you had asked something like “Is X more authoritarian than Y?” instead.
Yeah, like:
“Are Nazis bad people?”
“All people are bad”
LMAO
Would you have been satisfied if Jabril said “Yes, every state is authoritarian” instead? What was Jabril supposed to say?
wut
That’s ok, you’ll get your social credit points nonetheless.
“OUR glorious Ministry of Truth has determined that their hated Ministry of Truth is full of lies. Our glorious ministry of truth also assures us that they never lie.”
Sure, bud.
What source do you think we’re reading our news from? What’s our “Ministry of Truth”?
Actually I think this comment unintentionally answers OP’s question.
I think a common tankie story is:
-
Realization that much of western media is propaganda or influenced by propaganda.
-
Finding that enemies of the American empire (and Europe) with some semblance of power agree that western media is propaganda, and these people are MLM communists.
-
After they’ve established credibility with their accurate criticisms of western capitalist society, tell you that, oh, by the way, those propaganda outlets in the west also lie about us, actually almost all of what we do is awesome and people who claim otherwise are automatically suspect.
Number 3 is a mistake, I think, but it’s an understandable one. This isn’t super fair to tankies but the analogy I’d give is to people who fall under the spell of someone like Jordan Peterson: he sounds smart, and he lulls you into a sense of security with good advice about taking care of yourself, keeping your house clean, etc., and then once he’s gotten your trust he gently introduces stuff like “oh by the way evolution proves that men and women shouldn’t work together” or whatever, and because he’s made sensible points up until then, your guard is down and you don’t critique it in your head before accepting it.
[Enemies of the American empire] tell you that, oh, by the way, those propaganda outlets in the west also lie about us
Western propaganda outlets absolutely do like about their enemies though. It’s verifiable. They lie about them more than anything else.
The primary goal of the empire is maintaining its hegemony. Since the biggest threats to that hegemony are its rival states, it undermines support for them by libeling and slandering them. The empire doesn’t much care about how great you think it is. As long as you hate every alternative more, they’re not threatened. The reason Stalin and Mao were demonized more than anyone else in modern history is because they scared the living shit out of the capitalists.
Example of their lies
My “tankie story”, so to speak, began in 2019 just before the Hong Kong protests kicked off. I followed the progression of that story through Marxist news sources like Proles Pod:
A Chinese man murdered and dismembered his girlfriend, stashed her body parts in a suitcase, and fled to Hong Kong. China couldn’t extradite him back to the mainland, so the Chinese authorities in Hong Kong crafted an extradition law. Hong Kong capitalists opposed it, fearing extradition for their financial crimes.
For a long time, I heard nothing about the story from mainstream American news sources. Then one day, NPR broached the subject. I thought “oh boy, someone is finally covering this story!”
All that NPR had to say about it was “There are protests in Hong Kong. The protesters want more democracy. China is against them because they hate democracy.” I was flabbergasted! There was no substance at all to the reporting. Absolutely none of the inciting background was covered. I was introduced in real time to the way that even “good” liberal, Western news sources like NPR flatten all stories about enemy countries into simple good vs. evil narratives.
[and] actually almost all of what we do is awesome and people who claim otherwise are automatically suspect.
This is just a straw man. The reason the concept of “critical support” is so common in Marxist anti-imperialist spaces is because we acknowledge nuance and limit our support to productive actions.
I’m going to throw back once more to my experience with Proles Pod, a podcast that was widely criticized as being one of the most “Stalinist” media in existence. I was introduced to them through an interview with the hosts conducted by Breht O’Shea on Revolutionary Left Radio. They spent the first twenty minutes enumerating all their criticisms of the mistakes that Stalin made.
-
“it’s okay that I support imperialism, the imperialists told me the anti imperialists will believe anything!”
Please point to where I said I support imperialism
I’m commenting on the meme you shared, which takes the position that being a puppet of US imperialism is actually the lesser evil than having any rational perspective on the evil authoritarians of the east
The meme I shared takes the position that those you call “puppets of US imperialism” are fully aware that they are being showered with propaganda and that the US is an evil state which lies about everything.
We constantly criticize the US for its bullshit but the second we criticize the “communist” nations of the east we are gobbling up western propaganda and sucking the cocks of the US elite
fully aware
westerners are famous for being fully aware
We constantly criticize the US for its bullshit but the second we criticize the “communist” nations of the east we are gobbling up western propaganda and sucking the cocks of the US elite
it isn’t hard to point out western propaganda made by the US explicitly to foment war and conquest over their enemies.
It sounds like you are saying that by pointing this out when it is happening it isn’t fair because the US is also bad, so their enemies also deserve to be called bad, even by the US, even when it is easily proven to be a lie?
If you say some shit that is easily proven to be a lie, it just is that. It isn’t some propaganda conspiracy by evil authoritarians when someone posts blatant bullshit and gets called out.
As I said in another comment, browse hexbear for awhile and you will see plenty of criticism of Russia, China, Iran and more. We just criticize them for things that we have evidence for instead of shit that is directly paid for by the US state department, like the idea that Venezuela’s president runs the largest cartel in the country or that the leadership of North Korea ties prisoners to cannons and shoots them into tiny pieces. Ironically that fake store about DPRK was really what the British did to their colonized subjects, as is often the case with imperialist nonsense
westerners are famous for being fully aware
it isn’t hard to point out western propaganda
Pick one. I’m also sure the next thing you’re going to say is that you are fully aware.
It sounds like you are saying that by pointing this out when it is happening it isn’t fair because the US is also bad, so their enemies also deserve to be called bad, even by the US, even when it is easily proven to be a lie?
Not what I’m saying at all. The examples you gave are ridiculous and I’ve never heard anyone claim those. I’m talking basic shit like North Korea not allowing people to escape the country, and visits there being heavily chaperoned, so the only coverage is either directly from the North Korean government or from controlled journalism (or western propaganda). But I still see government “news” posted on hexbear and y’all treat it like 100% truth.
But when it’s pointed out that “hey maybe the governments you look up to aren’t being totally honest either” we get shit like
westerners are famous for being fully aware
Well for sure one of the reason is that even in non marxist communities they show up and write comments in a style that many people resonate with. I mean using citations, good grammar, appealing to logic, (seemingly) good argumentations etc.
This makes them look reasonable and even if you do not read all their sources, you might remember their comments and talking points in a pretty positive light.
I dont want to say this style of arguing is bad, but I think it gets valued higher than arguments based on intuition and emotion with a less “scientific” style, because that is what many people are taught when growing up, going to school etc.
Also I would like to say, in some cases this “showing up” is done in a way that feels invasive to (parts of) communties. Like an online version of Jehovas Witnesses.
People deify their favorite State and overlook the bad it does. All States commit atrocities so it is easier for everyone to look away rather than say “I like x about how y nation handles z” and be specific about it.
But that last part is included in the “maturing” part of your life. About countries and about people.
Oh man this was one month ago? It feels like years.
You say this, but I bet you and almost everyone here support the Allies during WWII even though most of the Allies had colonial empires and had already committed multiple genocides to build those empires. I do not think people here would seriously think that the principled socialist position is to hold “neither Berlin nor Moscow nor London” signs while the Blitz was happening or to hide in a cave while the Nazis were exterminating people in death camps because the British were also starving Bengalis to death.
States should not exist. Dont know what this rant wants to project but thats what I think, full stop.
States should not exist.
That’s the goal of all communists, including MLs. The disagreement lies in the path to get there.
Marxists-Leninism doesn’t attract people whose disposition is towards a stateless society. They may offer a vague “some day”, but all their effort is in the opposite direction.
So you support neither the Allies nor the Axis during WWII because both sides comprise of state actors? Non-state actors didn’t exist in any meaningful capacity during WWII. Even partisans and underground resistance groups were affiliated with the Allies.
What does this have to do with the discussion in the post? This is just whataboutism.
No, it’s asking you to apply your theory to practice. Take from the theoretical and apply it to history and reality.
Its definitely not. Its blanketing all people of WW2, no matter their political or personal beliefs, and presenting them as a unified block that I must answer yes or no to appease. Obviously the Nazis being stopped was a good thing. But I dont have to worship the nations that did it to appreciate it. Nor do I have to exonerate them of their atrocities to say that this one course of action was good. Stop dealing in dichotomies and absolutes.
Obviously the Nazis being stopped was a good thing. But I dont have to worship the nations that did it to appreciate it. Nor do I have to exonerate them of their atrocities to say that this one course of action was good.
His point is that this is the same kind of critical support that MLs want to extend to AES states. MLs have a lot of criticisms of, e.g., contemporary China. They just think it is one of the better available realistic alternatives, and deserves qualified support over (say) the United States. MLs agree that a stateless society is the eventual goal (and that China is flawed), but believe that as a matter of practical real-world tactics, it is better to support China against the US in the same way it was better to support the US against Nazi Germany.
First and foremost, I think people should consume media that is not from the West. You really can’t claim to be an internationalist if your media bubble (I’m including social media as well) is entirely situated within the West. To be an internationalist means recognizing that Western thought isn’t the end all of human civilization. What constitutes the West is actually pretty small. It’s only through imperialism that the West has a very oversized presence. But the West is only one of many viewpoints. At a bare minimum, you have to read what non-Westerners say.
But it’s not just a case of picking any random non-Western country since many of their news media has been captured by the West through NGOs. Personally, I find news from Anglophone non-Western countries (India, Nigeria, and so on) to be bad overall as far as echoing what has already been said on Reuters and the BBC. The easiest way is to get out of the bubble is to pick news media from countries that are hostile to the West. That’s one of the reasons why you see Russian/Chinese/Iranian/Venezuelan news media cited in ML circles. It’s an easy way to pierce through the Western bubble even if you must be cognizant of the geopolitics at play. It’s not the only way by any means. In many ways, social media by non-Westerners can be superior even when accounting for botting and censorship. There’s a reason why the US wanted to get rid of Tiktok and I strongly suspect they will move to do the same with XHS, which actually has authentic Chinese people (of a certain demographic) on social media.
When you step outside the Western bubble, it’s very obvious that the vast majority of criticism of China comes from a broader Cold War 2.0 strategy by the US to attack China. Whatever is not wholly made up is put an exorbitant emphasis on. There are numerous problems with Chinese society, of course. Many of them are actually pretty apparent if you consume Chinese social media made by Chinese people in China. However, you’re not going to find this in any article by the BBC unless it’s to push some ridiculous narrative about how Taiwan is going to be invaded or Tokyo is going to be nuked by China. You have to step outside the Western bubble.
It’s a tiny fringe, just here on Lemmy they can be quite noisy 🤷
Personally, I kept reading and that’s where it lead me. You can be part of the team too, comrade
wishing i had the mao hexbear copypasta bot right now though
Personally, I kept reading and that’s where it lead me.
Same reason I’m an anarchist 🙂
I’m curious (in a genuine, friendly way) what you read that led you to anarchism over Marxism-Leninism. Was it a theoretical text that reverberated particularly well with you, historical texts that you felt made anarchism a more justifiable position than MLism, something else entirely?
Because for me, like others have answered, it was reading more that led me from identifying as an anarchist to (to me, personally) recognizing MLism as far more theoretically sound and realistic. And to answer my own question, it was mostly reading Lenin that did this for me, but plenty of others helped, from more contemporary advocates like Michael Parenti and Vijay Prashad to actually reading and contemplating the works of the big bad Stalin and Mao themselves.
I still am strongly tied to an anarchist mindset, despite seeing MLism as simply the factually correct position. For example, as someone else (u/axont) in this thread mentioned one difference in irl organizing she’s noticed with both MLs and anarchists is that the latter tends to be more willing to do illegal stuff - let’s just say I am far more likely to side with anarchists in situations where that more immediate tactical question might come up. I’m also a bit more sympathetic to so-called adventurism, given the current political climate and lack of organized left in the west, than most of my ML comrades are.
Still, when it comes to a broader understanding of history, theory, long term tactics, and the support of international AES projects, I can’t come to any other conclusion than that Marxism-Leninism is simply a more accurate lens to see the world through than anarchism is, more theoretically robust as well as being proven a more successful methodology for revolution. And given the phrasing OP used, I also don’t hold the frankly naive and simplistic (not to mention convenient for our bourgeois enemies) view of AES = bad and “authoritarian.”
I’m curious (in a genuine, friendly way) what you read that led you to anarchism over Marxism-Leninism. Was it a theoretical text that reverberated particularly well with you, historical texts that you felt made anarchism a more justifiable position than MLism, something else entirely?
Two things:
-
I am autistic with severe trust issues. Not to imply that autistic ==> anarchist, but IMO I “inherited” a great deal of skepticism and distrust from growing up autistic in AmeriKKKa, where basically every interaction is lies all day every day, and systems are optimally designed to maximize capitalist oppression. And frankly, I am not looking for new masters since I already hate the masters I have. So it’s going to be very difficult to rationally convince me that any state is worth supporting, even one that labels itself a dictatorship of the proletariat, or even (especially!) groups that claim to agree with me.
-
Statistically speaking, anarchism has helped me navigate the world and predict to sufficient accuracy how things are gonna go down in the fields where it applies. If you told me that MLism has statistically helped you like anarchism has helped you, I’d believe you because we all have different experiences, and I guess that’s just how the dice rolled.
-
I wouldn’t describe myself as a tankie, but I do think I am more sympathetic towards the various communist projects that have been tried in one way or another. The difficulty talking about this is that there is all sorts of misinformation, so it can be hard to have a complete, coherent discussion on these issues. (and of course I know it can be coming from both sides, so it really makes things confusing) What’s more important to me though are the interpretations people have of these issues and how that informs their politics in the context of the real world that we live in.
What do I mean by this? While of course it’s important to critique past and current governments, it should be so that we can learn from their mistakes and do better in the future. I don’t really want to be defending some atrocity or failure of a state. I want to have an honest and productive talk about it. But in the context of living in the west, and especially the US, the propaganda line is to treat these governments as a complete and unique evil in order to justify both imperialism abroad and suppression of the left at home. They make it sound like their actions are just a continuation of our role in WWII fighting against fascism for freedom and democracy. But clearly that’s not the case. The US does absolutely awful shit all around the world and is buddy buddy with various oppressive/undemocratic governments. And this isn’t whataboutism. I’m not saying “well we did awful shit so it’s ok when they do it too.” What I’m saying is that by overly focusing your ire on these left wing governments, you reinforce the idea that the US is the good guy for fighting against them, that even if you have problems with the US, the other guys are way worse and it’s worth supporting US military interventions because of that. With that mentality, the military budget keeps growing, we keep bombing people who didn’t deserve it, we continue to justify our own authoritarian measures as being necessary for fighting against these existential threats. etc.
I’m sure for most on the left, especially anarchists, who participate in this, that isn’t their intention. They just want a better, fairer world and want to recognize injustice regardless of who does it. But the effect is still unfortunately to feed into the more right wing position on this. You’re working in an environment where the average uninformed person you talk to will at best not care about any atrocities the US has committed and at worst will view you as a crazy conspiracy theorist for telling them about publicly available information. Meanwhile they’ll gladly join in on getting angry about anything you say about a place they’ve been told is evil, even if it is a conspiracy theory. You have to consider that when you decide what to spend your limited time and political capital on.
That said, I don’t really know what to do with all that. I don’t think it’s right to go out of your way to lie about or defend actual atrocities, but how do you manage to do that without contributing to the oversimplified narrative of these places being cartoon villains? How do you get people to not fall for the manufactured consent for war time and time again while still acknowledging the things people treat like original sins that can never be atoned for?
A lot of people get fed up with slow or no progress, so they fall for supporting approaches that “get things done.” Even though they go very wrong, and by that point, some are too lost in the sauce to admit it’s wrong or severely off-base.
Being involved in anarchist and decentralized leftist orgs, it’s very discouraging how few people care and how little power we have.
Often times it takes weeks of planning and everybody’s collective effort and spare resources to provide meals to a few dozen people, or to host a single information booth or class at a larger leftist meet up.
After years of that, the temptations of centralized power to just dictate to the masses what will happen is very strong. The justification goes something like, “yeah there are a ton of problems with XYZ, but at least they are accomplishing ABC!”
I feel it too when I look around my country of the USA. Sure China is State-capitalist, authoritarian, pseudo-dystopian police state, and super politically repressive. But god damn it, they have some of the best public transport in the world, a kickass tech and manufacturing sector, solid public healthcare, and the actually imprison and even execute billionaire scumbags…
When I have to encounter the level of American idiocy on a weekly basis, listen to the most asinine politicians and talking heads, and endure capitalist bootlicking propaganda everywhere, I start to get really tempted to advocate for the China way…
So it boils down to “at least the trains run on time”?
Not OP but I think they are sold on the “consequences for billionaires” part
Wumao shills are everywhere now.
“Everyone who disagrees with me is corrupt and lying” lol cope
No it boils down to “we kicked the Japanese fascists out and have a pretty decent standard of living now compared to the rest of the world”
I think you’re probably the only person in this thread that’s actually tried to put yourself in our shoes and see things from our perspective. I still disagree with calling China a capitalist country and I think calling a nation-state terms like authoritarian, police-state, etc is redundant. But thanks for actually thinking it through and not making it a pure us vs them issue.
Mao Zedong, an actual mass killer
wow really, who did he kill, did he order drone strikes on a wedding or something
Im a tankie because i want there to be clean water anywhere on earth in the future. We have less than 50 years to overthrow capitalism before the earth is a depleted cinder. Marxist Lenninist revolution has worked in the past. 2 out of 3 post WW2 superpowers arose from it. Anarchist success stories include… Rojava? For a while? If you ignore all the US support and how it fell apart without that. By the time the US is weak enough that it can be destroyed without the need for regimented party and military structures it will simply be much to late.
It’s also quite telling that you squishily back away from “the tiananmen square massacre” but then gesture vaguely at some other unspecified crime. Parenti called what you have an unfalsifiable orthodoxy.
Im a tankie because i want there to be clean water anywhere on earth in the future. We have less than 50 years to overthrow capitalism before the earth is a depleted cinder.
See this is why I’m an anarchist and not a state socialist. Like I’m not “squishy” about violence, but I don’t think that the state is an optimal or even suboptimal-but-certifiably-good way to liberate the masses. States are just not practical for what anarchists want to achieve.
Marxist Lenninist revolution has worked in the past. 2 out of 3 post WW2 superpowers arose from it.
That would be a scathing indictment of anarchism if that was the result of an anarchist revolution. I’m not interested in building “big” “powerful” societies; I want to build networks of consensual, decentralized, sustainable, free communities. Anarchists and Marxist-Leninists have different metrics for success.
Just to be clear: Marxist-Leninists are not state socialists, in the sense that it’s not an end goal. Socialism before the withering away of the state is a transitional measure that’s considered necessary by MLs while classes still exist in the world, and therefore class warfare.
What is your timeline for creating this consensual, decentralized, sustainable, free community and how does it compare to the timeline on ecological collapse? When an already extant “big powerful society” such as the US comes to knock you over what do you propose to do about it that won’t require you to establish a disciplined military of your own?
What is your timeline for creating this consensual, decentralized, sustainable, free community and how does it compare to the timeline on ecological collapse?
ASAP. In the here and now. Don’t mistake anarchism for moderation or flippancy. I am honestly not sure if worldwide anarchism can be realized faster than the climate crisis, but in my view it has the best shot out of all the existing plans.
When an already extant “big powerful society” such as the US comes to knock you over what do you propose to do about it that won’t require you to establish a disciplined military of your own?
IMO in the here and now, part of anarchist praxis needs to be organizing defensive militas, frankly in a way that aesthetically might resemble a military, but is in practice informed by anarchist principles and goals. Anarchists need to wage actual war against the bourgeoisie and world governments. Frankly, we need our ideas to be more widespread and accepted by the masses, i.e. numbers — a reality that, in my view, equally affects all communist struggles, and no ideology can overcome. IMO, militias should be formed for specific purposes, disbanded as soon as their mission is complete, and only exist subject to the people they claim to defend.
The need to disassemble and then reform your military inbetween each action doesn’t strike you as an extreme limitation? Just how fast do you think you can pull a militia together if you want to do it from scratch in response to each case of capitalist aggression? I agree that both our movements would need much greater numbers in order to challenge the west militarily but I don’t see how an anarchist force could maintain those numbers if they had them when you only ever want to field completely green, newly formed units. Seems like your just feeding shelter cats to coyotes.
The need to disassemble and then reform your military inbetween each action doesn’t strike you as an extreme limitation?
It is, but I think it’s a necessary one. But also, I do want to be a bit more concrete about what constitutes an “action”. I’m really thinking that “liberation of region X” is an example of an action, so it is possible to have militias standing for many years. Honestly…no, I really don’t want to see militias lasting any longer or getting any bigger. And that is a feature, not a bug.
Seems like your just feeding shelter cats to coyotes.
I mean I’ve never gone to war before, but can’t we train people to be “generically” good at fighting so that we can form and reform units in finite time? I.e., how to use firearms, basic urban and wilderness survival, basic tactics, and how to be part of a unit? Because yeah, it would be a bad move to just throw complete rookies into battle with no training.
Sure individual veterans of many different militias would accrue individual military knowledge but no amount of individual knowledge is sufficient on its own, there is also a need for institutional knowledge. Leadership must have an intimate understanding of the force which it leads. Effective logistical practices must be developed. Long term relationships with other allied forces must be cultivated. All of this is achieved through the repeated iteration and refinement of military institutions over many subsequent conflicts. These necessities cannot be liquidated and reformed at will.
Clean water you say…
It’s also quite telling that your answer became a “communism vs anarchism” out of nowhere.
The teams and labels are a fucking cancer of human society…
What is meant by “tankie” if not ML communist? And what other ideology would OP, who posted this from anarchist nexus to an anarchism community, propose i hold instead if not anarchism?
I don’t propose you hold any ideology, I’m just curious as to why people choose this one
Because I see no other credible way to stop capital from devouring the world.
The topic isn’t a comparison between the two and the fact you needed to bring it up is pretty funny.
It’s an anarchist complaining about “tankies” and parroting NATO propaganda, it is absolutely a comparison between the two.
And what does your side parrot?
Seek employment
That’s what capitalists parrot as well, weird.
Of course there is implied comparison. If one doesn’t “fall into the tankie mindset” they must necessarily believe in something else. And if nothing else is equal to the task before us, which I assert to be the case, one must be either a tankie or resigned to extinction. I presumed based on OPs choice of instance and comm that the something else they believe and implicitly compare to “tankieism” is anarchism. OP asked why someone would be a tankie and I told them why I am a tankie rather than what they seem to be.
Exactly what i was talking about teams: "if you don’t agree with us you must be < insert whatever is perceived as the current enemy >
I consider anarchists misguided, not my enemy. My enemy is the bourgeoisie and not because they disagree with me but because they exploit me, my peers, and the environment. Do you never argue with people who aren’t your enemy?
If one doesn’t “fall into the tankie mindset” they must necessarily believe in something else.
This is factually false since, for example, I don’t fall into the tankie mindset and I do not believe in one thing in particular.
I am against the exploitation of the workers and the environment, but I am not fooled by Chinese propaganda or whatever.
anarchist comm deriding “tankies” but totally no comparison or debate here, fellas, no-sireeee
Can you show me in this doll where anarchists touched you?
are you okay?
Can you read?
I can yes, that’s why I wonder where the butt hurting against anarchism come from.
The teams and labels are a fucking cancer of human society…
I can’t stand people who treat everything like team sports, especially those who treat POLITICS like team sports and vilify absolutely everyone who doesn’t root for their guy coughMAGAcough
My approach to politics is “like team sports” only in that I acknowledge the existence of teams and have chosen one. Do you really think we’re all on the same side? When liberals insist that we all want what’s best for everyone, that there are no conflicting interests only conflicting methods, do you believe them?
Has there ever been a revolution in history that was fought without its combatants falling into one of at least 2 separate forces?
When you grow up in nations that have villified communists, you default to believing all the lies and falsehoods you are told about communists.
Then one day you see people who have actually looked into those lies and found out they are made up stories by the ruling class to keep workers from overthrowing them and you think those people are “falling into the Tankie mindset,” and that you are the one free from being the victim of propaganda.
It is incredibly ironic, especially when people who are “against authoritarianism” start censoring and blocking users from educating people about these topics
The destruction of american hegemony is a material necessity and their rivals thus require critical support. Call it campist if you want, i don’t see western proletariat doing anything to put an end to the America’s genocides and ecocides.
Other capitalist hegemonies are, however, fine.
Hardly. Russia is currently under a proto-fascist government severely repressing women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, communists, and worker organization. That doesn’t mean I want a Russian loss in war that would reinforce the west. Hence the “critical” in critical support
