Tankie is used so vaguely nowadays it means nothing to me without context.
it’s flattery to me when they call me a tankie – i’m literally incapable of learning marxism.
i’ll always keep trying to pick it up and i fully suspect that i will never fully succeed and people calling me a tankie feels like they’ve giving me the diploma while i’m still taking classes to learn it. lol
Its ok you’re still on the team⭐️
so when do i get my badge and my pistol? :p
It means what it has always meant - “a person who is correct too early”.
Holy fuck that’s even vaguer.
What issues are we talking about here and what’s your stance lmao.
It’s not vague at all. It is invariably used as an admission that the “tankie” person is correct, but the speaker can’t admit that yet.
Correct about what
About whichever they are being called a “tankie” over.
Oh definitely usually yeah I see it used by fascists all the time to try and attach leftists to global military domination that capitalists are obviously responsible for, for example.
I am not aware of any examples that don’t fall under the usage that I described.
Betamax vs VHS
Genuinely, cant I think both the US and Russia both crusted knobends. China looks better by comparison but I don’t trust them either. China looks the most stable and reasonable though they are just better at playing the shifty game.
If you live in the west and you’re going “they’re all bad” then you’ve fallen for propaganda. It is not important how you feel about your own government, as long as you support the status quo, which you do when your worldview is that reductive.
Having skepticism and being critical in general is fine, but to do that we need to engage with reality as much as we can. Most of the time I see China being criticized for exaggerations or outright fabrications, we can’t take anti-China propaganda at face value when it’s pushed by their geopolitical adversaries. We need evidence.
Removed by mod
China definetly has rot at the center of their society just like ours, they’ve very good lately by hiding it with propoganda.
“Those lying Asians are just as bad as us. We don’t have any evidence of that, but it must be because they are so good at hiding it with their lies”.
They have rampant corruption (so much that they give officals the death penalty for bribery, but it still doesn’t stop,)
So, giving severe punishment for corruption is evidence of rampant corruption, rather than of the state actually taking action against corruption (and not doing the Epstein thing)?
out of control pollution
Which has been getting “in control”, so to speak.
Also, amusing how you blame the effects of colonialism on the Global South. Do you think that the PRC should have magically switched to green energy without building up the capability to do that, all after your empire plundered it?huge modern cities where nobody lives
Oh nooo. What an atrocity. This hurts… approximately nobody.
cheap EVs that explode
Tesla is a NATO company, not a PRC one.
people finding the rice they just bought is actually plastic
Source?
thousands of identical online content creators all using the same filter to look like the perfect woman, sometimes lined up dozens livestreaming on the same street a few feet from each other, etc.
Ah yes, such an awful thing in comparison with your empire engaging a genocide of Palestine.
Also, any sources of that happening, or is this another case of “Iraq WMDs”?We don’t hear about that stuff very much in the west because freedom of speech doesn’t exist there
You mean the thing that you heard from the people who also sold you on “Iraq WMDs”?
Also, what do you expect to hear from there when you do not speak the language?thousands of identical online content creators all using the same filter to look like the perfect woman, sometimes lined up dozens livestreaming on the same street a few feet from each other, etc.
Get a load of the last fortunate soul on earth who’s never heard of Miami
You wouldn’t be tankies if you knew any history, if you’d ever heard about holodomor 1984 animal farm tienanmen communism only works on paper. Yeah, sorry to present some new ideas and some novel knowledge to you like that. Bet you feel dumb now, huh?
Yeah sorry to burst your echo chamber like that, bet you’ve never heard “china bad” before, huh? I’m the smartest boy in the world and if you disagree with me then it’s because you don’t know what I know, because I know everything. I’m not in an echo chamber, now if you’ll excuse me I gotta go back to my subreddit where we call everyone CCP bots if they suggest we shouldn’t nuke Beijing, then I’m gonna go outside where I’m not at all surrounded by all sorts of mind viruses and tonight I’m gonna educate myself by rewatching John Olivers Last Week Tonight about Venezuela and then probably a little bit of Fair and Balanced CNN to stay informed. It’s so hard to avoid the tankie echochamber these days.edit: Forgot to add if anyone disagrees with me then it’s because they’re either an unthinking machine or a filthy devious foreigner. I am as far left as they come.
also have y’all hear about le authoritarian dictatorism? Bet you haven’t. Bet you haven’t heard about molotov-ribbentrop which is the only treaty anybody signed with the nazis
edit: Forgot to add if anyone disagrees with me then it’s because they’re either an unthinking machine or a filthy devious foreigner…
– or a bot. lol
Thats the unthinking machine part
not spelling it out in in plain easy-to-read english is the tankie’s greatest weakness
you gotta remember that we’re talking about the american public education system here; it would have collapsed decades ago were it not for the blood, sweat and tears of criminally & intentionally underpaid teachers so it’s a miracle most can read above a 3th grade level. :p
This text was more just an inside joke for all of us. Any outsider who knows nothing about how much they’re propagandised would probably be horrified to see me dismiss the nazi myth of the “holodomor” (look up double Genocide theory) or the failed CIA colour revolution in China. If I made this for them, then there would have to be copious footnotes.
I have heard about Chinese spies and Russian bots, what are these Chinese bots?
Smh you’re obviously one of them
BEGONE
NSA MASS SURVEILLANCE KENT STATE KENT STATE UNI CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY DAVID MISCAVIGE 佔領華爾街 MAY 4 1970 MASSACRE 肯特州立大学枪击事件 MAY 13 1985 MOVE BOMBING「MOVE」組織轰炸 RED SUMMER 1919 HOUSE UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES COMMITTEE 众议院非美活动调查委员会 TRAIL OF TEARS 美国本地人种族灭绝 JIM CROW SEGREGATION 吉姆·克勞法 HUMAN RIGHTS 人權 CITIZENS UNITED 联合公民诉联邦选举委员会案 SAFETY 安全 HIGH SPEED RAIL 人民共和国高速铁路 STRONG MASS LINE 群众路线 REPUBLIC OF HAWAII 夏威夷共和国 THIRTEEN COLONIES 十三殖民地 VIETNAM AFGHANISTAN IRAQ 伊拉克 EDWARD SNOWDEN 爱德华·斯诺登 SCIENTOLOGY 山達基教會 GUANTANAMO BAY DETENTION CAMP 关塔那摩湾拘押中心 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE 諾貝爾和平獎 BARACK OBAMA 贝拉克·奥巴马 COMMUNISM SOLIDARITY LABOUR ACTION ANTI-CAPITALIST PRO-REVOLUTION PROTEST MOVEMENT ANTIFA RIOT POLICE BRUTAILITY POLICE OCCUPATION PAID SUSPENSION LEFTIST COUNTER PROTEST CHARLES MANSON MANSON FAMILY JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES BORDER CONCENTRATION CAMPS MKULTRA ASSASINATE FRED HAMPTON JANE FONDA EUGENE DEBS MALCOLM X EAT THE RICH THE CRUMBLING OF AMERICA REAGANOMICS INFOWARS MANUFACTURING CONSENT FASCIST OLIGARCHY FBI HONEYPOT NSA SPYING ICE DEPORTATIONS WAR ON DRUGS PRISON SLAVERY CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE ENHANCED INTERROGATION MY LAI PRISONremoved DEPORTATION MS13 PIZZAGATE LOLIHENTAI PURCHASING KINDER EGG LOTTERY OPERATION SEA SPRAY PATRIOT ACT AMWAY 21 SAVAGE 奇多贝尼托 SCOTT WARREN NET NEUTRALITY LOVEINT EGLIN AIRFORCE BASE COINTELPRO OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD OPERATION EARNEST VOICE OPERATION AURORAGOLD 1999 BELGRADE EMBASSY BOMBING IRAN AIR FLIGHT 655 QASEM SOLEIMANI JEFFREY EPSTEIN MASS PEDOPHILIA ABROAD AND DOMESTIC OPERATION SNOW WHITE HARVEY WEINSTEIN OPERATION CONDOR AARON SWARTZ WACO SIEGE RUBY RIDGE SIEGE 1998 CAVALESE CABLE CAR DISASTER PROJECT ELDEST SON GUNS FOR ANTIGUA GARY WEBB FREE BURMA RANGERS STRONGHOLD RESCUE & RELIEF MCNAMARA’S MORONS PROJECT APPLE PROJECT MIRROR PROJECT WITCH GEORGE PELL ACQUITTAL FORT DETRICK KILLING OF HUEY LONG BLAIR MOUNTAIN ERIC HARROUN MIRACLE VALLEY JINGMING BUILDING INCIDENT YANGJU HIGHWAY INCIDENT 16754432 JAPANESE WARCRIMES OPERATION ASIAN TOUCH OPERATION FREEDOM DEAL CHILEAN COUP D’ETAT TULSA MASSACRE MERE removed RULE MORO CRATER CUBANA FLIGHT 455 OPIOID EPIDEMIC SACKLER FAMILY JADE HELM 15 NO GUN RI RYAN WHITAKER PROJECT SUNSHINE WECH BAGHTU DASANI FAKE WATER ICE CONCENTRATION CAMPS ICE HYSTERECTOMIES OPERATION MIDNIGHT CLIMAX OPERATION MONGOOSE JULIAN ASSANGE EMMETT TILL ANDRE VITCHEK NIKOLA MOTORS FORT HOOD MISSING SOLDIERS AGRICULTURAL ABCD AARON SWARTZ KENTUCKY POLICE HITLER RUSHAN ABBAS GITMO US MILITARY BUYS APP DATA ELAINE MASSACRE LITTLE HIROSHIMA LYSOL INJECTION US RACTOPAMINE MEAT PIKETON WASTE BONUS ARMY DANNY CHEN NORTH DAKOTA ACCESS PIPELINE PROTESTS 北达科他州接入管道抗议 FERGUSON PROTESTS 弗格森暴动 ST. LOUIS PROTESTS 2017 年圣路易斯抗议活动 NUCLEAR TESTING BIKINI ATOLL 比基尼环礁的核试验 UNITE THE RIGHT RALLY 团结右集会 CHARLOTTE PROTESTS 夏洛特暴动 ATTACK ON SUI-HO DAM 袭击穗河水坝 MILWAUKEE PROTESTS 密尔沃基骚乱 Shooting of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile 奥尔顿·斯特林和菲兰多·卡斯蒂利亚的射击 Occupation of the Malheur NationalWildlife Refuge Malheur国家野生动物保护区的占领 death of Freddie Gray 弗雷迪·格雷的死 Shooting of Michael Brown迈克尔·布朗的拍摄 death of Eric Garner, Oakland California 奥克兰奥克兰市埃里克·加纳（Eric Garner）逝世 Operation Condor 神鹰行动 Occupy WallStreet 占领华尔街 My Lai Massacre 我的大屠杀 St. Petersburg, Florida 佛罗里达州圣彼得堡 Kandahar Massacre 坎大哈屠杀 1992Washington Heights riots 1992年华盛顿高地暴动 No Gun Ri Massacre 无枪杀案 L.A. Rodney King riots 洛杉矶罗德尼·金暴动 1979 Greensboro Massacre 1979年格林斯伯勒大屠杀 Vietnam War 越南战争 Kent State shootings肯特州枪击案 Bombing of Tokyo 轰炸东京 San Francisco Police Department Park Station bombing 旧金山警察局公园站爆炸案 Assassination of MartinLuther King, Jr. 小马丁·路德·金遭暗杀。 Long Hot Summer of 1967 1967年炎热的夏天 Bagram 巴格拉姆 Selma to Montgomery marches 塞尔玛到蒙哥马利游行 Highway of Death 死亡之路 Ax Handle Saturday 星期六斧头 Battle of Evarts 埃瓦茨战役 Battle ofBlair Mountain 布莱尔山战役 McCarthyism 麦卡锡主义 Red Summer 红色夏天 Rock Springs massacre 岩泉大屠杀 Pottawatomie massacre 盆大屠杀 Jeju uprising 济州起义 Colfaxmassacre 科尔法克斯大屠杀 Reading Railroad massacre 阅读铁路大屠杀 Rock Springs massacre 岩泉大屠杀 Bay viewMassacre 湾景大屠杀 Lattimer massacre 拉蒂默大屠杀 Ludlow massacre 拉德洛屠杀 Everett massacre 埃弗里特屠杀Centralia Massacre 中部大屠杀 Ocoee massacre Ocoee大屠杀 Herrin Massacre 赫林大屠杀 Redwood Massacre红木大屠杀 Columbine Mine Massacre 哥伦拜恩矿难 Guantanamo Bay 关塔那摩湾 extraordinary rendition 非凡的演绎 Abu Ghraib torture and prison abuse 阿布格莱布的酷刑和监狱虐待 Henry Kissinger 亨利·基辛格 TIMBER SYCAMORE DANNY CHEN PROJECT ICEWORM CHINESE EXLCUSION ACT BIKINI ATOLL GUANO ACT LOVE CANAL JIM JONES PEOPLE’S TEMPEL PARENT’S CHOICE HEAVY METALS OPERATION BROTHER SAM 2021 TEXAS BLACKOUTNSA MASS SURVEILLANCE KENT STATE KENT STATE UNI CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY DAVID MISCAVIGE 佔領華爾街 MAY 4 1970 MASSACRE 肯特州立大学枪击事件 MAY 13 1985 MOVE BOMBING「MOVE」組織轰炸 RED SUMMER 1919 HOUSE UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES COMMITTEE 众议院非美活动调查委员会 TRAIL OF TEARS 美国本地人种族灭绝 JIM CROW SEGREGATION 吉姆·克勞法 HUMAN RIGHTS 人權 CITIZENS UNITED 联合公民诉联邦选举委员会案 SAFETY 安全 HIGH SPEED RAIL 人民共和国高速铁路 STRONG MASS LINE 群众路线 REPUBLIC OF HAWAII 夏威夷共和国 THIRTEEN COLONIES 十三殖民地 VIETNAM AFGHANISTAN IRAQ 伊拉克 EDWARD SNOWDEN 爱德华·斯诺登 SCIENTOLOGY 山達基教會 GUANTANAMO BAY DETENTION CAMP 关塔那摩湾拘押中心 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE 諾貝爾和平獎 BARACK OBAMA 贝拉克·奥巴马 COMMUNISM SOLIDARITY LABOUR ACTION ANTI-CAPITALIST PRO-REVOLUTION PROTEST MOVEMENT ANTIFA RIOT POLICE BRUTAILITY POLICE OCCUPATION PAID SUSPENSION LEFTIST COUNTER PROTEST CHARLES MANSON MANSON FAMILY JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES BORDER CONCENTRATION CAMPS MKULTRA ASSASINATE FRED HAMPTON JANE FONDA EUGENE DEBS MALCOLM X EAT THE RICH THE CRUMBLING OF AMERICA REAGANOMICS INFOWARS MANUFACTURING CONSENT FASCIST OLIGARCHY FBI HONEYPOT NSA SPYING ICE DEPORTATIONS WAR ON DRUGS PRISON SLAVERY CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE ENHANCED INTERROGATION MY LAI PRISONremoved DEPORTATION MS13 PIZZAGATE LOLIHENTAI PURCHASING KINDER EGG LOTTERY OPERATION SEA SPRAY PATRIOT ACT AMWAY 21 SAVAGE 奇多贝尼托 SCOTT WARREN NET NEUTRALITY LOVEINT EGLIN AIRFORCE BASE COINTELPRO OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD OPERATION EARNEST VOICE OPERATION AURORAGOLD 1999 BELGRADE EMBASSY BOMBING IRAN AIR FLIGHT 655 QASEM SOLEIMANI JEFFREY EPSTEIN MASS PEDOPHILIA ABROAD AND DOMESTIC OPERATION SNOW WHITE HARVEY WEINSTEIN OPERATION CONDOR AARON SWARTZ WACO SIEGE RUBY RIDGE SIEGE 1998 CAVALESE CABLE CAR DISASTER PROJECT ELDEST SON GUNS FOR ANTIGUA GARY WEBB FREE BURMA RANGERS STRONGHOLD RESCUE & RELIEF MCNAMARA’S MORONS PROJECT APPLE PROJECT MIRROR PROJECT WITCH GEORGE PELL ACQUITTAL FORT DETRICK KILLING OF HUEY LONG BLAIR MOUNTAIN ERIC HARROUN MIRACLE VALLEY JINGMING BUILDING INCIDENT YANGJU HIGHWAY INCIDENT 16754432 JAPANESE WARCRIMES OPERATION ASIAN TOUCH OPERATION FREEDOM DEAL CHILEAN COUP D’ETAT TULSA MASSACRE MERE removed RULE MORO CRATER CUBANA FLIGHT 455 OPIOID EPIDEMIC SACKLER FAMILY JADE HELM 15 NO GUN RI RYAN WHITAKER PROJECT SUNSHINE WECH BAGHTU DASANI FAKE WATER ICE CONCENTRATION CAMPS ICE HYSTERECTOMIES OPERATION MIDNIGHT CLIMAX OPERATION MONGOOSE JULIAN ASSANGE EMMETT TILL ANDRE VITCHEK NIKOLA MOTORS FORT HOOD MISSING SOLDIERS AGRICULTURAL ABCD AARON SWARTZ KENTUCKY POLICE HITLER RUSHAN ABBAS GITMO US MILITARY BUYS APP DATA ELAINE MASSACRE LITTLE HIROSHIMA LYSOL INJECTION US RACTOPAMINE MEAT PIKETON WASTE BONUS ARMY DANNY CHEN NORTH DAKOTA ACCESS PIPELINE PROTESTS 北达科他州接入管道抗议 FERGUSON PROTESTS 弗格森暴动 ST. LOUIS PROTESTS 2017 年圣路易斯抗议活动 NUCLEAR TESTING BIKINI ATOLL 比基尼环礁的核试验 UNITE THE RIGHT RALLY 团结右集会 CHARLOTTE PROTESTS 夏洛特暴动 ATTACK ON SUI-HO DAM 袭击穗河水坝 MILWAUKEE PROTESTS 密尔沃基骚乱 Shooting of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile 奥尔顿·斯特林和菲兰多·卡斯蒂利亚的射击 Occupation of the Malheur NationalWildlife Refuge Malheur国家野生动物保护区的占领 death of Freddie Gray 弗雷迪·格雷的死 Shooting of Michael Brown迈克尔·布朗的拍摄 death of Eric Garner, Oakland California 奥克兰奥克兰市埃里克·加纳（Eric Garner）逝世 Operation Condor 神鹰行动 Occupy WallStreet 占领华尔街 My Lai Massacre 我的大屠杀 St. Petersburg, Florida 佛罗里达州圣彼得堡 Kandahar Massacre 坎大哈屠杀 1992Washington Heights riots 1992年华盛顿高地暴动 No Gun Ri Massacre 无枪杀案 L.A. Rodney King riots 洛杉矶罗德尼·金暴动 1979 Greensboro Massacre 1979年格林斯伯勒大屠杀 Vietnam War 越南战争 Kent State shootings肯特州枪击案 Bombing of Tokyo 轰炸东京 San Francisco Police Department Park Station bombing 旧金山警察局公园站爆炸案 Assassination of MartinLuther King, Jr. 小马丁·路德·金遭暗杀。 Long Hot Summer of 1967 1967年炎热的夏天 Bagram 巴格拉姆 Selma to Montgomery marches 塞尔玛到蒙哥马利游行 Highway of Death 死亡之路 Ax Handle Saturday 星期六斧头 Battle of Evarts 埃瓦茨战役 Battle ofBlair Mountain 布莱尔山战役 McCarthyism 麦卡锡主义 Red Summer 红色夏天 Rock Springs massacre 岩泉大屠杀 Pottawatomie massacre 盆大屠杀 Jeju uprising 济州起义 Colfaxmassacre 科尔法克斯大屠杀 Reading Railroad massacre 阅读铁路大屠杀 Rock Springs massacre 岩泉大屠杀 Bay viewMassacre 湾景大屠杀 Lattimer massacre 拉蒂默大屠杀 Ludlow massacre 拉德洛屠杀 Everett massacre 埃弗里特屠杀Centralia Massacre 中部大屠杀 Ocoee massacre Ocoee大屠杀 Herrin Massacre 赫林大屠杀 Redwood Massacre红木大屠杀 Columbine Mine Massacre 哥伦拜恩矿难 Guantanamo Bay 关塔那摩湾 extraordinary rendition 非凡的演绎 Abu Ghraib torture and prison abuse 阿布格莱布的酷刑和监狱虐待 Henry Kissinger 亨利·基辛格 TIMBER SYCAMORE PROJECT ICEWORM CHINESE EXLCUSION ACT BIKINI ATOLL GUANO ACT LOVE CANAL JIM JONES PEOPLE’S TEMPEL PARENT’S CHOICE HEAVY METALS OPERATION BROTHER SAM 2021 TEXAS BLACKOUT
Am I supposed to understand something from this Great wall of text?
AHHH The firewall activation spell doesn’t work anymore! They’ve cracked the code!
/s no, I was just continuing the bit where liberals believe saying forbidden words makes chinese people get disappeared, but I used a variant of the copypasta where it’s all western atrocities
edit: just now realised the pun. Top tier work
Great wall of text?
😂
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.
To defend someone from an unfair attack you don’t have to deify them, you just have to notice that they’re being unfairly attacked. This is unquestionably the case for Stalin and Mao, who have been unjustly demonized more than any other heads of state in history. Tankies understand that there is a reason for this: the Cold War, in which the US spent countless billions of dollars trying to undermine and destroy socialism [3], specifically Marxist-Leninist states. Many western leftists think that all this money and energy had no substantial effect on their opinions, but this seems extremely naive. We all grew up in ideological/media environments shaped profoundly by the Cold War, which is why Cold War anticommunist ideas about the Soviets being monsters are so pervasive a dogma (in the West).
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.
There are two approaches one can take to people who say “socialism = Stalin = bad”: you can try to break the first leg of the equation or the second. Trotskyists take the first option; they’ve had the blessing of the academy, foundation and CIA money for their publishing outfits, and controlled the narrative in the West for the better part of the last century. But they haven’t managed to make a successful revolution anywhere in all that time. Recently, socialism has been gaining in popularity… and so have Marxism-Leninism and support for Stalin and Mao. Thus it’s not the case that socialism can only gain ground in the West by throwing really existing socialism and socialist leaders under the bus.
The thing is, delinking socialism from Stalin also means delinking it from the Soviet Union, disavowing everything that’s been done under the name of socialism as “Stalinist.” The “socialism” that results from this procedure is defined as grassroots, bottom-up, democratic, non-bureaucratic, nonviolent, non-hierarchical… in other words, perfect. So whenever real revolutionaries (say, for example, the Naxals in India) do things imperfectly they are cast out of “socialism” and labeled “Stalinists.” This is clearly an example of respectability politics run amok. Tankies believe that this failure of solidarity, along with the utopian ideas that the revolution can win without any kind of serious conflict or without party discipline, are more significant problems for the left than is “authoritarianism” (see Engels for more on this last point). [5] We believe that understanding the problems faced by Stalin and Mao helps us understand problems generic to socialism, that any successful socialism will have to face sooner or later. This is much more instructive and useful than just painting nicer and nicer pictures of socialism while the world gets worse and worse.
It’s extremely unconvincing to say “Sure it was horrible last time, but next time it’ll be different.” Trotskyists and ultraleftists compensate by prettying up their picture of socialism and picking more obscure (usually short-lived) experiments to uphold as the real deal. But this just gives ammunition to those who say “Socialism doesn’t work” or “Socialism is a utopian fantasy.” And lurking behind the whole conversation is Stalin, who for the average Westerner represents the unadvisability of trying to radically change the world at all. No matter how much you insist that your thing isn’t Stalinist, the specter of Stalin is still going to affect how people think about (any form of) socialism — tankies have decided that there is no getting around the problem of addressing Stalin’s legacy. That legacy, as it stands, at least in Western public opinion (they feel differently about him in other parts of the world), is largely the product of Cold War propaganda.
And shouldn’t we expect capitalists to smear socialists, especially effective socialists? Shouldn’t we expect to hear made up horror stories about really existing socialism to try and deter us from trying to overthrow our own capitalist governments? Think of how the media treats antifa. Think of WMDs in Iraq, think of how concentrated media ownership is, think of the regularity with which the CIA gets involved in Hollywood productions, think of the entirety of dirty tricks employed by the West during the Cold War (starting with the invasion of the Soviet Union immediately after the October Revolution by nearly every Western power), and then tell me they wouldn’t lie about Stalin. Robert Conquest was IRD. [6] Gareth Jones worked for the Rockefeller Institute, the Chrysler Foundation and Standard Oil and was buddies with Heinz and Hitler. Solzhenitsyn was a virulently antisemitic fiction writer. Everything we know about the power of media and suggestion indicates that the anticommunist and anti-Stalin consensus could easily have been manufactured irrespective of the facts — couple that with an appreciation for how legitimately terrified the ruling classes of the West were by the Russian and Chinese revolutions and you have means and motive.
Anyway, the basic point is that socialist revolution is neither easy (as the Trotskyists and ultraleftists would have it) nor impossible (as the liberals and conservatives would have it), but hard. It will require dedication and sacrifice and it won’t be won in a day. Tankies are those people who think the millions of communists who fought and died for socialism in the twentieth century weren’t evil, dupes, or wasting their time, but people to whom we owe a great deal and who can still teach us a lot.
Or, to put it another way: socialism has powerful enemies. Those enemies don’t care how you feel about Marx or Makhno or Deleuze or communism in the abstract, they care about your feelings towards FARC, the Naxals, Cuba, North Korea, etc. They care about your position with respect to states and contenders-for-statehood, and how likely you are to try and emulate them. They are not worried about the molecular and the rhizomatic because they know that those things can be brought back into line by the application of force. It’s their monopoly on force that they are primarily concerned to protect. When you desert real socialism in favor of ideal socialism, the kind that never took up arms against anybody, you’re doing them a favor.
- “Tankies” by Nia Frome
Claiming people unironically say Mao did nothing wrong is specially funny to me cause the official stance of the CPC is that he made a lot of mistakes
the official stance of the CPC is that he made a lot of mistakes
learning that that the russians acknowledged the full horrifying extent of stalin’s cult of personality in school text books was the first time i realized i had been fooled by propaganda.
up until them i had assumed that they would white wash it like my own school text books did regarding the pogroms/ethnic-cleansings of native-americans/mexicans/black-people/etc. and my assumptions were later reassured by the knowledge the that german and japanese students get similar “education” but my russian lab partner in college translated outloud horrifying descriptions from his school text book on his laptop to me.
i was also struck by how similar they were to the descriptions of the few survivors from the native american pogroms and when i asked him why they would teach this to children; he told me that the popular consensus was that it was important not to sugar coat it for society’s sake.
learning that that the russians acknowledged the full horrifying extent of stalin’s cult of personality in school text books was the first time i realized i had been fooled by propaganda.
Just wait until you learn that he didn’t have one and all that shit was made up by kruschev to consolidate power lmao
Yep, people rarely seek truth from facts and as a consequence seek to convert the ideas of their perceived enemies into irrational, self-contradicting falsehoods. It’s the easiest way to dismiss Marxism-Leninism.
Or, to put it another way: socialism has powerful enemies. Those enemies don’t care how you feel about Marx or Makhno or Deleuze or communism in the abstract, they care about your feelings towards FARC, the Naxals, Cuba, North Korea, etc
This point is especially important. I’m in the middle of reading (and recording) Philip Agee - Inside the company, a CIA diary. He was a former CIA case officer who defected and escaped to Cuba. In Ecuador, he ran several of the 15+ operations the CIA was running in that country. These programs included everything from running US-friendly assets in the government, infiltrations of labor unions, control of religious institutions, control of youth orgs (especially catholic and conservative ones), journalists (especially getting them to put out anti-communist agitprop), leftist-org penetration agents, witting and unwitting police captains. They ran both ultra-conservative and social democratic / center-left media and political orgs.
These campaigns destabilized and divided the country, and the CIA was laughing while people on the streets were killing each other.
Their #1 goal: to get the Ecuadorian government to cut ties with Cuba and denounce communism, expel Cuban diplomats, and alienate them from Cuba and the USSR. If any org was even vaguely pro-Cuba, regardless of how left it was, the goal was to either take it over from the inside, or if that proved impossible, then make a new org friendly to US interests.
The US knows that the greatest threat to capitalist-imperialism and its overall power, is the threat of a good example, in the form of nations who reject its dominance. Anti-communism becomes the new witch-hunting campaign to unite all these disparate groups, to act on behalf of US interests.
Well said! That’s an interesting book, I’ll have to give it a look. The US knows its enemies very well, it isn’t irrational, it follows a concrete set of interests, the interests of profit and accumulation.
This was really helpful, thank you.
No problem! I find it to be the best and most concise explanation for the “tankie” perspective.
When I think about all the problems in the world and the best possible use of my time the number one priority must be pushing back against tankies on small network of open source servers. The biggest threat to life on earth are leftists who don’t agree with what is obvious and right, the neutral and objectively correct US centric world view. Should I organize my workplace or go outside and enjoy life? No, I will sit at my computer and harass open source developers with all my free time so I can mitigate this clear and present danger to myself and others.
thank you for this comment! sometimes I feel alone with my thoughts, but right now I don’t.
But enough about rimu, AdmiralPatrick, TanteRegenbogen, PugJesus, and cm0002.
Looks like someone can’t stop thinking about me. Are you gonna ask me out on a date next? :3
Jordanlund?
Also rest in piss PugJesus lol
This is great, lol
He’s gone? I blocked him and his comms months ago, not even because he’s an annoying liberal, more that it was low effort spam
I unblocked a community (Roman memes) to see if he was still posting : gone!
Also rest in piss PugJesus
what happened?
I can’t remember off the top of my head, I think he was just burnt out from constantly sharting out anti-left propaganda.
I remember he made a goodbye post somewhere and all the liberals were crying in the comments lol.
i wouldn’t be surprised if they retired/transferred from the cyberspace squadrons at elgin air force base.
link in cas you didn’t already know (and someone the only one that still works) https://www.kucoin.com/zh-hant/news/insight/BTC/6a3c92aa38c88c0007a5f159
and the reddit link if you’re willing to wade into the cesspool: https://www.reddit.com/r/AirForce/comments/13szb8f/introducing_my_lovely_sponsor_to_cannon_air_force/
What am I lookin at here?
someone discovered back in 2013 that the cyberspace task forces at elgin air force base uses reddit considerably higher rates that most municipalities despite being a fraction of their size – in other words the parts of the us military tasked with cyberspace warfare is actively using reddit at significantly higher rates than most cities.
the mashable link that broke this story originally is now gone, so i shared links to the reddit post itself as well as another source.
Did somebody who doesn’t like me die?
I think he’s still alive but taking a lemmy break. Hopefully he just fucked off back to reddit.
Excuse you OP, don’t you understand that I am NOT aligned with US imperialism.
Must I tap the sign for you all AGAIN
False dichotomy. Anarchists exist.
Edit: .ml living up to its reputation here.
You people never shut the fuck up about the spooky evil instance, you’re like schoolkids telling ghost stories
You guys are always so pathetic with the edits lmao. Trying to get some snide little comment in, but you never have it in you to actually respond it to the people making you write it. Like a little worm
Actual anarchists are included under the “tankie” umbrella, the rest are just edgy liberals
Or the Ukraine flag alongside Palestine flag
like, those two are explicitly incompatible
I used to be social darwinist before I was an ML. I’m glad I came out of adolescence.
Explain the mind of the social darwinist to me, please
There’s not much to explain really. I was just another fascist who hated Muslims and the USA.
Thanks, glad to hear these things can change
Might makes right basically.
Sort of.
“Well it’s not nice or good but it’s happening, better to be on the winning side.”
Mine was more like: “Let them kill each other, so we can destroy the winner soon after.”
Very feudal minded, I know.
damn quick trigger, i had JUST edited mine.
I’ll take top left while also pointing quite a bit of blame on the USA for being generally shit for at least many decades.
Ukraine is explicitly modeling itself after Israel. Zelensky publicly stated this intention.
isn’t it better to fully understand what you are talking about?
Why?
Anti-war
Anti-war
But you aren’t even anti-war, as you support invaders of Iraq and Syria.
No, I was against those too
You self-admittedly support Ukraine - an invader of both.
But pro breaching of peace treaties, pro shelling of civilians for 8 years, pro ethnic cleansing. Don’t worry, its not a war, the victims can’t fight back.
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I’m actually most concerned about Germans still defending “Israel”'s actions in Gaza (of which at least a part was payed using their taxes). I don’t even know how to label it. Delusion? Stupidity? Hypocrisy? Whatever the correct term is, their way of coming clean with the genocide they commited in the past by supporting a genocide in the present is simply beyond me.
It seems the lesson they learned wasn’t “don’t do genocide” so much as “get someone else to do your dirty work to avoid being held accountable for genocide.”
Neoliberalism loves outsourcing what used to be government work
I don’t think they’ve learned any lesson at all tbh.
They learned that Jews were Aryans
If I’m not mistaken, some of the original reasoning behind targeting the Jews in particular is because the “Aryan” idealogues thought that the Jewish race was the only real competition.
Like they were jealous lol
I always figured it was a sort of stand-in for hating muslims, since Europe didn’t have a lot of muslims at that point (The whole anti-semitism what with most semites being muslim) but the ottomans are a big cultural memory
Well I’m sure they didn’t like muslims but hating Jews in Europe is literally as old as Judaism lol. I think they borrowed heavily from the Thule society and weirdo German conspiracy theories, as well as the “stabbed in the back” myth. Very interesting stuff if you don’t mind actively making yourself dumber lol.
It’s the same thing happening today with the focus shifted to Muslims, trans people, and immigrants in general. There always needs to be an out group.
Certainly wasn’t on my geopolitical Bingo card
The term you’re looking for is “USA occupation”
“Tankie” is often used by MAGA and their allies…
No it’s not lol
Yeah more of a blue maga phenomenon, conservatives still just call everyone a commie like it’s 1965
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We’re the reason Lemmy exists at all. You’re in our house. https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Lemmy
Lemmy was created in August 2019 by two communist developers known as Dessalines and Nutomic. Their goal for Lemmy was to provide an open-source alternative to Reddit that anyone could self-host and federate with other Lemmy instances, effectively exchanging content between platforms.
Lmao the OP literally created Lemmy.
Are you allowed to be on any other instances and not talk about .ml? Holy fuck it’s tiring to have endless ghost stories told about you for having unauthorized opinions
I can spend all day saying that that US capitalism is the biggest global threat to all forms of democracy but I squint my eyes at Putin once and (some!) people here will call me a star-spangled liberal. Frankly it’s frustrating.
I totally see why tankies are pissed off with some of the people who criticize you, because many of those people are indeed absolute idiots, just like most people on the internet. But if you throw everyone you disagree with into the liberal basket, you’ve taken the easy way out.
When I criticize Putin (or any other anti-US leader) nobody calls me a liberal. Probably because I don’t make shit the fuck up and am aware of the role the US plays in the equation.
Have you tried not having liberal views?
I give lip service about imperialism being bad but then support it anyway. It’s so frustrating when people compare me to others I agree with but don’t have the aesthetic I hope to project.
The biggest struggle Marxist-Leninists have right now is often getting people to understand imperialism as a material process and stage in capitalism, rather than a whim of this or that state. That’s often why many of us react rather sharply when someone uses a clearly less developed understanding of imperialism and mechanically applies it to Russia. Most people are on board with socialism. Most people at the moment are not on board with truly understanding that existing socialist states are heavily propagandized against, and this applies doubly to non-socialist states that align themselves against the imperialist powers out of a sense of self-preservation, which includes Russia and Iran.
But if you throw everyone you disagree with into the liberal basket, you’ve taken the easy way out.
Okay, but we’re not doing that. We’re not calling anarchists or other socialists liberals.
We are however calling social democrats liberals, because welfare capitalism is still capitalism.
I think we should admit that there is some oversensitivity with regard to perceived liberal agendas and that sometimes this gives way to reductionist characterisation and dismissal of opposition in our communities.
I also do not think that admitting as such is anything tantamount to confirmation of the tankie critique by the liberals (see what I did there?), which is also arguably even worse on this exact issue.
That’s fair and I agree with you. I have made different experiences as well, unfortunately, but if I throw you in the same basket, I’m not exactly practicing what I preach lol
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but I squint my eyes at Putin once
I would be curious to know what exactly this entailed, because if past events are anything to go by it may have been a less than tactful approach.
why would you say something so uncontroversial yet so
bravesafeI want to ask a personal question, direct and no sarcasm, if that’s OK. A question to you and to @Dessalines.
Do you rather support Russia or Ukraine? Do you rather support Palestine or Israel?
I stand with the Palestinians without reservation and against the state of Israel.
As for Russia & Ukraine, here’s an info dump.
Honest question from a non-communist, based on your reply here. Does one need to support Putin to be a Marxist?
In a word, no. In a few more words, support for Russia (not Putin, as historical materialists don’t subscribe to great man theory) is only a partial, temporary, tactical one, in the context of imperialist liberation. Russia is still a capitalist state, though, so it’s a two stage strategy: first liberate colonized bourgeois states from colonizer states, and second revolution within those liberated bourgeois states.
Russia is an interesting case: it has already liberated itself from the post-Soviet “shock therapy” neocolonizers. This occurred during Putin’s administration, which is why he is especially hated by the US. So now the support for Russia is in the context of keeping the colonizers from recolonizing it, and supporting Russia to the extent that it helps other states liberate themselves. But Russia isn’t trying to “liberate” Ukraine, at least not all of Ukraine. It’s trying to resolve the genocidal attacks on the people of the Donbas, and it’s trying to resolve the imperialist military expansion at its border.
- Reuters, 2014: Leaked audio reveals embarrassing U.S. exchange on Ukraine, EU
- Leaked recording between Nuland and Pyatt: audio | transcript
- Counterpunch, 2014: US Imperialism and the Ukraine Coup
- BBC, 2014: Ukraine underplays role of far right in conflict
- Human Rights Watch, 2014: Ukraine: Unguided Rockets Killing Civilians
- Consortium News, 2015: The Mess That Nuland Made Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland engineered Ukraine’s regime change without weighing the likely consequences.
- The Hill, 2017: The reality of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is far from Kremlin propaganda
- The Guardian, 2017: ‘I want to bring up a warrior’: Ukraine’s far-right children’s camp – video
- WaPo, 2018: The war in Ukraine is more devastating than you know
- Reuters, 2018: Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem
- The Nation, 2019: Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine
- openDemocracy, 2019: Why Ukraine’s new language law will have long-term consequences
- Al Jazeera, 2022: Why did Ukraine suspend 11 ‘pro-Russia’ parties?
- Jacobin, 2022: A US-Backed, Far Right–Led Revolution in Ukraine Helped Bring Us to the Brink of War
- Consortium News, 2023: The West’s Sabotage of Peace in Ukraine Former Israeli Prime Minister Bennett’s recent comments about getting his mediation efforts squashed in the early days of the war adds more to the growing pile of evidence that Western powers are intent on regime change in Russia.
- Internationalist 360°, 2022–2024: History of Fascism in Ukraine: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV
- NYT, 2024: U.N. Court to Rule on Whether Ukraine Committed Genocide
- Human Rights Watch, 2014: Ukraine: Unguided Rockets Killing Civilians
- WaPo, 2018: The war in Ukraine is more devastating than you know
- openDemocracy, 2019: Why Ukraine’s new language law will have long-term consequences
- NYT, 2024: U.N. Court to Rule on Whether Ukraine Committed Genocide
- https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/40th-periodic-report-human-rights-situation-ukraine-treatment-prisoners
- https://www.npr.org/2023/01/31/1152743054/human-rights-watch-ukraine-landmines
- CNN coverage of Donbas in 2014 https://xcancel.com/paulius60/status/1611148483859255296
- https://mronline.org/2023/07/30/russia-donbass-and-the-reality-of-the-conflict-in-ukraine/
- https://www.kanekoa.news/p/osce-reports-reveal-ukraine-started
- HRW https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/20/ukraine-widespread-use-cluster-munitions
- Donbas documentary 2016 https://youtube.com/watch?v=bN68OfFKaWs
- Ukraine in Donbas https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2022/08/10/what-ive-seen-of-ukraines-war-crimes-against-civilians-in-the-donbass-over-the-years/
- Poroshenko saying the quiet part out loud https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHWHqj8g7Bk
NATO expansion:
- George Washington Univ., 2017: NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner
- Orinoco Tribune, 2022: Former German Chancellor Merkel Admits that Minsk Peace Agreements Were Part of Scheme for Ukraine to Buy Time to Prepare for War With Russia
- Al Mayadeen, 2023: Zelensky admits he never intended to implement Minsk agreements
- Jeffrey Sachs, 2023: The War in Ukraine Was Provoked—and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace
- Jeffrey Sachs, 2023: NATO Chief Admits NATO Expansion Was Key to Russian Invasion of Ukraine
NATO in general:- The Intercept, 2021: Meet NATO, the Dangerous “Defensive” Alliance Trying to Run the World
- CounterPunch, 2022: NATO is Not a Defensive Alliance
- Noam Chomsky, 2023: NATO “most violent, aggressive alliance in the world”
- Thomas Fazi, 2024: NATO: 75 years of war, unprovoked aggressions and state-sponsored terrorism
- Gabriel Rockhill, 2020: The U.S. Did Not Defeat Fascism in WWII, It Discretely Internationalized It
Would you say that you’re wearing imperialist clothes then for the tactical benefit, like a soldier on a secret mission disguised as the enemy?
Everyone understands Russia is correct to invade because NATO can’t be a neighbor, and that NATO is correct to “take” Ukraine because it’s possible and useful in keeping Russia in check. The problem is that this is imperialist logic. The common sense that runs the world of zero sum capitalists. The “think of the shareholders” of geopolitics.
What action do you suggest for a state when the most prolific invader in the world subjugates nearby countries and starts amassing military personnel and equipment on its border or otherwise in position to attack it?
Imperialism isn’t just “when a country invades another country” it is an actual mode of capitalism wherein capital, in the need to extract as much wealth as possible, is driven to subjugate other nations. That’s not why Russia invaded and you’re not seeing those processes occur now - Or at least not on the russian side. Do you know who has signed extortionate deals with Ukraine to extract its natural resources for pennies on the dollar? That’s right, the west!
If you’re gonna use big words, learn what they mean. Here’s a good text
Thank you for the answer.
I wholeheartedly agree with you on the topic of Palestine and Israel, with strong support for the freedom and independence of Palestine and against the state of Israel.
I’m very thrown aback by your stance on the topic of Ukraine and Russia. In particular:
In a few more words, support for Russia … is only a partial, temporary, tactical one
To me, that is atrocious. It’s a bit like you see a bully beating another person to a pulp on the street, and you say you support this action as a partial, temporary, tactical support. Whichever great cause is set on a pedestal (such as supporting the bully in order for later to overthrow them, what could possibly go wrong), it is a crime to support it.
Right now, the best thing that can happen to Russia, I believe, is stopping the war. That is possible only if Russia as an aggressor country is stopped, and a peace treaty is forced on Russia, whether with Putin alive or not does not matter.
I have trouble processing this world view from an admin of lemmy.ml. I will need to take my time to process this information.
It’s a bit like you see a bully beating another person to a pulp on the street, and you say you support this action as a partial, temporary, tactical support.
it’s more like the bully getting his ass kicked by the victim’s big brother; but you also know that big brother is an asshole too, but not as big of an asshole as the bully.
To me, that is atrocious. It’s a bit like you see a bully beating another person to a pulp on the street, and you say you support this action as a partial, temporary, tactical support.
Except the “victim” is quite literally a lackey of the biggest bully on earth, the US, and had been terrorizing the people of Donbass for more than a decade. Things ain’t so simple.
To me, that is atrocious.
So, you think that the rest of the world does not have a right to defend itself against the most prolific invader in the world - NATO - that also happens to be committing at least one high-profile genocide right now?
Right now, the best thing that can happen to Russia, I believe, is stopping the war.
How would that benefit Russia (or the rest of the Global South, for that matter), and not just help the most prolific invader in the world?
That is possible only if Russia as an aggressor country is stopped, and a peace treaty is forced on Russia
So, the most prolific invader in the world doing a coup against a neighbouring state and trying to amass military personnel and weapons on one’s border is suddenly not aggression? You think that that is perfectly okay and should not be acted upon?
Your street bully analogy fails spectacularly at really understanding the conflict on a basic level. It treats a complex geopolitical struggle as a random act of individual malice, ignoring the historical trajectory and objective forces at play.
In 2014, the legitimately elected government of Ukraine was overthrown in a US-backed coup. The subsequent regime empowered nationalist elements as their virulent Russophobia made them a useful proxy for Western capital and NATO expansion.
This war is many things but it is categorically not an unprovoked assault on an innocent bystander. The new Kyiv government almost immediately launched a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the predominantly Russian-speaking population in the Donbass. The Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015 expose this dynamic entirely. Kyiv repeatedly violated the terms, refusing to implement the political provisions regarding Donbass autonomy. Ceasefire violations were routine and the shelling of civilian infrastructure in the east continued for close to a decade.
This material reality forced the populations of Donetsk and Luhansk to organize their own defense. This led to the formation of the LPR and DPR, alongside Crimea moving to reunify with Russia. This civil conflict is the direct precursor to the current war.
Kyiv was deliberately cultivated as a geopolitical spearhead against Russia. To evaluate Russia’s response through the lens of abstract morality is to ignore objective conditions. Russia’s actions were a logical and foreseeable reaction to a hostile military infrastructure constructed on its border by a hegemonic power. You cannot isolate a single event from the chain of material cause and effect that produced it.
So you support Russia going to war on the territory of another country ~“because other countries did not leave it any choice” or so? The NATO that was mostly forgotten and dormant before Russian’s invasion and received a small fraction of its attention and funding now, that same NATO, just did not leave Russia any choice but to attack at all? And Russia absolutely could not avoid invading Ukraine, it just had to do it, in attempts to fix internal Ukranian problems, as perceived by Russia. Oh and the poor populations of Donetsk, legally and otherwise belonging to Ukraine, had to be invaded too and their lives are now improving?
What you’re saying is shameful. You’re not even giving Ukraine autonomy in your explanation of the “geopolitical struggle”. You’re saying “US” and “Russia”, but not “Ukranian people chose to _”.
Ukraine does not have autonomy. It is ruled by a coup government installed by the US in 2014. Elections have been disbanded and opposition parties declared illegal. Roving gangs of Nazis carry out pogroms and it is illegal to leave the country.
What autonomy do the ukrainians have in this situation? The only one they have is refusing military service, which is why they are being forced to serve. So looking at the only outlet they have - Not being willing to fight - it seems they are opposing this war.
Why are you denying them that autonomy?You’re not even giving Ukraine autonomy in your explanation
Correct, they don’t have autonomy. We, the collective west, took that from them in 2014, and now the government we installed is trafficking the people of Ukraine like meat.
The NATO that was mostly forgotten and dormant before Russian’s invasion and received a small fraction of its attention and funding now, that same NATO, just did not leave Russia any choice but to attack at all?
Man you gotta be trolling atp
The NATO that was mostly forgotten and dormant before Russian’s invasion
???
Did you miss things like the invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iran, the genocide of Palestine - things that have been very high-profile and happening this century.And Russia absolutely could not avoid invading Ukraine
Okay, suggest an alternative course of action for a state whom the most prolific invader is gathering forces on the border of, or nearby, especially after subjugating nearby countries.
You’re not even giving Ukraine autonomy in your explanation
Why do you care about the autonomy of states (i.e. the freedom of rulers of those states to do whatever they want), rather than the well-being of the vast majority of people in the world?
I very specifically did not declare support or condemnation. Subjective moralizing is irrelevant to analyzing historical reality. Explaining the material causes of an event is not the same as endorsing it. My point was that Russia’s actions were a logical and foreseeable reaction to objective conditions, not that they operated with some metaphysical lack of choice.
Your claim that NATO was dormant or forgotten is historically illiterate. In the decade preceding this conflict, that same alliance bombed and destabilized multiple sovereign nations, including Libya and Afghanistan. It is not a defensive pact that suddenly woke up. It is an expanding military bloc.
Any state would perceive a foreign-backed coup and a hostile military buildup on its border as a direct threat. This is basic geopolitical reality, exactly as it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Expecting a major power to passively accept its border being turned into a staging ground for a rival hegemon is naive.
You speak of Ukrainian self-determination while offering blatant apologetics for the eight-year shelling of the Donbas and the suppression of Crimea. True autonomy was discarded in 2014. The majority of the Ukrainian population did not choose the current path of perpetual war and subordination to Western interests. That is precisely why a forceful coup was required to install the current regime, sparking the civil war that escalated into the current conflict.
Analyzing how and why events happen requires looking at material reality, not retreating into abstract ravings about street bullies and metaphysical musts.
I don’t think it’s possible to look at the Russia-Ukraine war without considering the role of NATO. I care about ending this war which is devastating to working class people. I don’t think it’s a truthful analysis to say that Russia is just a big bully here who holds all the cards. If you look at Russia’s actions, most escalations on Russia’s side have been a reaction to actions from NATO. To think that more escalation from NATO will lead to a quicker end to the war is contrary to this historic pattern. Russia sees NATO as an existential threat, so it has a lot of motivation to keep fighting Ukraine to prevent NATO from spreading further to Russia’s border. NATO’s actions, to increase aggression towards Russia, only increase Russia’s motivation to keep fighting. If NATO were to pull back from Ukraine, make concessions to Russia that it will not expand further, and will allow Russia to trade and collaborate with European countries, then Russia has very little incentive to keep fighting Ukraine because they no longer see an existential threat. For Ukrainians it is devastating to be in the middle in this conflict, while not having any influence on the course of the war. But it’s a reality that I cannot change. All I can do is pressure my own government to work towards peace instead of continued aggression.
If you look at Russia’s actions, most escalations on Russia’s side have been a reaction to actions from NATO.
Is your argument reallly that Russia’s invasion is justified because Russia was provoked? So a good country that should be supported, totally has the right to invade another one if the other one is doing something not to your liking?
Russia sees NATO as an existential threat, so it has a lot of motivation
Who cares? I mean, it is a lie as the head of Russian state only really cares for money and power. But even if that would be true, that Russia would see NATO as an existential threat. Who cares? You should support Ukraine in its fight for existence and independence even if that pisses Russia. NATO or Ukraine have no obligation to please Russia.
On the contrary, Europe and other countries should take concrete actions to protect themselves. There is an obvious aggressor. If the aggressor sees your safety as their existential threat, and the aggressor is invading other countries, your only reasonable option is to be prepared to defend yourself and help others who are fighting for their existence and their independence. There’s no other choice unless your argument is “just give the aggressor what it wants, surely it’s gonna fix the problem”. And that in particular is very, very, very well studied to be wrong. An aggressor like that never stops given reduced resistance.
Who cares?
Everybody who is at risk of being attacked by the most prolific invader in the world that has been holding most of the world in colonial subjugation for the past few centuries.
Who cares? You should support Ukraine in its fight for existence and independence even if that pisses Russia.
You don’t support Ukraine’s independence from NATO, and you don’t support its people who very much do not want to keep getting abducted off the streets.
Also, why should one care about the existence of nazi governments, like nazi Germany, the US, today’s nazi Germany, Ukraine, etc. over the well-being of the people who are attacked by them?
NATO or Ukraine have no obligation to please Russia.
“Nazi Germany has no obligation to please the USSR”.
On the contrary, Europe and other countries should take concrete actions to protect themselves.
Why? Why should the invaders of Iraq and Afghanistan, the genocidaires of Palestine be protected?
There is an obvious aggressor. If the aggressor sees your safety as their existential threat, and the aggressor is invading other countries, your only reasonable option is to be prepared to defend yourself and help others who are fighting for their existence and their independence
So, now, you support Russia against the most prolific invader in the world that has been invading other countries, committing genocides, and pushing for war with Russia? You seem to be very confused.
NATO expansion against Russia’s borders has been one of their red lines for over 40 years at this point. The West knew exactly how Russia would respond, and pushed Ukraine to join deliberately. This is a proxy war, and one the West appears to be tiring of; eventually they will lose interest altogether and Ukraine will be forced to surrender.
You seem to be completely oblivious to NATO expansionism:
And the atrocities NATO and the US has committed in Europe, Libya, Afghanistan, etc.
And the atrocities NATO and the US has committed in Europe, Libya, Afghanistan, etc.
I’ve never seen an etc. that held this much implied information behind it lol.
I’m not making any moral judgements. I care about ending the suffering that came from this war, and I think your analysis is based on wishful thinking and fantasy stories that you have been told about Ukraine and NATO. There’s too much for me to dissect to continue this conversation.
Wow, first day using analogies?
Support people, oppose the state.
And if the people want a state?
Congratulations, your unirganised utopia has now been invaded by opposing capitalist states. Have fun digging up rare earth minerals.
Crazy that you would post something like this. You know you’re the face of Lemmy, right? From everyone’s perspective, your ideals represent the project’s ideals.
There’s a reason why projects aiming for widespread adoption do not shout their controversial opinions from the rooftops.
Nah its fucking awesome to finally have a platform run by a principled leftist. Most online platforms have their equavilent of Dessalines make equally “controversial” statements, they’re just acceptable within the cultural hegemony so you dont pick up on them
My ideals are of course embedded into Lemmy in some ways, but overall its a self-hostable social media platform, that can be run in any way the server-runner sees fit. This autonomy is completely up to the server runner, and no one, including me, can dictate how they run it, or what content and discussion they choose to platform. If this weren’t the case, there wouldn’t be so many lemmy servers with different and often conflicting viewpoints. I can encourage that diversity, while at the same time saying what I like on the spaces I have a hand in running.
There’s a reason why projects aiming for widespread adoption do not shout their controversial opinions from the rooftops.
Most companies have PR firms to make sure they don’t make controversial statements that would upset their users and shareholders, and affect their profits. I know some would prefer that developers be opinion-less vanilla automatons, because they see user adoption as more important than anything else. To me, having smaller, more enjoyable, more closely-knit communities (with the window to the greater fediverse) is more important.
If someone is offended by a project lead like myself saying: “Israel is carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian people, and it must be stopped”, then they can use reddit which already supports the opposite viewpoint.
You know you’re the face of Lemmy, right?
Cool
There’s a reason why projects aiming for widespread adoption do not shout their controversial opinions from the rooftops.
They lack both the courage and conviction of communists?
Unlike fascists, communists have nothing to hide. A better world for everyone is not a “controversial” opinion and we are definitely not gonna censor ourselves because some illiterate americans think communists are evil.
The fediverse was developed such that you don’t have to agree with the devs to use it. Unlike corporate social media, you’re free to set up an instance that’s rabidly at odds with the dev’s viewpoints.
Given that, if the devs criticizing the US is so “controversial” that you won’t touch any instance on the fediverse, if you demand that the devs speak in a bland, focus-group tested way, even though you’re not subject to their authority by their own design, then you should probably just stay on corporate social media. Facebook, for example, has a single authority with a marketing team that carefully curates their messaging to appeal as much as possible to a wide audience. We are not Facebook.
The devs built Lemmy as a passion project, and are not just looking to grow it to sell to some venture capitalist firm.
There’s a reason why projects aiming for widespread adoption do not shout their controversial opinions from the rooftops.
Yeah, but that reason is cowardice and a willingness to trade a correct position for a popular one, so fuck all that anyway.
Yeah, @Dessalines@lemmy.ml better be careful what they say, or Lemmy Developers Ltd will fire them.
I stand by these ideals.
I’m just a filthy casual, but I didn’t look at the OP’s name, don’t have a clue who develops lemmy, and didn’t (still don’t) think to put it on one person’s shoulders to be the “face of Lemmy”.
You are the face of Lemmy. We are the face of Lemmy. It is nothing without its users.
I am glad you made this comment, as it’s given me a moment to reflect on each of our pieces in this crazy puzzle of life. Thanks
This is a classic false equivalence fallacy. You can be both anti - tankie and anti - USA.
This is a classic false equivalence fallacy.
This is not false equivalence at all, not even a little bit. Either you are completely misunderstanding the text in the image or you don’t actually know what a false equivalence is. Or both (it’s probably both).
You can be both anti - tankie and anti - USA.
No shit, no one is saying otherwise. The OP image is not claiming that someone can’t be “both anti-tankie and anti-USA.” Nowhere is that implied, and it clearly is possible to be foolish enough to be both those things. That does not change the fact that when you hold “anti-tankie” positions, those positions are aligned with the US even if you consider yourself anti-USA.
Take the issue of support for China: sure, you can be “anti-tankie” and thus erroneously believe that the CPC is an evil dictatorship while also hating the fascist US, but despising China is still aligning with the US on that position. Or for another example, take the issue of support for Ukraine: sure you can be “anti-tankie” by throwing your support behind the neo-Nazi state of Ukraine while simultaneously being “anti-USA,” but your support of Ukraine is still taking a position in alignment with the US. And that is what the OP image is referring to. There is zero false equivalence there, regardless of your stance on “tankies.”
The other people responding to your comment are mostly focusing on pointing out the ignorance of being “anti-tankie” while also thinking you oppose the US, and they are right for doing so. But they are missing (or just glossing over) the fact that it’s your comment that is not logically sound, as it is based on a faulty premise. A little ironic that your claim of a fallacy is itself so obviously fallacious.
“Look buddy, I said USA bad, so that means its okay for me to continue uncritically shitting out state department propaganda. Yeah the end result is me supporting the status quo, but I said USA bad so…”
In the abstract, you can hold any two incompatible positions you want. In practice, you cannot.
Anti-communism in the west has been a cradle-to-grave indoctrination program for nearly 100 years now, affecting everything from schools, media, local and national politics, communications mediums, even religious institutions. Its extremely naive (or disingenous) to pretend to take a centrist stance, yet agree with everything the US empire says about its enemies.
Then listen to the anti-communism in the East because they know what they’re talking about and stop “westsplaining”
Which eastern anti-communists are you referring to?
Maybe Syngman Rhee?
- The U.S. installed Syngman Rhee,a conservative Korean exile, as President of South Korea in 1948. Rhee became a dictator on an anti-communist crusade, arresting and torturing suspected communists, brutally putting down rebellions, killing 100,000 people and vowing to take over North Korea. Rhee precipitated the outbreak of the Korean War and for the allied decision to invade North Korea once South Korea had been recaptured. He was finally forced to resign by mass student protests in 1960.1
Maybe Chiang Kai-shek?
- In 1949 during the resumed Chinese Civil War, the US supported the corrupt Kuomintang dictatorship of Chiang Kaishek to fight against the Chinese Communists, who had won the support of the vast majority of peasant-farmers and helped defeat the Japanese invasion. The US strongly supported the Kuomintang forces. Over 50,000 US Marines were sent to guard strategic sites, and 100,000 US troops were sent to Shandong. The US equipped and trained over 500,000 KMT troops, and transported KMT forces to occupy newly liberated zones as well as to contain Communist-controlled areas.51 American aid included substantial amounts of both new and surplus military supplies; additionally, loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars were made to the KMT.59 Within less than two years after the Sino-Japanese War, the KMT had received $4.43 billion from the US—most of which was military aid.511
Or maybe Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam?
- From 1955-1975, the US supported French colonialist interests in Vietnam, set up a puppet regime in Saigon to serve US interests, and later took part as a belligerent against North Vietnam in the Vietnam War. U.S. involvement escalated further following the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, which was later found to be staged by Lyndon Johnson. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities (see Vietnam War casualties). Estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from 966,000 source to 3.8 million.source Some 240,000–300,000 Cambodians,source23 20,000–62,000 Laotians,4 and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict, with a further 1,626 missing in action. Unexploded bomb continue to kill civilians for years afterward. 1
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Lmao
None of that has to be incorrect. The original post is still fallacious.
I have yet to meet one but even if it was possible, why would any group holding anti-US views go out of their way to also punch other anti-US groups? Youre just another fed at that point. Ive not once heard the saying “the enemy of my enemy is also my enemy”.
And yet every “anti USA and anti Tankie” person seems to believe exactly what the US State Department has to say about all of the US’s geopolitical adversaries, so it’s really just a meaningless label for a US bootlicker who’s disingenuous or deeply confused.
Please explain how you can be both against the people who are against colonialism, but also against the entities engaging in colonialism
Please explain how you can be both against
the people who are against colonialisman empire, but also againstthe entities engaging in colonialismanother empire.It’s called consistency.
What do you think an empire is?
Oh, this is one of those things where you don’t know what “empire” means, and just use it as a standin for “large country (bad vibes)”
The US empire has over 700+ military bases outside its borders, and has waged wars and coups in nearly every country on the planet.
All other countries combined, have a total of <20 foreign bases.
okay so one empire is bigger than the others, does that make all the other empires suddenly not count? everyone is automatically good if they aren’t the US? sounds like quite an infantile position to hold.
calling the empire with over 700 bases all over the world, with active support for “Israel” and their genocide and who bombed Iran that killed 150~ school girls and kidnapped a democratically elected leader from Venezuela just “bigger than the other empires” as implying the other countries to be the same when it’s obvious that they are not only NOT empires, because words can mean things and not based on some childish vibes, but that they are ones actively under siege by the Amerikan empire.
If you see someone viciously assaulting someone. Where the assaulting person has a known history of unprovoked violence, and you assume that both are bad. Then you are siding with the assaulter. You are siding the empire. You are not neutral, there is no neutrality.
Ah yes, “neither Tel Aviv, nor Gaza”.
The empire of global south that’s a new one to me.
Tankies are simply “people against colonialism” is a new take for me. Pfft.
But anyway, your question is an obviously false dichotomy. I can be against some subset of people who are against colonialism while still being against colonialism myself. Supporting shared beliefs while not supporting unshared beliefs is a logical position for anyone to take. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is a very unrealistic and asinine take in most real life situations.
For example, Libertarians and I are both ostensibly against war, the military industrial complex, and the US being a world police force. But Libertarians would also let this capitalist hellscape chew up and spit out as many people as the market demands in the name of profit. We are not friends.
Similarly, by your definition, tankies and I may both be “against colonialism” (and I’m just granting you that for the sake of argument, as I very much think that that is a bullshit take), but we do not agree on the means, the justification of violence, and the authoritarianism needed to oppose it. We are also not friends.
Tankies are simply “people against colonialism” is a new take for me. Pfft.
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“The enemy is both an imminent danger to our society and self evidently ridiculous and mentally defective for reasons that don’t even warrant elucidation.”
🤔
Revolutionaries, freedom fighters, and socialists are not one to one with tankies, friend. Some became tankies, yes. But fighting your oppressors and becoming an oppressors are two different things.
friend
Gonna tell me this isn’t the way next?
I cannot stress enough how the entire structure of this “tankie” narrative is just reheated Christian epistemology about power corrupting, rehashed Marvel slop about how changing anything actually makes you turn evil, capitalist slave ideology about how change leads to bad things and a better world isn’t possible. Better to suffer forever and be a pure lamb in the hopes of being rewarded
in the afterlifeafter a really good election.Anyway, if I was to ask you what on earth you think is going to happen if we all “go tankie” (just the new snarl word for communist now that communism is becoming popular) you would not be able to give me a coherent, stage-1 stage-2, cause and effect answer. Your answer would look less like a scientific process of cause and effect and more like a religious prohpect, because you and I grew up being conditioned into liberal thought, which means being conditioned into magical thinking.
I have no issue with communists, revolutionaries, fighting oppressors, change, etc. I have an issue with authoritarianism (both left and right wing), and violence employed against political dissenters.
I have an issue with authoritarianism (both left and right wing), and violence employed against political dissenters.
Revolution is violence against political dissenters and is authoritarian, considering that revolutionaries impose their will upon somebody else by usage of force.
But hey, everybody willing can explain why violence against fascists (who are the “political dissenters” in question) and authoritarianism (i.e. having a government and a military) are bad and shouldn’t be done by the Global South.
Tankies are simply “people against colonialism” is a new take for me. Pfft.
Well, “tankies” are simply “people who are correct too early”, but that does, indeed, include being against colonialism.
But anyway, your question is an obviously false dichotomy.
No dichotomy is presented, other than the implicit “being for/against colonialism” (and, let’s be honest, you are firmly for it).
For example, Libertarians and I are both ostensibly against war
Yeeah, no. Let’s be honest, you support invaders of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Similarly, by your definition, tankies and I may both be “against colonialism” (and I’m just granting you that for the sake of argument, as I very much think that that is a bullshit take)
Considering that “tankies” were a major force behind decolonisation in the 20th century, your protestations are rather silly.
but we do not agree on the means, the justification of violence, and the authoritarianism needed to oppose it. We are also not friends.
Okay, how do you propose the Global South fights against your empire without violence and “authoritarianism” (i.e. having functioning governments and militaries)?
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That is not a definition.
That expression is interchangeable with the word “tankie”, so it is a definition of that word.
The fact thay you follow that up with an entire field of strawmen
You don’t know what a “strawman” is, either, do you?
It’s pretty clear that you have realised that your “no violence, no governments” position just supports colonialism and nothing more, and have decided to leave while attempting to save face.
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Me: “I’m against colonialism”, You: “You are firmly for it”
Me: “I’m against war, the miltiary industrial complex, and the US policing the world with force”, You: “You support the invaders of Afghanistan and Iraq”
I welcome to be proven wrong.
So far, you have said that you disagree that the Global South needs to use violence and “authoritarianism” (i.e. having governments and militaries) to defend against your empire. How should the Global South resist your empire?Instead of dealing with what I actually said, you knock down a fake, weaker version of the argument. Strawmanning.
Okay, where did I misrepresent your argument?
And your definition means nothing at. So anyone correct “too early” is, definitionally, a tankie? I’ll inform the historians that Galileo was one of the original tankies then, I guess. Such bullshit.
Sure, I engaged in some levity. However, the fact that you do not contest that, when people are called “tankies”, they are, indeed, correct too soon is telling.
Lol, you fucking baby; “how dare you not just accept my political snarl word!”
What are you even talking about?
Go back to Reddit
Aw, he confused
