I was wrong, yes there is:
https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/socialism_faq.md#whats-going-on-with-the-uyghurs
It’s the tankie “It’s not a genocide, no I’m not denying that people are getting murdered I’m saying that they had it coming for reasons other than being of a particular group” kind of genocide denial-support.
About the only thing that makes tankies not technically fascist is that they come up with elaborate rationalisations of why everything they do serves the common good. They manage to rationalise any and all human rights abuses and atrocities as “necessary evil”.
Once upon a time a German lyricist/composer wrote a song satirising that kind of attitude. The GDR’s ruling party adopted is as their hymn, unironically. Do watch it it’s glorious in its insanity.
Most far-right fascists also make up excuses for the genocides they support - the Nazis said that Jewish people were responsible for the collapse of the Weimar economy (and a lot of other bullshit) for example.
Yeah but fascists don’t believe it, or even put much effort in those arguments. It’s merely a signal to their supporters saying “Yep we hate Jews”.
And I do grant tankies the point that they don’t inherently hate Uyghurs – what they hate is there being cultural aspects not under their control as that means a current of mass psychology outside of party control. The most they will countenance is “Socialism with Uyghur characteristics” next to “Socialism with Chinese characteristics”, under the condition that it’s about weave patterns of traditional hats or something, not loyalty to the party’s prerogative of interpretation: If Bejing thinks a particular weave pattern is counter-revolutionary then it is, Uyghurs don’t get a say.
By what definition of fascism are tankies the same?
I’ve seen the term tankie more here in my last week in the fediverse than at any other time in my life so forgive me if I don’t fully understand. From what I’ve gathered, it’s extreme auth-left. Though being authoritarian does not automatically mean fascist.
Oh boy! That entire page is definitely something. As someone born in a comunist country I can only pitty people like that. They must have had some pretty sheltered lives in order to be this detached from reality. As others have said it is impressive what they’ve done with the platform and deserve prays for it, but man those views are going to push a lot of users away, especially when they are so public.
The one that had a pretty bad revolution to get rid of communism 😉. The problem with communism is that, since they achieve power through illegal means, they also refuse to leave when the people, who they are supposed to represent, don’t want them anymore.
Not sure what I make of that. He quoted a guy, rather than giving his own opinion. We can make a lot of assumptions about why he quoted the guy, but without stating an opinion it can only ever be speculation. In a massive list of essays, which I admittedly haven’t read all of, one quote seems to be the big uproar about fascists running Lemmy?
And then being like “Hey maybe don’t delete posts just because they’re about China? That doesn’t break any rules,” suddenly makes them in love with the CCP? I don’t have any context to judge the quote and posts regarding China literally do not break any rule. “Orientalism” is a ridiculous reason to delete a post.
This all seems completely blown out of proportion like typical Twitter drama.
This. I’d really love it if someone could go through these links one by one and provide a detailed summary and rebuttal. I just want to know both sides of the issue. I totally believe in US propaganda, but highly doubt this is purely that.
I quite doubt you’ll see such thing as sane leftists generally simply discount tankie talking points out of hand – you look for certain patterns and the sources they cite and say “eh, not worth reading”, and also “eh, not worth replying to” because talking to a tankie is talking to a TV. They have a closed world-view, are able to bend reality itself to fit their core beliefs in the same way hardcore flat-earthers can.
You’ll be able to head over to random socialist places and find people who can readily address points, cut through the historical revisionism and selective reading that tankies do, but you’ll have to actually, well, ask questions and things might get egg-headed. If you address tankies directly I recommend going for broad-strokes arguments and questions and refuse to let yourself be dragged into areas that can’t be wikipedia’d quickly, say, the status of unions in the USSR. An unprepared tankie is not unlikely to flat-out claim that they were independent from the party. Ask them about whether they think people should be sent to Gulag over their interpretation of Darwin, suchlike: They will either deny it, at which point they disagree with Stalin which means that he did, in fact, do things which were not right, which is inconsistent with what they believe in, or they will support it, outing themselves as batshit crazy plain for everyone to see (and also disagreeing with post-Stalin USSR scientific community, much less the world’s scientific community).
Coming to the question of “why are tankies the way they are in the first place” though we come, at least from an Anarchist POV, to vanguardism as a core feature everything hinges on: The idea that for radical change to be possible, the masses must be led by a revolutionary vanguard. Marxist-Leninists all tend to fall into that category in one way or the other (and there’s plenty of e.g. Trots who are cringe but perfectly fine human beings) but it’s tankies who take it up to 11 by declaring themselves (and of course Stalin etc) infallible, and any opposition to their exalted “infallible” positions as counter-revolutionary. Thus, if you are not of the exact same opinion as them you’re the enemy and voila you have a cult going that can justify anything to itself.
This “change is caused by small groups leading broad masses” thing then leads to the “everything is a proxy war” type of thinking you see: It is inconceivable for tankies to think that Ukrainians would have a free will, a desire to decide their fate, and as they were drifting further and further away from Russia of course the CIA must be behind that. It’s pure projection.
(And, just for the record, yes, even Anarchists technically form vanguards. From “farming commune doing its thing and writing revolutionary poetry” to “Let’s stop right-wing militias from slaughtering native people and then live among the natives and talk about humanism”, see Chiapas).
(Also, Tankiedom is a CONTELPRO programme, their purpose is to make lefitsts in general look bonkers and inherently oppressive. Convince me otherwise).
I mean my stance is anarchism or left libertarianism, and I agree with most of what you said. But I also am just totally unfamiliar with these regimes. The only thing I’ve ever been taught is “bad”. I don’t really trust what I have been taught to be honest. I feel like there is a lot more nuance than the American POV. Also I’ve traveled enough to know that propoganda is EVERYWHERE. Every country propagandizes every other country. So it’s just hard to know what’s true about geopolitics tbh.
I think China and the USA are both terrible regimes, but in such a way that it’s generally fine to live there, which is a weird modern phenomenon. I bet Russia and Cuba aren’t what the US teaches. I suspect NK is a repressive hellscape IRL same as on TV lol.
Look I’m decidedly on the fence because of what I perceive as my own ignorance on these topics, but I’m sorry, if the reaction to the lead dev’s link bomb like this is to just dismiss it without rebuttal and take the Western media’s word at face value, then I have to at least entertain the notion that they might not be wrong here.
Manufacturing Consent ingrained a deep skepticism of mainstream media in me that has only served me well for over a decade. It’s not a dismissal of mainstream sources, mind you, but an understanding of their biases and a healthy skepticism and unwillingness to tow the line without my own independent research or the backing of a source I fully trust.
Unfortunately, I find that my anarchist comrades often hold strong opinions on these issues when they have not done any of this research themselves or have only done surface level research at the same level of an average liberal. This again leaves me on the fence until I feel comfortable having an opinion.
In the meantime, the lead devs may have their own ideological views, but they have really not been pushing anything heavily on this platform and have been accommodating. I don’t think the FUD spread over their beliefs helps any of us, and while they may be ML instead of anarchist or liberal, this culture also helps ensure that anti-racism, anti-transphobia, anti-capitalism, and more are cultural staples of the platform and acts as a deterrence to trolls and real, outright fascists from viewing this platform as a place to call home.
A Reddit clone with a leftist, not liberal, culture is one I fully embrace, personally.
sane leftists generally simply discount tankie talking points out of hand
how is this sane? tankies might well be wrong, but I don’t see how they’re obviously wrong. the west does lie about its enemies. a million iraqis died on a lie in our lifetimes. i’m not here to fight a court case, i just find the dismissal baffling.
