EDIT: @Awoo is awesome :fidel-salute:
One time I did this with a supposed socialist and he said Cuba didn’t count as tankie since they’re monoethnic (they aren’t). Apparently this person was under the impression socialism is good when it’s one ethnicity per society, which doesn’t even describe Cuba though. He proceeded to talk about how “tankie countries” are defined by ethnic oppression, examples being Russians oppressing Hungarians or China oppressing the Taiwanese.
I only have an example of one, but I have to believe this is a common ideological underpinning for a lot of confused western leftists
All Chinese population policies are applied to Han Chinese only. Abortion and other family planning services are readily available in most of China (although they have been rising in cost), but to say that China is an ethnostate denies the fact that most local CPC political parties are dominated by the majority ethnicity in their areas, even if it isn’t Han. Now the central national bureau is still dominated by Han, and the lingua franca is Han, but given the federated enforcement nature of CPC governance, to say that minority ethnicities have no power over policy is a vast understatement.
That’s just balkanisation propaganda manifesting itself in this person’s racial obsessions and fusing into a special kind of brainworms.
Engaging with these people is about performing for the audience, they are not moveable but audiences are. Everything should be about exposing them so that the point that they are just like the people obsessed with “woke” sinks in. Many of them are secretly the same people too.
There’s a lot of truly bizarre opinion on nationalism and ethnicity when it comes to “tankie” and “red fash” discourse. Some streaming had a whole filled diaper moment talking about how anti-imperialist movements in Africa are ethno-nationalists for wanting to kick out their white ruling classes.
Cuba? Monoethnic? Like… if there’s one thing people know about ethnicity in Cuba it’s the contributions of Afrocubans to the revolution
