Remember kids, Tankies wants to undermine democracy - same as facists.
they’re too busy wanking off to their own perceived superiority
Unlike all the people commenting on this post!
This is just another stupid online factionalism post. None of what anybody says online (especially on a tiny niche forum) matters one fucking bit.
Antifa, feed the homeless, or get social housing or public transport built
This is what matters. And I guarantee you there are MLs participating in black bloc protests, Food not Bombs, and all sorts of other useful things you can think of, but your tendency doesn’t matter when you’re actually out there helping people. Did you turn to your fellow protestors and ask them what they think about China or what they think about some shit that happened a hundred years ago? Or did you just do what needed to be done in the moment?
factionalism
You sure you aren’t a tankie or why else would you use the word with a negative connotation? When two actual leftists meet there’s going to be three factions, yes, but shit is still going to get done. Factions means plurality, plurality means diversity of tactics, all that is good shit.
And I guarantee you there are MLs participating in black bloc protests
MLs, yes. As in Trots and stuff. But actual tankies? Nope. That would require a capacity to cooperate, they even discourage participation internally (mostly by claiming it’s a waste of time, doesn’t contribute to the revolution, whatnot) as it’s dangerous to them, in the sense that people who have not yet completely bought into the cult might choose praxis over brainwashing: Those things are by and large run by Anarchists, with Anarchist organisation principles, and that shit working flies right into the face of democratic centralism.
…okay. I guess I missed the dude with the clipboard checking everyone’s tendency at the protests but I guess you saw him.
I think posts like this are just emblematic of being too online. And if, like you’re saying, tankies don’t do anything because that would be counterrevolutionary or whatever, then what’s the problem? Keyboard warriors aren’t changing shit.
I find all this weird exclusively online rhetoric around what’s an acceptable type of communist to be exhausting. My metric of whether or not someone is a good communist is if they help their community and help workers. You can have whatever takes you want on the kulaks or the Hungarian revolution as long as you’re standing next to me at the soup kitchen. You know why? Because nobody’s thoughts about the Hungarian revolution or even the war in Ukraine matter one iota. In the west we’re all so far from even seeing a lever of power that it doesn’t matter one whit what any of us think. There’s not about to be a tankie coup d’etat of the American government any sooner than an anarchist one.
All this post and the responses to it are are leftists wrestling in the mud to see who can have the fewest allies when they get crushed by global capital.
And if, like you’re saying, tankies don’t do anything because that would be counterrevolutionary or whatever, then what’s the problem?
I find all this weird exclusively online rhetoric around what’s an acceptable type of communist to be exhausting
Oh it’s not at all exclusively online. Like, I’d prefer not to be put into a gulag, thank you, or have a vanguard start revolutions when conditions aren’t met, ultimately delaying the actual fall of capitalism. This shit has real-world implications, and them being tolerated in online places gives them power to recruit, to propagandise, ultimately to act like that AFK so we can’t have that.
Yes I’m saying tankies should be deplatformed. Deal with it.
