Fuck all imperialist and hierarchical power structures. Fuck colonialism and fuck the police. Fuck fascists and the libs that enable them.
Xi Jinping is a fascist, and I don’t think it was liberals that enabled him
Xi’s also an imperialist and implemented a hierarchical government. Nothing I said was paradoxical. Fuck 'em all.
The only country actually running over people with tanks is Israel and does it with the unconditional support of the US
Liberals as always don’t see Arabs as people. Don’t you dare come asking for our votes.
Do Arabs get to vote in the US?
Or if you mean Arabs that chose to go live in the US, I don’t think they care too much about a country that, well, murdered all the natives
‘The Libs,’ LOL!!!
From a anon American, it’s hilarious seeing the hick come out. ‘the Libs hur durrr.’
Hahaha that shits always funny
imperialism is the subjugation of one country for the benefit of the first. DPRK is not imperialist (how could it be under UN sanctions), PRC is not imperialist, USSR was not imperialist.
Communists critically support the DPRK, the USSR, and the PCR, progressive liberals uncritically support Obama, Biden, conservative liberals uncritically support Trump, Bush, etc
read lenin.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/
Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak? Quite a few comrades always keep their eyes shut and talk nonsense, and for a Communist that is disgraceful. How can a Communist keep his eyes shut and talk nonsense?
It won’t do!
It won’t do!
You must investigate!
You must not talk nonsense!
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-6/mswv6_11.htm
The instance you use is named after an Ikea plush. I will not debate you.
The South China Sea, Poland and most of eastern Europe would like a word…
Edit: Oh, and Tibet, Taiwan, etc…
Poland and most of eastern Europe would like a word
I’ve answered already to someone else making the example of Estonia, but I’ll answer you too so that you can see my take.
After 30+ years of anti-communist propaganda, of course many countries in Eastern Europe may “disagree”. As a currently ongoing example, the other day there was an article ( paywalled, but you can read it pasting the link in 12ft.io ) in the Spanish newspaper “El País” about a new museum in Moldova dedicated to the forcibly relocated to other parts of the USSR during the late 30s. The article talks about the horrors of Stalinism and how 90k people from the region were forcibly relocated in 1937-1941, although the majority were allowed to return in the 50s. All that’s good, having a memory of our history is a good thing. But then, the article goes on with some conversation with the “Director of the National Agency of Archives in Moldova”, Igor Casu. I’ll translate to Spanish:
Casu considers that the war in neighboring Ukraine started by Russia has made the [Moldovan] citizens begin to perceive the Soviet regime as one of occupation and colonisation
So, basically, conflating the current imperialist capitalist Russia with communist USSR. But the funny part comes now, when they actually quote Casu:
“We hope that if the deportations keep being exposed ni the following five years, we’ll achieve that a solid part of the population will be really informed, and, at the same time, that they’ll consolidate a national identity”
So, they’re going FULL mask-off, and basically saying “we want to show this particular side of history not with the objective of remembrance of victims, but actually to create a new national identity based on the independence from supposedly oppressive Russia”. Fostering nationalism and anti-Russian sentiment as part of the new national identity. This is the recipe that’s been successfully applied to most of Eastern Europe for the past 30+ years, and you can see the results by asking any Polish person what they think of Russians. If this isn’t clear enough, the article reminds us:
During the last years, under the rule of the pro-European government, this ex-Soviet republic has been making efforts to propagate knowledge of the suffering created by the phenomenon of “Russification” that took place […]
Mind you, not a single reference in the article or the monument, to the 140.000 Jews deported by the Nazis during the 1940s invasion in Moldova, of whom 90.000+ were murdered in concentration camps. Let’s remember the victims of horrors of our history, but only those politically convenient to us now. Since we want to get closer to western Europe, including Germany, let’s put those killed by Nazis (many more than by Soviets) aside for now.
If you look at historical evidence, you can’t possibly make the argument that Estonia was subjugated and exploited by the USSR. The local language was preserved and there was an abundance of written publications in Estonian, people were allowed to study in the local language, the salaries were similar to those in the rest of the USSR (or higher actually), industrialization rates were equal or higher to those of the rest of the USSR, number of doctors/teachers and hospital beds per capita were equal… really, none of the telltales of imperialism are there. If you want to see a discussion with actual data regarding this, I suggest you have a look at “Human Rights in the Soviet Union” by Albert Szymanski, a wonderful book filled to the brim with data and a rather nuanced discussion.
So let’s not pretend that there hasn’t been a strong effort from pro-western authorities in all of Eastern Europe into pushing the narrative that this made-up historically continuous “Russia” has been exploiting and colonising Eastern Europe, and let’s not pretend that the opinion of most people in Eastern Europe who’ve been exposed to this campaign for the past 3 decades is unbiased and historically accurate (because public opinion never is).
Oh, and Tibet, Taiwan
Funny that you mention those two as well. Taiwan’s national identity, again, has been manufactured from the ground up over the past 30+ years. The data that western countries celebrate of Taiwanese people mostly declaring themselves to be “only Taiwanese”, is a fairly recent trend. From the link above:
According to the latest survey by National Chengchi University in Taipei (June 2023), 62.8 percent of the inhabitants of the Republic of China perceive themselves as “Taiwanese only,” 30.5 percent “both Taiwanese and Chinese,” and 2.5 percent “Chinese only.” In 1992, when surveys began, 25.5 percent described themselves as “Chinese only” and 17.6 percent “Taiwanese only,” with the remaining 46.4 percent “both Taiwanese and Chinese.”
So the country has gone from a 17.6% of “Taiwanese only” and a 25.5% of “both Taiwanese and Chinese” in 1992, to 63% of “Taiwanese only” and 2.5% of “Chinese only”. Funny how it’s the exact same process that I was describing above for Estonia and Moldova, in which 30+ years of propaganda can generate a new national identity and generate negative feelings towards previously friendly neighboring countries!
Regarding Tibet, I don’t think I’ll find such polls about national identity. However, until the Sino-Tibetan war, Tibet was literally a feudal country in which an aristocracy owned the lands and serfs were legally bound to the land as workers. When you criticise the lack of Tibet’s autonomy after the Sino-Tibetan war, remember that you’re arguing in favor of a literal feudal regime with aristocrats and serfs.
Look dude I’ve worked with many MLs and MLMs. I’ve read some of both Lenin and Mao’s works. I think the recent rhetoric of calling communists fascist is wholely harmful to the left and I don’t participate in it. I never called the DPRK imperialist for obvious reasons. I didn’t even call the PRC imperialist because I do recognize that western media is not a reliable source on the matter. I recognize my own ignorance in these matters and don’t take part in uncritically decrying post-revolution communist states.
We disagree on the way a just society should be structured, or the methods of achieving that end. I consider authoritarianism and unjust hierarchies as a problem of both capitalism and state communism, but as long as my viewpoints can be heard and addressed, I personally don’t have issue with MLs and MLMs. The atrocities of capitalism far outweigh the failures of established communist states.
Communism is neither left nor right. It is just a construct of governance. While it was originally promoted by leftists, it can be either left or right. Some communists are conservative and/or fascist (ex. China).
USSR was not imperialist.
Countries like Estonia might disagree with you there, buddy.
After 30+ years of anti-communist propaganda, of course many countries in Eastern Europe may “disagree”. As a currently ongoing example, the other day there was an article ( paywalled, but you can read it pasting the link in 12ft.io ) in the Spanish newspaper “El País” about a new museum in Moldova dedicated to the forcibly relocated to other parts of the USSR during the late 30s. The article talks about the horrors of Stalinism and how 90k people from the region were forcibly relocated in 1937-1941, although the majority were allowed to return in the 50s. All that’s good, having a memory of our history is a good thing. But then, the article goes on with some conversation with the “Director of the National Agency of Archives in Moldova”, Igor Casu. I’ll translate to Spanish:
Casu considers that the war in neighboring Ukraine started by Russia has made the [Moldovan] citizens begin to perceive the Soviet regime as one of occupation and colonisation
So, basically, conflating the current imperialist capitalist Russia with communist USSR. But the funny part comes now, when they actually quote Casu:
“We hope that if the deportations keep being exposed ni the following five years, we’ll achieve that a solid part of the population will be really informed, and, at the same time, that they’ll consolidate a national identity”
So, they’re going FULL mask-off, and basically saying “we want to show this particular side of history not with the objective of remembrance of victims, but actually to create a new national identity based on the independence from supposedly oppressive Russia”. Fostering nationalism and anti-Russian sentiment as part of the new national identity. This is the recipe that’s been successfully applied to most of Eastern Europe for the past 30+ years, and you can see the results by asking any Polish person what they think of Russians. If this isn’t clear enough, the article reminds us:
During the last years, under the rule of the pro-European government, this ex-Soviet republic has been making efforts to propagate knowledge of the suffering created by the phenomenon of “Russification” that took place […]
Mind you, not a single reference in the article or the monument, to the 140.000 Jews deported by the Nazis during the 1940s invasion in Moldova, of whom 90.000+ were murdered in concentration camps. Let’s remember the victims of horrors of our history, but only those politically convenient to us now. Since we want to get closer to western Europe, including Germany, let’s put those killed by Nazis (many more than by Soviets) aside for now.
If you look at historical evidence, you can’t possibly make the argument that Estonia was subjugated and exploited by the USSR. The local language was preserved and there was an abundance of written publications in Estonian, people were allowed to study in the local language, the salaries were similar to those in the rest of the USSR (or higher actually), industrialization rates were equal or higher to those of the rest of the USSR, number of doctors/teachers and hospital beds per capita were equal… really, none of the telltales of imperialism are there. If you want to see a discussion with actual data regarding this, I suggest you have a look at “Human Rights in the Soviet Union” by Albert Szymanski, a wonderful book filled to the brim with data and a rather nuanced discussion.
So let’s not pretend that there hasn’t been a strong effort from pro-western authorities in all of Eastern Europe into pushing the narrative that this made-up historically continuous “Russia” has been exploiting and colonising Eastern Europe, and let’s not pretend that the opinion of most people in Eastern Europe who’ve been exposed to this campaign for the past 3 decades is unbiased and historically accurate (because public opinion never is).
And by “liberal” you mean anyone who dares criticise Daddy Putin and Supreme Leader Xi, amirite?
Dude my very first sentence was “Fuck all imperialist and hierarchical power structures.” How can you think that I support China or Russia?
Uh oh, you’ve activated the libs. Now they’ll make wild assumptions and other fabrications instead of actually addressing anything you’ve said.
You seem to be under the impression that liberals have a logically and ethically consistent belief structure.
The realization that liberals are unscratched fascists is a tough one, but you are one of the few intelligent folks able to recognize it… it’s a curse.
you’re such an online edgelord that you’re fighting straw men of your own creation. sign off, your family probably misses you.
Oops. Posted on tankie news again. Always forget to check.
Edit: actually, i retract that. I got mixed up with another thread.
These “tankies” are conservative right-wing shitbag trolls trying to convince the normal people that supporting oppression and dictators is somehow “left-wing”. Do not fall for their conservative bullshit.
Just like any other conservative, every word they utter is deception or manipulation. Tankies are conservative trolls through and through.
That’s a no true Scotsman argument.
There are plenty of actual tankies here. In fact, the Lemmy software is created by tankies and one of the larger Lemmy instances is run by them.
From what I’ve seen, there’s a big divide amongst the tankies. There are those who are basically Stalin MAGA, base their political opinions on Soviet aesthetics and don’t consider much the practical implications of their actions. Some simply lash out against mainstream liberal ideology and others are just trolls.
Ane the other camp is made of people who read a lot of communist philosophy and are absolutely convinced the only way to achieve an equal society is by forcing everyone into it. This has its own problems, but they at least have an internally coherent ideology.
That’s not to say I agree with either camp. Their ideology promotes a vanguard party which can quickly spiral into “some are more equal than others”. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and all that. But I do understand where the second camp is coming from. I think the path to a better world lies in trade unions and people coming together to defend common interests.
When they are actively censoring and banning people who make critical comments about the PRC, the USSR, or even present day Russia, I don’t care where they come from.
I was banned from lemmy.ml myself for saying something about the Tiananmen Square massacre.
There are plenty of actual tankies here.
When a term becomes an insult, it’s very difficult to use it as anything other than an insult.
I more often see “tankie” used to decribe anti-war liberals than pro-war leftists.
There are two useful tests when evaluating the value of words like this:
-
Do people use it as a form of self-identification? If they do, that’s probably the real definition. If they don’t it’s probably just an insult.
-
Does the word have a consistent definition? If the definition frequently shifts to suit the needs of the speaker, it’s probably not a real definition.
In my own experience with actual Communists (I do live in a country which has them), they’re some of the most conservative people around.
I mean, these people are holding on really hard to political slogans which often are a century old or near it and they genuinelly an uncritically think all that stuff is Leftwing even in the face of all evidence that such forms invariably led to the creating of new Elites and to lesser or greater extent Dystopian Societies, never the promised Equalitarian Utopia.
Plenty of Lefties around who trully believe in Leftwing Principles without the insane tribalism of following the dictats of The Party.
Personally I just saw this meme as referencing such traditionalist unthinking muppets who think of themselves as Lefties all the while defending the well installed and entrenched establishment and elites of a few specific countries.
Russia was and is a culturally conservative country. The USSR made some early progress towards equality for women and LGBT folk, and turned it right back around a bit later. Russification under the Czar–trying to get all the diverse ethnic minorities to just be Russian–was simply turned into a Stalinist version of the same thing. The fundamental authoritarianism of the Czar never left, but it was given a Marxist coat of paint.
The USSR made some early progress towards equality for women and LGBT folk, and turned it right back around a bit later.
I’m sorry but this is just wrong. The Soviet Union was the first European country to legalize abortion - and after banning it again, they became the second European country to legalize abortion when they re-legalized it, and their commitment to women’s health surpassed any other country for decades as the Soviets provided abortion on demand rather than after a laundry list of restrictions as most of their contemporaries did. The Soviets also had universal childcare, freeing women from the tyranny of domestic servitude decades before any other developed country would, and the legacy of this effort is so strong that even the capitalist successor regimes in Eastern Europe outperform the ones in the West in terms of having female scientists, heads of government departments, etc. The women of the Soviet Union were the freest women in the world for the entirety of the USSR’s existence.
True the Soviets never came around on LGBT issues, which is a shame.
Having lived 20 years abroad, including my core years of personal adult development, and having returned to my homeland were I became a member of a small Leftwing party, I keenly notice just how much people are, seemingly unaware of it, frequently shaping their thinking and even practice of being Leftwing on local cultural factors: pushing up in the party the sons and daughters of old hands or selecting people for positions of responsibility based on liking them rather than merit isn’t really being Leftwing (it’s quite literally the opposite of Fair and by being unmeritocratic one actually reduces the chances of success of the party) and people making speeches of the “give shit to my group” (women, teaches, pensioners, whatever) variety isn’t being Leftwing, it’s disguising one’s greed as being “for the group” and has little to do with the common good.
The point being that all political ideologies get adjusted by those who practice tehm and they do it based on what they thing is normal, and most people think “normal” is what they’ve seen around themselves their whole lives, so it’s expect that the political ideologies that end up being successful in a country “go along with the grain of the wood” and adopt the local’s ideas of “normal”.
Well a lot of that can be explained by the fact that conservatives co-opted the left wing movements for communism and largely turned them into dictatorships. These governments endured several decades before collapsing, which allows newer conservatives to think of them as “the good ol days.”
It doesn’t mean they ever were communists. They just stole the name and ruined its reputation.
A simpler explanation is that the people who seek power are the worst of the bunch and they’ll say whatever it takes to get there and keep it - it’s a pretty well know thing since Ancient times that the best rulers are the ones who do NOT want to rule.
Sociopaths will just as easilly sing praises to Marxism-Leninism as they will to the Free Market, so don’t confuse whatever bullshit they spout to get to and stay at the top of the pile in an the power structures created by a specific ideology with their actual beliefs and don’t excuse the failures of the structures created by that ideology that allow such people to get to the top.
Even if the “Revolution” isn’t led by assholes, any power structure which centralizes power and doesn’t have hard to subvert mechanisms for constant change of who is in power, attract the worst vermin and they’re the one who will knifes as many backs as it takes to get it and keep it so they’re far more likely to get it than “good people”. This is true even in Power Duopoly systems like the US, and much worse in power monopolies like the Soviet Union and even Modern Russia.
That blaming of “others” for one’s own failures is just you having internalised the typical propaganda from the power hungry assholes (just as much from the ones portraying themselves as Fascists or from the ones portraying themselves as Communists) to deflect the blame for their own actions away from themselves.
Back to the specifics of your point, the inherent weakness of Socialism and Communism as opposed to more Democratic systems like Social Democracy, is that the former require a Dictatorship Of The Proletariat to reach the final utopia which was Equality For All, and invariably that supposedly temporary step were power and the Means Of Production are centralized becomes permanent, and they’re exactly the kind of structure that pulls is the worst assholes: Lenin was probably somebody who, at least to begin with, had his hearth in the right place (though with him too, the Power Corrupts dictum applies), whilst Stalin was a pure Sociopath.
I’d bet that most of them aren’t trolls. I have friends who were liberal as you could be, but they let cynicism turn them into tankies.
Well there’s basically two kinds of tankie:
The grifters who run the cult and sell the rhetoric in exchange for clout, authority, arrogant self-importance, and the extraction of material support through abuse and exploitation,
And the cope-starved simps who are desperate to feel like they are doing something practical about their material conditions but have been too enervated after being fucked raw by corporate liberalism to actually do anything.
Remember Caleb Maupin? Exposed as a coercive sex pest? Ran a “commune” that was little more than a shoddy knockoff of a human trafficking operation? Yeah. That’s tankie “leadership” for you.
Haha no, they are real. Horseshoe theory of politics and all, what comes around goes around.
Lemmy was originally built by and for tankies, so this is completely unsurprising. The .ml TLD on the original instance isn’t a coincidence.
They made it for themselves but let us set up instances outside of their control due to their morals that software should be open for all. Again proving the best open source software comes from scratching a personal itch.
I can see the decentralized platform as a communist parallel. I don’t, however, understand the fanaticism for the murdery shit show dictatorship that was Russia/China though.
the murdery shit show dictatorship that was Russia/China
You have been heavily propagandized about these countries. They were not as bad as you think they were and in fact had many elements where they were plainly superior to their contemporaries. On balance, these countries were far better to their citizens than equivalent capitalist countries, and far less damaging to the world at large than the American Empire has been, even when you take into account their mistakes.
It’s a pretty standard take on the commie side that stuff like colonialism and American slavery are pretty much the capitalist equivalent of the communist mass deaths, so I think their position is that everyone’s a hypocrite who has to support a government committing some kind of mass murder (in the modern day, America’s mass murder in this lens is its alliance with Israel). Since Americans won’t admit their government’s atrocities (even though a lot of them do call out the US, but that’s not how they see it), why should they admit the atrocities of the USSR?
It was never closed to non-tankies, but it wasn’t very welcoming. I had an account on .ml early on and most of the time I got hammered with downvotes, despite having opinions that I’d describe as being on the left edge of liberalism.
and most of the time I got hammered with downvotes
Downvotes are federated.
To be clear, the left edge of liberalism is bernie sanders. Is that what youre saying?
It’s almost like the dishonest nature is built into their every move.
CTH has been eradicated from every platform it’s arisen on, then they built Lemmy.
CTH didn’t build Lemmy, they forked it and then merged it back a few years later.
I had one of these fucks try to tell me that North Korea is very democratic.
Wait, really? It says more about USA than about Korea. How does one become even worse than Korea? It is antiachivement.
In literally no instance is the USA worse than north Korea. Unless you count the lack of murder death camps and a supreme dictator for life as something to be better at
No it doesnt. NKs parlament is for show and fasade.
Kim’s party holfs 98% of the seats. The other 2 partys hold no power at all and arent an opposition. They always vote with the main party.
hexbear has entered the chat
I’m seeing more and more tankies migrate to lemmy.world, because they don’t do anything against them, but lemmy.world is also much less likely to get defederated by other instances. Fuck big, centralized instances. People should move to smaller, niche servers like db0, blahaj.zone, beehaw, etc.
