I want to draw attention to the elephant in the room.
Leading up to the election, and perhaps even more prominently now, we've been seeing droves of people on the internet displaying a series of traits in common.
- Claiming to be leftists
- Dedicating most of their posting to dismantling any power possessed by the left
- Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
- Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
- Attacking anyone who promotes defending leftist political power by claiming they are centrists and that the attacker is "to the left of them"
- Using US foreign policy as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the US political system
- Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism
When you look at an aerial view of these behaviors in conjunction with one another, what they're accomplishing is pretty plain to see, in my opinion. It's a way of utilizing the moral scrupulousness of the left to cut our teeth out politically. We get so caught up in giving these arguments the benefit of the doubt and of making sure people who claim to be leftists have a platform that we're missing ideological parasites in our midst.
This is not a good-faith discourse. This is not friendly disagreement. This is, largely, not even internal disagreement. It is infiltration, and it's extremely effective.
Before attacking this argument as lacking proof, just do a little thought experiment with me. If there is a vector that allows authoritarians to dismantle all progress made by the left, to demotivate us and to detract from our ability to form coalitions and build solidarity, do you really think they wouldn't take advantage of it?
By refusing to ever question those who do nothing with their time in our spaces but try to drive a wedge between us, to take away our power and make us feel helpless and hopeless, we're giving them exactly that vector. I am telling you, they are using it.
We need to stop letting them. We need to see it for what it is, get the word out, and remember, as the political left, how to use the tools that we have to change society. It starts with us between one another. It starts with what we do in the spaces that we inhabit. They know this, and it's why they're targeting us here.
Stop being an easy target. Stop feeding the cuckoo.
I'm not "spreading discord" nor "trolling." I have no interest in disguising my beliefs.
Yes, I will defend the USSR. I will also "defend" just about any nation, if the claims being made about it are false, because my priority is the truth. For many people, the truth doesn't matter so much as they feel this need to demonstrate that they're part of an in-group or to communicate that they themselves aren't going to revolt, and so they allow all kinds of lies spread and propagate them themselves. Because to counteract blatant misinformation about a country is to defend it.
As for democracy, I don't believe in bourgeois "democracy" where the winner is decided by who has the most money and virtually every important decision is taken out of the sphere of public influence. I do not believe in a "democracy" where the people have to choose which face will be the one to commit genocide. That's not really democracy though, is it?
I embrace the label "tankie," mostly because it is thrown around so wantonly that it's meaningless, and loses any punch it might have otherwise have. In practice, if you have a single positive thing to say about any self-described socialist state in history, for example, "Cuba's literacy program was good," then someone's gonna call you a tankie.
Personally, I love that, because it turns it into this broad, all-inclusive term for any serious leftist, and papers over some differences. It's kinda like the word "queer." Whether you're an Anarchist or a Marxist or whatever else, if the liberals are calling you "tankie" you're probably a comrade, and if you're throwing around the term yourself you're probably a liberal. You Ain't Done Nothing If You Ain't Been Called A ~~Red~~ Tankie
Again, nothing socialist about you, authoritarian.
Socialism is when you ask nicely for the bourgeoisie to pretty please give up their wealth and stop exploiting people and the nicer you ask the more socialistier it is.
Classic. Assuming I'm against a socialist revolution despite me never having made this claim.
Edit: To be clear I am very much in favor of socialist revolutions. Unlike a certain someone else I am however not in favor of military dictatorships which pretend to be socialist,
Fredrick Engles, famous non-socialist
How irrelevant. I'm talking about the end result of the revolution. You want to establish dictatorship. I want to establish worker democracy. I am a socialist. You are an authoritarian.
Edit: Never understood why tankies are so obsessed with quoting old dead authoritarians as if that somehow changes the present in some way. I don't let auths redefine my words. Also how about quoting the anarchists they are so fond of murdering instead.
I must correct my previous statement.
Socialism is when you violently overthrow the bourgeoisie, then immediately allow yourself to be overthrown by a fascist counter-revolution in which everyone on the left is exterminated, because you're too afraid of your own shadow to stop them.
Tell me, what are your thoughts on Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran? A progressive leader who came to power through a peaceful, popular movement against British colonialism, nationalized the oil industry and reclaimed it's profits for the benefit of the common people, and then, as the CIA began infiltrating the country, refused to implement any "authoritarian" measures, leading to his overthrow? Leading to the installation of the shah who hunted down and exterminated any and all leftists in the country with his secret police? Leading to generations of Iranians living their entire lives under far-right governments, with no end in sight?
There's a reason why existing socialist governments are willing to employ authoritarian methods, it's called "survivorship bias," as in, all the movements that were too averse to such methods were subverted and exterminated.
Honestly, I find your position less coherent and less respectable than outright liberalism. If you're serious about revolution, then you have to be prepared for what that entails and you have to understand the life-or-death stakes. If you blow it, not only will everyone involved be killed, but the example will live on and the next opportunity might not arise for another 100 years or more. You are playing with powerful forces, and failure is not an option. It's necessary to adapt to the situation and use whatever methods are most effective, whether those methods are "authoritarian" or not.
What you want to do is to try to fight the vastly superior foe of capitalism, but before you even start, you want to put on a blindfold and tie one hand behind your back. You want to win in the "right" way, the way that makes you feel good. You're trying to play games, but the other side does not fuck around.
Of course, I assume you don't have thoughts on Mossadegh because I assume you haven't actually studied historical examples to inform your views, nor actual theory. My views are not something I was born with or that were just naturally appealing to me, it's only after studying such things and seriously considering them that I arrived here. In a world where leaders like Mossadegh didn't get overthrown, I wouldn't hold the views I do, unfortunately, that's not the world we live in. I'd rather survive, win, and deliver on material improvements, rather than be an aspiring martyr.
Like imagine spending all this effort to try to escape oppression by... implementing more oppression.
In practice, it's the opposite. You want to spend all the effort of revolution just to end up with more oppression because you get overthrown by CIA-backed fascists.
You assume quite a lot and then start jabbering on about dictatorships. You're no better than fascists
Edit: why do you keep assuming I am against revolutions. Tankies are extremely disingenuous
So, as I assumed, no answer to the Mossadegh problem.
Nowhere in that comment did I assume that you're against revolutions. You're in favor of them, as you said. A bit too in favor of them, tbh. You seem to think revolutions are trivial matters, that if the gains of a revolution are lost, you can simply do it again. If you're not prepared to commit to whatever's necessary to win and secure those gains, you're probably better off not doing it at all.
Nothing I've said is remotely disingenuous. You've just decided you hate me because of memes and meme ideologies. If you're attempting to demonstrate the importance of theory through this silly display of ignorance and infighting, you're doing a good job of it.
People become "tankies" because they take these questions seriously and study them. You can't understand it because you don't, and haven't. Your ideology (whatever it is) wasn't chosen because of a rigorous study of history and theory, but because it looks nice. It's fun to denounce people as authoritarians, makes you feel good, whatever. But you don't actually have reason or evidence to back up your position, you're not interested in engaging with such historical or theoretical questions at all. None of you are, really. It's all just memes and yet you have this bizarre, misplaced confidence, that because your catchphrases sound nice it means your ideology works.
Perhaps they should study all the anarchists your ideology has murdered, or all the revolutions it has ruined. Most of the regimes you support are the result of military coups of actual revolutions. Why support that? Why support the genocides or the oppression of workers? You don't support socialism, even if you call it that. How great that your ideology is successful. Still doesn't make it socialism.
Really? Which ones, specifically? I'm not aware of any like that.
I don't.
If you want to write off the whole history of socialist theory as well as every revolution that called itself socialist as having nothing to do with socialism, then I might suggest that you're the one who should find another name for whatever it is you believe. Marx and Engles were socialists. Lenin was a socialist. Ho Chi Minh was a socialist. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were socialists. They identified as such, acknowledged each other as such (when possible chronologically), and are widely seen as such. But I guess you personally are the ultimate authority on who is and isn't a socialist, and I just need to DM you whenever I have any questions about that.
Who exactly is a socialist in your mind, anyway? Any actual human being you can name, aside from yourself?