I'm not into that authoritarian stuff. Worshipping a fascist authoritarian state is not a leftist make.
Communism and fascism are entirely different, and conflating the two has roots in Double Genocide Theory, a form of Holocaust trivialization and Nazi Apologia. The Nazis industrialized murder and attempted to colonize the world, the Soviets uplifted the Proletariat and supported national liberation movements such as in Cuba, China, Algeria, and Palestine. I recommend reading Blackshirts and Reds.
If you look at the holodomor I think it's hard to continue painting the Soviet Union as having uplifted the proletariat. Soviets starved their people to achieve rapid industrialization - a tradeoff that most of those who died would probably not have agreed with. IIRC most historians say that collectivization was a horrible failure and was not good for the working class.
First hand accounts of life during stalinism make it clear that people had to develop weird mannerisms to avoid making it seem like they were disloyal/anti-party; basically everyone walking on eggshells all the time.
-- and they both punch left; exactly as conservatives like to do.
I consider tankies to be on the right end of the socialist spectrum, so when I say it I'm punching right. They're still comrades even if they are miss guided by state-capitalist governments. Cheers
I think if you're comparing "degrees" of left vs right, at that point you're missing the forest for the trees. Ultimately, Anarchists and Marxists disagree on strategy and end goal, but both oppose Capitalism and Imperialism. At that point, there really isn't a "more" or "less" left, there's just differences in analysis and what must be done to get from A to B, as well as what B itself is.
I love it when people call a transitional economy state capitalist because it betrays a lack of understanding of actually existing capitalism and the role the state plays in it.
If you're one of those people who just considers "tankie" to be a synonym for "Marxist-leninist" then I suppose I agree, but I think the term is used too nebulously to meaningfully place on the political spectrum.
Tankie doesn't really mean anything to me anymore. Even self-proclaimed tankies often have trouble defining it in a way that is consistent among leftist groups.
I believe in reclaiming "tankie" in the same way as "queer." Schoolyard bullies don't really care to distinguish between the many different labels encompassed by LGBT+, and so they inadvertently invented a term that could be very inclusive and all encompassing, even if you're still figuring out who you are, you call always fall back on "queer" to give the general idea.
In the same way, the term "tankie" gets applied to people of all sorts of different left ideologies. There are significant differences between different leftist ideologies, but our critics don't care to understand or distinguish between them, so I consider tankie to be a similarly inclusive term. Do you support anything that any socialist government has ever done? Do you think Cuba had an effective literacy program? Congratulations, you're a tankie, welcome to the club.
Note that my identifying with the term isn't really an invitation for people to use it. But, you know, if people want to keep using it as this broad, meaningless term that lumps a bunch of people together, as I see it, it only works to our advantage as "tankies," it pushes people towards us and helps us remember what we have in common instead of fighting over our differences. So I'm not exactly going to fight the label particularly hard.
Tankie always meant a fan of authoritarianism but not of the nazi variety. And hand to hand with that goes hate for America, but hate for America isn't enough on it's own, it should be paired with love of Strong Hand Of The East.
Tankie thinks China, Russia, North Korea are just swell, and not because of some underlying ideology, but because they have an authoritarian model of governance and generally in opposition to the west to some degree.
And that's the reason why it's so hard to define for some people, boiled down to it's definition, it's very hard to spin into something universally good, so talking to a general public they have to do what authoritarian lovers from the other side of the spectrum call "hiding the power lever", which muddies the water.
I always just thought it meant leftists who are actively advocating violence.
Truly. Any moderate support for AES? Immediately labeled a tankie, I've seen Anarchists and even Liberals labeled a tankie. The term only exists to punch left from the Liberal POV, just like "Woke" is used to punch anything left of fascism.
What are you referring to with "AES"? (I only know it as an encryption method and Google ain't helping)
Do MLs consider anarchists liberals now?
No, but a lot of liberals consider themselves anarchists.
Anarchists tend to be smart enough to not use the word tankie.
There are exceptions of course.
Generally not. Anarchists and Marxists want separate goals and have separate means, but Liberalism is a separate ideology.
Do people genuinely take badempanada seriously?
He starts a lot of shit, but dammit if he isn't right most of the time.
