Words that can only be spoken by someone who's never tried to get together with others to change things for the better. You don't get to take an entire society and immediately make it equitable and free it of centuries of hangups. You do the revolution with the people in your country, warts and all, and struggle to make them better at the same time. You do not have the luxury of only organizing people that already 100% agree with you, nor will you be "in charge". And, let's be honest: any of us in charge would bring our own hangups, because all of us look back on ourselves 5-10 years ago and say, "wow that person believed some problematic things".

For example, the October Revolution and Russuan Civil War were fought by, believe it or not, Russians born (mostly) in the 1800s in a semi-feudal country without universal education and a large peasantry. The communists were incredibly progressive in comparison to the rest of thr country. But because they retained some of the harmful biases of their culture at the time, you write off the whole project and carry around little lists in your head about how actually they were also just "bad".

It's good to endlessly excuse the USSR and PRC, as most criticisms of them are bullsit that is only believable by people with poor knowledge of history and zero capacity to critically engage with the media. Unfortunately, this is basically everyone under capitalism.

Usually it means someone that actually reads history and will specifically debunk common anticommunist myths about it, i.e. historical revisionism.

The term "authoritarian" is also used selectively by anticommunists and this pervades capitalist societies, who continue to teach cold war nonsense. It is implicitly reserved for actions of the state, for example, but this is a false distinction made solely because after any kind of a left takeover, the state is the most powerful tool the people have. Universal government healthcare is authoritarian by this selective definition. On the other hand, the assertion of massive control over people's lives is not described as authoritarian when it comes from the private sector. Workers spend 8-16 hours per day working in petty dictatorships, working around the personalities and whims of business owners and managers, just to ensure some kind of steady income lest they lose basic human security. They are forced to migrate by poverty forced by capitalism, this system creates marginalised groups and then (sometimes slowly) treats them genocidally. Much of it was built on colonialism and neocolonialism, with the richness of the West built on uneven exchange with everyone else, a system set up at gunpoint. None of this is described as authoritarian.

Please read more widely.

This is a difficult question to answer because there are multiple groups in each of those countries and there are different ways one could support them. Also the multiple groups may dislike each other. Also it's generally a good idea to do specific research before supporting one.

For example, what would it mean to support Naxalites in light of considering support for CPIM? Sometimes Naxalites and CPIM members have killed each other and there are many disagreements about tactics and how capitalist-friendly the other one ultimately is.

I would recommend doing a lot of research and seeing what aligns best with your concept of what will work in their country. And if oosdibke, find and read the writings of people there and talk to communists who visit your country.

As always, default to skepticism towards liberal or ultra criticicisms of communists.

Thanks for not saying, "another kkkracka down unlimited genocide on the first world" during your announcement that hexbear would be joining these TANKIES. That took a lot of restraint.

I'm not a huge fan of folks reading The Communist Manifesto as their first forray into socialism/communism. It was a pamphlet for workers in the 19th century and has some weaknesses if you're not part of that audience.

I would recommend Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti to most people instead. We live under a more advanced stage of capitalism and it does a great job of explaining a lot of how "the reds" worked, who opposed them, and dispels common myths.

There's the etymology of tankie and there's the actual ways it's used. The etymology is rolling tanks into Hungary in 1956, which caused a solit (among many) among UK communists (who came up with the term). The usage varies wildly because liberals don't understand politics very well and slap it on anything to the left of Obama.

Communista understand politics through a series of criticisms of capitalism and a framework by which to understand those within it, namely economic classes whose interests align/do not align depending on the material context. You might find that some of this appeals to you, as a material grounding is more common in Eastern traditions than Western. Also we are super duper correct, so we've got that going for us.

Re: flawed humans, there are of course a variety of people out there and we all make mistakes. However, it's also important to recognize tgatva lot that is attributed to "human nature" is actually fairly recent and is either a consequence of living under the capitalist system (which came into being over a period of about 1000 years) or is just a myth spread to justify the violences done by that system to the common person.

And re: perfection, you might like us there, too. We view the political economic system as an evolving thing that changes relative to material conditions. There is no perfext system, but there are valid struggles to replace the current one with systems that prioritize people over profit. For example, no communist would say that socialism is the solution to hunter-gatherers in Crete because hunter-gathering Crete isn't capitalist - the idea would have no meaning. We also know and expect that the fight doesn't stop even after a revolution, that there will still be struggles for a long time - but at least we could fight them together and with greater agency.

Reddit tends to ban commies. It's like a mini red scare: with the left removed, the right thrives.

They'll go back to Reddit in a few weeks. Imagine thinking Redditors can pull off even a slacktivist version of a general strike. These are people whose entire lives revolve around fascile dopamine hits.