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Criticizing Marxists on a community that is federated with the largest Marxist-aligned instances will indeed result in a struggle session.
Not criticising marxists, just tankies.
Given that “tankie” means anyone to the left of Elizabeth Warren, Marxists are a subset of tankies.
As we already discussed, if the vast majority of Marxists fit the definition of “tankie” you gave, then it’s just a pejorative for Marxists. The Black Panther Party supported and was influenced by the DPRK, if you count that as “glorifying,” in your own words, then the Black Panthers were tankies. If you don’t, and believe them to have been sufficiently nuanced, then “tankies” practically do not exist on Lemmy.
Alright, forget the word tankie.
People who- Support modern russia and/or are opposed to Ukraine
- Deny that the Uyghurs were mistreated by china
- Think the DRPK is a nice place to live right now.
Most Marxists do not uncritically support Russia, though opposition to the Nationalists like Azov in Ukraine is something common on the Left, and believe Russia’s anti-US stance is beneficial for the Global South (see the string of African liberation movements in the past few years). Most Marxists can agree that the Uyghur people have been placed in re-education camps, but most do not believe they are being systemically murdered en masse like many people report. Most Marxists think the DPRK is doing surprisingly well for a country under extreme embargoes and was subject to more tons of bombs than the pacific front in World War II, not that it would be preferable to live there than in a highly developed country free from those problems.
Most of the people you are talking about, are not who I am referring to in the post.
I am talking about the majority of the people people on Lemmy call “tankies.” Not everyone has your specific view and nuance of the word, yet when others see you use it to describe people, they think of the worst nightmare of McCarthy. It’s better to not use the word at all, unless you want to antagonize Marxists in general, because that’s what Marxists see it as.
What do you recommend I use instead?
Maybe they should stop playing devils advocate for Russia in general, If you have to have a conversation about the Genocidal Mob state, and throw a bunch of ifs, ands, or buts in the discussion. You’re already stoking trouble.
America can be bad, and Russia can be equally bad in the same instance.
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it’s so fucking true
Anytime they pull you into an argument, suddenly 5 more show up to try and overwhelm you. There’s no way it isn’t a deliberate tactic.
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I didn’t say conspiracy
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Lol, you’ve got some serious main character syndrome
Why is it that when I say something controversial in a normal conversation, that doesn’t happen? It only happens when I say something mean or, god forbid, factual, in a conversation with an .ml user.
Yeah, you’re right, it couldn’t just be that a lot of people disagree with you, it must be an organised conspiracy
Reading comprehension and organized harassment is such a problem for your community that the entire rest of the fediverse knows and jokes about it. I can appreciate that you might not see most of that because most instances defederate from yours and most users block you after the first interaction.
It’s totally normal and organic that entire groups of tankies show up at the same time to dunk on low-interaction comments in low-interaction posts, often several replies deep in a thread that nobody’s reading anymore, and it’s always the most meaningless shit where they clearly didn’t read the post and formed a cohesive rebuttal to any points but just spew the first vaguely relevant zinger they find in the text file of one-line zingers they seem to share amongst each other.
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That is a tactic they learned from real life tanks. Argue with one tank, more tanks show up.
Tanks are pack hunters, after all.
I think they can’t stand talking to each other unless it’s circle-jerking over how much “theory” they’ve read. So, they love getting a chance to scream at an outsider.
>talk to each other
“These tankies are caught up in an echo chamber, they never expose themselves to outside ideas or engage with criticism!”
>talk to other people
“These tankies can’t stand talking to each other and just want to scream at outsiders!”
Can’t win.
During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.
If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.
-Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds
I was going to tell you to fuck off because I can’t stand talking to people who agree with me and just want to scream at outsiders, but I think this counts as “circle-jerking over how much ‘theory’ we’ve read” so that means we’re cool 😜
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Yeah, I think people constantly making those posts are a bit annoying, like they’re just trying to stir shit up, but a lot of users on grad, hex and ml will very agressively defend themselves under these threads, hence the meme.
edit: yet again downvoted by .ml for agreeing with them.
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If you make them look bad they delete the thread. It’s happened to me twice. I consider it a win, but it is sad that others won’t see how wacky they are.
They even downvote you if you agree with them.
serious question, is there any chance a large portion of these users are acting in bad faith and don’t actually believe these things because the now threads i see, the more that seems to be the case
They are very agressive, to the point where the slightest disagreement will cause them all to collectively (no pun intended) hound your comment.
Then they complain about leftist infighting.Lol imagine complaining about straw men “complaining about leftist infighting” while you punch left against someone who isn’t even there. Weak ass shit
I don’t understand the constant liberal need to assume everyone who disagrees with you is acting in bad faith. Not everyone believes the same things as you. If you like, I can explain why I believe the things I do and what works or life experiences led me to those conclusions.
The platform you’re using was designed by Marxist-Leninists, it shouldn’t be surprising to find Marxist-Leninists on here.
I try to discuss stuff with you all in good faith, but its really hard to ngl.
Edit to add: Why do you assume everyone arguing with you is a liberal?
Why do you assume everyone arguing with you is a liberal?
In regards to the person I was originally replying to here, because this is a tendency that I notice especially among liberals, and which seems to track with their idealist ideology. They view their position as being “obvious,” “objective” and “rational,” and therefore expect everyone to agree with them unless there is some sort of irregular interference in the “marketplace of ideas,” like foreign subversion. Furthermore, since liberalism is the dominant ideology of the present world, it is easier for people to believe that it is the only thing any reasonable person would believe.
Leftism is comparatively fringe, and also has many different forms of analysis that account for people believing different things. Any leftist should be aware that people who have different material conditions and material interests are likely to arrive at different sets of beliefs. It is difficult to imagine a leftist thinking that anyone who disagrees with them must be disguising their beliefs and motivations, they would have to be paranoid and suspicious of virtually everyone they ever encounter in life. It makes no sense. Furthermore, there are many different leftist ideologies so even if a leftist did expect everyone to be a leftist, it raises the question of, “which tendency?” A Trotskyist and a Maoist will have a substantial number of disagreements with each other.
As for the others, well, because they say lib things and take offense when I talk negatively about liberals. I’m sure some of them style themselves as “anarchists” while supporting liberals and acting and thinking like liberals. Anarchism has some very cool aesthetics, after all.
Perhaps, if they start respecting our labels and bothering to understand what the difference is between a Marxist-Lenininst and a Maoist instead of just blanket labelling everyone to the left of Bernie as a “tankie,” then I’ll consider respecting the difference between self-identified liberals vs anarcho-NATOists instead of labelling them all liberals. But then, if they bothered to learn or understand the things my side actually believes rather than just making shit up about us whole cloth and dismissing us when we try to actually explain our positions, they’d hardly be liberals, would they?
“liberalism” is a confusing word with 3 different meanings: “economic liberalism”, “classical/conservative liberalism” or “social liberalism”.
Seeking “freedom” does not mean much without specifying what kind of freedom you seek and in which area.
In the USA, “liberal” is almost synonym with “leftist” since it’s always understood as “social liberalism” which actually relies on a strong government to defend social freedom.
This is an international forum, not an American one.
The reason “liberal” is synonymous with “leftist” in the US is that the left has retreated so ridiculously far. Left anticommunism has been a dismal failure that’s played into the right’s hands. People thought that if they just demonstrated their anticommunist credentials that people would stop accusing them of being “reds” or “pinkos,” but it absolutely has not worked and only emboldened the right to the point that even “liberal” became an accusation, a dirty word, while at the same time hurting and dividing the left.
I don’t accept that, and neither do people outside of the US. A liberal is a supporter of capitalism, liberals are, by definition, right wing.
Ok, what’s a tankie?
It’s an updated version of “commie”, means the same thing, but for people who don’t want to sound like cold war boomers.
Half a century ago it meant people who supported the soviet union using tanks to put down a cia backed coup in Hungary.
Modern times in the west it means anyone left of AOC.
I would never call a leftist a “tankie” because they are a leftist. People who do that are idiots. The important part of the word is the support of authoritarian regimes.
Which is pretty weird nowadays because neither Russia, China nor North Korea are even communist/leftist anymore.
Originally, it meant people who supported the soviet union’s use of tanks to crush uprisings.
Now its used to describe people who support Authoritatian Communist regimes, like the ussr, north korea or china.
On lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml there is a high amount of them.Originally, it meant people who supported the soviet union’s use of tanks to crush uprisings.
And with the recent JFK declassified documents:
…it turns out the soviets were right to crush the Hungarian color revolution lmao
Damn, y’all are back.
Wait…you’ve been making post about us for the last several weeks, despite not being federated? What a nerd Loloolllooll
Somehow they even support modern russia which is as far from communism as it’s possible to be without being US
I think the best evidence that “tankie” is a meaningless snarl word is the way the people who use it just make up what ever positions they like to ascribe to the mythical “tankie”. Like, none of the people you call “tankies” support modern Russia, but you’re going to insist that tankies support modern Russia anyway, because it’s not meant to an actual descriptive word, just a way to punch left.
People who support russia and communism are tankies.
Communists aren’t necessarily tankies.Ok, good news then: there aren’t any tankies on hexbear
I lurk on hexbear from time to time, and there is definetely people there who believe some of those.
Yeah, out of “supports Russia” and “are communist” there are indeed people who support some of those two things
Can I reference you here when I get called a tankie despite not supporting Russia?
Thats not what I meant, there is other “criteria”.
Yes, I’ve noticed that the “criteria” are extremely malleable and impossible to pin down. That’s why I concluded that it’s just a snarl word that ultimately means “anyone to the left of me”
I really haven’t seen that? A while ago I looked into HexBear’s opinion on it and it wasn’t good.
Check out this thread, there really isn’t any Putin worship in these spaces.
https://hexbear.net/post/148426?scrollToComments=false
In this one some of the top comments are hoping Putin gets shot in the face. https://hexbear.net/post/3270551
shhhh! They haven’t finished building their strawman
Plenty of examples from .ml. Not sure how one 3 year old thread disproves it?
I gave you two links, one which is much newer.
I’m looking at this community you linked I’m not sure I can see how you’re proving that “tankies” admire the modern Russian government.
The part where they ban people for being critical of it?
Just because we don’t suck off Azov toes doesn’t mean we do suck the FSB’s. Go back to reddit, liberal.
This recent thread is pretty insightful on lemmygrad.ml’s position. Their own users repeatedly emphasize that they are critical of the RF, which shouldn’t be a surprise given that it’s a capitalist country with plenty of reactionary domestic policies. (OP didn’t get banned)
Their reasoning is that its anti-us imperialism, despite russia being pretty imperialistic itself.
That’s such an oversimplifcation that it can just be dismissed as wrong. Here is someone who actually asked and didn’t just assume
Ah, the classic “only western countries can be imperialist”
It’s not a classic because no one says that. Japan did it for sixty years, until it was made a vassal of the US, which it still is today[1][2].
What people tend not to realize is they don’t support Russia because they think it’s still communist, but because of a combination of campism, accelerationism, and revolutionary defeatism. If you want to argue with someone in good faith you should try to understand their position first, otherwise they will just see you as a reactionary and dismiss what you say. I still occasionally get my comments removed from .ml but I’ve been able to get through to people somewhat by leading with an actual understanding of where they’re coming from.
A non .ml user arguing in good faith? That’s as rare as it is welcome!
Also, I think you forgot anti-Americanism and anti imperialism in your list.
It’s a coward who needs an echo chamber to find support for their perspectives.
Is this why .world preemptively defederated from hexbear?
Maybe they were all commenting on your spelling of “criticising”
meh, its one of 10-15 words I use often, but can’t spell properly for shit.
If only there was some kind of spelling check.
It doesn’t work for some reason:
Works on my secret alt on another instance though.
Only an oqho wdors ewql can call someone an oqho wdors ewql.
It will actually look more like this:
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You can’t fool me!
