The kind that thinks communism is the same as nazism and thinks communism is when the government does things.
I hate liberal brain worms.
They seriously do as much damage to the left as fascists by punching to the left and spreading capitalist anti-left propaganda. They overall weaken leftism and help fascism.
We need more left unity, folks. Fash ain't gonna bash themselves.
Depends on the individual. I think for some, it's just another step of their radicalization.
It took repeated instances of reality being a battering ram against my own liberal delusions until I finally became a "tankie", until I finally realized that the system is unfixable and "civil debate" will get us nowhere.
Mostly by not considering them left. They are liberals wearing leftist aesthetics. You can not be a nato supporter without being a western supremacist which is barely one step removed from white supremacism, this is incompatible with leftism, it's only compatible with liberalism and reactionaries.
Honestly I don't know. I write them off as liberals laboring under the delusion that they are leftists, which might be true, but ultimately that does nothing to push them further left
It honestly feels like a fed campaign sometimes. Posing as the left, spewing red scare propaganda and then sitting back and letting the libs fight the commies.
I assume that once material conditions worsen, the non-fed libs eating that shit up won't be able to hold such a privileged view on 'evil tankies' as they start to realize where political power comes from.
When you have the level of propaganda thst the US has, and you ensure the population is political illterate through your schools yoy don't even need campaigns. The people do it for you, for free.
This might be a bad take, but when I've done real life organizing the "tankie red-fash" stuff almost never comes up. That's probably because "tankie" tends to describe a western person who has an uncommon level sympathy for non-western socialist movements. And if you live in America and you're organizing here, China and the DPRK just don't come up in discussion often. If they do, it's not really relevant to anything going on. "Tankie" might as well mean something along the lines of "traitor to the west."
I've worked with some folk in a wide amount of organizations who would sometimes go on rants about tankies. We had one guy in Food not Bombs who would always complain about the library we worked at being full of "tankies" (he meant there were books by Marx on the shelf). And one guy I worked with was very adamant that any socialist movement must be intrinsically Christian, meaning the USSR/China etc were all doomed to fail. But those were clearly cranks and their crankishness didn't distract much from the work that needed to get done.
That's the real antidote to all of this, it's getting off the internet. Tankie as it's used online just means someone who doesn't ruthlessly despise communists in non-white countries. If you don't have sufficient hatred for China/DPRK/wherever, then you're just a tankie. I've been called a tankie for saying America committed atrocities against Korea. It's just meaningless national chauvinism by people who aren't doing much work in the first place and if they are doing work they're probably capitulating to liberals. The one thing that's going to have to get through their heads is that the EU and the USA are evil and the greatest source of evil worldwide, instead they're stuck seeing foreign communist movements as equally evil. They'll say "two wrongs don't make a right" or "whataboutism." They say that stuff because they cannot see the west as a greater evil, which means they're carrying water for western imperialism.
It reminds me of the double-genocide theory that trivializes the holocaust. There should be a term for people who trivialize western imperialism. I guess they're just liberals.
That's been my experience with organizing IRL. Occasionally you'll get some baby adventure seeker, but for the most part we have shit to actually do instead of bicker about WWII
Yeah, you got it. It just doesn't come up in real life much at all. Surprisingly it seems stuff that happened 100 years ago on another continent don't have much relevance to scattered socialists in America in 2023. The theory yeah that's still relevant, but the intricacies of what to denounce or who did what war crime? Dude we're trying to get 5 car wash employees to strike to get a $2 raise. Let's focus on tasks. There just aren't enough of us to bicker.
The most relevance it might have is when we're deciding what to put on signs at a protest. Should we use a sickle and hammer? Should we use a portrait of Lenin? Depends on why we're there and who we're dealing with.
Spam them articles of us supplying tanks to . Rub their noses in it. All projection. We're not the ones supplying tanks.
They'll counter with "what do you want us to do let Russia take the territories"?
At this point ask them about bombing their own people after the 2014 Maidan coup...I mean "revolution" going on a decade now. If you say the word "coup" they will instantly shut down as they've been INNOCULATED
to deflect any variation of Certainly Not News as "Russian/Chinese propaganda".
Ok Russia pulls out and Ukraine gets their backwards country song. What do they think will happen to the people if they are returned to Ukraine? Do they think Ukraine will leave them alone? Let them speak Russian? Allow them their political parties back? Amnesty? What will happen to the economy there now that Ukraine is indebted to kingdom come? What will be of the schools? The churches Ukraine has banned?
Bet you they haven't even thought that out yet because they haven't been told what to think.
The establishment would love to draw it out into Afghanistan 2.0. We don't fight to win. We fight to draw it out, and thus the military’s budget as high and long as possible, damned what goes on domestically. Juat give the cops more military shit and treat your citizens like combatants.
Yeah when it comes to Ukraine in particular I like to talk about how the war started in 2014 and Russia was so patient to wait until 2021 to try and put and end to the war happening on their border.
And don’t say it as if it’s new info that contradicts theirs, you say it as if of course they already know the war’s been going since 2014. It makes their heads explode.
It's almost impossible, their narrative that the tankies are all genocidal is almost a universal, unshakeable truth to them. There is the rare occasion that when they're given the facts on a very specific instance they change their mind, but it's not easy.
There is the rare occasion that when they're given the facts on a very specific instance they change their mind
Yeah i think with these kinds, it takes something very specific in order to have a breakthrough. Best case that leads them to a wider understanding and radicalizing, but frustratingly for many of those libs that's where it stops.
Its insteresting to see NATO supporting western "leftists" have like maybe one or two AES they support and know the propaganda is wrong about (usually Cuba or Vietnam, probably because of the US involvement in obstructing both countries)
I throw a bit of their arrogance back in their face if theyre real active in threads, get them to focus on me for awhile instead of derailing multiple threads. My goal is to get them so frustrated they go do something else for awhile. It even works sometimes!
I take solace in knowing that if I’m sent to the concentration camps, they will be alongside me, and I can cave their skulls in before I’m executed by the fascists.
If you’re safe and comfortable to do, call their asses out. It’s a lot harder to do in-person, but I think it’s still worth it. You’re probably not going to change their minds but you’ll likely make their cognitive dissonance deepen a little more, and anyone else within earshot will hear a good opinion for once
Same. These libs have not abandoned their deology, they just want free healthcare and legal weed. They jave no problem with imperialism, they just want concessions
They don't really exist in South Africa, unless you count some well off white guy that writes op-eds for the Daily Maverick that consist of US state department talking points as "left wing"
I don't have anything to do with them, partly out of distaste, but also because I do think they pose a potential threat of getting real leftists Rosa'd. They strongly prefer fascism to the so-called "red fascism" of the dreaded tankies. There's not much value in trying to make community with them, mostly just the risk of being fucked over by a bunch of shit-libs masquerading as socialists.
In some ways it's easier to engage with self-identified liberals than it is with the liberals that decided to call themselves leftists.
These people exist online mostly. And even then just mostly among Europeans and American left liberals seeking a distinct identity for self actualization, not political engagement.
Personal real world organizing and political agitation should revolve around labor activism and to a person's immediate self interests rather than forcing them to take a stance on foreign policy you and they have very little standing to influence with.
At best these people canvass as Bernie bros but you should consider them more of embarrassment and lifestylists than competing revolutionaries.
You don't. It's not a position you reason yourself into. Even the slightest of study would show the deprivation of the poorer countries. Personally, I just like to tell people they have no soul, no heart, and say they're scared to feel their emotions. A little trolly but that's all it is.
How do I deal with them? Poorly. If you're going to engage with one, you'd probably need your theory on point and get your persuasive pants on. You'd have to be ready to field questions like "so you're okay with political violence?" or "China is capitalist though." Sounds like they'd likely grill you on Ukraine and the 2024 election. "Putin's puppets" and "you're a Trump supporter."
The only winning line I can imagine is being well researched, concise, patient, and then finding some common ground once you field 2 or 3 accusations. You'd hit them with your philosophical justification for solidarity like "I was really moved by MLK's letter from Birmingham jail when he talked about lukewarm acceptance and decided that I agree that you should never put a timeline on someone else's freedom."
How to Save a Life starts playing
He will do one of two things, he will admit to everything or he'll say he's just not the same and you'll begin to wonder why you came.
Asking anarchists to stop criticising statists and being against statism and vanguardism is big enough of a compromise that you're basically asking them to stop being anarchists.
But funnily enough, no left unity person, no matter how vehement, ever asks MLs to stop believing in or expressing their beliefs of anything. Because MLs think they are "the default leftism", and anarchism is a divergency. So then, left unity would be bringing the divergency back to line.
But even accepting that belief, that's not unity. That's assimilation. Unity would be finding a place in between the two. Which is impossible because means cannot be disentangled from ends. The "anti-sectarianism" of Hexbear is just as you show it is, "MLs, but anarchists can hang out if they shut up". They want anarchists to be useful idiots to them.
99% of the people who use the term "tankie" are NOT anarchists
Principled and theoretical anarchists who organize get my respect, Social liberals with delusions of spontaneity get my scorn, just like any patsoc liberal who pretends to be a "communist"
You don't get to define what is a "true anarchist" and what isn't, much less exclusively based off of if they use a word you don't like or not. I don't care about your respect, I am merely pointing out a dynamic that constantly happens in this community and those similar to it.
Yes, if you see yourself as an anarcho-natoist, we're gonna need you to compromise on some of your principles. The people of Russia, even if you don't like them, don't deserve to be pillaged again by NATO.
Who said anything about NATO? Do you just have an imaginary anarchist in your head to be mad about? Do you think an anarchist is someone who watches a lot of Vaush?
Hey folx, I have to move houses, will not have internet for a while, so I'mma disengage. Despite the usual smug and mocky tone, I thank you for actually engaging and not just banning me. I will leave with this: