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What the fuck is a tankie?
A socialist who wins
No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except for the ones that succeed.
Michael Parenti
anyone to the left of Bernie, it would seem
A person who praises authoritarianism with a communist bend. Think people who like North Korea and it's great leader, but live somewhere like the USA.
What's so authoritarian about having a dual elected party officials/union control of all medium and large workplaces with oversight from the women's committee?
Tbc that was a joke but this is something that actually happens in the dprk and kinda contradicts the idea that it is an "authoritarian" state. Like, do you even know any parliamentary democracies which have that set up?
What no theory does to a mf
This is like how a republican mom explains Communists to a 10 year old kid who asked, lol. Do you stand for anything?
If the person saying it is a leftist, they mean authoritarian leftists, the sort of people who unironically praise Mao and are very positive towards modern-day China. If the person saying this is more right-wing, replace "tankie" with "commie scum" when you're reading and you'll get what they mean just fine.
Accurate as fuck
You're correct in that the usage of the term tankie is largely identical to rightwing anti-communism. Thinking that being a Maoist is the same as supporting modern day China is pretty wild as far as political takes go, though. You're missing several decades of leftist infighting history both in China and the West there.
anybody to the left of Vaush
Lmao I really do not like Vaush and also do not like tankies for their authoritarianism (which is not "more left").
What is "authoritarianism"?
Is that when a handful of capital owners get to decide what we do with all of our productive resources?
Did I ever claim that capitalism is not authoritarian? I certainly consider it to be authoritarian >.<, and more specifically I consider the USA (varying by state and location) to be pretty authoritarian in a lot of ways, though they have decent press freedom (even if there are pretty severe issues with copyright and larger media conglomerates being owned by investment corpos), which is kind of an anomaly given many other things like drug laws and police militarisation and such :/ (many other things too)
I could go on a whole thing about hierarchy & subjugation, organisational structures, top-down coercion, incarceration, prescriptivism and more rigid societal role-setting (including micromanagement and control of personal behaviour in particular, and government promotion of a culture of snitching and general obedience), information suppression usually by more violent means, and centralised governance often associated with strong cults of personality, but this would take ages and I have other things to do.
These are all aspects of and related to authoritarianism and constitute a cluster of concepts I would consider a definition ., though lots overlap with each other nya, and I don't really feel like digging down rn to get an exact phrase.
It's more than just about distribution of resources (though that is an aspect often used to enable it and one of the reasons I consider universal access to certain things the bare minimum on the route to true liberation), and related to the degree to which systems and ideologies micromanage people and prescribe roles and behaviours for them, as well as the degree to which there is concrete and direct influence of people on social structures and consensus building, plus high transparency in decision making processes ., and the less coercion involved in anything the better (and if there is coercion, transparency, scrutinisability, and routes for avoiding poor outcomes (as well as consensus based methods to alter any use of such) reduce the authoritarianism). There's more but this is a start.
It's related to hierarchy and coercion, but it's not just that but also accountability, transparency, and consensus building without undue influence from smaller groups of individuals, plus lack of micromanagement and prescriptivistic roles and paths ;3. As well as encouraging people to think critically and come to their own conclusions (though this applies especially to people claiming to be "free thinkers" while parroting bullshit).
I could also talk about groups becoming a new ruling class while claiming to liberate, or several other aspects too.
After you fight and win a revolution, how do you protect your new state from being crushed or invaded? Look what happened to Allende, Lumumba, Aidit, Árbenz, etc.
more specifically I consider the USA (varying by state and location) to be pretty authoritarian in a lot of ways, though they have decent press freedom (even if there are pretty severe issues with copyright and larger media conglomerates being owned by investment corpos), which is kind of an anomaly given many other things like drug laws and police militarisation and such :/ (many other things too)
Damn, you're like 90% of the way there, but you still only see the trees.
US has no freedom of the press because all media is privately owned and even state media is privately financed. The entire 4th estate is literally just an appendage of the ruling class. Freedom of the press isn't private ownership of the press, it's independence and democratic oversight over the press, something that exists in no capacity in America.
In the US you have freedom to purchase the press
All that text and you couldn't give a real world example? Name one revolution that overthrew a brutal gov and didn't resort to "authoritarianism" in your opinion.
An authoritarian leftist.
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