We’re a small tight knit community. We see the same names everywhere. I’m sure many of you have been recognised by strangers before.
What is your claim to Lemmy fame.
(Question inspired by, https://lemmy.world/comment/19964547)
We’re a small tight knit community. We see the same names everywhere. I’m sure many of you have been recognised by strangers before.
What is your claim to Lemmy fame.
(Question inspired by, https://lemmy.world/comment/19964547)
‘defending’ 🙄
it’s that I find there’s more common ground with them than with the centrist extremists who get so worked up about their existence.
Just yesterday I had one such person who started off calling me a tankie immediately pivot to ‘yeah well anarchism is bullshit too’
Was it that vanth (or smth like that) idiot.
it was here, the ragebait was too obvious so I disengaged lol
YES that’s the one. Obvious troll. I almost blocked him but gave him the benefit of doubt
Where’s the common ground when anarchism is all about anti-authoritarianism?
Anarchism is anti-authoritarian, but that’s not really where it ends (to say it’s ‘all about that’ is a bit reductive). The point isn’t just to oppose authority, but to oppose hierarchy and domination. IE systems where authority becomes permanent, coercive, and self-justifying.
Anarchists aren’t going to oppose a doctor giving orders in the middle of surgery, or say that teachers have to get a vote from their class before being allowed to assign homework.
The problem is the structural authority where participation isn’t voluntary and the power can’t be revoked. This is why opposing the state, class society and capitalism is such a common refrain.
That’s why I said there’s common ground between marxists and anarchists. Both traditions start from the same diagnosis: the capitalist state is a machine of class domination. We both want to abolish exploitation and create a classless, stateless society. We can disagree about if some heirarchies can still be used temporarily for the purpose of liberation, however that’s a strategic debate with a shared revolutionary objective, not some huge moral divide.
At the end of the day, anarchists and marxists want the same thing: a society without without rulers, landlords, or bosses.
The disagreement is about how to get there, not about if people should be free at all.
That’s fine, if most of the controversy surrounding tankies on here (and elsewhere) was just about “what state they’re trying to build”, but that’s not the case. Tankies defend genocide regimes, make false claims about suppressing uprisings because they were “fascist backed”, downplay atrocities committed by Mao and Stalin, support imperialist occupations of Ukraine and Taiwan, defend human rights abuses committed by the DPRK, and much much more. This is what makes up the bulk of controversy on tankies on the fediverse and outside it. Do you support these as well?
I ask this because I’m aware of anarchist’s readiness to denounce failings of past anarchist revolutions. Anarchists are more honest with their takes and readily say, “yeah’ I don’t support that. We can do better”; tankies do not have the same attitude.
The biggest shit-stirrers on this front don’t tend to express issues with authoritarianism under capitalism. In fact they tend to be the first to browbeat people to fall in line with western narratives and express contempt at challenging the existing systems. I have no obligation to take them seriously.
The problem is that you’re using tankie now interchangeably with what was originally ‘leninist’ and the goalposts shifted for what they believe.
I can point to a recent thread where these ‘tankies’ are complaining about the fascists larping as communists on reddit ‘tankies’ are not a monolith and the site cultures are clearly different. Here’s a thread where ‘the tankies’ on hexbear are saying that the CPRF should all be shot for supporting the SMO, and that if Putin is praising you then you’re not a communist party.
Most marxists/leninists I’ve known in real life are pretty quick to concede the failures of previous socialist states, because having a critical understanding of history is integral to having a materialist worldview.
If people are just shouting slogans it’s a problem, obviously. However that door swings both ways: I find it’s more often the people complaining loudly about ‘tankies’ who are starting off with slogans and an uncritical reading of their own sides history.
What? Just because they’re not actively going on about how the West is so shit doesn’t actually mean they don’t think it is, and that is especially pertinent to the fediverse since there’re already so few people on here defending US-style capitalism.
I don’t get the constant pedantry about the term “tankie”. It’s simply a pejorative for extreme far-left views which include, but is not limited to, valiant defense of authoritarian regimes, anti-US imperialist states simply because they’re anti-US, etc.
Those threads you showed seem to be disdain for very niche and specific issues pertaining to Russia. Especially since those are hexbear communities which are very notorious for supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Remember, the point here is not that tankies align with Russia on every single issue, it’s that they do so on any issues at all; like the war in Ukraine.
If that is the case then they certainly aren’t well represented here on the fediverse. All I seen on here is about how past socialist states only failed due to external contradictions, failing to see how external contradictions could have exploited internal contradictions that existed within the system.
Once again, most leftist anti-tankies already criticize the US. It is failing to see how the alternative isn’t worse. I’m not defending centrists or conservatives here.
‘tankie’ is used a pejorative for any leftist, just like ‘red’ or ‘commie’ or ‘pinko’ was. You apply it to them because they say one thing, and automatically ascribe to them all of the other things that you dislike. It’s a caricature.
I linked two different threads of people unanimously shitting on purported communists who are reactionary or offer full support to the war in ukraine and you read it as them being ‘aligned on the war in ukraine’. I don’t really know what else to say if you’re just going to read the opposite.
The ‘vaguely left’ poster that’s one of the main ‘anti-tankies’ is constantly posting NAFO shit and anticommunism. I don’t think that we are in agreement on what ‘leftist’ is, beyond a self-identification.