• SomeLemmyUser@discuss.tchncs.de
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    2 years ago

    Agree with you in general, but I think a lot if people here are not really informed what differences there are materialistic ideologies.

    Yes, Stalin bad.

    But Guevara is not Stalin.

    Marx is not che

    Engels is not Marx

    China is not communist.

    Marxism is not materialism

    Socialism is not communism

    Also the amount of people bringing the “the 3 times people tried socialism were bad, so the whole ideology must be bad” argument are way to high IMHO.

    How many times was capitalism tried? How many times it worked out? Is the USA a “functioning” state with all the oppression, racism, greed, invading other countries out of monetarian interest and environment destruction?

    While I agree with you, that oppression is bad, no matter what the oppressor calls himself, we should talk about policies without resorting to dogmas and generalising people in favor of fear the hegemonic class is propagating to stay in power.

      • TrashcanMarxist@sh.itjust.works
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        2 years ago

        Should probably listen to Blowback Season 3.

        Not to say they’re a perfect country but to pretend that anyone in the West can critique them when their material conditions are dictated by the actions of the West is just comical.

        If you aren’t a materialist, what are you even doing? As if history happens in the realm of pure thought…

          • TrashcanMarxist@sh.itjust.works
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            2 years ago

            Something something worlds largest prison population?

            Again, it’s not like North Korea is some shining example or anything, but to pretend that the west has the moral high ground here is laughable.

            Again, listen to Blowback Season 3, recognize that their country was basically bombed to the stone age Curtis le may style and then maybe reevaluate, just a little, the chauvinist attitude.

            DPRK is not a great country but it’s not as if they were ever given a chance either.

            • Sekoia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              2 years ago

              Yeah, the US prison system is absolutely abhorrent and counterethical to all the principles it’s supposed to hold.

              First, the US is basically the only western country like that:tm:, second, more than one thing can be bad. “‘North Korea is a great country’ is a dumb position”, the only (implied) assertion I made about it in my original comment, is still true, even if they got dealt a shit hand (which, so did most of the east after WW2; South Korea was in a pretty similar state (it was actually worse than NK shortly after the Korean war), yet they’re doing… much better than NK at least).

              Being “basically bombed to the stone age” doesn’t mean a dictatorship is inevitable, nor that their government is suddenly blameless; being victimized doesn’t mean you can victimize others.

              Genuinely, if you take “the west” as a whole and compare it to North Korea… yeah, I do think they have a high ground. No, I’m not saying the west is perfect, far from it. No, I’m not saying communism is automatically bad, I’m totally cool with communists.

              Basically my base position is “a functional democracy is the governance system that works the best”. Most western states are much closer to that than North Korea (yes, I know what the Electoral College is and why it’s bad), so I do think their political system is better.

            • IriYan@lemmy.world
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              2 years ago

              The country that holds the record for number and percentage of people in prison is the US. In the US the percentage of black people in prison was higher than the percentage of black people in prison in South Africa during apartheid.

              No other western/industrialized (at some stage) nation has had so many political exilees and people whose citizenship was revoked based on “anti-american” views than the US. At some point the general secretary of RCP was in exile in France with his citizenship revoked. So, not all states are equal, and their historic development as modern capitalist states should be studied within context.

    • 𝔊𝔦𝔫𝔧𝔲𝔱𝔰𝔲@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Is the USA a “functioning” state with all the oppression, racism, greed, invading other countries out of monetarian interest and environment destruction?

      I hope you realize that this is an incredibly privileged take. The US is rife with issues, but the hardships experienced by the average western citizen doesn’t even compare to the suffering that you would find in, say, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, or (to a less extreme extent) Maduro’s Venezuela. To compare what a US citizen deals with on a daily basis due to capitalism to what a citizen of any of those countries had to go through is very reductive and may be perceived as disrespectful to many who had to live those experiences.

      • proletariatnerd@iusearchlinux.fyi
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        2 years ago

        The US is rife with issues, but the hardships experienced by the average western citizen doesn’t even compare to the suffering that you would find in, say, Pol Pot’s Cambodia

        I have some fellas from Detroit that would disagree.

        • Cowbob45@beehaw.org
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          2 years ago

          My dude you need to stop right now before you end up saying that genocide isn’t that bad. Because that’s what Pol Pot did.

      • Definitely_me@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 years ago

        The United States, for all it’s faults, is the pretty side of capitalism.you don’t even need to look to the most poor countries to see a standard of living that makes even directly post ww2 soviet union look like a great place.

      • Discoslugs@lemmy.worldBanned from community
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        2 years ago

        That’s the unfortunate thing.

        Start criticizing the Soviet union and you’ll end up with a bunch of people left bashing in general.

        • Frod@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          “tankies” criticize the Soviet union, you know? They also criticize the ebil See See Pee but apparently there’s no room for nuance

          • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            What’s your definition of “tankie”? If you’re willing to call out Putin’s homophobic journalist murdering authoritarian bullshit and the Chinese government’s massacring of protesters and genociding of ethnic minorities you’re not a tankie imo, you’re just a communist.

    • GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.ml
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      2 years ago

      Meanwhile anarchist organizing doesn’t have cops, it has Agents of Community Defense who definitely aren’t cops!

      I have nothing against anarchists, but you need to see past slogans to be anything but a useful idiot to neoliberals.

      • Big_Farto@sh.itjust.works
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        2 years ago

        I mean any person or entity that enforces oppressive laws is a bastard. The government of China is far from some sort of benevolent state.

  • animelivesmatter@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 years ago

    finds social media developed by tankies

    looks inside

    finds tankies

    fr I’m down with having a good old purge eventually but noone should be surprised

    • Silverstrings@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      Tankies on their way to explain why teaming up with the Nazis to conquer Poland is actually based and totally in line with Marxist philosophy.

      • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl
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        2 years ago

        Isn’t “authoritarian communist” kind of an oxymoron? 😂 like the whole point of communism is that there isn’t a ruling class. I guess Russia and China were never really communist, just statist authoritarian right? I mean, the Nazis called themselves Socialist. They were nowhere near that

        • argv_minus_one@beehaw.orgBanned
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          2 years ago

          Isn’t “authoritarian communist” kind of an oxymoron?

          Yes. Yes, it is. I sometimes call them “pseudocommunists” for this reason.

        • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
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          2 years ago

          Isn’t “authoritarian communist” kind of an oxymoron?

          Most real life implementations of communism used an authoritarian one party system. You can say these aren’t true examples of communism, but that just ends up sounding like cope unfortunately.

          • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl
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            2 years ago

            Fair point. Though so far, there hasn’t really been any system at all that didn’t lead to genocide and/or class based opression. From monarchs to feudal Lords to capitalist oligarchies and communist dictators, terrible people always rise to the top.

        • Coryneform@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          2 years ago

          well socialism has the proletariat as the ruling class, this is true in Marxism & anarchism even if anarchists word it differently

          • ATGM 🚀@beehaw.org
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            2 years ago

            The party leaders are not proletarian, but rather become part of a class of privileged bureaucrats.

            • Coryneform@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              2 years ago

              there’s a trend towards that, which can be combatted & has been by communist parties. Stalin had a pretty incoherent plan to combat rightist tendencies within the communist party, assuming the problem stemmed from external meddling. Mao actually shared your view in that bureaucracy rots socialism, and that it needs to be decreased as the people are helped towards being self reliant, ready to self manage the economy & have suitable industry to run the country with. that’s why the cultural revolution happened, to fight bureaucracy

              • ATGM 🚀@beehaw.org
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                And yet in spite of the few positive things contributions Mao made, and some of the things he got right, he still positioned himself culturally to take up the position 'benign and distant emperor. Much as the contemporary regime prefers to pin all the horrors of the Cultural Revolution on the Gang of Four, many of Mao’s ideas themselves were harmful (such as wholesale and universal destruction of old culture).

                Marxism-Leninism and its party structure has shown itself, in practice and historically, as being unable to resist this impulse to corruption and autocracy. It was Bolshevik counterrevolution that destroyed the power of the Worker’s and Soldier’s Soviets in Russia, Soviet counterrevolution that invaded Ukraine during its revolution, and then again Leninist party counterrevolution that prevented any of the (few) positive aspects of the cultural revolution from blossoming into anything useful.

                Vanguard parties are counter productive, and counter revolutionary. The French revolution gives us the same lesson, as the Jacobin counter-revolutionary terror (with the oh-so-popular guillotine mostly used on the poor) created the space for reactionary backlash.

                The centralization of power is, therefore, a counter-revolutionary impulse. Humans being are not suited for the rule and management of others. Only a revolution that truly returns power to the people has any chance of lasting. That’s why even the flawed and imperfect Kurdish revolutionaries of Rojava are sustaining the social and cultural infrastructure for revolution, while Marxists, Maoists and other authoritarian communists world-wide consistently either degrade into bandits and terrorists, or form corrupt and reactionary power-structures.

          • argv_minus_one@beehaw.orgBanned
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            2 years ago

            The proletariat are by definition the majority. The Soviet Union was by no means ruled by the majority. Stalin murdered millions to enforce his autocracy—the exact opposite of majority rule.

            • WabiSabiPapi@lemmy.world
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              2 years ago

              just to chime in with an anarchist perspective-- majority rule, as lionized by proponents of liberal democracies, is itself a form of heirarchy in which the will of an ostensible ‘majority’ (though usually that of the capital- owning class actually) is inflicted upon society as a whole, alienating the minority position, enforced by the state apparatus’ monopoly of violence.

              if one values bodily autonomy, reconciled with the needs of the collective, a system of governance like mutual collective determination must be established which guarantees that all voices are heard and acknowledged.

          • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl
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            2 years ago

            The same can be said for capitalism though.

            Capitalism must be enforced somehow, it ends up being an oligarchy or authoritarian because of that.

        • peanuts4life@beehaw.org
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          2 years ago

          Both. Fascist apologist like to cherry pick palatable characteristics of figures like Stalin, or Hitler, or Andrew Jackson in order to destigmatize thier idolatry of these figures. These “certain aspects” are the tip of the wedge they use to destroy rationality and peace.

          A reasonable person who would like to discuss the benefits of communism would point to the value of labor, advantages of unions, and the dignity of the worker, not the evil, paranoid, and violent person of Stalin.

          Always, the stink of fascism follows the idolization of so called “great men.” Excuses after excuses.

            • peanuts4life@beehaw.org
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              2 years ago

              The Holocaust most definitely happened and was perpetuated by the Nazis. Please don’t accuse me of denial.

              Communism, or to be most specific, Marxism, was most definitely aligned against Hitler.

              Stalin, was not. He would have watched Hitler kill all of Europe had the Nazis not attacked Russia. Same as the united states if Japan had not attacked them.

                • SuddenDownpour@lemmy.world
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                  2 years ago

                  Your historical notes are technically correct, and Stalin did even attempt to reach a pact with France to limit the potential expansion of Nazi Germany. However, once those initiatives failed, Stalin had no issue about pacting with Hitler instead to invade third countries together, which highlights how Stalin’s first priority was improving his geopolitical position, rather than an ideological opposition to nazism.

                • peanuts4life@beehaw.org
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                  2 years ago

                  I’m not obsessed with Stalin. I’m also not a Holocaust denier. You really seem keen on saying inflammatory things about me without any preceding context.

                  I will observe that I think Stalin was an awful person who tarnished the reputation of socialism for a century. I don’t have anything against socialist, being one myself.

                  I have a beef with apologist for failed communist states like the soviet onion. I feel they deeply misrepresent socialism.

                • Quereller@lemmy.one
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                  2 years ago

                  Do you deny the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact and the illegal attack on Poland by the Soviet union under its leader Josef Stalin?

            • peanuts4life@beehaw.org
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              I am of the strong opinion that fascism doesn’t care if you call yourself a communist, a capitalist, or a Democrat. If someone promotes a state which strips the power of local and individual labor for it’s own use; cultivates violence as a means of domestic control; supports expansionism; and finally the consolidation of power under a personality; I oppose it, and call it what it is.

    • ProcurementCat@feddit.de
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      2 years ago

      When the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, there were some british leftists who cheered for those tanks driving into Prague. They proved by this that they didn’t care about leftism, socialism, democracy or anti-imperialism at all - they approved the imperialism and militarism of the Soviet regime.

      Their praise for the rolling tanks is what gave them their name: Tankies.

      So, people who love North Korea, or defend russia invading Ukraine, people, who stand by even the most autoritarian, anti-democratic, militaristic, imperialistic regimes - just because they call themselves “socialist” or “communist” - are “Tankies”.

        • ATGM 🚀@beehaw.org
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          And Stalinist, Maoists, and other authoritarian Communists.

          Usually they also “love” countries like North Korea, China, and for whatever reason (aNtI iMpErIaLiSm), Syria, Russia, and so on.

          Red Fascists. They use the same tactics of gas lighting and goal post shifting.

          • Coryneform@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            2 years ago

            maoists??? I think you should read anything by mao. he was anything but “authoritarian”, he spend most of his time after 1949 taking a sledgehammer to bureaucracy & encouraging communities to be self reliant

            • ATGM 🚀@beehaw.org
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              And also going around making lunatic declaration, indifferent to the human suffering he was causing.

    • limbo99@lemmy.ml
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      It’s the prog-lib equivalent of woke. It’s used dismiss leftists with out engaging with our arguments. The term has lite ideological or argumentative use.

  • flashgnash@lemm.ee
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    2 years ago

    Literally just made an account and am just a Reddit pleb. What exactly are tankies and what is 196? Guessing it’s a Lemmy server but otherwise unsure

    • shadowscale@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      196 is a shitpost sub where you must post something when you vist

      a tankie is a authoritarian that believes they’re a communist. they support the imperialist invasion of Ukraine, and they deny the tianaman square massacre, where the CCP ran tanks over college students protesting the authoritarian government. they deny a bunch of other atrocities as well, these are the only two i can think of right now.

      a lot of tankies are going to be posting an essay by Engles that defends authoritarianism, asserting that authoritarianism is compatible with communism. which, while sure, isn’t ideal because one person having power always ends in genocide. well, it doesn’t end in genocide, genocide just… happens under authoritarianism.

    • Rhabuko@feddit.de
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      Tankies are far left Marxists/Communists that are so anti- USA/West that they gladly defend almost anything that opposes the USA. Even authoritarian states like Russia and China. To be clear not every Communist is a Tankie through. And if you critizises on of this countries for horrible stuff, the Tankies will see you automatically as a USA chill. Because, from my online interactions with them, they see the world in black and white.

    • breadsmasher@lemmy.world
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      To quote wikipedia

      Tankie is a pejorative label for communists, particularly Stalinists, who support the authoritarian tendencies of Marxism–Leninism or, more generally, authoritarian states associated with Marxism–Leninism in history. The term was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defense of the Soviet use of tanks to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring uprising, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions.

    • asukii@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      196 is the server you’re in right now, tankies is a slang term for the more authoritarian types of communists (like Stalinists and such)

      • 18650@lemmy.sdf.org
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        2 years ago

        can we please not let the discord brainrot spread here? this is a post on the lemmy.blahaj.zone server, in the 196 community.

    • AtomicAria@beehaw.org
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      2 years ago

      ? The developers of Lemmy are tankies, it’s important to make sure that tankies know they aren’t welcome here.

      • setVeryLoud(true);@lemmy.ca
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        2 years ago

        Gotta ask for both a source and your definition of a “tankie”.

        You keep using that word, I don’t think it means what you think it means.

        • sp6@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          A tankie is someone who supports authoritarian communism (I believe the term originated from using tanks to suppress protests)

          Here’s a post showing that the main instance of Lemmy (hosted by the main 2 Lemmy devs) removes any negative posts about the Chinese or Russian governments for “orientalism”: https://lemmy.pineapplemachine.com/post/5784

          In the comments of that post, you can find one of the devs borderline defending what China is doing to the Uyghurs: https://lemmy.pineapplemachine.com/comment/5950

          That same dev has a github repo called “essays on communism”: https://github.com/dessalines/essays

          I’m pretty sure both of the devs’ profile pictures are Fidel Castro too

          • setVeryLoud(true);@lemmy.ca
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            2 years ago

            Aight fair enough, that’s pretty concerning.

            Nothing wrong per se with communism itself, it just tends to be extremely unstable and quickly turns to authoritarianism, I don’t think it’s ever worked for any nation in history so far.

            The defending of Uyghur genocides, and the defending of the CCP and Russian government is really concerning though. Good thing this platform is federated.

            libretro has a similar problem, it’s developed by a team of transphobic, homophobic, racist Russian apologists who border on Nazism. I don’t know what attracts these people to FOSS development.

  • Kagami@lemmy.world
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    When a leftist, or progressive says “tankie” it is different from what the mainstream media perceives. It (tankie) indicates someone who is overzealously supportive of non-Western imperialist countries such as Russia and China and denies their atrocities.

    Also, the term developed from the tanks deplored by the user to invade Hungary and denote people who supported such action.

    • Silverstrings@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      No one is suggesting that the states the authoritarian communists replaced were good or functional, just that they failed to actually uplift and make people’s lives better. There’s nothing to admire about one oppressive state being replaced by another.

  • BlinkerFluid@lemmy.one
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    Thank fuck. I thought Lemmy was some ultra militant leftist hellhole before the shift.

    I don’t like extreme radical left any more than extreme radical right.

    Fuck Che Guevara. Read a book.