Oh boyyyy can’t wait to hear from the Tankies going NUH UH THOSE ARE FAKE AND/OR RUN BY UKRAINIANS ON RUSSIAN-SPEAKING PEOPLE THIS IS EVIDENCE OF UKRAINIANS COMMITTING GENOCIDE OR ITS THE CIA COMRADE PUTIN WOULD NEVER DO THIS
I’m not a Russia or Putin Stan but this isn’t evidence of anything. A Ukrainian blog stating the Ukrainian police found 80 places the Russians used to allegedly hold and torture civilians? The article offers nothing but a statement as evidence this happened. The only photo in the blog post is a room with what looks like a mattress and clothes.
I’m sure the Russians are doing fucked up shit. I’m pretty tired of the pro-ukraine take.
What’s this lefties nonsense the only people saying this are tankies because communism is good in their mind despite the fact that there’s demonstrably provably wrong.
Conservatives are playing word games to try to confuse non-conservatives. When conservatives cannot defend an absurd postition, they often resort to re-defining words or gaslighting.
As always, every thought uttered by a conservative is either deception or manipulation. Every time. Never, ever trust a conservative. They are not capable of honesty.
Communism in itself is a great ideology, it’s just that applying it correctly requires an unreal amount of effort and cooperation between millions of people.
And since that’s extremely hard, if not impossible, to do in a realistic setting, the only countries that identify as communist are actually fascist ones who try to fool people into believing they aren’t.
It’s not an “ideology” either. It’s a mode of production, which includes feudalism, slave society, and capitalism. The argument has been about how we move from a capitalist society to a class-less/state-less society.
I haven’t seen a single country identify as Communist, not in the past and not in the present. They have identified as socialist, welfare capitalist, building socialism, or state-capitalist.
I agree with that sentiment and consider myself a leftist, also. It certainly applies more to ML/tankie types. I also believe that’s what the poster in the image means too. There’s still broadly some confusion and conflation of terms regarding the exact definition of solicaism/communism/leftism/ML-ism, and I believe the this is an example of that.
I view that as wishful thinking. They’re leftists authoritarians. I know it’s uncomfortable to think we may share a side of the political specrtum with such people, but to deny it is to ignore the problem in the same way right-wingers did with the fascists (right-wing authoritarians) who now dominate their ranks in at least the U.S and Italty. However, unlike the far right, they’re usually socially progressive; at least western leftists are. Perhaps the similarities ML types have with fascists can be best explained by horseshoe theory.
However, I’m open to the idea that our common political parlance is insufficient in this matter. I’d much prefer a political spectrum defined by rationalism/humanism/critical theory vs the alternative embodied by lunatics of every stripe and philosophy, political, religious, or otherwise. Perhaps that’s what you meant by disassociating from them.
Facts, fam. It’s ok to enjoy pipe dreams as long as we’re mindful of the fact that they are pipe dreams. Everybody gets inspiration from unrealistic aspirations. It’s fine. Like, unironically, it’s ok to think “boy, it would be nice if the world were a little more like how I wish it were”, as long as there isn’t an effort made to abuse other people for not always agreeing or having the same dream.
Truth be told, it’d be cool if communism were to actually work, although I for one feel leery of the human error introduced by central planning. Parallel processing is humanity’s greatest strength and leaving things up to a committee is a massive vulnerability. If instead of an insular committee of unilaterally appointed bureaucrats, it were some kind of democratic system where direct referendums could override the representatives whenever people get pissed off enough at their representatives not doing their (FUCKING) jobs, that’d be a damn sight better than any currently operating economic model. Because frankly, right now, capitalism itself also has insular committees of appointees (shareholders in boardrooms) and that sucks too.
I wouldn’t want centrally planned, and I definitely don’t want insular commitees of bureaucrats. Just asking for trouble. But I think what I’m asking for now would be called Market Socialism instead of Communism. If we sieze the means of production, why give up that power to someone who doesn’t make the goods? And central planning sounds like it will always have the Local Knowledge problem, though today we do have tariffs at port authorities which sound to me equally insane.
“boy, it would be nice if the world were a little more like how I wish it were”
Might that be closer to something like syndicalism?
Because, like, the people doing the work all belong to an association that represents their industry and decide collectively among their industry peers what is produced, how it’s produced, and for whom.
Those industrial associations would be worker syndicates.
As far as communicating the wants of the population at large, that’s what currency exists for; it’s a signalling system. That’s the “market” component - if a worker syndicate decides to produce things that they send to markets where nobody wants those things, nobody there buys the things and as a result they get less money for paying their own bills (including wages). Nobody likes not getting paid, after all.
Who is trying to establish communism here? Even socialism as a whole was already abandonded by both Russia and Ukraine in the 1960s, maybe even earlier. If two sides are verifiably fighting for capitalist interests, with a single country caught between choosing to pawn themselves off to one major capitalist power or another, and both sides have been confirmed to commit war crimes far beyond what could be passed off as incidental,
This is a better evidenced and written article. Like I said I’m not a Russia fan and approaching western reporting with skepticism is generally a better approach in my opinion.
I think varying degrees of torture probably occur with all wars, by all sides. War is distasteful and terrible. (International) crimes are surely committed.
I agree that the article in question is weak. I know there’s already evidence that Russia has committed war crimes. Probably Ukraine, too. War sucks.
That’s generally my take, I’m not interested in breathless horse race reporting from CNN. I find it very suspicious that in my googling about torture in Ukraine, I found only one article mentioning atrocities from the Ukrainian side. I probably believe the Russians are being more brutal especially given the limited reporting I’ve seen about penal battalions. But given all the Nazi patches I’ve seen on Ukrainians, I doubt the war has been clean. From my understanding having never lived in a war zone, wars are never clean.
I don’t like this war reporting portraying Russians in a dehumanizing way. I think that’s dangerous narrative building. I don’t trust western reporting to not toe NATO’s line. So when I say I’m skeptical of articles, I try to take what information presented without the narrative attached. In this example I found not much actual information presented but a strong narrative of an invasive oppressive army brutalizing the civilian population showing no empathy and a penchant for war crimes. That might be true but the evidence presented for such a strong narrative is a picture of an ill maintained room and a police report.
We’re caught in the middle of a third world war, with many similarities to the first one: namely, inter-imperialist/inter-capitalist. Saying something bad about “your team” (the one you’re supposed to praise as supreme and glorious with a clear display of patriotism) is seen as traitor behavior worthy of prison. The US and UK would dehumanize Germans back during WWI, and send labor activists to jail over claims of German interference. You’re right to avoid the trap of dehumanizing “the other” for the sake of trying to pick the lesser of two evils. Never pick sides in an inter-imperialist conflict. At best you get an FDR to avert revolution, at worst you get a bunch of Mussolinis walking around.
That’s fair, and Iappreciate your response. However, at this point most reasonable people understand how vicious Russian occupiers are. Most people still making arguments about the veracity of their crimes are not arguing in good faith.
No, the tankies are also most definitely swallowing up the same bullshit because they believe Russia and China to be freer states than the rest of the world.
I mean, there is a long documented list of crimes that make China look like a Muslim paradise compared to anything in Europe or North America, and Ukraine has every problem that Russia does. Again, why are we all trying to compare sides? Of course, with Russian suppression, it will soon be just as repressive as Ukraine, and China has a bunch of “war on terror” laws just like the US, so there’s nothing to be proud of there.
I mean i don’t think they actually believe them to be freer, i think they don’t care about individual freedom. Whether or not Russia is more free or more repressive doesn’t matter to authoritarians. (Or if anything, they prefer the repression.)
You haven’t been paying too much attention then. The tankies are vomiting the same pro-putin propaganda as the right-wing fascists. The right-wing fascists want to suck Putin’s dick because he hates gays and loves economic corruption. The tankies want to suck Putin’s dick because they have some kind of delusion that modern Russia is a communist country and believe west=bad so anything westerners hate must be good.
I actually went and asked on Hexbear their opinions about this and tried to dig a bit to understand the logic. I don’t agree with it and I think their logic is cold, brutal and lacking in empathy, but there is a logic.
Essentially, they support Russia critically. This means they agree with any normal person that Russia is a shithole, but it’s a useful shithole that challenges NATO. They see this as a proxy war between NATO and Russia, and the more they can bleed each other the better, especially if it weakens NATO. The civilians who are caught in the middle are acceptable collateral damage according to them.
I’ve also talked to some of these folks, and my strong sense is that they are teenagers who have never been to any of these places, or really understand much about the complexity of global systems
I also get the strong sense that the vast majority are from North America, which greatly limits their perspectives. It’s very easy to see this in simple calculus terms when the war isn’t going on right over the border and has the potential to destroy a sibling country (Moldova, I’m Romanian).
I honestly don’t think that’s the case. This seems to me to be people who have an ideology (fair enough, we all do) but then see the entire world and everything around them through this black and white filter where everything either supports the cause or doesn’t, and anything and everything is justified in support of that.
Why don’t you think it’s the case? The CCP and Kremlin want to take down the current rules-based international system, and using LLMs on social media is an incredibly cheap way to do it.
A lot of American communists supported Stalin. They refused to believe that the anti-Stalin news was anything but American propaganda. When Khrushchev exposed Stalin for what he did in an attempt to try rebuilding the country, many were disillusioned to the point that they left communism. Some remained pro-Soviet but rejected Stalin, some remained communist but rejected the USSR as state capitalism, and some remained pro-Stalin. I’m just pointing that out to make sure that we all remember that people can be all over the place and still justify their positions to themselves.
To me, supporting Putin because he opposes NATO is like supporting Donald Trump because he opposes Biden. There are some accelerationists who literally do that. I personally think it is idiotic, and anyone who does so is a fascist and not a communist. Putin’s homophobia, xenophobia, right wing religious fascism, and misogyny should be more than enough to dissuade any person with a conscience from supporting him. Honestly, I really think it does. I believe that the majority of the “tankies” supporting Putin are right wing accounts sockpuppeting as leftists. No one who supports LGBT rights could support Putin. I think the tankies are the same type of crowd that populated the_donald - people cosplaying a political position until it becomes internalized.
There is an absolutely massive literature in American and Western communism. Most of it predates Putin - at least, predates Putin bring anything other than a mafioso with a superpower to fund his personal wealth. You can read all about the soul searching about actually existing communism vs ideological communism and the moral dilemma that resulted.
But insofar as it’s about opposition to American imperialism or accelerationism, I think that the Trump years should have shown that to be tragically misguided. Putin’s opposition to NATO isn’t helping anyone in the West except for people like Trump and LePen. It’s not like supporting Ho Chi Minh or Mao, and it’s certainly not like supporting Allende, Castro, or Che. It’s like supporting Hitler on the basis of Hitler being anti-British.
You need to research some info on LaRouche and Dugin. They sound like complete jokes and everyone downplays their influence, but it’s very real. That’s where this comes from.
Also, Stalin was supported at that time in the US because of major wins in labor disputes and the fact that we were allied during WWII. The USSR was defeating Germany under Stalin, and we (the US) decided to finish off the losing team (luckily Germany). He was considered a hero, and a genuine revolutionary Communist for his work, and the fight against Nazism is how he went down in history. Ironically, wrt. your comment, it was the de-Stalinizing USSR under Khrushchev that were the “tankies”, it had nothing to do with Stalin at all.
Like many other impoverished, war-torn, or underdeveloped countries, socialism failed to be fully achieved in the USSR and ended up getting stuck. We could recognize the good and move on to build something better.
Why are you claiming that Putin hates gays like it’s a bad thing, and then making fun of gay people? I don’t suck dick, and I definitely wouldn’t make the offer if I was trying to “own” a homophobe…
How am I making fun of gay people? Anyone with a mouth can suck a cock, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. The problem is sucking Putin’s dick.
Oh ok, it’s only okay to be homophobic if you’re laughing at people who suck the wrong person’s dick.
You mean to tell me that hearing that exact phrase during my entire life in a homophobic context has all of a sudden changed meanings? I don’t buy your bullshit.
Have you been living under a rock? I’ve been hearing it used to mock, demean, or criticize people of any gender for over 10 years. So, congrats! You’ve discovered that the meaning of words and phrases can change. As it turns out, women can suck cock too. So can enbies! Women can have cocks, men can have vaginas, people can identify however they want, it’s 2023, get with fucking times.
Oh, and I wasn’t mocking them. I was using in a degrading manner. Sucking the cock of a lover or friend is one thing (and shouldn’t be mocked), but being so enthusiastic about a genocidal dictator that you’d willingly gobble their cock is entirely different.
There are a lot of pro-putin (and other shitty regime) tankies, that’s really my problem with them. If they were just militant communist types I wouldn’t have too much of an issue with them, I may not agree with them, but I’d at least understand their position, maybe even be somewhat sympathetic in some cases.
When you dig into their reasoning, it’s usually something like they support them because they’re also against the US/NATO/the west, sort of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” kind of deal, but that argument doesn’t really hold water for me, throwing your lot in with someone pulling the kinds of shit Putin does is totally indefensible, even if your plan is to ultimately turn on them after you’ve successfully toppled the west or whatever, you’ve still been supporting or at least turning a blind eye to some pretty horrific shit.
It’s like how the far right tries to gaslight everyone by trying to change the meaning of the word “nazi”. E.g.
“Oh, you call all right wingers nazis!”
“It’s a historical term! Nazis don’t exist anymore!”
etc
Tankies are doing the same with the word “tankie”. Even “militant communists” aren’t tankies – unless they cheer on brutal oppression by authoritarian regimes.
i think it’s relatively clear and obvious that there needs to be a word that describes regimes which systematically inflict violence upon their own civilians via mechanized artillery and the simps who support these regimes,
and that word is ‘tankie’
now, if I had my way, it’d be a different word, which would have served the purpose of freeing up ‘tankie’ for another purpose (a pejorative for people who brainlessly and uncritically gobble up the bullshit of think-tanks) but that’s not the world we live in. In this world, tankie refers to the scenario wherein,
Civilian Population: “We don’t like what’s happening” *peacefully protests and/or elects local leaders The Regime doesn’t like* The Regime: *dispatches tanks and/or shells the Civilian Population with artillery fire to brutalize them into submission or slaughter them if they don’t submit*
Granted, the present usage of “tankie” also carries implications about a given regime’s economic system (which is to imply that the regime’s economic system is Centrally Planned) but frankly that’s a stupid distinction to make when even capitalist regimes will do this to their own civilians too.
Ironically, the “Russian Speaking Civilians” that Russia claimed they were invading to “protect” have suffered greater casualties directly from Russian-fired munitions than they ever had before, so even though they are actually, in fact, UKRAINIAN civilians that they’re murdering, taking them at their word about these victims being Russian civilians would literally make Russia’s actions a tankie move.
By my more utilitarian definition of what constitutes tankie behavior, it also includes the actions of the previous Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, who launched artillery strikes against the very same Ukrainian civilians back in 2014 (and subsequently had his ass kicked electorally by Zelenskyy on the basis that Zelenskyy was NOT going to be attacking civilians) so… it stopped being ukrainian policy by the time russia invaded. Russia stopped nothing, and on the contrary resumed needless civilian slaughter.
And there are some witless shitstains around the lemmy fediverse who unironically defend this abject fuckery.
(AKA Tankies)
TL;DR: Yes I concur my friend. The definition and usage of Tankie is indeed quite well established, ACTUALLY.
There’s no excuse for it, really. They always get involved with anti-(US)imperialism, and end up having high ranking members of their parties shake hands with reactionaries. You can support lifting sanctions on Iran, Syria, etc. without actually supporting Bashar al-Assad or Holocaust-deniers. They went to far in pursuit of geopolitcs rather than recognizing that one’s domestic bourgeosie is the major threat.
Imagine if Trump won 2024 and backed out of NATO. Who cares if Trump (a hardline anti-labor conservative) gets us out of wars if he thinks Joe Biden is a Communist. Of course, anyone to the left of Nick Fuentes would be sent to jail for “anti-patriotic actions” or some shit.
The same excuse of “the enemy of my enemy…” was used when the USSR told the Chinese Communists to just fully join with the Kuomintang after defeating Japan (which were backed by Americans that got rich off the Opium Wars and massacred leftists); or when China under Mao called the USSR social-imperialist and backed the Pol Pot regime.
fascist alignment happens on the left - rarely, but it does. And when it does, they are very LOUD, and they unironically believe that ukraine was genociding russians.
It rarely happens because fascists laugh at them before ordering their execution, and they get purged by any serious Communist party. Loud as they are, we all know what happens to them in the end.
Oh boyyyy can’t wait to hear from the Tankies going NUH UH THOSE ARE FAKE AND/OR RUN BY UKRAINIANS ON RUSSIAN-SPEAKING PEOPLE THIS IS EVIDENCE OF UKRAINIANS COMMITTING GENOCIDE OR ITS THE CIA COMRADE PUTIN WOULD NEVER DO THIS
SOURCE: TRUST ME BRO
e_e
I’m not a Russia or Putin Stan but this isn’t evidence of anything. A Ukrainian blog stating the Ukrainian police found 80 places the Russians used to allegedly hold and torture civilians? The article offers nothing but a statement as evidence this happened. The only photo in the blog post is a room with what looks like a mattress and clothes.
I’m sure the Russians are doing fucked up shit. I’m pretty tired of the pro-ukraine take.
What’s this lefties nonsense the only people saying this are tankies because communism is good in their mind despite the fact that there’s demonstrably provably wrong.
The political left are not saying this.
Conservatives are playing word games to try to confuse non-conservatives. When conservatives cannot defend an absurd postition, they often resort to re-defining words or gaslighting.
As always, every thought uttered by a conservative is either deception or manipulation. Every time. Never, ever trust a conservative. They are not capable of honesty.
The battle of the pot and the kettle
Communism in itself is a great ideology, it’s just that applying it correctly requires an unreal amount of effort and cooperation between millions of people.
And since that’s extremely hard, if not impossible, to do in a realistic setting, the only countries that identify as communist are actually fascist ones who try to fool people into believing they aren’t.
It’s not an “ideology” either. It’s a mode of production, which includes feudalism, slave society, and capitalism. The argument has been about how we move from a capitalist society to a class-less/state-less society.
I haven’t seen a single country identify as Communist, not in the past and not in the present. They have identified as socialist, welfare capitalist, building socialism, or state-capitalist.
Uhh… what about China, ruled for the past 70+ years by the “Communist Party of China”…?
They’re trying to redefine left like some idiotic psyops lol.
I agree with that sentiment and consider myself a leftist, also. It certainly applies more to ML/tankie types. I also believe that’s what the poster in the image means too. There’s still broadly some confusion and conflation of terms regarding the exact definition of solicaism/communism/leftism/ML-ism, and I believe the this is an example of that.
Tankies are not actually on the left, though. That’s part of their gaslighting. Tankies are conservatives.
I view that as wishful thinking. They’re leftists authoritarians. I know it’s uncomfortable to think we may share a side of the political specrtum with such people, but to deny it is to ignore the problem in the same way right-wingers did with the fascists (right-wing authoritarians) who now dominate their ranks in at least the U.S and Italty. However, unlike the far right, they’re usually socially progressive; at least western leftists are. Perhaps the similarities ML types have with fascists can be best explained by horseshoe theory.
However, I’m open to the idea that our common political parlance is insufficient in this matter. I’d much prefer a political spectrum defined by rationalism/humanism/critical theory vs the alternative embodied by lunatics of every stripe and philosophy, political, religious, or otherwise. Perhaps that’s what you meant by disassociating from them.
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Hold on, communism is good in my mind, its just what they call communism fucking sucks and what I call communism is a pipe dream.
Facts, fam. It’s ok to enjoy pipe dreams as long as we’re mindful of the fact that they are pipe dreams. Everybody gets inspiration from unrealistic aspirations. It’s fine. Like, unironically, it’s ok to think “boy, it would be nice if the world were a little more like how I wish it were”, as long as there isn’t an effort made to abuse other people for not always agreeing or having the same dream.
Truth be told, it’d be cool if communism were to actually work, although I for one feel leery of the human error introduced by central planning. Parallel processing is humanity’s greatest strength and leaving things up to a committee is a massive vulnerability. If instead of an insular committee of unilaterally appointed bureaucrats, it were some kind of democratic system where direct referendums could override the representatives whenever people get pissed off enough at their representatives not doing their (FUCKING) jobs, that’d be a damn sight better than any currently operating economic model. Because frankly, right now, capitalism itself also has insular committees of appointees (shareholders in boardrooms) and that sucks too.
I wouldn’t want centrally planned, and I definitely don’t want insular commitees of bureaucrats. Just asking for trouble. But I think what I’m asking for now would be called Market Socialism instead of Communism. If we sieze the means of production, why give up that power to someone who doesn’t make the goods? And central planning sounds like it will always have the Local Knowledge problem, though today we do have tariffs at port authorities which sound to me equally insane.
Gosh yeah :3
Hella fair!
Might that be closer to something like syndicalism?
Because, like, the people doing the work all belong to an association that represents their industry and decide collectively among their industry peers what is produced, how it’s produced, and for whom.
Those industrial associations would be worker syndicates.
As far as communicating the wants of the population at large, that’s what currency exists for; it’s a signalling system. That’s the “market” component - if a worker syndicate decides to produce things that they send to markets where nobody wants those things, nobody there buys the things and as a result they get less money for paying their own bills (including wages). Nobody likes not getting paid, after all.
Thank you. I oughta read some theory, after all :3
That sounds so wonderful
Who is trying to establish communism here? Even socialism as a whole was already abandonded by both Russia and Ukraine in the 1960s, maybe even earlier. If two sides are verifiably fighting for capitalist interests, with a single country caught between choosing to pawn themselves off to one major capitalist power or another, and both sides have been confirmed to commit war crimes far beyond what could be passed off as incidental,
why do we have to support a side?
I didn’t say any of that. I pointed out that this particular blog source isn’t providing any tangible evidence and should be treated with skepticism.
I deliberately don’t follow much Ukrainian war news, I find the coverage from a western perspective distasteful so I went and googled around a bit.
https://apnews.com/article/un-human-rights-torture-civilians-russia-ukraine-29e238cf0ec6a2e6a25bfd260bf5e93b
This is a better evidenced and written article. Like I said I’m not a Russia fan and approaching western reporting with skepticism is generally a better approach in my opinion.
I think varying degrees of torture probably occur with all wars, by all sides. War is distasteful and terrible. (International) crimes are surely committed.
I agree that the article in question is weak. I know there’s already evidence that Russia has committed war crimes. Probably Ukraine, too. War sucks.
That’s generally my take, I’m not interested in breathless horse race reporting from CNN. I find it very suspicious that in my googling about torture in Ukraine, I found only one article mentioning atrocities from the Ukrainian side. I probably believe the Russians are being more brutal especially given the limited reporting I’ve seen about penal battalions. But given all the Nazi patches I’ve seen on Ukrainians, I doubt the war has been clean. From my understanding having never lived in a war zone, wars are never clean.
I don’t like this war reporting portraying Russians in a dehumanizing way. I think that’s dangerous narrative building. I don’t trust western reporting to not toe NATO’s line. So when I say I’m skeptical of articles, I try to take what information presented without the narrative attached. In this example I found not much actual information presented but a strong narrative of an invasive oppressive army brutalizing the civilian population showing no empathy and a penchant for war crimes. That might be true but the evidence presented for such a strong narrative is a picture of an ill maintained room and a police report.
We’re caught in the middle of a third world war, with many similarities to the first one: namely, inter-imperialist/inter-capitalist. Saying something bad about “your team” (the one you’re supposed to praise as supreme and glorious with a clear display of patriotism) is seen as traitor behavior worthy of prison. The US and UK would dehumanize Germans back during WWI, and send labor activists to jail over claims of German interference. You’re right to avoid the trap of dehumanizing “the other” for the sake of trying to pick the lesser of two evils. Never pick sides in an inter-imperialist conflict. At best you get an FDR to avert revolution, at worst you get a bunch of Mussolinis walking around.
That’s fair, and Iappreciate your response. However, at this point most reasonable people understand how vicious Russian occupiers are. Most people still making arguments about the veracity of their crimes are not arguing in good faith.
To be completely fair, the meme applies to me completely lol. I have to examine and reflect on my bias as well.
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No, the tankies are also most definitely swallowing up the same bullshit because they believe Russia and China to be freer states than the rest of the world.
I mean, there is a long documented list of crimes that make China look like a Muslim paradise compared to anything in Europe or North America, and Ukraine has every problem that Russia does. Again, why are we all trying to compare sides? Of course, with Russian suppression, it will soon be just as repressive as Ukraine, and China has a bunch of “war on terror” laws just like the US, so there’s nothing to be proud of there.
I mean i don’t think they actually believe them to be freer, i think they don’t care about individual freedom. Whether or not Russia is more free or more repressive doesn’t matter to authoritarians. (Or if anything, they prefer the repression.)
You haven’t been paying too much attention then. The tankies are vomiting the same pro-putin propaganda as the right-wing fascists. The right-wing fascists want to suck Putin’s dick because he hates gays and loves economic corruption. The tankies want to suck Putin’s dick because they have some kind of delusion that modern Russia is a communist country and believe west=bad so anything westerners hate must be good.
I actually went and asked on Hexbear their opinions about this and tried to dig a bit to understand the logic. I don’t agree with it and I think their logic is cold, brutal and lacking in empathy, but there is a logic.
Essentially, they support Russia critically. This means they agree with any normal person that Russia is a shithole, but it’s a useful shithole that challenges NATO. They see this as a proxy war between NATO and Russia, and the more they can bleed each other the better, especially if it weakens NATO. The civilians who are caught in the middle are acceptable collateral damage according to them.
I’ve also talked to some of these folks, and my strong sense is that they are teenagers who have never been to any of these places, or really understand much about the complexity of global systems
I also get the strong sense that the vast majority are from North America, which greatly limits their perspectives. It’s very easy to see this in simple calculus terms when the war isn’t going on right over the border and has the potential to destroy a sibling country (Moldova, I’m Romanian).
I have a strong sense that a lot of them aren’t people, they’re CCP LLMs.
I honestly don’t think that’s the case. This seems to me to be people who have an ideology (fair enough, we all do) but then see the entire world and everything around them through this black and white filter where everything either supports the cause or doesn’t, and anything and everything is justified in support of that.
Why don’t you think it’s the case? The CCP and Kremlin want to take down the current rules-based international system, and using LLMs on social media is an incredibly cheap way to do it.
There’s definitely a lot of teens and young adults in those spaces, on both sides.
A lot of American communists supported Stalin. They refused to believe that the anti-Stalin news was anything but American propaganda. When Khrushchev exposed Stalin for what he did in an attempt to try rebuilding the country, many were disillusioned to the point that they left communism. Some remained pro-Soviet but rejected Stalin, some remained communist but rejected the USSR as state capitalism, and some remained pro-Stalin. I’m just pointing that out to make sure that we all remember that people can be all over the place and still justify their positions to themselves.
To me, supporting Putin because he opposes NATO is like supporting Donald Trump because he opposes Biden. There are some accelerationists who literally do that. I personally think it is idiotic, and anyone who does so is a fascist and not a communist. Putin’s homophobia, xenophobia, right wing religious fascism, and misogyny should be more than enough to dissuade any person with a conscience from supporting him. Honestly, I really think it does. I believe that the majority of the “tankies” supporting Putin are right wing accounts sockpuppeting as leftists. No one who supports LGBT rights could support Putin. I think the tankies are the same type of crowd that populated the_donald - people cosplaying a political position until it becomes internalized.
There is an absolutely massive literature in American and Western communism. Most of it predates Putin - at least, predates Putin bring anything other than a mafioso with a superpower to fund his personal wealth. You can read all about the soul searching about actually existing communism vs ideological communism and the moral dilemma that resulted.
But insofar as it’s about opposition to American imperialism or accelerationism, I think that the Trump years should have shown that to be tragically misguided. Putin’s opposition to NATO isn’t helping anyone in the West except for people like Trump and LePen. It’s not like supporting Ho Chi Minh or Mao, and it’s certainly not like supporting Allende, Castro, or Che. It’s like supporting Hitler on the basis of Hitler being anti-British.
You need to research some info on LaRouche and Dugin. They sound like complete jokes and everyone downplays their influence, but it’s very real. That’s where this comes from.
Also, Stalin was supported at that time in the US because of major wins in labor disputes and the fact that we were allied during WWII. The USSR was defeating Germany under Stalin, and we (the US) decided to finish off the losing team (luckily Germany). He was considered a hero, and a genuine revolutionary Communist for his work, and the fight against Nazism is how he went down in history. Ironically, wrt. your comment, it was the de-Stalinizing USSR under Khrushchev that were the “tankies”, it had nothing to do with Stalin at all.
Like many other impoverished, war-torn, or underdeveloped countries, socialism failed to be fully achieved in the USSR and ended up getting stuck. We could recognize the good and move on to build something better.
Cutting the nose, those fine fellows…
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Why are you claiming that Putin hates gays like it’s a bad thing, and then making fun of gay people? I don’t suck dick, and I definitely wouldn’t make the offer if I was trying to “own” a homophobe…
How am I making fun of gay people? Anyone with a mouth can suck a cock, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. The problem is sucking Putin’s dick.
Why do you think only gay men can suck cock?
Oh ok, it’s only okay to be homophobic if you’re laughing at people who suck the wrong person’s dick.
You mean to tell me that hearing that exact phrase during my entire life in a homophobic context has all of a sudden changed meanings? I don’t buy your bullshit.
Have you been living under a rock? I’ve been hearing it used to mock, demean, or criticize people of any gender for over 10 years. So, congrats! You’ve discovered that the meaning of words and phrases can change. As it turns out, women can suck cock too. So can enbies! Women can have cocks, men can have vaginas, people can identify however they want, it’s 2023, get with fucking times.
Oh, and I wasn’t mocking them. I was using in a degrading manner. Sucking the cock of a lover or friend is one thing (and shouldn’t be mocked), but being so enthusiastic about a genocidal dictator that you’d willingly gobble their cock is entirely different.
There are a lot of pro-putin (and other shitty regime) tankies, that’s really my problem with them. If they were just militant communist types I wouldn’t have too much of an issue with them, I may not agree with them, but I’d at least understand their position, maybe even be somewhat sympathetic in some cases.
When you dig into their reasoning, it’s usually something like they support them because they’re also against the US/NATO/the west, sort of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” kind of deal, but that argument doesn’t really hold water for me, throwing your lot in with someone pulling the kinds of shit Putin does is totally indefensible, even if your plan is to ultimately turn on them after you’ve successfully toppled the west or whatever, you’ve still been supporting or at least turning a blind eye to some pretty horrific shit.
Exactly. I’m cool with communists, but fuck Hexbear and also kind of Lemmygrad for spreading authoritarian propaganda.
It’s like how the far right tries to gaslight everyone by trying to change the meaning of the word “nazi”. E.g.
Tankies are doing the same with the word “tankie”. Even “militant communists” aren’t tankies – unless they cheer on brutal oppression by authoritarian regimes.
i think it’s relatively clear and obvious that there needs to be a word that describes regimes which systematically inflict violence upon their own civilians via mechanized artillery and the simps who support these regimes,
and that word is ‘tankie’
now, if I had my way, it’d be a different word, which would have served the purpose of freeing up ‘tankie’ for another purpose (a pejorative for people who brainlessly and uncritically gobble up the bullshit of think-tanks) but that’s not the world we live in. In this world, tankie refers to the scenario wherein,
Granted, the present usage of “tankie” also carries implications about a given regime’s economic system (which is to imply that the regime’s economic system is Centrally Planned) but frankly that’s a stupid distinction to make when even capitalist regimes will do this to their own civilians too.
Ironically, the “Russian Speaking Civilians” that Russia claimed they were invading to “protect” have suffered greater casualties directly from Russian-fired munitions than they ever had before, so even though they are actually, in fact, UKRAINIAN civilians that they’re murdering, taking them at their word about these victims being Russian civilians would literally make Russia’s actions a tankie move.
By my more utilitarian definition of what constitutes tankie behavior, it also includes the actions of the previous Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, who launched artillery strikes against the very same Ukrainian civilians back in 2014 (and subsequently had his ass kicked electorally by Zelenskyy on the basis that Zelenskyy was NOT going to be attacking civilians) so… it stopped being ukrainian policy by the time russia invaded. Russia stopped nothing, and on the contrary resumed needless civilian slaughter.
And there are some witless shitstains around the lemmy fediverse who unironically defend this abject fuckery.
(AKA Tankies)
TL;DR: Yes I concur my friend. The definition and usage of Tankie is indeed quite well established, ACTUALLY.
There’s no excuse for it, really. They always get involved with anti-(US)imperialism, and end up having high ranking members of their parties shake hands with reactionaries. You can support lifting sanctions on Iran, Syria, etc. without actually supporting Bashar al-Assad or Holocaust-deniers. They went to far in pursuit of geopolitcs rather than recognizing that one’s domestic bourgeosie is the major threat.
Imagine if Trump won 2024 and backed out of NATO. Who cares if Trump (a hardline anti-labor conservative) gets us out of wars if he thinks Joe Biden is a Communist. Of course, anyone to the left of Nick Fuentes would be sent to jail for “anti-patriotic actions” or some shit.
The same excuse of “the enemy of my enemy…” was used when the USSR told the Chinese Communists to just fully join with the Kuomintang after defeating Japan (which were backed by Americans that got rich off the Opium Wars and massacred leftists); or when China under Mao called the USSR social-imperialist and backed the Pol Pot regime.
tankies and extreme conservatives are the same kind of stupid and both deserve mockery
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fascist alignment happens on the left - rarely, but it does. And when it does, they are very LOUD, and they unironically believe that ukraine was genociding russians.
It rarely happens because fascists laugh at them before ordering their execution, and they get purged by any serious Communist party. Loud as they are, we all know what happens to them in the end.
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I doubt there are stupid enough people who would deny Putin’s crimes.
I’m not surprised given that even drafted are tortured in army, or sledgehammer thing when Ukraine exchanged POWs.
If militant gang pensioner did it Russia with chemical weapon or in Britan, he sure will do it again.