Political discourse
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I'm too uneducated on politics (read: stupid) to even know what left and right means. Where do I land
Most people have confused politics. If you want to land somewhere you need to educate yourself and develop principles so that instead of not knowing where you'll land, you'll know exactly where you stand
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tankie is, as i understand it, a combination of authoritarianism, leftism, and some weird nostalgia for the soviet union i'm not entirely sure i've just been casually trying to pick stuff up.
That's more likely to be Nationalist Bolshevism. The correct term is should be 'NazBol' and they're nationalistic right wingers.
Keep in mind some users on Lemmy use the term 'tankie' to include anyone with opposition to capitalism and will argue to include anyone who is pro-palestinian or even anti-war ironically.
But those users just so happen to be critics of the Nuremburg Trial verdicts, so their opinions matter less than the NazBols to begin with.
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The ACP is the only american so-called communist org that supports Trump, and virtually every other segment of the serious organized left considers them a fascist org. Don't buy into fascist framing of issues or you are working for the fascists when you spread them
And Chinese state run TikTok promoted him and Hexbear was singing his praises. Bottom line is anybody who opposes "us imperialism, capitalism" is happy to see Trump make cruelty the point, happy to see Americans suffer in decline.
Tankies aren't far left, they're just the CCP's tools of war.
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They both support Donald Trump, for example.
lmao what?
They both enable ethnostates to send minorities to camps.
lmao what?
They believe in a nation ruled by one supreme absolute leader.
Dictatorship of the proletariat doesn't mean total rule by one dude named proletariat, it means total rule by the people.
Tankies support China and the USSR, neither of which have ever practiced rule by the proletariat, and of which the remainder is committing their own little genocide at home.
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And Chinese state run TikTok promoted him and Hexbear was singing his praises. Bottom line is anybody who opposes "us imperialism, capitalism" is happy to see Trump make cruelty the point, happy to see Americans suffer in decline.
Tankies aren't far left, they're just the CCP's tools of war.
wrote last edited by [email protected]That is a total and complete lie. DSA, the largest socialist org in the USA in 100 years is unwaveringly against us imperialism and capitalism, and Trump. There are virtually no tankies in DSA, even the most ml aligned factions in DSA are not "tankies" as you try to slander.
Democratic socialism is opposed to imperialism and capitalism, none too fond of China or Russia (though I'm sure if you bad faith make certain generalizations you could make illogical connections to suit your purpose), virulently anti Trump and "tankies" when they pop up in our org usually become disengaged ineffective sectarian hyper minorities, though they rarely pop up at all.
In fact if you aren't opposed to US imperialism, you are on the right wing, and have no right to speak on it. Do you think the genocide in Palestine is a left wing position? Be serious
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That's more likely to be Nationalist Bolshevism. The correct term is should be 'NazBol' and they're nationalistic right wingers.
Keep in mind some users on Lemmy use the term 'tankie' to include anyone with opposition to capitalism and will argue to include anyone who is pro-palestinian or even anti-war ironically.
But those users just so happen to be critics of the Nuremburg Trial verdicts, so their opinions matter less than the NazBols to begin with.
i remember talking about the nuremburg trials with some... now that i think about of it most of them were lawyer friends, and i only have basic education about the nuremburg trials. a few of them have studied them in depth, and now that i think about it the only criticism i ever heard about the verdict was, if you'll allow me to paraphrase, "you're going to spend your whole life disappointed if you keep expecting everything to be perfect".
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That is a total and complete lie. DSA, the largest socialist org in the USA in 100 years is unwaveringly against us imperialism and capitalism, and Trump. There are virtually no tankies in DSA, even the most ml aligned factions in DSA are not "tankies" as you try to slander.
Democratic socialism is opposed to imperialism and capitalism, none too fond of China or Russia (though I'm sure if you bad faith make certain generalizations you could make illogical connections to suit your purpose), virulently anti Trump and "tankies" when they pop up in our org usually become disengaged ineffective sectarian hyper minorities, though they rarely pop up at all.
In fact if you aren't opposed to US imperialism, you are on the right wing, and have no right to speak on it. Do you think the genocide in Palestine is a left wing position? Be serious
If you're not talking about Tankies then what are you even arguing against? I think you've just been fighting a strawman in your head rather than against anything I've written.
Heres a tip, if you don't want to be treated like a pro-authoritarian bot then stop defending them and stop throwing your hat in with their lot.
Bernie Sanders early in his career rejected the label of socialist because he didn't want to be associated with the USSR, China, and concentration camps, you can find countless quotes on that. He also doesn't even oppose capitalism, in his book "It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism" he outlines that the problem is late stage, undemocratic, uber-capitalism and his ideal system is adding the social safety nets they use in scandinavia while taxing the rich.
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Tankies support China and the USSR, neither of which have ever practiced rule by the proletariat, and of which the remainder is committing their own little genocide at home.
Weird how they brought a billion farmers out of poverty. I wonder why they would do that if those farmers didn't have any influence.
We certainly don't see that happening in capitalist countries right nextdoor, such as India.
the remainder is committing their own little genocide at home
lol you still believe that? Anybody can literally just go to Xinjiang, there's no travel restrictions. Don't you think they would try to keep foreigners from going there and talking to people if they were committing a genocide?
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Weird how they brought a billion farmers out of poverty. I wonder why they would do that if those farmers didn't have any influence.
We certainly don't see that happening in capitalist countries right nextdoor, such as India.
the remainder is committing their own little genocide at home
lol you still believe that? Anybody can literally just go to Xinjiang, there's no travel restrictions. Don't you think they would try to keep foreigners from going there and talking to people if they were committing a genocide?
Thank you for being a perfect example of the point I was making, enjoy your dead minorities and your roads paved in the blood of the innocent.
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i remember talking about the nuremburg trials with some... now that i think about of it most of them were lawyer friends, and i only have basic education about the nuremburg trials. a few of them have studied them in depth, and now that i think about it the only criticism i ever heard about the verdict was, if you'll allow me to paraphrase, "you're going to spend your whole life disappointed if you keep expecting everything to be perfect".
Here I distinctly recall a user calling the execution of Julius Streicher an inhumane act and that we lost our humanity executing unrepentant Nazis.
So that's fun.
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tankies are such a small niche group, i dont think theres enough of them to have a significant on policy, unlike right wingers have real numbers on thier hands.
They run TikTok among many other CCP funded operations, I wouldn't disregard them personally.
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Isn't there a difference between the right and the far right though
I wouldn't say so, I'm a consequentialist so when I see a billionaire pedophile felon in the white house removing the 14th amendment while not a single GOP congressman opposes him, I feel like the entirety of the US right is effectively gone and only the far right remains.
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Anyone who stands against genocide and opposes war has been lumped in with “tankie” for a long while now. That centrist is empowering the Nazis.
Thank you.
Because being a passive centrist while the world slides towards authoritarianism, global conflict, and environmental holocaust is not morally acceptable.
You don't have to be a Tankie to want to fight these fascist fucks and their suicidal agenda.
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Thank you.
Because being a passive centrist while the world slides towards authoritarianism, global conflict, and environmental holocaust is not morally acceptable.
You don't have to be a Tankie to want to fight these fascist fucks and their suicidal agenda.
Well if you say anything like ‘we shouldn’t give weapons to Nazis,’ you’re going to be labeled a tankie, too.
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Anyone who stands against genocide and opposes war has been lumped in with “tankie” for a long while now. That centrist is empowering the Nazis.
Someone misinterpreted the post.
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Here I distinctly recall a user calling the execution of Julius Streicher an inhumane act and that we lost our humanity executing unrepentant Nazis.
So that's fun.
so i'm very much not a fan of the death penalty as i've seen the criminal punishment system fuck up. a lot. they've gotta be above reproach if we can trust them with literal power over life and death.
at the same time, unrepentant Nazi. if it had been up to me, I'd've wanted to give him the ol' Robert-François Damiens. first: people are allowed contradictions. second: sometimes the brutality is part of the point. hold the unrepentant nazis up for generations as villains. don't allow them to be buried in normal cemeteries. Take their ashes and spread them around the country to be on permanent display in each and every post office as an example of why you don't fuck with the postmaster. teach your kids "you end up being one of those damn nazis i'll put you in the community ash jar myself". we really could have done better.
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If you're not talking about Tankies then what are you even arguing against? I think you've just been fighting a strawman in your head rather than against anything I've written.
Heres a tip, if you don't want to be treated like a pro-authoritarian bot then stop defending them and stop throwing your hat in with their lot.
Bernie Sanders early in his career rejected the label of socialist because he didn't want to be associated with the USSR, China, and concentration camps, you can find countless quotes on that. He also doesn't even oppose capitalism, in his book "It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism" he outlines that the problem is late stage, undemocratic, uber-capitalism and his ideal system is adding the social safety nets they use in scandinavia while taxing the rich.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I'm not defending tankies, I'm disagreeing with your extremely narrow categories, that would define 90% of non tankie leftists as tankies.
I'm not making a strawman when I say that support for us imperialism is support for the Palestinian genocide. That's just like common knowledge at this point.
Flattening Sanders entire political career, which started out with him organizing as a socialist, into a narrow category is as dishonest as doing the same with the history of the USSR. There is not much worth defending about the Stalinist bureaucracy that the USSR became. Even throwing the USSR and China in the same bucket when referring to Sanders is a historical revision, since Sanders entire political life began after the Sino/Soviet split. However information about the atrocities of Stalin came from Kruschev. Trotskyists and anti-authoritarian communists, like CLR James, could see that much was wrong with the USSR, but the truth wasn't revealed until the 60s. Other great american communist organizers like James Cannon mistakenly cooperated with the Comintern, who systematically destroyed the movements in the USA that got us our new deal. Cannon and many others were eventually purged from the american socialist movement, turning it into yet another husk of the workers movement under the auspices of the "communist international."
After the Vietnam war, the USA and China both supported the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese communists, who were supported by the USSR. Are you a supporter of the USA's war in Viet Nam? Or the Khmer Rouge? I certainly hope not!
Dealing with reality isn't a strawman, unless you're an idealist. I hope you aren't waiting for the good capitalists to save us from our current situation, because our version of capitalism is irredeemable. We are in the late stage, which only means that we are part of the global financialized economy. An economy that enslaves the third world, and huge swaths of the first world, in order to keep its ruling classes.
If you are in favor of having a ruling class, which would still exist under social democracy, then IMO your position is closer to trumps than any leftist. And I work with thousands of leftists all over the world. Look at how European social democracies are also being taken over by fascist parties. It is not a realistic defense against fascism.
Trumps whole strategy, which is actually the strategy of the global tech elite, is to crash the US economy to force an asset bubble (recession) onto the EU. At which point, anti-immigrant fascistic parties will mobilize their message to overturn the "good capitalist" social democratic reforms and allow capitalist destruction of the welfare state.
Social democracy is falling apart in real time, and I think you can't see it because you have no theory of change. You see things categorically rather than dynamically, which removes you from actual conditions. As much as I'd like to disabuse you of those notions, you seem pretty committed to your narrow idealist views, which is a shame as we could use more spicy fighters on our side against Trump, and less performative resistance that only contributes to mass confusion.
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Thank you.
Because being a passive centrist while the world slides towards authoritarianism, global conflict, and environmental holocaust is not morally acceptable.
You don't have to be a Tankie to want to fight these fascist fucks and their suicidal agenda.
I mean a lot of people don't want to have their way of life userped by these radical idiots. One side is calling for a civil war and the other side is effectively campaigning for concentration camps. Normal people don't want to engage with either brand of insanity. They just want to go to work and go home, spend time with their family.
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I'm not defending tankies, I'm disagreeing with your extremely narrow categories, that would define 90% of non tankie leftists as tankies.
I'm not making a strawman when I say that support for us imperialism is support for the Palestinian genocide. That's just like common knowledge at this point.
Flattening Sanders entire political career, which started out with him organizing as a socialist, into a narrow category is as dishonest as doing the same with the history of the USSR. There is not much worth defending about the Stalinist bureaucracy that the USSR became. Even throwing the USSR and China in the same bucket when referring to Sanders is a historical revision, since Sanders entire political life began after the Sino/Soviet split. However information about the atrocities of Stalin came from Kruschev. Trotskyists and anti-authoritarian communists, like CLR James, could see that much was wrong with the USSR, but the truth wasn't revealed until the 60s. Other great american communist organizers like James Cannon mistakenly cooperated with the Comintern, who systematically destroyed the movements in the USA that got us our new deal. Cannon and many others were eventually purged from the american socialist movement, turning it into yet another husk of the workers movement under the auspices of the "communist international."
After the Vietnam war, the USA and China both supported the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese communists, who were supported by the USSR. Are you a supporter of the USA's war in Viet Nam? Or the Khmer Rouge? I certainly hope not!
Dealing with reality isn't a strawman, unless you're an idealist. I hope you aren't waiting for the good capitalists to save us from our current situation, because our version of capitalism is irredeemable. We are in the late stage, which only means that we are part of the global financialized economy. An economy that enslaves the third world, and huge swaths of the first world, in order to keep its ruling classes.
If you are in favor of having a ruling class, which would still exist under social democracy, then IMO your position is closer to trumps than any leftist. And I work with thousands of leftists all over the world. Look at how European social democracies are also being taken over by fascist parties. It is not a realistic defense against fascism.
Trumps whole strategy, which is actually the strategy of the global tech elite, is to crash the US economy to force an asset bubble (recession) onto the EU. At which point, anti-immigrant fascistic parties will mobilize their message to overturn the "good capitalist" social democratic reforms and allow capitalist destruction of the welfare state.
Social democracy is falling apart in real time, and I think you can't see it because you have no theory of change. You see things categorically rather than dynamically, which removes you from actual conditions. As much as I'd like to disabuse you of those notions, you seem pretty committed to your narrow idealist views, which is a shame as we could use more spicy fighters on our side against Trump, and less performative resistance that only contributes to mass confusion.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I think the thing you’re asserting isn’t what the person you’re responding to is saying.
Tankies bad, we’re talking about tankies not leftists.
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Someone misinterpreted the post.
Another centrist who thinks the left just doesn’t get it.
