Tankies aren’t leftists.
Tankiesb are authoritarians with anti-USA/anti-west coating.
I think the problem with tankies is that they let their perception of what is “pragmatic” and “realistic” poison and overpower their true ideals, which tends to steer them towards authoritarianism. So scared of losing, that they lose themselves in pursuit of victory.
Tankies have less hesitancy calling more libertarian leftists and liberals “fascists” than the various flavors of the modern far-right, because “Stalin’s definition of fascism”.
I’m not familiar with this one.
I’m moving around online leftist circles for more than a decade. First I wanted to have some unity with tankies, but I had to slowly learn that it’s a futile attempt, with the main issue being their idea of unity being total assimilation.
First of all, just like their authoritarian-right counterparts, don’t play by the rules, but expect other to do so, except it’s only for the libertarian-left (or anyone who’s not as authoritarian as Stalin). This leads to them forming online (and from what I’ve heard, real life) spaces to their liking, usually with the intent to turn what they call “moderates” into “full-fledged Marxist-Leninists”. If you don’t they will bait others to harass you, usually by finding something in your past. Often they also work in tandem with far-right groups by providing anonymous information to them, and register accounts to their forums (kiwifarms etc) to get help from them. They often managed to even manipulate the discourse around social causes, they singlehandedly managed to remind people that “spook” also used to be an anti-black slur (they got really angry at egoist leftist memes), and part of the reason why some online leftists are sometimes terminally online about loli/shota (around that time, they really wanted to cancel sex-positive leftists en masse, consensual-noncon also got a hit but that wasn’t really part of a fandom that needed a “safe space” for right wingers, hence the frequent cooperation with the right).
One of their greatest display of “manipulating the rules” is their constant redefinition of authoritarianism into “the will of the people” rather than “a hierarchial system of power formed around a select number of people, whom must be submitted to by the rest of the people”. On some level, authoritarianism is “will of the people”, but tankies (likely intentionally) forget that dictators having pet projects and banning things they don’t like isn’t the same as liberation of the people who often want to free themselves from those strongmen, and not replace them with someone who promises to be kind. This is not their only use of the “redefinition game”: they often like to redefine porn as something inherently exploitative, while promising general sexuality will be fine, then they proceed to act in ways people who define porn as “an ungodly act of perversion”, but pretend they’re doing it in favor of “progress” rather than saving the masses from the eternal burning fire. On paper, “authoritarian social justice” sounds good, but in practice it can be only be done with things that are “concrete”. You can stop people from denying the holocaust, you probably could also stop social media accounts calling all LGBTQ+ people pedophiles, but then there’s the issue of sexual objectification in media, which will be on very shaky grounds, and should not be put into law. China put a lot of effort into trying to regulate it, but other than tankie puriteens on Twitter, no one likes it, and often gets workarounds.
Sorry for my personal ramble here, even forgot why I was answering your comment, but the TLDR is that the auth-left and auth-right have way more in common than the auth-left and lib-left, which is especially sad since capitalism itself is a form of authority around wealth.
Hey I’m a terminally online leftist.
Fuck Russia, fuck China, fuck the US too. I’m not going to gaslight myself in to thinking someone else is doing it right just because the West is also fucked.
Working class people all over the planet are getting fucked by billionaires who’ve purchased their governments, few places are exempt from that problem.
You are just a libtard with brainrot and not a proper tankie leftist!
Where is my main man Youghurt and OmegaHaxor at?! Gish galop that western ass.
Aneurism posting in real time!
few places are exempt from that problem.
Please provide examples
No
Fuck all countries and their imaginary lines.
And double fuck Russia for starting a war.
Ukraine started the war, and the Donbas had been fighting it alone for eight years before Russia joined it.
Lol
Ukraine started the war by defending itself. Classic warmongering tactic.
This is seeing the wood for the trees.
Nation states largely exist to protect the power of their respective elites. No country is immune, but there are shining examples in the world, like the nordic model, that other nations choose to ignore because, unlike those nations, most nation’s decision maker’s goal isn’t to maximize the well being of their people, but to maximize their own individual power, which capital is a form of.
The problem with your analysis is that it views each country as an island and imagines that they have no effect on the world around them. The Nordic countries are indeed very good places to live for the people who live there, but they are also participants in the international system of unequal exchange that sees trillions of dollars in wealth siphoned away from the global south every year, contributing massively to unhappiness in those countries which are victims to it.
Is it worth keeping ten Africans in perpetual poverty for each European who gets to live a comfy life? I would say “no”, but…
What’s your opinion of the West lending aid to Ukraine to help it defend itself?
I think the military industrial complex will be the end of us all. Generally, I think military spending is fucking atrocious and is a huge contributor to the myriad problems we as people face on a daily basis.
While I agree, Russia has no right to annex territory in Ukraine or Georgia or anywhere else, and I agree, like any rational person will, that Ukraine has every right to defend itself to the fullest extent, including matching on Moscow and fucking up the place, that’s decidedly not our problem.
Ukraine found a fucking massive oil ans natural gas deposit, large enough it threatens Russia’s market dominance. Ukraine kicked out it’s Russian puppet. Russia wants control back and will bleed itself dry to obtain it. In so doing, they’re bleeding us too.
I wish Ukraine the best, I really do. But at the top, this isn’t about defending the freedom of a downtrodden underdog. That’s a convenient story to sell to the American public. It’s about resources, and resource wars will only become more common.
How is this bleeding the US? I thought we were giving them cast-offs the military had no interest in using anyway.
It’s whatever rhetoric needs to be used in order to discourage US support for Ukraine. But they’re definitely not pro-genocide, honest.
What’s funny is how frequently I get downvoted to oblivion for daring to suggest that genocide isn’t acceptable in any circumstances, including when voting for US presidents.
It’s you guys that seem to be ok with it when your guy is the one supporting it.
Genocide is always evil.
When confronted with two evils, one must choose the lesser evil if there is no realistic alternative; as letting the greater evil in helps literally no one.
Is that too complex? Do I need to simplify it further?
“Genocide is good if ‘the lesser evil’ is doing it!”
You claim genocide is always evil yet you make excuses for it. What’s the difference between an authoritarian dictatorship carrying out genocide and a plutocracy giving you a Fisher-Price voting ballot that will result in genocide no matter which option you pick?
If we had STAR voting I could give these two guys a 1 and a 2 while progressives all get 8 to 10. Unfortunately, that isn’t a reality we exist in. In reality only one of these two guys will win.
There is no realistic scenario this year where a third party candidate receives enough EC votes to become president. Like both guys would have to die before the election and the third party would have to be a popular household name.
Given that these two are the only realistic candidates, my only option on this issue is throwing my vote in the trash (expressing that one doesn’t give a fuck how many Palestinians die, no preference either way) or voting for the person I think will kill fewer Palestinians.
Military industrial complex is relatively tiny.
If you want to see who will be the end of us, follow the bigger fish.
Oil companies will destroy the environment.
Agrochemical companies will destroy biodiversity.
Food companies will make us obese.
Social media companies will misinform and divide us.
that’s decidedly not our problem.
Disagree. The putin propaganda parties are fucking up every democracy possible - most importantly, or perhaps most relevantly to this topic, the US. And the invasion and destruction of Ukraine is the proof that it’s working. We’ve got to help Ukraine win, rebuild, and be a peaceful and prosperous democracy because russia will stop at nothing to bend everything to them.
trump and the Qult will stop at nothing to help putin destroy the US ideals and become a malleable Christofascist oligopoly like they are. If you think Ukraine is not our problem you’re not addressing our problem. Ukraine is the leading edge of the problem.
While I agree, Russia has no right to annex territory in Ukraine or Georgia or anywhere else, and I agree, like any rational person will, that Ukraine has every right to defend itself to the fullest extent, including matching on Moscow and fucking up the place, that’s decidedly not our problem.
How convenient that every time a moral issue comes up that we’re on the right side of, it’s not our problem.
How convenient that every time a moral issue comes up that we’re on the right side of, it’s not our problem.
I think the last time this happened was World War 2.
and even then internment camps happened
I think the last time this happened was World War 2
No, don’t worry, MLs advocated us staying out of the ‘Capitalist Imperialist War’ there too, until their favorite Nazi-allied country got betrayed.
Unsurprising that you find preventing the genocide of Ukrainians to be the ‘wrong side’ of this war.
You’re thinking of World War 1, which the communists were 100% vindicated for not supporting.
MLs in World War 2 wanted us to support the USSR. Curious how supporting the communists put us on the right side of history, while all the times we fought against communists we were very clearly on the wrong side of it - must be a coincidence.
You should change it to tankies instead of leftists.
Unfortunately, as people in this thread show, even non-tankie leftists can be sucked in by Russian talking points.
Ok so obviously this is anecdotal evidence but my personal experience with this is that the people who support Russia are pretty much all right wing. The farther to the right they are , the harder they’re buying into Russian propaganda.
I haven’t seen actual support from the left in real life, but more some sort of vague both-siding and “understanding” and stuff like that. And that’s come from both left and right (not center-left or center-right), but as a minority opinion. Old Stalinists, some left-wingers closer to the left side than center, then some right to far right. I think for the left it might also be the heritage of USSR alignment and peace mindedness. For the right, I’m not even really sure. Some sort of “anti-West” in the sort of “anti-globalism” sense which make you go hmmmm and then there’s been some pretty sus financial ties.
I strongly suggest seeking out professional help because you clearly live in an alternate reality.
cause a loss for the west is a win for the third world. its not russia that has been couping, invading and generally fucking with most of planet earth.
you can’t fuck us for a couple of centuries then expect us to be on your side, we will take a status quo thats less bad.
The fuck planet are you on?
this one. study your own history, you have been continuously killing brown people nonstop for what? at least 50years now?
And Russia literally teamed up with the Nazis and only fought back because they were stupid enough to get betrayed. Russia has a pretty colorful history if you wanna get down to the nitty gritty of things.
you need to study some history then.
they literally defeated the nazis at great cost to themselves. buy they were socialist back them, different times than today.
Seems it is you that should study history. Russia fought the Nazis only once Hitler turned on them.
The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939. It was publicly a non-aggression treaty, but it included a secret protocol in which eastern European countries were divided into spheres of interest.
From here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War
you do realize this treaty failed, because nazis invaded them anyway and the soviet union defeated nazi germany?
understand the context in which you are saying this before equating the soviet union to modern russia.
Every time you people equate the Russian Federation with the USSR, you’re telling on yourselves. The government completely changed, the current one destroyed the old one, and the only continuity is the location and the people. So if you equate the two, then it sounds to me what you’re really saying is that Russian skull shape or whatever makes them inherently inclined towards violence regardless what form of government they adopt. Which begs the question, what is your ultimate, you know, final solution for this apparently genetically inferior race?
Wtf are you even fucking on about? Who the fuck even hinted anything related to what you just posted.
How are the USSR’s actions relevant to the Russian Federation?
Wow, reading is hard.
