Remember kids, Tankies wants to undermine democracy - same as facists.
Just like fascists, tankies could theoretically hang out here without getting the boot. It’s just that genocide denying authoritarians cannot be tolerated in a tolerant, democratic society. The reason tankies and fascists get the boot is because they can’t resist trying to bully and intimidate those that find their views abhorrent. They simply can’t resist being terrible.
They’re cultists with views that can’t stand up to scrutiny, so they need use other tactics to spread their shit and gain power. They use the real downsides and weaknesses of democracy to argue we need an even worse system. Then they argue you actually hold the worst views of their enemies, even though they usually support exactly the same things that make those enemies bad. Tankies claim you’re a free-market liberal for opposing them, when the countries they support are state capitalists. Fascists claim you’re against freedom of speech, while they are always trying to ban ideas they hate. Some of them are misguided and believe their own lies, but others are just awful people.
Tankies traditionally are associated with communists, but today’s tankies (even those that call themselves communists) are really after authoritarianism than communism, and given the history of the name (that they supported using tracks on civilians). I don’t think they’re is much difference between current communists and current fascists, both groups seem to support authoritarianism and feels like term “tankies” fits both of them well.
I learned about a week ago why they are the way they are. See the soviet union was the closest in their mind the world has ever come to communism, so even though it’s fallen into fascist oligarchy, they still hold hope that the anticommunist putin is going to rise up and reestablish global communism once more. The only problem with that is that… well Russia doesn’t want communism. This is their playbook Yeah, that doesn’t look socialist, that looks like “we tried communism it didn’t work so lets do fascism this time” so they end up throwing their support towards red flavored fascism since it’s the best chance (in their minds) at getting global communism. When the alternative is an american nazi world order, or tiny countries with no power, you don’t really have much choice.
But here’s something I want every single one of you to realize having read all of that: Even the most fascist redfash still would have killed the nazis. The same cannot be said for the average (in-power) liberal today. Anticommunism is always pro-fascism. Never let your critiques of the left turn into support for the right.
EDIT: Case in point, the person i’m responding to is never going to see this post because they’re on a nazi bar instance that banned me.
Even the most fascist redfash still would have killed the nazis.
They’d kill who they define as nazis. I find that tankies’ (especially Hexbear) definition of nazism doesn’t entirely correspond to mine or that of most other people. So this is not something to be super optimistic about.
It is a bare minimum that the current world order can’t even pass. They can’t even go a week without funding a mass ethnic genocide.
I really have no idea what people are trying to say or getting at in a lot of these comments, it feels like one of those art experiments where words don’t have meaning but are used to express emotion
It doesn’t help that I think I ended up replying to the wrong comment :s
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Lol redfash killing nazis isn’t worth praise. Redfash kill each other the first chance they get. They are so paranoid when they come to power they purge anyone and everyone they can.
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Lemmy world are nazis?
The users are a mixed bag but the mods/admins absolutely are in the business of running a nazi bar. They’re doing the classic strategy of passively protecting fascists while actively suppressing those calling out the fascists. They also ban people who are open communists.
Meanwhile, .ml keeps banning my accounts for just commenting on c/worldnews these days.
I’m not a troll. You can go look at my contributions. I made some hexbears look like idiots and now they’ve got me on a leash.
I’ve learned the fun way not to bother with hexbear users. They’re only here to antagonize nazis so best not to get in the way of that.
I muted a couple dozen hexbear accounts when the whole instance was out seemingly trying to antagonize the entire fediverse.
Turns out that got the vast majority of annoying trolls from there.
so even though it’s fallen into fascist oligarchy,
You know any left wing project after being overthrown by the US would also end up a fascist oligarchy right? As was the case with the illegal and undemocratic dissolution of the Soviet Union brought about by the US.
Even the most fascist redfash
A mainstream Jewish holocaust scholar on equating fascism and communism and why it is bad
Yeah I was making a point that even the most “fascist” communist is still a zillion times less fascist than your average liberal. I love that you brought that article because it reinforces my point that anti-communism is always pro-fascism.
Slaps Table Thank You!
I hate it when threads like this make me have to repeatedly post the mainstream Jewish holocaust historian “stop conflating fascism and communism” article
Are you aware how obnoxious it is to spam a 5,000 word article while refusing to provide any summation or distillation of its thesis?
Paste it into ChatGPT if you’re having reading challenges
I’d like to respond, but I’m going to need you to read 5,000 words on my personal philosophy towards online commenting before I do.
im sorry you have a problem reading
Wait but I’m a communist. As in communes first, no state, no hierarchy, collective ownership, and all that jazz. I’m not super well read on the theory. Its really easy to see the difference, we’re not splitting hairs here.
That is why I use anarchist instead. It means all of that while also making it clear that authoritarianism is not ok.
That’s called collective anarchism. Anarchism is what the name implies… and most lemmy users wouldn’t last especially long lmao
More specifically, yes. It is collective anarchism, but in this context I think it is obvious enough that I don’t need to clarify it further.
Also I think that any type of anarchism allows for collective anarchism, and by extension could be used to mean collective anarchism.
I mean if your definition of collectivism is men with guns taking what they want then yeah that sounds likely. I’m also a collective anarchist, but it’s important to note how far we must come as a species before we can actually engage meaningfully in such a philosophy, otherwise it will just regress on progress made in other spheres. Bolstering of education is a good step in this process, but also moral and philosophical teachings.
Collective anarchism, along with all utopias, is unachievable, but a system incorporating its tenets is certainly possible, I just question whether it would devolve into men with guns taking what they want.
I most certainly do not mean men with guns taking whatever they want. That is authoritarian. The revolution is an ongoing process to redefine society as a non-hierarchical. I see it as non-violent: only defending against violence, never inciting it.
Between writing that comment I read through the anarchist FAQ on revolution.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-anarchist-faq-editorial-collective-an-anarchist-faq-full#text-amuse-label-secj7
And I agree with it wholeheartedly.We as a species are far enough for anarchism to work, people just have to stop believing in authority, and we have to help them.
I also do not think anarchism is a utopia. There is nothing about it that couldn’t work. Non-hierarchical societies have existed, and their dissolution just means people aren’t ready yet.
Wanting all of that but without the authoritarian bit should be called something else. I’m from a country which was occupied by communists (collective ownership was a thing) and it sucked big time.
Ouch. Thats really disappointing to hear and like I think more important for me as a western leftist is probably not reading theory but how these things go wrong and lead to bad outcomes.
There is no perfect system, textbook wonderland communism has lots of flaws too. In my ideal world it should be a mix of everything. Communal gardens or hobby workshops are great, communal workplaces not so much. I mean, people should be allowed to get rich if they can do it without abusing others. You should be able to start and grow your company, and get paid for it accordingly.
That could make a fine compromise. If we can remove that capital barrier to starting your own business, we can remove the profit incentive to pay rent or loans. Working for an enterprising person would be really nice.
It’s called campism and it’s dumb teenager stuff.
Yes, when it comes to the axis from authoritarian to anarchist. Things all tend to narrow in to a single point at either end. In regards to authoritarians, it’s all about the hierarchy and holding power for themselves. They don’t give a shit what form of government sits under that. When it comes to anarchists and libertarians, no government other than a largely flat form of socialism is acceptable. Simply because they are focused on freedoms both individual and social. And large monolithic hierarchies tend to get in the way of that.
And when I use the term libertarian I of course mean actual libertarians. Not temporarily embarrassed Republicans, or teenage capitalists. The easiest test to find out whether someone might accidentally be a libertarian or not. Is to find out if they belong to the Libertarian party, or ever plan to vote for their candidates. No one who would ever do that could ever be a libertarian lol
those “libertarians” are just anarcho-capitalists who think the issue isn’t the system itself but they couldn’t get access to the pie soon enough and get a bigger piece than everyone else so they think we should do a reset do this time they can come out on top
it’s enough to look at how Crypto works with it’s deflationary system where first buyers are much stronger than late comers or the MOAS /ape crowd
Absolutely. Though even calling them in Arco capitalist is still to generous and a blight to the term anarchist. (I’ve met a few anarchists that were too idealistic and unreasonable for their own good. But they are generally pretty chill, reasonable people otherwise.) They are no true libertarians. Actual libertarians push not just for freedom from things like government. But also the freedom for everyone in society to be able to do the things they desire. One without the other is not a libertarian.
🤔 There should be a fediverse-wide rule against genocidal rhetoric. Who cares what side it’s from?
In that case i’m fucked, because I called for the genocide of mosquitoes about a month ago.
Genocide against mosquitoes is an acceptable genocide, as are those against cockroaches and bedbugs.
As are those against fascists and landlords, but I would get in trouble if I was vocal about those ones.
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Yeah, we ignored the Tea Party as silly folks in 2008 and 2012, but by 2016 they had rebranded as MAGA and now they run the GOP.
Any delusional, hateful ideology – be it tankies, Nazis, or whatever – will fester if you let it.
And you are extremely out of touch if you think tankies could ever manifest into anything more than a threat than a Unabomberesc bad actor. Tankies arent organized whatsoever in the west, while Nazis are have actual rallies in broad day light, while the GOP is actively championing causes that they support. Tankies want to kill landlords, Nazis want to kill Jews, Black People, Queer folk, and Liberals that wont toe the line. I dont agree with either of them, but i can recognize that the Nazi threat is much more metastasised in America and a much greater threat. If you cant see that you need to get your head out of your ass.
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they’re too busy wanking off to their own perceived superiority
Unlike all the people commenting on this post!
This is just another stupid online factionalism post. None of what anybody says online (especially on a tiny niche forum) matters one fucking bit.
Antifa, feed the homeless, or get social housing or public transport built
This is what matters. And I guarantee you there are MLs participating in black bloc protests, Food not Bombs, and all sorts of other useful things you can think of, but your tendency doesn’t matter when you’re actually out there helping people. Did you turn to your fellow protestors and ask them what they think about China or what they think about some shit that happened a hundred years ago? Or did you just do what needed to be done in the moment?
factionalism
You sure you aren’t a tankie or why else would you use the word with a negative connotation? When two actual leftists meet there’s going to be three factions, yes, but shit is still going to get done. Factions means plurality, plurality means diversity of tactics, all that is good shit.
And I guarantee you there are MLs participating in black bloc protests
MLs, yes. As in Trots and stuff. But actual tankies? Nope. That would require a capacity to cooperate, they even discourage participation internally (mostly by claiming it’s a waste of time, doesn’t contribute to the revolution, whatnot) as it’s dangerous to them, in the sense that people who have not yet completely bought into the cult might choose praxis over brainwashing: Those things are by and large run by Anarchists, with Anarchist organisation principles, and that shit working flies right into the face of democratic centralism.
…okay. I guess I missed the dude with the clipboard checking everyone’s tendency at the protests but I guess you saw him.
I think posts like this are just emblematic of being too online. And if, like you’re saying, tankies don’t do anything because that would be counterrevolutionary or whatever, then what’s the problem? Keyboard warriors aren’t changing shit.
I find all this weird exclusively online rhetoric around what’s an acceptable type of communist to be exhausting. My metric of whether or not someone is a good communist is if they help their community and help workers. You can have whatever takes you want on the kulaks or the Hungarian revolution as long as you’re standing next to me at the soup kitchen. You know why? Because nobody’s thoughts about the Hungarian revolution or even the war in Ukraine matter one iota. In the west we’re all so far from even seeing a lever of power that it doesn’t matter one whit what any of us think. There’s not about to be a tankie coup d’etat of the American government any sooner than an anarchist one.
All this post and the responses to it are are leftists wrestling in the mud to see who can have the fewest allies when they get crushed by global capital.
And if, like you’re saying, tankies don’t do anything because that would be counterrevolutionary or whatever, then what’s the problem?
I find all this weird exclusively online rhetoric around what’s an acceptable type of communist to be exhausting
Oh it’s not at all exclusively online. Like, I’d prefer not to be put into a gulag, thank you, or have a vanguard start revolutions when conditions aren’t met, ultimately delaying the actual fall of capitalism. This shit has real-world implications, and them being tolerated in online places gives them power to recruit, to propagandise, ultimately to act like that AFK so we can’t have that.
Yes I’m saying tankies should be deplatformed. Deal with it.
I agree that the purity check politics is counter intuitive, and also why they pose no threat of violent revolution in the west. The real threat to Western Capital comes from what the they have labled Cultural Marxism because the glaring hypocrisies of Capitalism are impossible to logically refute, hence the rise of Fascism. Also:
State capitalism is not worker ownership. Hence the “capitalism” part. Say what you want about Lenin but he used accurate terminology, there.
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And you are extremely out of touch if you think tankies could ever manifest into anything more than a threat than a Unabomberesc bad actor.
We’ve literally had and still have totalitarian regimes that claimed to be communist what the hell are you talking about?
I hate tankies
So you hate them more than nazis?!?
wat
Sure, nazis are a bigger problem than tankies, but no one here needs to be told to look out for nazis. That’s kinda self explanatory.
But tankies are a lot less well known, but still have a very destructive ideology. Just look at the comments here — there are multiple people who asked what tankies even are.
Saying “Kick nazis out of 196” would be redundant, which can’t be said for “Kick tankies out of 196”.
Nazis are literally just less common here. There’s not much reason to constantly talk about them in a meta sub fashion when they are already so rare I haven’t seen one in weeks and are routinely and swiftly banned.
Tankies on the other hand, are not.
Your protest just looks silly and obviously ridiculous. Not talking about the problem of Nazis in online discourse 24/7 isn’t an endorsement of them, different spaces have different problems.
Exactly. Shocking as it may be to some people, we can hate 2 flavors of fascism at the same time. And it’s not like lemmy as a whole has had to defederate from 2 Nazi instances in the past couple of months due to their awful behavior, which cannot be said for a certain 2 tankie instances.
The goal of a progressive community is not just to protest its own reactionary elements, but the reactionary elements across all society.
What about
but what about?? hmm???
I’ve seen this reposted on the original 196 on Reddit multiple times so saying this is the worst 196 on the basis of this meme being posted makes no sense.
Also nazis are very unlikely to be participating in this community anyway, and if they are then they are either hiding to the point of indistinguishably or getting the ban-hammer really quickly. In the latter case, the problem is solved by the mods and in the former case, with the internet’s anonymity, someone fully to be a member of a digital community is just a regular member of the community.
Tankies on the other hand share many more values with the core demographic of this community so they might be less inclined to fully hide their views and their views simmering through might not immediately get them a ban (depending on what they let shine through, of course).
The blahaja zone 196 literally says fuck tankies on its header…
As it should
This is not a place for genocide apologists
Nah, Nazi dogwhistles are accepted here. Admin banned me for calling out someone who “hates politics”.
Nah, the admin called you out for repeatedly forcing political discussion on people who had explicitly requested to disengage, in spaces that were not focused on political conversation, and then banned you for harassment, and repeated attempts to stir up drama targeting the people you disagree with.
Which is the same reason you’re banned again now on this account
Right, I hate tankies on the internet and Republicans in real life (and also on the internet). It’s not my fault that tankies are more marginalized. But I assure you I have no shortage of contempt to go around.
Jessie what the hell are you talking about
tankies just want to LARP as revolutionaries online while never doing any real praxis
So you’re saying the more praxis I do, the leas tankies I will meet?
True. Yall just Putin apologists.
I think they’re probably thinking about it in a strictly Lemmy context, in which case tankies definitely are a much bigger problem than Nazis, who as far as I can tell have virtually no presence on Lemmy at all.
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Hexbear disliked that
I think we should consider the feelings of Hexbear users when posting or commenting.
If you think they’ll dislike it, it’s probably a good post.
Hexbear REALLY dislikes my compilation of their queerphobia at !dronerights@lemm.ee
I mentioned the time hexbear’s admin called the (trans) admin of blahaj.zone (the trans instance) “transphobic” in another thread once. Some hexbear dipshit then “named and shamed” me as a transphobe.
They’re loud, obnoxious idiots – nothing more.
the user you are replying to was banned for transphobia, they were dismissing the existence of enbys as their own gender. They’re an insane troll.
Enbies are not our own gender. We are thousands of genders.
I wonder if it’s the same hexbear admin who banned me from the entire site after I called them on being in support of crypto, then made a post-hoc justification for. You know, that sham right wing capitalism alternative that pedos use to buy illegal material with.
Regardless, I made a comment saying “Stop working, ‘work will set you free’ is a nazi phrase” and they removed it for “Godwins Law” so obviously I’m not missing out because I have literally never seen anyone outside of a nazi misuse Godwin’s Law that egregiously.
this sounds weird to me because to my knowledge hexbear hates crypto, I feel like I’m missing context
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Posting history is public too and gives a more clear picture of what was happening.
Hexbear is full of transphobic trans people and Blahaj’s admin is also a transphobic trans person.
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DroneRights (me) was banned for saying gender neutral pronouns exist. Because Hexbear thinks gender neutral pronouns are transphobic.
no you’re making shit up, look at the goddamn modlog
Removed Comment “They” is a non gendering pronoun. If you use they/them, you’ll never misgender anyone, but you’ll also never gender anyone correctly either. Some people are okay with not being gendered and some people aren’t. You should respect their wishes once you’ve heard them, but I don’t believe you have any obligation to check them in advance.
by DroneRights [it/its] reason: enbyphobiaThis is pretty unambiguously a log of me saying gender neutral pronouns exist and the admins taking issue with that.
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As for the pictures you have of me on Blahaj, they are perfectly accurate summaries of my views on Ada. Yes, you are 100% correct that Ada banned me for daring to disagree with her and to call out her transphobic behaviour.
As for Hexbear you are 100% incorrect about my views. I do not they/them anyone I know to have a different pronoun preference, and indeed you’ve taken a screenshot of me saying that you can’t gender someone correctly with they/them. You will find many instances of me referring to people with their chosen pronouns on !dronerights@lemm.ee . Your misrepresentation of my views is slander, entirely unbased in fact and directly contradicted by the evidence that you yourself provided. If you are not lying on purpose, then I have the deepest sympathies for the teacher who tried to teach you reading comprehension.
Good
they don’t have the ability to dislike, they removed the downvotes (i think) lmao
who is hexbear
A website on the fediverse for transphobic stalinists
These threads are odd to me, considering how many people call all communists tankies. The word seems to be used by anarchists, conservatives, communists, anti-communists, and more, and every person has a slightly different definition.
Half the people here could consider the other half to be the tankies everyone is mad at.
To be clear this isn’t me saying “be nice to the tankies” this is me saying “the overuse of this word is confusing the shit out of me.”
It became confusing when liberals learnt of the word - now they hurl the word at anyone who dares to remind them that being pro-capitalist is still a right-wing thing to be.
Maybe it’s just the circles I run in, but I understand “tankie” to mean leftists who think Soviet/Maoist/vanguard-party styles of Communist revolution/rule were good, actually, to the point of denying any bad things they did/do as “Western propaganda”.
Given the red scare in the US, our ability as a whole to use any sort of leftist political labels accurately across the population is basically non-existent, so I do understand the frustration by both tankies and non-tankie leftists about how the term gets used lately, especially in produce circles on social media.
But again maybe that’s just me. I don’t know if I would consider myself a communist, but I do consider myself as a yet undetermined variety of socialist, if that helps at all.
…because none of those groups are Tankies and they are all unified against Tankies.
Tankies aren’t socialists or communists (not that those two things are the same either). They are the purist ideologues of communism, where compromise is defeat. Rampant in telling you why you’re wrong, and why only the purest form of communism will bring nirvana. All without understanding the consequences of what they propose.
Even the Communists don’t want them on their side.
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Then there’s folks like me who have no idea what the term means, you’re not alone in your confusion.
Edit: thanks for all the replies folks! TIL
Tankies are ‘communists’ ala Mao and Stalin, i.e. okay with the violent opression of democratic movements and minorities.
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Communists seem to be sad, pathetic people now. I thought ya’ll had something, but you’re all just a bunch of fractured apologists trying to get one over on each other.
Sad, ya’ll actually had something going on at one point, now you’re just irrelevant
I’m an anarchist, we don’t call anybody tankies. Tankies is a term coming from the UK i think the 80s some eastern european nation was taken over by the USSR and some Brittish came out in support of it. So they were called tankies.
These political fighting words need to be layed to rest. Communists hate me as much as anybody else but I’d rather engage on the idea level instead of ad hominem attacks and name calling.
I suspect this whole tankie thing might be a coordinated propaganda campaign geared at discrediting communists and at the same time creating tension between them and other leftits. I suspect this as this whole infighting over small differences doesn’t lead to a victory for the left but effectively disables and neutralizes it.
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Hey everyone, just a reminder:
- Yes Nazis are also bad, we don’t have Nazis pop up anywhere near as often as Tankies
- We remove and ban Nazis too
- We’re aware of Lemmy’s main code writers being ML’s, and it’s not great.
- Please report any bigot bullshit, or fascist/tankie dogwhistles.
Kick Zionists out of 196
The guy needs a speech bubble that says “Stalin did nothing wr-”
I mean when people give Stalin shit yet don’t bat an eye at what Lenin did, I can safely assume they’re going off cold war propaganda.
Lenin had some legitimately good takes, e.g. that Stalin should, under no circumstance, ever be allowed to come to power. His analysis was also usually spot-on, but his solutions to things either hare-brained or naive, leading to, well, history. Or, put differently, on a scale from tragic hero to villain he’s at least in the middle while Stalin is a straight-up villain.
Lenin ordered the Red Terror. The main difference between him and Stalin when it comes to willingness to use state violence was the size of the state. His solution to political decent was mass executions. While it was announced as a class war on the bourgeoisie, it began with a massacreof sociallists. In addition to kulaks and white army afficers, it targeted the former bolshenik allies Left Socialists, anarchists, and striking workers. The Red Terror featured the creation of the gulags and concentration camps, hostage taking, and torture.
I mean, is “hang more kulaks or you’ll be hanged for treason” really that bad of a plan?
Nooo, you don’t understand. It was the material conditions that were forcing Lenin to order Trotsky to murder his way through the free territory of Ukraine.
forcing Lenin to order Trotsky
Sources?
What exactly do you want a source for?
The claim that the soviets caused the conflict because of “material conditions” was a joke that was meant to make fun of tankies.
But you quoted “forcing Lenin to order Trotsky”, which is why I don’t exactly know if that’s what you’re talking about.
The claim that the soviets caused the conflict because of “material conditions” was a joke that was meant to make fun of tankies.
ive never heard this claim, it was a civil war, anarchists weren’t exactly all nice
The anarchists worked together with the soviets, going as far as actually being a part of the red army and fighting together against the whites. Tensions between the two groups only rose because bolchevik commanders repeatedly attacked their autonomy.
That unity lasted until the reds had beaten the whites in moscow, after which they just invaded the Makhnovshchina.
The anarchists weren’t all that nice and had oftentimes critiqued the bolshevists way of implementing communism, but they still worked together and tried to work with the Bolsheviks on equal footing. The Bolsheviks on the other hand repeatedly tried to undermine their autonomy and just betrayed them as soon as they thought that they didn’t need them anymore and thus caused a civil war that killed 1.5 million people.
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“We should all look up to Chi-”
Based AF
Fuck tankies
I think most of you need to worry way less about sounding sufficiently the “right kind” of leftist and focus more on promoting leftism through action. More than half the “tankie” discourse is, at best, a needless distraction from actual progress. Lose your buzzwords and stop the ideological purity pissing contest and actually put in the work in your communities instead, goddamn.
It’s funny that everyone is up in arms about this post but the literal sticky post says no tankies
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I’m not against the hostility being shown towards tankies here… but it should be remembered that there are a lot of well-meaning and well-intentioned people who get caught up in the technocratic ideology tankies buy into. Let’s face it… if you google anything about leftism you are more likely to end up reading about Marx and Engels than Bakunin or Goldman - and right-wing propaganda is as perfectly fine with conflating everything “leftist” with the technocratic (ie authoritarian) left as tankies themselves are.
If we are leaving some doors open for fascists and capitalists who turn against their programming, we should remember to do the same for tankies.
i wonder why this post about tankies is suddenly popular
sees top posts criticising israel and fascism
ah there it is
Eh this argues that we even have a democracy that is functional enough to undermine in the first place, and I reject that premise.
