• Exactly! I’m so tired of being accused of being a liberal and/or a fascist every single time I note that China or Russia isn’t some perfect leftist utopia, but in fact just another empire that is a pain in the ass not only to other countries but also their own citizens.

      • China is a fascist ethnostate, Russia is another neoliberal capitalist state, North Korea IMO cannot be described as socialist, Vietnam is pretty cool but mixed and only partially socialist, Cuba is not great tbh just in general, Venezuela is horrible, the Nordic states are just Social Democrat states, Israel has multiple worker co-ops but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re still a genocidal ethnostate, that just about covers all the tankie countries.

          • China perfectly fits the definition of a fascist ethnostate. Their economy is indirectly managed by the government while having capitalist elements (state control is the only “socialist” elements), they enforce a language, one ethnicity is clearly depicted as the “true Chinese ethnicity” (despite China having many), censorship is rampant, they’re committing a genocide, and at the end of the day THEY’RE NOT EVEN SOCIALIST.

              • Zagorath ( Zagorath@aussie.zone ) 
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                Oh, so you did! I missed that.

                I’ll just say, having lived in Vietnam for quite some time, it certainly is a much better country than China, but describing it as “mixed” and “partially socialist” understates its issues. Corruption is rampant and open, and is the way of things in both the private and public sectors.

                As just one example, the Saigon Metro project began construction not long before I stopped living there in 2012, and was scheduled to finish in 2018. Rampant corruption with that project has meant multiple times it’s just stalled with seemingly no progress made for years, and the Japanese construction company hired to do some of the work threatened to pull out over cost overruns caused by the corruption. It’s a lovely country in so many ways, and its government is so much better than those that tankies usually love to praise in terms of the degrees of gross authoritarian bs, but it’s got a long it could improve in many regards.

          • Sure. Except if you allow those in power to define the meaning of demos, every single country that ever existed - including Nazi Germany - was democratic. As a result, the term democratic becomes tautological in that it is always true regardless of the system involved.

            So yes, your statement that China is a nation is true.

              • Euphoma ( Euphoma@lemmy.ml ) 
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                The chinese web novel reverand insanity literally got banned for criticizing china. The guy who wrote it can’t write it anymore and you can’t even pirate the novel in china. cuz its been deleted off the chinese internet.

                • finderscult ( finderscult@lemmy.ml ) 
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                  That’s nice and all, but there are literally millions of critics that aren’t banned, whose work is publicly available, who criticize from a place of wanting to improve, not destroy.

                  China is ML, and if there’s anything MLs live to do, it’s criticize each other.

                  The vast majority of people that actually get banned from producing certain works either spread entirely false propaganda created by western intelligence agencies ( uighur “genocide” ) or want to remove the government entirely and replace it with a kleptocracy like the US has.

                • finderscult ( finderscult@lemmy.ml ) 
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                  I’ve lived in China for work. It’s genuinely no different than say, the Denmark in terms of “repression” except instead of arresting those that threaten capital, they arrest those that threaten the people (usually on behalf of capital). It’s not an anarchist paradise, they haven’t achieved communism, but they’re likely the furthest thing from fascism that’s still a nation. Anyone that claims to be on the left and dislikes their methods or compares them to fascists are genuinely either not on the left, or are baby lefties stuck in the 1800s in terms of reading and philosophy.

            • Cowbee [he/they] ( Cowbee@lemmy.ml ) Banned from community
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              I haven’t seen a single Marxist in favor of Israel, though, you’re just inventing people at this point. Unless you’re trying to describe entirely different groups under the same general umbrella, but that confuses the convesation.

                • Cowbee [he/they] ( Cowbee@lemmy.ml ) Banned from community
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                  The people supporting China, Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela, etc. and “critically supporting” Russia in its anti-Western stance are generally Marxists, and none of these people support Israel, and none fully support Russia. Israel has some few people that support the faux-Socialist “Kibbutz” system, but these people are anti-China, anti-Cuba, anti-Vietnam, anti-Venezuela, etc.

                  That’s why I am saying it’s confusing the conversation, your “tankie” doesn’t hold all of the views you mentioned, you’re describing separate groups under one label, a label almost always used for Marxists, and as such it leads to obfuscation of your actual message, hence confusion from other users.

    • Did you not read the meme? Imperialism is bad no matter who is doing it, and arguing over which empire is more ‘problematic’ is counterproductive, as we should oppose all empires instead of wasting all of our time and effort on getting on each other’s throats.

    • ComradeSharkfucker ( sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml ) 
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      I wonder why a westerner who gets their news from english speaking western sources which profit off of the same wealth extraction as the empire they are part of would think like this? Surely the western free press would not be influenced by the whims of capital and empire. Obviously China and Russia must be the “worse empire”, my empire told me so!

      • Well, just personally speaking, I know Russian, and reading Russian news sources (state-owned as well as those that have been banned by the Russian state) from time to time, and talking with Russians directly, hasn’t even remotely convinced me that the “Russian empire” is equally bad as the “western empire”.

    • theoneIno ( theoneIno@lemmy.ml ) 
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      More problematic to whom? The US literally changed the political direction of my country and fucked us over real hard.

      Where are the chinese wars and regime change operations? At least Russia only attacks its neighbors at most so countries far away have nothing to fear, unlike the US invading and destroying countries all around the globe.

      Call them empire or whatever, but being unable to admit that the US is the bigger threat to real freedom in the world only contributes to the causes of the biggest and arguably most brutal empire in history, that is in constant state of war since it was founded.

        • theoneIno ( theoneIno@lemmy.ml ) 
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          Well, at least global south countries are gonna have to choose between them or play both sides at best to survive the foereseeable future, so at least in some instances it does matter.

          What will Nigeria choose? Chinese or US exports, loans, cultural influence etc

          No country can be fully independent from the world around, so they do have to choose allies and foes.

      • random ( random@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 
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        More problematic to whom?

        people living under the threat of them

        Where are the chinese wars and regime change operations?

        cold war (they did the same as the us, but just lost), tibet, uigurs, taiwan, mongolia, and don’t forget their brutal mining operations in africa

        At least Russia only attacks its neighbors at most so countries far away have nothing to fear, unlike the US invading and destroying countries all around the globe.

        but in return the us only conqueres nations far away from them (at least in the last 100 years), also that’s not really better, russia got a lot of neighbors

        the US is the bigger threat to real freedom in the world

        imo, it purely depends on the region you’re looking on

        most brutal empire in history

        historically britain outcompetes them imo, but in the 20th century, yes they were, now I’d say china tho, just look at their actions in africa, they’re kinda repeating briyish history there

        but it’s nice, that you have manners and don’t want to ban everyone disagreeing with you like some on grad

      • Honytawk ( Honytawk@lemmy.zip ) 
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        You just went through a regime change operation of Russia. Or did you think Trump and all those extremist right-wing governments in Europe won all on their own?

        Putins propaganda machine made those happen. They infiltrated so many social media groups spreading lies to make everyone more xenophobic so they can invade Ukraine and all previous USSR regions without them getting help.

        On Lemmy, they are mostly hiding in your instance.

    • And in doing so they may have pushed large parts of the Chinese-American community to the right. Tankies caping for the CCP were not a good look for the moderate immigrants who had been fucked over by the Chinese government in various ways.

      • DerKommissar ( DerKommissar@lemmy.ml ) 
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        they may have pushed large parts of the Chinese-American community to the right.

        That’s just the Gusano effect, frankly. Why would someone who supports the ML regime move to China’s self-nominated existential enemy, after all?

        No, those who oppose just come over here and Yeonmi Park themselves all over the place. You see it in ever single “Castro took my grandfather’s plantation” wannabe-settler who conveniently leaves out that el viejo’s plantation was staffed by slaves; I expect exactly the same out of Chinese expatriate capitalists afraid they’re next (when there’s actually still hella billionaires that haven’t been milled yet).

    • spacedout ( spacedout@lemmy.ml ) 
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      The vile Russian Empire, with its Romanov dynasty, super problematic. If Peter is so great, why does he look so wimpy compared to Joe Rogan? Hah, those stupid tankies don’t even realize the Chinese empire has been abolished for over 110 years!

  • It’s something that really bothers me about communism and socialism being derisive in the US, even in 2024, about 35 years after USSR fell.

    The alternative to community-centric society is autocracy, typically devolving into monarchism.

    Death to monarchists!

  • OBJECTION! ( Objection@lemmy.ml ) 
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    It’s kinda unavoidable that if one major power loses influence, another will benefit from the vacuum. You can’t really oppose your own country’s imperialism without making the case that other countries taking advantage is an acceptable risk.

    This is more or less the story of WWI. With the increasing tensions and military buildup, socialists of countries across Europe formed the Second International and agreed in the Basel Declaration, which said that they would use the crisis to rise up simultaneously against every imperialist power and put an end to both the war and to capitalism:

    If a war threatens to break out, it is the duty of the working classes and their parliamentary representatives in the countries involved supported by the coordinating activity of the International Socialist Bureau to exert every effort in order to prevent the outbreak of war by the means they consider most effective, which naturally vary according to the sharpening of the class struggle and the sharpening of the general political situation.

    In case war should break out anyway it is their duty to intervene in favor of its speedy termination and with all their powers to utilize the economic and political crisis created by the war to arouse the people and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.

    But once the war actually broke out, most of them found reasons to rally around their country’s flag. German socialists pointed to the conditions of serfdom under the Tsar and pointed to the massive colonial empires of Britain and France, while British and French socialists argued that Germany undemocratic under the Kaiser and had more responsibility for starting the war. They mostly agreed that both sides were bad, but they said they were only fighting to safeguard their countries “against defeat” rather than for victory, but regardless, for all intents and purposes it was the same thing. Of course, in all of these countries, there was considerable political pressure and propaganda pushing them to fall in line and to regard the enemy as worse, and many people did what was personally advantageous regardless of what they had said previously.

    There was only one exception, where the socialists took advantage of the war to overthrow their government, without regard for the possibility that it could help the other side, and they did end up ceding a fair bit of land too, but they were able to put a stop that that theater of the meat grinder everyone was being fed into.

      • OBJECTION! ( Objection@lemmy.ml ) 
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        As near as I can tell, advocating for peaceful, dovish, isolationist policies is enough for someone to be considered a tankie (ironically enough). WWI era socialists who did not fall in line behind their governments certainly faced similar accusations.

          • OBJECTION! ( Objection@lemmy.ml ) 
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            And there you have it. If you advocate for peaceful, dovish, isolationist policies, you are a tankie because you’re letting other nations that aren’t those things win. The exact same logic that caused “leftists” to rally around their own imperialist governments in WWI. Germany wasn’t socialist, so why should the British socialists let them win? Britain wasn’t socialist, so why should the German socialists let them win?

            The phrase-bandying Trotsky has completely lost his bearings on a simple issue. It seems to him that to desire Russia’s defeat means desiring the victory of Germany. (Bukvoyed and Semkovsky give more direct expression to the “thought”, or rather want of thought, which they share with Trotsky.) To help people that are unable to think for themselves, the Berne resolution made it clear, that in all imperialist countries the proletariat must now desire the defeat of its own government. Bukvoyed and Trotsky preferred to avoid this truth, while Semkovsky (an opportunist who is more useful to the working class than all the others, thanks to his naively frank reiteration of bourgeois wisdom) blurted out the following: “This is nonsense, because either Germany or Russia can win”

            What is the substitute proposed for the defeat slogan? It is that of “neither victory nor defeat." This, however, is nothing but a paraphrase of the “defence of the fatherland” slogan. It means shifting the issue to the level of a war between governments (who, according to the content of this slogan, are to keep to their old stand, “retain their positions"), and not to the level of the struggle of the oppressed classes against their governments! It means justifying the chauvinism of all the imperialist nations, whose bourgeoisie are always ready to say—and do say to the people—that they are “only” fighting “against defeat”.

            On closer examination, this slogan will be found to mean a “class truce”, the renunciation of the class struggle by the oppressed classes in all belligerent countries, since the class struggle is impossible without dealing blows at one’s “own” bourgeoisie, one’s “own” government, whereas dealing a blow at one’s own government in wartime is (for Bukvoyed’s information) high treason, means contributing to the defeat of one’s own country. Those who accept the “neither victory-nor-defeat” slogan can only be hypocritically in favour of the class struggle, of “disrupting the class truce”; in practice, such people are renouncing an independent proletarian policy because they subordinate the proletariat of all belligerent countries to the absolutely bourgeois task of safeguarding the imperialist governments against defeat. The only policy of actual, not verbal disruption of the “class truce”, of acceptance of the class struggle, is for the proletariat to take advantage of the difficulties experienced by its government and its bourgeoisie in order to overthrow them. This, however, cannot be achieved or striven for, without desiring the defeat of one’s own government and without contributing to that defeat.

            When, before the war, the Italian Social-Democrats raised the question of a mass strike, the bourgeoisie replied, no doubt correctly from their own point of view, that this would be high treason, and that Social-Democrats would be dealt with as traitors. That is true, just as it is true that fraternisation in the trenches is high treason. Those who write against “high treason”, as Bukvoyed does, or against the “disintegration of Russia”, as Semkovsky does, are adopting the bourgeois, not the proletarian point of view. A proletarian cannot deal a class blow at his government or hold out (in fact) a hand to his brother, the proletarian of the “foreign” country which is at war with “our side”, without committing “high treason”, without contributing to the defeat, to the disintegration of his “own”, imperialist “Great” Power.

            Whoever is in favour of the slogan of “neither victory nor defeat” is consciously or unconsciously a chauvinist; at best he is a conciliatory petty bourgeois but in any case he is an enemy to proletarian policy, a partisan of the existing governments, of the present-day ruling classes.

            The Defeat of One’s Own Government in the Imperialist War, V.I. Lenin

    • Listen, I’m as anti-imperialist as the next guy. But realistically if the core of capital that has nearly unopposed dominion over the entire world recedes, another entity that deserves the moniker of ‘empire’ completely equally will step in to fill the void! And if that’s the case, we should just support the most morally righteous empire. Ours >:-D

      • OBJECTION! ( Objection@lemmy.ml ) 
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        I think you may have misunderstood me. I’m not saying that imperialism is justified because of the possibility of a vacuum, I’m saying that the possibility of a vacuum is an acceptable risk for the sake of opposing imperialism.

    • theoneIno ( theoneIno@lemmy.ml ) 
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      the ones who prospered were the most aggressive ones, even conquering the whole world by force, it’s a survivorship bias situation.

      not every group of humans is aggressive, but those eventually get conquered by the agressive ones, military power always ends up winning.

      It’s unscientific to say that any country, given the chance, would do the same as the europeans or the US empire did to the world.

      At least the Chinese century will prove or disprove this theory, given it’s the first significant power shift in the last 500 years, let’s see if they will be so brutal as the US and its allies (you know who) are to the world.

      I firmly doubt it, there are no signs of brutality to other nations coming from the chinese, at most you could argue of some internal issues. There are no invasions, war or regime change operations done by China yet.

      As someone from the global south, I don’t fear China or even Russia in the least, I only fear what the US or Europe will try to inflict in my country, like the recent regime change operations that I lived through, that was pretty harsh.

          • Zagorath ( Zagorath@aussie.zone ) 
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            Even if you buy into all the best Chinese propaganda (oh, so it’s “terrorism” when Uyghurs fight against the state, but you’re ok with Palestinian freedom fighting? Where’s the consistency, tankies??), there’s no denying that China is imperialist by virtue of the fact that they rule over the Uyghur and Tibetan peoples despite enormous cultural differences to the ruling imperial core and a demonstrated desire for independence.

        • DerKommissar ( DerKommissar@lemmy.ml ) 
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          Even if your sources weren’t biased western rags and people that can’t speak a lick of Mandarin but can talk all the trash in the world about China in support of white settlerdom (adrian zenz has 23 citations on your bullshit-ass wikipedia article alone), at least China pays for the things they buy; rather than stealing it at gunpoint like the Americans, the French, any part of the countries that profited off the Transatlantic Slave Trade rly, other et cetera. While we wanna bullshit about ‘debt trapping’, since that’s obviously what you’re talking about, what’s the IMF again?

          Deeply unserious; and DEFINITELY not beating the “weakest link” allegations.

      • the ones who prospered were the most aggressive ones, even conquering the whole world by force, it’s a survivorship bias situation.

        this is my fundamental gripe with the problem, yes it’s technically a survivorship bias, but how do you remove it, that’s the hard question.

        If 10 people in a group agree to leave 10,000 USD on a table, such that after 20 minutes, they can all split it amongst themselves, and then turn off the lights in the room and plug their ears in the meantime, someone if not multiple people are going to try and take it all for themselves.

        Evolution has fundamentally programmed in a form of survivorship bias within basically every species. I don’t think you can separate it unfortunately.

        not every group of humans is aggressive, but those eventually get conquered by the agressive ones, military power always ends up winning.

        exactly.

        It’s unscientific to say that any country, given the chance, would do the same as the europeans or the US empire did to the world.

        i wouldn’t say that they would explicitly, but i would argue that being in a position of that much power, over that much of the world, in that much of a volatile position, there is a very high likelihood that they would influence some amount of the world, in a similar manner.

        At least the Chinese century will prove or disprove this theory, given it’s the first significant power shift in the last 500 years, let’s see if they will be so brutal as the US and its allies (you know who) are to the world.

        if we’re talking about modern day china, they already do a lot of power projection in the sea, illegally, same in the air. I don’t know if they’re doing any predatory lending to other countries, but that could very well change in the future, so we can’t say anything about it now. It’s highly likely that china at least wants other countries to be dependent on themselves at the minimum, which i would argue is a form of this power projection.

        They are 100% in a position to do things that are more predatory, time will tell, i predict they will, it’s inevitable, but i could be wrong. Either that or china itself implodes before we get to that point, so who knows.

        personally i know nothing about their military presence outside of the previously mentioned stuff. So i can’t really say anything about it, but there’s probably at least one bad thing they’ve done. Again, time will tell.

        • lad ( sukhmel@programming.dev ) 
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          It’s highly likely that china at least wants other countries to be dependent on themselves

          I may prefer being dependent to being conquered by force

        • theoneIno ( theoneIno@lemmy.ml ) 
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          I’m on mobile (and sleepy) rn, so I don’t think I can properly respond to all your points, but thanks for this comment, I found it overall very constructive!

          I’d just like to question one point for now

          If 10 people in a group agree to leave 10,000 USD on a table, such that after 20 minutes, they can all split it amongst themselves, and then turn off the lights in the room and plug their ears in the meantime, someone if not multiple people are going to try and take it all for themselves.

          Where are these people from? Urban, Rural, which country, which region etc, culture can have a big influence on that, I’d guess more collectivist cultures would have a different approach to this experiment than individualist ones such as you described. The country I live is also individualist so I see your point, but is all of humanity really like that?

          A Native American tribe of 10 people would probably coordinate to be able to split the money, or even to invest collectivelly in their own village for example. A group of 10 New York executives with survival of the fittest mentality would probably act like you described.

          Just some food for thought, hope you or anyone reading finds this interesting.

        • how do you remove it

          You can’t remove the bias in favour of aggression, but you can decouple aggression and oppression. You need to train the non-predators to get aggressive in defending one another. Look at elephants. They’re herbivores. They’re not out there attacking other species to exploit them. But no predator, not even lions, fucks with elephants. Because if you fuck with elephants, they’ll kick your ass.

          • theoneIno ( theoneIno@lemmy.ml ) 
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            Interesting point, based on this I could argue that military might (elephant power) is necessary for peace, if not used to coerce others

            a country that builds nuclear power to protect itself but has a no first aggression rule could be a parallel to the elephants

            • Si vis pacem, para bellum.

              That’s Latin for “if you want peace, prepare for war”. It was true 2000 years ago and it’s true now. If you want to be a pacifist, you should learn a martial art. If you want a peaceful government, you should learn to use a gun.

      • Umbrias ( Umbrias@beehaw.org ) 
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        the “always conquered” thing, this is a fatalism only justified by it being what happened, not what always must happen. this is an incredibly important distinction.

      • possibly, but i think it’s a sort of fundamental problem. I would be curious if history/anthropology has any sort of knowledge on societies that didn’t have a hierarchical power structure within itself. But i’m guessing it’s very uncommon, if not unheard of.

        If humans could do a communal governance structure effectively, one would think it would have already been tried, and successfully implemented.

        Democracy is probably the closest thing we’ve ever had, but it’s still not perfect.

        I’m sure theres also a lot of psych and socio research on this as well.

        there’s also the question of whether it’s even possible to have a communal government structure in the first place, the world is incredibly complex, and politics is even more complex, doing things correctly is very hard.

        TL;DR i don’t think it’s possible, and i’m not sure it ever will, judging by how humans behave.

  • spacedout ( spacedout@lemmy.ml ) 
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    So true! All the peaceniks yapping about the a bomb, flowers and trees are just pinkos. I heard a guy call for ceasefire in Palestine the other day, and I screamed to him: “Fuck off to Iran, if you like it so much”.

  • DerKommissar ( DerKommissar@lemmy.ml ) 
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    "The pure (libertarian) socialists ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted.

    Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed." - Michael Parenti, “Blackshirts and Reds”