‘Tankies’ (for the lack of a better word) have been against communism throughout history. It’s disingenuous to assume they could be capable of unity
I always wonder what the political left would look like in different European countries in the 20th century had it not been for the influence of the Soviet Union. Soviet influence ran, in my humble opinion, like poison through the veins of European socialist organisations. It seems to me like successful left wing mobilization is directly correlated with a relative lack of Soviet influence.
Yeah. They executed a lot of leftist thinking and set back progress for decades. And inadvertently were the reason for the red scare still deeply ingrained in many
Even ignoring the executions, they set the party agenda for a lot of European communist parties, struck down independent local organization (which were more in line with traditional communitarian ideas), and made the political left wing something that could more legitimately be written off as a foreign influence rather than a legitimate political movement because to an uncanny degree, that was just what it was.
This reflects my impression in countries like France - in Spain they of course took it to another level.
You mean the coup, revisionist, governments of Khrushchev, Brezhnev and the following reactionary anti-communists that destroyed the USSR were actually bad for leftism? Color me shocked.
Even “tankies” would agree that all the anti-communism, anti-Stalinism and anti-Leninism of the USSR after Stalin really fucked communism and leftism all over the world.
Or do you think “tankies” think the USSR after Stalin was “based”? What even is this take?
What even is this indeed. I was talking about the influence of the Comintern, through which the Soviet Union set the agenda of socialist parties all over Europe.
The Comintern ended in '43, but there’s a broken part of the European left that never stopped sucking up to Russia. These days they’re thankfully just a bunch of weirdos that nobody really gives a shit about, but back in the 30s this stuff mattered.
Your point being the USSR was influential because it was… what evil?
Doesn’t it make sense they were influential because they were like the only socialist state at the time? And they actually did support many, if not most, anti-colonial and leftist movements all over the world. Like, if you were a leftist in Africa, and needed help fighting against colonialism and stuff, there was only the USSR around to help you. And they did help, a lot.
They had the largest increase in quality of life in history prior to China, they pioneered space exploration and computation. They had the most advanced laws to protect minorities, to guarantee equality for women etc. Their universities were free for people on the 2nd AND 3rd world to attend.
How exactly were they so terrible? And please, don’t list things every country did exactly the same or worse.
Or do you think all the good they did is completely nullified by the bad?
Would it be best for humans to stop trying to do good, never try to learn from the bad, and just give up?
I recommend reading Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia!
It’s a great read and gives a lot of insights into the dynamics I’m describing. The infighting between leftist fractions gets pretty technical, but Orwell does a great job with it.
Orwell is a piece of shit traitor who worked for the UK government to fight communists. AND he was a racist piece of shit. I will never read any books by him, thanks.
I refuse to read explicit anti-communists who worked for fascists states outing communists and disrupting their parties.
Chef’s kiss
Just call em authoritarians. That’s what they are
Hexbear comes here to be the debate bros they try so hard to dunk on. They are dying looking for just one little morsel of dunk. Not a good showing, not a leftist unity moment lmao
They’re starving, man
What an impressive turn out. Looks like they’re all using the exact same “arguments” (a combination of manipulation techniques and logical fallicies) that they use every single time.
It’s worrying how much of a presence these people create in online discourse because they come out in full force, dominating and suppressing anyone or thing that challenges them. There is no healthy debate.
But i suppose it all makes perfect sense; these people glorify the state, single party rule and dictatorship. Their behavior is a logical result of these beliefs
You know, there’d be a whole lot less gish-galloping propaganda in the comments here if you were to defederate hexbear. Just sayin. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hexbears don’t bother me, but I seem to be bothering them quite a lot
Just like with fascists though, it’s better not to let them propagandize, even if you aren’t personally triggered by it.
Eh half of them are just making asses out of themselves by going full mask off. I don’t think they’ve had a great showing.
The quality of their arguments doesn’t really matter though, nor does it matter whether they’re able to convince a majority of people. What matters is that they can reach the few people that will find their overall presentation intriguing enough to merit further investigation, and then pull those people down the rabbit hole. It’s the same strategy that fascists use, just red-flavored instead of brown.
It also makes the space overall less appealing to your actual target audience, which is a cardinal sin of online community management.
…gonna pop in and agree, dbzer0 may have got carried away with engaging with them.
Hexbear also doesn’t have downvotes, their instance heavily emphasizes commenting to show the quality of a post, rather than vote, in most cases anyways.
But they do definitely rally behind their own and do both, as seen in this thread. It’s like kicking a hornets nest.
Just saying, if you have Kbin nazis tempting you to defederate hexbear, you need to reevaluate how you’re carrying yourself.
They create such lame excuses to defend things like Trotsky assassination it’s awful
Meme has been ammended to not be racist. Sorry about not paying close enough attention to it. I’ve been having issues with my object storage and I’ve been trying to fix it. In the end I decided to rehost on imgur.
Neat, now we can see how long before/if federated instances update that.
Just a hint: if you find yourself accidentally doing racism, maybe stop and consider if you’re doing the right thing.
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holy shit
What’s a Tankie?
EDIT: The range of definitions below is interesting
A slang term for authoritarian communists.
A liberal who waves a red flag and pretends they aren’t liberal. Often they call everyone else (including us) liberal. 😂 😉
One upside is that the flaming comments is less lethal than bullets. Of course if they start kicking in doors because of comments we have a different problem.
What in the actual fuck is going on in here?
I guess you could say it’s…Anarchy?
Just going to say what I say every time this shit shows its ugly head: Anticommunism is always profascism. You are siding with nazis.
EDIT: when the place starts getting infested with nazis you have nobody to blame but yourself for effectively inviting them over.
I’m not anticommunism ya dolt.
You are when you do that.
Anarchists have criticized Marxists from the left since the time of Bakunin.
Cool, continue to do so in ways that don’t align with nazis.
Anarchists saying we don’t trust tankies because they have a history of killing us when they’re in power is aligning with Nazis now?
Just a thought, maybe it’s because you all start acting like nazis the instant the government turns socialist? Maybe consider not doing that??
Ye, that totally fills me with confidence about MLs now…
Just because you seem to say it often doesn’t make it less stupid
Anticommunism is always profascism
Desired result: oh no now I must be Communist.
Actual result: whelp, I guess I’m a fascist then.
So we dont trust authoritarian communists/socialists. How does this influence our praxis?
It doesn’t really. Just keep doing anarchist things and don’t allow ML entry-ism and agitate for direct action moves instead of top down decision making.
Hmmmm I kinda get that and actually agree. Buuuuut I feel like actually doing this might be hard and sometimes one might have to disengage because the ML entry-ism actually succeeded.
Just wanted to come in and say good job op, you managed to make a very entertaining thread. Big ups
This will stand as a great monument to Hexbear
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