These “tankies” are conservative right-wing shitbag trolls trying to convince the normal people that supporting oppression and dictators is somehow “left-wing”. Do not fall for their conservative bullshit.
Just like any other conservative, every word they utter is deception or manipulation. Tankies are conservative trolls through and through.
That’s a no true Scotsman argument.
There are plenty of actual tankies here. In fact, the Lemmy software is created by tankies and one of the larger Lemmy instances is run by them.
From what I’ve seen, there’s a big divide amongst the tankies. There are those who are basically Stalin MAGA, base their political opinions on Soviet aesthetics and don’t consider much the practical implications of their actions. Some simply lash out against mainstream liberal ideology and others are just trolls.
Ane the other camp is made of people who read a lot of communist philosophy and are absolutely convinced the only way to achieve an equal society is by forcing everyone into it. This has its own problems, but they at least have an internally coherent ideology.
That’s not to say I agree with either camp. Their ideology promotes a vanguard party which can quickly spiral into “some are more equal than others”. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and all that. But I do understand where the second camp is coming from. I think the path to a better world lies in trade unions and people coming together to defend common interests.
When they are actively censoring and banning people who make critical comments about the PRC, the USSR, or even present day Russia, I don’t care where they come from.
I was banned from lemmy.ml myself for saying something about the Tiananmen Square massacre.
or even present day Russia,
How did this even happened? How can anyone not right-wing ban for opposing Putin’s oligarchs like Usmanov, Roldugin, Rotenberg, Yakunin and Putin himself?
West bad, not-West good
That’s literally all they care about.
If you push them they yell “just joking bro” or ban you immediately.
I was just banned from leftymemes because I was having a conversation about Democrats. They essentially said that the Democrats suck because they don’t want to sink the levels of depravity of the Alt-Right. I pretty much said, whatever happened to “Be the Change you want to see?” They want a government that works together. You can’t do that be being savage, raving, lying lunatics like the Alt-Right.
Apparently that’s enough to get you banned by the Alt-Left. Fuck them
You got banned for a month because you posted an off topic anti-China meme in the thread looking for moderators of the memes sub with the text “Why, so you can censor some more posts critical of China? The modlog of this sub is absolutely ridiculous:”
The ban expired a month ago so I guess feel free to go back.
E: after more carefully scrutinizing the images in the modlog, you posted a screenshot of people being banned or having posts removed for posting gore and debunked sinophobic stuff.
Debunked sinophobic stuff like what? In my experience, that category includes anything critical of China, including Tiananmen Square.
It depends on what you mean by “including Tiananmen Square”. The narrative that you see among many westerners is so detached from reality it’s on the same level as flat earth or climate change denial, but no tankie would deny that hundreds of people died in clashes between police/military and violent activists on the night of June 4 1989.
Oh, is there a 97% consensus among historians that the western narrative of Tiananmen is wrong the same way that 97% of studies indicate climate change is real and human caused? Are there entire fields of study that only exist because of the agreement that the western narrative of Tiananmen is wrong like plate techtonics for the spherical earth? Do we have constant access to the physical evidence of the CCPs claim like we do with satellites that can only work with a spherical earth?
Even assuming you are being hyperbolic, your statement is outrageous on its face.
Did you not see the other commenter in this thread saying that not a single student protester died?
Also I love the attempt to shift the blame by “clarifying” that it was “violent activists” that died and not more neutral terms like student protesters or citizens demanding democracy.
Quick question, if the CCPs actions were so clearly justified and good, why does China spend so much energy and money trying to keep their citizens in the dark about it?
I think there were two links to the gore page people post and a couple of responses saying you couldn’t even talk about tiannamen square.
The first is clear what it is, I’d call the second one sinophobic because it’s patently untrue and is basically an anti-china buzzword now. Idk why mods did what they did.
Genuine question, is criticism of the Israeli government, even based on falsehoods or misunderstandings, antisemitism?
To say that reference to a historical event that the CCP doesn’t believe happened the way the west does is sinophobic is on the same level. At best you’d have people with unjustified animus towards the government of China but not its people. After all, is the claim that the people of China collectively slaughtered those student protesters demanding reasonable changes to a corrupt system or that the government did so?
deleted by creator
I went back before you replied and double checked thinking “surely that wasn’t what happened” and you’re right, it was an image of the modlog with a bunch of removed posts of gore and sinophobic stuff.
If you want to block an entire instance of users the tools ought to exist in .nls version of lemmy.
Idk tbh, I never block anything.
deleted by creator
No you didn’t.
That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Where’s your source?
There are plenty of actual tankies here.
When a term becomes an insult, it’s very difficult to use it as anything other than an insult.
I more often see “tankie” used to decribe anti-war liberals than pro-war leftists.
There are two useful tests when evaluating the value of words like this:
-
Do people use it as a form of self-identification? If they do, that’s probably the real definition. If they don’t it’s probably just an insult.
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Does the word have a consistent definition? If the definition frequently shifts to suit the needs of the speaker, it’s probably not a real definition.
I really like your first point! Second one is a little tricky. It’s not just a fluctuation with an individual, but rather the difference between groups. Bottom line, the consistent definition depends on your own exposure to it, if you’re not going by what others claim to be “is the most frequent.”
The second one is definitely a bit trickier.
I think there are two major forms of inconsistency that matter most.
-
When the parties in a conversation use different definitions for a word, they will just argue in circles. They may both have good points but neither party will understand the other. That’s often fairly easy to resolve, “I can understand your point if we use your definition of X. We can also see how my point stands if we use my definition of X. How about we call them X1 and X2 so we don’t get confused?”
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When one party uses different definitions of the word it’s fair to ask them to pick one or to be explicit about when they’re shifting definitions. When someone says, “I believe Y because X is TRUE and I believe Z because X is NOT TRUE,” they’ve introduced a huge logical hole which needs to be addressed.
-
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Both r/conservative and lemmy.ml are equally frightened of facts.
In my own experience with actual Communists (I do live in a country which has them), they’re some of the most conservative people around.
I mean, these people are holding on really hard to political slogans which often are a century old or near it and they genuinelly an uncritically think all that stuff is Leftwing even in the face of all evidence that such forms invariably led to the creating of new Elites and to lesser or greater extent Dystopian Societies, never the promised Equalitarian Utopia.
Plenty of Lefties around who trully believe in Leftwing Principles without the insane tribalism of following the dictats of The Party.
Personally I just saw this meme as referencing such traditionalist unthinking muppets who think of themselves as Lefties all the while defending the well installed and entrenched establishment and elites of a few specific countries.
Russia was and is a culturally conservative country. The USSR made some early progress towards equality for women and LGBT folk, and turned it right back around a bit later. Russification under the Czar–trying to get all the diverse ethnic minorities to just be Russian–was simply turned into a Stalinist version of the same thing. The fundamental authoritarianism of the Czar never left, but it was given a Marxist coat of paint.
The USSR made some early progress towards equality for women and LGBT folk, and turned it right back around a bit later.
I’m sorry but this is just wrong. The Soviet Union was the first European country to legalize abortion - and after banning it again, they became the second European country to legalize abortion when they re-legalized it, and their commitment to women’s health surpassed any other country for decades as the Soviets provided abortion on demand rather than after a laundry list of restrictions as most of their contemporaries did. The Soviets also had universal childcare, freeing women from the tyranny of domestic servitude decades before any other developed country would, and the legacy of this effort is so strong that even the capitalist successor regimes in Eastern Europe outperform the ones in the West in terms of having female scientists, heads of government departments, etc. The women of the Soviet Union were the freest women in the world for the entirety of the USSR’s existence.
True the Soviets never came around on LGBT issues, which is a shame.
True the Soviets never came around on LGBT issues, which is a shame.
Not even completely true. After the civil war and prior to the crackdowns of the 30s, gay marriage was legalized, and there were soviet scientists already proclaiming that gender was more akin to a spectrum than to a binary. Sadly, that progress was lost forever after Stalinism.
Unfucking it and refucking it and unfucking it again is not exactly success. No more so than recent changes to abortion in the US. And there’s a whole lot more to Feminism than abortion.
Unfucking it and refucking it and unfucking it again is not exactly success
…are you sure? Because if you end up with it unfucked, while in the rest of the world it is still fucked, then I would call that a success even if there was a rocky road to get there.
And the rest of my comment is about how it wasn’t just abortion. You should read it.
Yes, I’m quite sure in the context of my original argument that Russia was and is culturally conservative. A society that goes backwards like that never had a solid feminist culture to begin with.
All across the west we’ve seen rollback of feminist issues over the past decade, do you think that that nullifies all of the victories that have been won? Liberation struggle isn’t like a tech tree that you climb in one direction, it’s a constant back-and-forth battle being waged between the oppressed and the oppressors.
No, you do not see comrade. All of the people of mother Russia are Eurasians, which is it’s own unique people that have a culture that just so happens to be identical to Russian culture. You westerners just wouldn’t understand our eastern ways…
Having lived 20 years abroad, including my core years of personal adult development, and having returned to my homeland were I became a member of a small Leftwing party, I keenly notice just how much people are, seemingly unaware of it, frequently shaping their thinking and even practice of being Leftwing on local cultural factors: pushing up in the party the sons and daughters of old hands or selecting people for positions of responsibility based on liking them rather than merit isn’t really being Leftwing (it’s quite literally the opposite of Fair and by being unmeritocratic one actually reduces the chances of success of the party) and people making speeches of the “give shit to my group” (women, teaches, pensioners, whatever) variety isn’t being Leftwing, it’s disguising one’s greed as being “for the group” and has little to do with the common good.
The point being that all political ideologies get adjusted by those who practice tehm and they do it based on what they thing is normal, and most people think “normal” is what they’ve seen around themselves their whole lives, so it’s expect that the political ideologies that end up being successful in a country “go along with the grain of the wood” and adopt the local’s ideas of “normal”.
Well a lot of that can be explained by the fact that conservatives co-opted the left wing movements for communism and largely turned them into dictatorships. These governments endured several decades before collapsing, which allows newer conservatives to think of them as “the good ol days.”
It doesn’t mean they ever were communists. They just stole the name and ruined its reputation.
A simpler explanation is that the people who seek power are the worst of the bunch and they’ll say whatever it takes to get there and keep it - it’s a pretty well know thing since Ancient times that the best rulers are the ones who do NOT want to rule.
Sociopaths will just as easilly sing praises to Marxism-Leninism as they will to the Free Market, so don’t confuse whatever bullshit they spout to get to and stay at the top of the pile in an the power structures created by a specific ideology with their actual beliefs and don’t excuse the failures of the structures created by that ideology that allow such people to get to the top.
Even if the “Revolution” isn’t led by assholes, any power structure which centralizes power and doesn’t have hard to subvert mechanisms for constant change of who is in power, attract the worst vermin and they’re the one who will knifes as many backs as it takes to get it and keep it so they’re far more likely to get it than “good people”. This is true even in Power Duopoly systems like the US, and much worse in power monopolies like the Soviet Union and even Modern Russia.
That blaming of “others” for one’s own failures is just you having internalised the typical propaganda from the power hungry assholes (just as much from the ones portraying themselves as Fascists or from the ones portraying themselves as Communists) to deflect the blame for their own actions away from themselves.
Back to the specifics of your point, the inherent weakness of Socialism and Communism as opposed to more Democratic systems like Social Democracy, is that the former require a Dictatorship Of The Proletariat to reach the final utopia which was Equality For All, and invariably that supposedly temporary step were power and the Means Of Production are centralized becomes permanent, and they’re exactly the kind of structure that pulls is the worst assholes: Lenin was probably somebody who, at least to begin with, had his hearth in the right place (though with him too, the Power Corrupts dictum applies), whilst Stalin was a pure Sociopath.
I don’t disagree with you, but I wasn’t trying to explain the origins of communism, but rather why conservatives would feel nostalgia for it today.
I get the impression that a lot of conservatism (in the original sense of word) is really old people yearning for something from their old days, which is just the image they have of their youth beautified by the passage of time.
I can see that with old Communists in the country I lived in: they grew up with the fire of their youthfull belief in Communism, back in the days of Fascist Dictatorship and even more so in the days of the Revolution which overthrew that Dictatorship, so they yearn for that feeling back, not for the Fascist Dictatorship but for that “simple” Communist and the fire of believing it and acting it from their youth.
The thing is, it wasn’t that Communism back then was simpler (sure, the practical implementations of that ideology invariably had simple emotion-appealing slogans accessible to all people of all educational levels, but that was just the Propaganda and the reality of it was never simple), it was they themselves who were comparativelly simple as teenagers and young adults compared to their much older selves of present day.
Then around that you have a lot of young people who are attracted to simple explanations for things - same for Politics as for Religion - many of whom get swayed by those older people who trully believe that Communism of old was simple and pure.
So my theory is that it wasn’t as much conservatives who took over Communist, it’s that the ones who have been there and stuck with it their whole lives became conservative.
I’d bet that most of them aren’t trolls. I have friends who were liberal as you could be, but they let cynicism turn them into tankies.
Well there’s basically two kinds of tankie:
The grifters who run the cult and sell the rhetoric in exchange for clout, authority, arrogant self-importance, and the extraction of material support through abuse and exploitation,
And the cope-starved simps who are desperate to feel like they are doing something practical about their material conditions but have been too enervated after being fucked raw by corporate liberalism to actually do anything.
Remember Caleb Maupin? Exposed as a coercive sex pest? Ran a “commune” that was little more than a shoddy knockoff of a human trafficking operation? Yeah. That’s tankie “leadership” for you.
Wut
The association with the left-wing is the point. Otherwise it would just be calling right wing trolls conservatives and fascists, and there’s a resistance to that for some reason.
Haha no, they are real. Horseshoe theory of politics and all, what comes around goes around.
And thus we have Poe’s law. No matter the fiction a grifter dreams up, society will produce an emtire group that truely believe worse.
Fuck all imperialist and hierarchical power structures. Fuck colonialism and fuck the police. Fuck fascists and the libs that enable them.
Xi Jinping is a fascist, and I don’t think it was liberals that enabled him
Xi’s also an imperialist and implemented a hierarchical government. Nothing I said was paradoxical. Fuck 'em all.
What liberals enabled Xi??
Did I say that all authoritarians are enabled by liberals? What agenda are you trying to push by misconstruing my words? Like seriously what point are you trying to reach here?
fuck fascists and the liberals who enable them.
I think it was this part where you link fascists to liberal enablers.
But that =/= “every fascist is and always has been enabled by liberals.”
They’re saying that it’s very common for liberals to side with a rising fascist over the left in a misguided attempt to maintain the status quo. They’d typically rather move to the right instead of giving any quarter to the left, because the left wants to upend the structures of oppression, while the right wants to bolster them—while scapegoating an out-group.
Look at what macron is doing in France right now. Moving to the right to build a coalition with them to go against the majority left coalition that won the election.
I didn’t stutter. Fuck every liberal enabling the rise of fascism.
Ah I see. Your point would have been clearer if it was “ fuck the fascists and
theany liberals who enable them”
Nixon
The only country actually running over people with tanks is Israel and does it with the unconditional support of the US
Liberals as always don’t see Arabs as people. Don’t you dare come asking for our votes.
Do Arabs get to vote in the US?
Or if you mean Arabs that chose to go live in the US, I don’t think they care too much about a country that, well, murdered all the natives
Yes, Arab Americans do and are enough to swing elections in Michigan and a few other states
In Michigan, for example, Biden won in 2020 by 154,000 votes. Census estimates put the state’s Arab American population around at least 278,000.
Biden won Arizona by 10,500 votes. The Arab American population in the Grand Canyon State is estimated to be 60,000.
Biden took Georgia by 11,800 votes. The Arab American population there is at least 57,000.
https://www.axios.com/2023/11/29/arab-american-voter-defections-biden-2024
Hear fuckin hear!
How many billionaires before a country is a liberal shit-hole?
600?
675?
Idk man, one seems like too many to me.
China’s around 695, guessing the threshold is 700. That’s when the tankies will turn on it for sure.
Punk is not dead
Here here
And by “liberal” you mean anyone who dares criticise Daddy Putin and Supreme Leader Xi, amirite?
Dude my very first sentence was “Fuck all imperialist and hierarchical power structures.” How can you think that I support China or Russia?
Uh oh, you’ve activated the libs. Now they’ll make wild assumptions and other fabrications instead of actually addressing anything you’ve said.
Uh oh, you’ve activated the
libstankies. Now they’ll make wild assumptions and other fabrications instead of actually addressing anything you’ve said.FTFY, lib
You seem to be under the impression that liberals have a logically and ethically consistent belief structure.
The realization that liberals are unscratched fascists is a tough one, but you are one of the few intelligent folks able to recognize it… it’s a curse.
you’re such an online edgelord that you’re fighting straw men of your own creation. sign off, your family probably misses you.
Oops. Posted on tankie news again. Always forget to check.
Edit: actually, i retract that. I got mixed up with another thread.
Your use of tankie is exactly like the conservative use of woke. You’re not even close to superior to those you mock. Hopefully one day you realize that and actually apply that human brain of yours.
Just to be clear, you don’t think I should be against liberals enabling fascism? You don’t see anything wrong with the slow march to the far right that’s happening in so many parts of the world recently?
The irony of a liberal calling an anarchist authoritarian… Liberals are simps for an authoritarian economic system
I’m just really annoyed by “liberal” constantly being equated with “fascist enabler” round here. If anyone calls themselves a liberal while supporting fascists, they’re just fascists in disguise. While there are people like that, that’s not what liberalism means, in fact, it’s quite the opposite.
Please, enlighten me about what you think liberalism means. In my view (as an anarchist) liberalism is at best ineffective at preventing fascism from taking over. It enables colonialism and imperialism, and offers no solution to the horrors of capitalism. Liberal ideology is one of state violence and compromise with literal fascists.
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law. Liberals espouse various and often mutually warring views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion, Liberalism is frequently cited as the dominant ideology of modern history.
- Wikipedia
Dude, liberals literally helped Hitler become Reichskanzler.
For anyone not familiar, that was in no small part thanks to Paul von Hindenburg. If only he had instead gone the way of the zeppelin named after him.
It’s a language issue. You’re likely from the United States, where liberal is used to suggest an adherent to classical liberalism or progressivism. Most of the rest of the English speaking world means neoliberal, as in an advocate or supporter of free-market capitalism, deregulation, and the reduction of government spending.
I’m fortunately not from the US. But you’re right. A lot of people equate liberal with neoliberal or libertarian. Which is a real bummer.
focusing on voting as the only allowed political action, supporting capitalism, valuing order over justice…
So many of them on Lemmy lol
They think liberal is the same as neoliberal
They clearly wrote fuck hierarchical powers. Fuck any supreme leader.
imperialism is the subjugation of one country for the benefit of the first. DPRK is not imperialist (how could it be under UN sanctions), PRC is not imperialist, USSR was not imperialist.
Communists critically support the DPRK, the USSR, and the PCR, progressive liberals uncritically support Obama, Biden, conservative liberals uncritically support Trump, Bush, etc
read lenin.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/
Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak? Quite a few comrades always keep their eyes shut and talk nonsense, and for a Communist that is disgraceful. How can a Communist keep his eyes shut and talk nonsense?
It won’t do!
It won’t do!
You must investigate!
You must not talk nonsense!
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-6/mswv6_11.htm
The instance you use is named after an Ikea plush. I will not debate you.
Look dude I’ve worked with many MLs and MLMs. I’ve read some of both Lenin and Mao’s works. I think the recent rhetoric of calling communists fascist is wholely harmful to the left and I don’t participate in it. I never called the DPRK imperialist for obvious reasons. I didn’t even call the PRC imperialist because I do recognize that western media is not a reliable source on the matter. I recognize my own ignorance in these matters and don’t take part in uncritically decrying post-revolution communist states.
We disagree on the way a just society should be structured, or the methods of achieving that end. I consider authoritarianism and unjust hierarchies as a problem of both capitalism and state communism, but as long as my viewpoints can be heard and addressed, I personally don’t have issue with MLs and MLMs. The atrocities of capitalism far outweigh the failures of established communist states.
Communism is neither left nor right. It is just a construct of governance. While it was originally promoted by leftists, it can be either left or right. Some communists are conservative and/or fascist (ex. China).
Communism is neither left nor right.
The Left/Right divide is about property. Should it be collectivized, or individually owned and traded, ie Socialism vs Capitalism. Communism, therefore, must be left-wing.
It is just a construct of governance.
Yes and no. Communism is also economic in nature.
While it was originally promoted by leftists, it can be either left or right.
You cannot have Right-Wing Communists.
Some communists are conservative and/or fascist (ex. China).
The PRC is socially conservative, yes. Economically, it is Socialist, though certainly not yet Lower-Stage Communist. This does not make China “fascist” or right-wing. It is a socially reactionary, economicaly progressive state.
USSR was not imperialist.
Countries like Estonia might disagree with you there, buddy.
After 30+ years of anti-communist propaganda, of course many countries in Eastern Europe may “disagree”. As a currently ongoing example, the other day there was an article ( paywalled, but you can read it pasting the link in 12ft.io ) in the Spanish newspaper “El País” about a new museum in Moldova dedicated to the forcibly relocated to other parts of the USSR during the late 30s. The article talks about the horrors of Stalinism and how 90k people from the region were forcibly relocated in 1937-1941, although the majority were allowed to return in the 50s. All that’s good, having a memory of our history is a good thing. But then, the article goes on with some conversation with the “Director of the National Agency of Archives in Moldova”, Igor Casu. I’ll translate to Spanish:
Casu considers that the war in neighboring Ukraine started by Russia has made the [Moldovan] citizens begin to perceive the Soviet regime as one of occupation and colonisation
So, basically, conflating the current imperialist capitalist Russia with communist USSR. But the funny part comes now, when they actually quote Casu:
“We hope that if the deportations keep being exposed ni the following five years, we’ll achieve that a solid part of the population will be really informed, and, at the same time, that they’ll consolidate a national identity”
So, they’re going FULL mask-off, and basically saying “we want to show this particular side of history not with the objective of remembrance of victims, but actually to create a new national identity based on the independence from supposedly oppressive Russia”. Fostering nationalism and anti-Russian sentiment as part of the new national identity. This is the recipe that’s been successfully applied to most of Eastern Europe for the past 30+ years, and you can see the results by asking any Polish person what they think of Russians. If this isn’t clear enough, the article reminds us:
During the last years, under the rule of the pro-European government, this ex-Soviet republic has been making efforts to propagate knowledge of the suffering created by the phenomenon of “Russification” that took place […]
Mind you, not a single reference in the article or the monument, to the 140.000 Jews deported by the Nazis during the 1940s invasion in Moldova, of whom 90.000+ were murdered in concentration camps. Let’s remember the victims of horrors of our history, but only those politically convenient to us now. Since we want to get closer to western Europe, including Germany, let’s put those killed by Nazis (many more than by Soviets) aside for now.
If you look at historical evidence, you can’t possibly make the argument that Estonia was subjugated and exploited by the USSR. The local language was preserved and there was an abundance of written publications in Estonian, people were allowed to study in the local language, the salaries were similar to those in the rest of the USSR (or higher actually), industrialization rates were equal or higher to those of the rest of the USSR, number of doctors/teachers and hospital beds per capita were equal… really, none of the telltales of imperialism are there. If you want to see a discussion with actual data regarding this, I suggest you have a look at “Human Rights in the Soviet Union” by Albert Szymanski, a wonderful book filled to the brim with data and a rather nuanced discussion.
So let’s not pretend that there hasn’t been a strong effort from pro-western authorities in all of Eastern Europe into pushing the narrative that this made-up historically continuous “Russia” has been exploiting and colonising Eastern Europe, and let’s not pretend that the opinion of most people in Eastern Europe who’ve been exposed to this campaign for the past 3 decades is unbiased and historically accurate (because public opinion never is).
Cool. The USSR still invaded and annexed Estonia. And Lithuania. And Latvia. And Armenia. Shall I go on?
Military invasion =/= imperialism, I’m surprised I have to explain this to a leftist.
Funny, invading multiple countries and making them part of your country sure sounds like it fits that definition to me.
Invading another country preventively in the wake of WW2 and the threat of Nazism =/= imperialism, I’m sorry buddy. Not defending the invasion of Estonia, but categorising it as imperialism is dumb and ahistorical.
The South China Sea, Poland and most of eastern Europe would like a word…
Edit: Oh, and Tibet, Taiwan, etc…
Poland and most of eastern Europe would like a word
I’ve answered already to someone else making the example of Estonia, but I’ll answer you too so that you can see my take.
After 30+ years of anti-communist propaganda, of course many countries in Eastern Europe may “disagree”. As a currently ongoing example, the other day there was an article ( paywalled, but you can read it pasting the link in 12ft.io ) in the Spanish newspaper “El País” about a new museum in Moldova dedicated to the forcibly relocated to other parts of the USSR during the late 30s. The article talks about the horrors of Stalinism and how 90k people from the region were forcibly relocated in 1937-1941, although the majority were allowed to return in the 50s. All that’s good, having a memory of our history is a good thing. But then, the article goes on with some conversation with the “Director of the National Agency of Archives in Moldova”, Igor Casu. I’ll translate to Spanish:
Casu considers that the war in neighboring Ukraine started by Russia has made the [Moldovan] citizens begin to perceive the Soviet regime as one of occupation and colonisation
So, basically, conflating the current imperialist capitalist Russia with communist USSR. But the funny part comes now, when they actually quote Casu:
“We hope that if the deportations keep being exposed ni the following five years, we’ll achieve that a solid part of the population will be really informed, and, at the same time, that they’ll consolidate a national identity”
So, they’re going FULL mask-off, and basically saying “we want to show this particular side of history not with the objective of remembrance of victims, but actually to create a new national identity based on the independence from supposedly oppressive Russia”. Fostering nationalism and anti-Russian sentiment as part of the new national identity. This is the recipe that’s been successfully applied to most of Eastern Europe for the past 30+ years, and you can see the results by asking any Polish person what they think of Russians. If this isn’t clear enough, the article reminds us:
During the last years, under the rule of the pro-European government, this ex-Soviet republic has been making efforts to propagate knowledge of the suffering created by the phenomenon of “Russification” that took place […]
Mind you, not a single reference in the article or the monument, to the 140.000 Jews deported by the Nazis during the 1940s invasion in Moldova, of whom 90.000+ were murdered in concentration camps. Let’s remember the victims of horrors of our history, but only those politically convenient to us now. Since we want to get closer to western Europe, including Germany, let’s put those killed by Nazis (many more than by Soviets) aside for now.
If you look at historical evidence, you can’t possibly make the argument that Estonia was subjugated and exploited by the USSR. The local language was preserved and there was an abundance of written publications in Estonian, people were allowed to study in the local language, the salaries were similar to those in the rest of the USSR (or higher actually), industrialization rates were equal or higher to those of the rest of the USSR, number of doctors/teachers and hospital beds per capita were equal… really, none of the telltales of imperialism are there. If you want to see a discussion with actual data regarding this, I suggest you have a look at “Human Rights in the Soviet Union” by Albert Szymanski, a wonderful book filled to the brim with data and a rather nuanced discussion.
So let’s not pretend that there hasn’t been a strong effort from pro-western authorities in all of Eastern Europe into pushing the narrative that this made-up historically continuous “Russia” has been exploiting and colonising Eastern Europe, and let’s not pretend that the opinion of most people in Eastern Europe who’ve been exposed to this campaign for the past 3 decades is unbiased and historically accurate (because public opinion never is).
Oh, and Tibet, Taiwan
Funny that you mention those two as well. Taiwan’s national identity, again, has been manufactured from the ground up over the past 30+ years. The data that western countries celebrate of Taiwanese people mostly declaring themselves to be “only Taiwanese”, is a fairly recent trend. From the link above:
According to the latest survey by National Chengchi University in Taipei (June 2023), 62.8 percent of the inhabitants of the Republic of China perceive themselves as “Taiwanese only,” 30.5 percent “both Taiwanese and Chinese,” and 2.5 percent “Chinese only.” In 1992, when surveys began, 25.5 percent described themselves as “Chinese only” and 17.6 percent “Taiwanese only,” with the remaining 46.4 percent “both Taiwanese and Chinese.”
So the country has gone from a 17.6% of “Taiwanese only” and a 25.5% of “both Taiwanese and Chinese” in 1992, to 63% of “Taiwanese only” and 2.5% of “Chinese only”. Funny how it’s the exact same process that I was describing above for Estonia and Moldova, in which 30+ years of propaganda can generate a new national identity and generate negative feelings towards previously friendly neighboring countries!
Regarding Tibet, I don’t think I’ll find such polls about national identity. However, until the Sino-Tibetan war, Tibet was literally a feudal country in which an aristocracy owned the lands and serfs were legally bound to the land as workers. When you criticise the lack of Tibet’s autonomy after the Sino-Tibetan war, remember that you’re arguing in favor of a literal feudal regime with aristocrats and serfs.
‘The instance you use is named after an Ikea plush. I will not debate you.’
This JK Rowling?
I think you proved their point. Also, your ad hominem attack (or ad urbem attack) could be construed as transphobic.
Lmao
‘The Libs,’ LOL!!!
From a anon American, it’s hilarious seeing the hick come out. ‘the Libs hur durrr.’
Hahaha that shits always funny
You’re replying to a leftist, not a conservative “hick.”
Tankies
That’s the average lemmy.ml user
I had one of these fucks try to tell me that North Korea is very democratic.
Easy, NK: One man, one vote. Thus democratic.
And the man? It’s Kim.
They literally have democratic in their name!!1!1!! /s
A shitpile by any other name…
They turn all the lights out at night because everyone voted for it, not because they are a failing authoritarian state that struggles to keep their grid running. Allows for great stargazing from the very normal hard labor camps.
SEEEEE THEY HAVE ONE MORE PARTY IN PARLAMENT THAN THE USA!!!11!1! /j
Wait, really? It says more about USA than about Korea. How does one become even worse than Korea? It is antiachivement.
In literally no instance is the USA worse than north Korea. Unless you count the lack of murder death camps and a supreme dictator for life as something to be better at
The USA has a higher rate of incarceration.
Based on the number of incarceration we know. Who knows if that’s true and how many are executed
Well, now I know about 3 countries in the world with death penalty: USA, Belarus and NK.
Belarusians are working on this.
No it doesnt. NKs parlament is for show and fasade.
Kim’s party holfs 98% of the seats. The other 2 partys hold no power at all and arent an opposition. They always vote with the main party.
No it doesnt. NKs parlament is for show and fasade.
Helloooo… Are you replying to something else? Or you don’t know what an antiachivement is? That’s the entire point.
Now, I don’t like violence. But even I can see that there’s a difference between violence waged for imperialism and violence waged against imperialism.
And you can see the difference too. That’s why Obama and Biden always say that their wars are being waged “for freedom”. That’s why you accept the violence of historical revolutions like the American Revolution.
The problem is, Obama and Biden are lying when they say their wars are for freedom. Their wars are for profit and control.
People here claiming it’s not the case are just wrong. I’ve been banned from multiple instances and had posts deleted by these bozos. Actually authoritarians lol
I can agree with the text while being against the authoritarians pictured.
I just hope people don’t think that everyone complaining about US imperialism is somehow fine with Russian or Chinese actions of the same hue.
The US as least has a flawed democracy.
Lemmy was originally built by and for tankies, so this is completely unsurprising. The .ml TLD on the original instance isn’t a coincidence.
Lemmygrad was literally made to be an even more mask off .ml
Weird they made a decentralized platform for one single group.
They made it for themselves but let us set up instances outside of their control due to their morals that software should be open for all. Again proving the best open source software comes from scratching a personal itch.
How authoritarian of them
Of course it’s OUR SOFTWARE
(cue soviet anthem)
/s
Of course it’s OUR SOFTWARE
(cue soviet anthem)
Which one? I choose The Internationale.
Off-topic, but the Starlight Glimmer art is on the point so well.
Starlight is one of the best representations of the Tankie IMO.
And the writers had the guts to pull it off in a show meant for a 5yo.
That’s impressive honestly.
Kinda. S5 GlimGlam? Yes. S6? Nah.
The problem was childhood-trauma-induced fake-smiles-forcing cutiemark-taking with propaganda. Remove it and what remains isn’t bad. Doesn’t seem to be much different from ideology of other places.
As an example from first season there is Winter Wrap-up, which is basically annual subbotnik.
That’s true, now that I think about it. But I still think the writers nailed the mindset in S5.
The final battle between Starlight and Twilight was epic for the lack of a better word.
I can see the decentralized platform as a communist parallel. I don’t, however, understand the fanaticism for the murdery shit show dictatorship that was Russia/China though.
the murdery shit show dictatorship that was Russia/China
You have been heavily propagandized about these countries. They were not as bad as you think they were and in fact had many elements where they were plainly superior to their contemporaries. On balance, these countries were far better to their citizens than equivalent capitalist countries, and far less damaging to the world at large than the American Empire has been, even when you take into account their mistakes.
It’s a pretty standard take on the commie side that stuff like colonialism and American slavery are pretty much the capitalist equivalent of the communist mass deaths, so I think their position is that everyone’s a hypocrite who has to support a government committing some kind of mass murder (in the modern day, America’s mass murder in this lens is its alliance with Israel). Since Americans won’t admit their government’s atrocities (even though a lot of them do call out the US, but that’s not how they see it), why should they admit the atrocities of the USSR?
I mean… I see people around here presumably amarrican have zero issues discussing US atrocities. So at all Americans at least.
Never seem a tankie admit Stalin did a genocide once
And that’s okay. Most of them stay to their own instance and don’t come over and bother us normal people. Just ignore the crazies and move on
Communism and conservatism are not mutually exclusive. Conservative communism involves dictators and oppression. That’s how that weird nonsense happened.
It’s almost like the dishonest nature is built into their every move.
CTH has been eradicated from every platform it’s arisen on, then they built Lemmy.
CTH didn’t build Lemmy, they forked it and then merged it back a few years later.
That is enlightening and not very surprising.
It was never closed to non-tankies, but it wasn’t very welcoming. I had an account on .ml early on and most of the time I got hammered with downvotes, despite having opinions that I’d describe as being on the left edge of liberalism.
and most of the time I got hammered with downvotes
Downvotes are federated.
Yeah but this was 3 years ago, Lemmy was basically only the .ml instance at that time.
To be clear, the left edge of liberalism is bernie sanders. Is that what youre saying?
By US standards maybe, but I’m to the left of that.
Some members of LDPR(e.g. Furgal) seem to be more left than Bernie. And LDPR is former LDPSU - first right-wing party of USSR. Or some members of Union of Right Forces.
Not corporate neofeudalist is better than corporate neofeudalist, which is improvement for US. But I can’t say he is on edge even of liberalism.
Meh, I’d say Bernie is either a social democrat or a reformist socialist who hides his power level.
He’s a self described democratic socialist
Correct, but I’m pretty sure he said he doesn’t want to completely socialize the economy.
Still have yet to see more than a lone tankie on any thread
Plenty of people vaguely gesturing at lemmy.ml for some reason thiugh
Lots of straw man wrestlers in this thread. 🥹
It’s weird that Mao, Sun Yat Sen, and Chiang Kai Shek, were all part of the same pro-democracy party early on in China’s civil war.
Mao won the war, Sun Yat Sen got out of there, Chiang Kai Shek was pushed out and became dictator of Taiwan.
China is weird.
Also weird is that one guy caused most of the deaths from famine in both the USSR and China: A conman named Trofim Lysenko, who was lying about having a new science of agriculture… He was bury seeds way further than they could handle then faking his results to keep his job… Killed like, 30 million people who were ordered to take up his techniques.
About China, you know what they say, it’s easier to be the opposition than to actually govern. Many of those who govern end up being corrupt or incompetent or both.
Who knows if mainland China under ROC would have been better. People say that will be the case when we look at Taiwan. But Taiwan suffered from thirty years of so-called White Terror and Taiwan eventually democratising is arguably pure luck due to a man whose name escapes me.
The trajectory of history is never predictable. There are far too many factors to consider; factors which are themselves caused by chain reactions of previous factors and events, which themselves are influenced by other previous events.
Lee Teng-Hui is the man that helped Taiwan transition into a democracy.
Chiang Kai Shek already oversaw a China beset with hyperinflation, pervasive corruption, and famine. That, too, is history.
It’s why the Maoists were able to launch a popular revolution in the first place. Chinese people had literally nothing to lose but their chains.
Chiang had to work with various warlords and bore most of the fight against the Japanese, while Mao gathered strength and let ROC to bleed itself. Even if ROC won and the CCP got destroyed, we don’t know if factionalism and warlord-ism will emerge since ROC had been weakened severely. Or, in another alternative time, Chiang and KMT had somehow pulled a miracle, and somehow made the entirety of China industrialised as quickly as post-war Japan and never had to resort to dictatorship and hence had always been democratic after World War 2.
If I remember it correctly, in China Mao ordered sparrow to be killed en masse because they supposedly ate the grain: turns out that what they ate were the pests that attacked the plants.
95% correct, the sparrows were also eating the grain, but removing the natural predator to the far worse pests resulted in far worse famine due to an explosion in population of pests. This was one of the factors that resulted in Mao losing influence in the party over time.
China is weird
Is it? There are plenty of examples of smaller factions joining forces to overthrow a common enemy, who later battled it out amongst themselves.
This is bidens fault
/S cause lemmy
I’d upvote the meme if it wasn’t also controversial to criticize all war criminals, including both those at the top and the bottom.
Edit: For a source, see people in this thread rushing to argue and feel called out when someone criticizes “all forms of imperialism”, including the Western ones.
“Let’s criticise everything.”
I mean there is a difference, and hearing “let’s criticise joe biden” after hearing about russia killing half a million people gets daunting in the long run. It feels like a new form of whataboutism.
Sure we should criticise all bad things, but I don’t really feel we are not criticising the west, quite the opposite. China, NK, Iran (Russia starts to get some, but not enough IMO) not so much.
What about Morocco? Mauretania, Kirgizistan or Libya? Or should we only have criticism for modern societies?
I’m open for discussion of course.
The usa is a giant military empire that literally indoctrinates children with flag swearing cultism stuff. Living in a world dominated by those fucks, who actively undermine the rules based order and refuse to rattify critical treaties/sabotage other treaties (e.g. sea floor resource stuff) is extremely stressful.
In my country, allegedly a democracy, the usa forced our government to secretly sign a trade deal that lets US companies sue our government… directly undermining sovereignty.
It sucks dude, we all fucking hate the usa because they ruin everything. I wouldn’t want to live next to Russia but they’re not fucking shit up over here so forgive me if I bitch about the dominant military empire that literally owns parts of where I live and makes us a target in war.
So you live in some country that doesn’t have a name?
Also, I mean this is whataboutisl at its finest. We all know west does bad things, but you know what? Russia is way worse. NK is way worse. China is way worse. Iran is way worse. But guess all you have is a personnal hatred for one and and only one specific country.
China is way worse
Point to the country that China has invaded in the last forty years killing millions of innocent people. Point to the country where Chinese-lead sanctions lead to the deaths of half a million children.
Oh? Those countries don’t exist? The worst of China’s crimes abroad are crashing into a fishing boat and throwing rocks at Indian soldiers along a contested border?
I’m down to criticize China when it fucks up but if you think it’s worse than the USA or any NATO country for that matter you are objectively wrong.
The Uyghur genocide is just one, in the 40 last years, before that it’s even worse. What a nice dictatorship.
You are such clowns.
The Uyghur genocide
Ah yes, the incredible evil of checks notes job training programs and anti-extremism outreach. I suppose China should have just bombed Xinjiang into dust instead, the American method.
When China kills it’s only sparkling death, not real murder.
Iran has never hurt me, China has never hurt me, never roped the country into an illegal war that left half my highschool mates broken meth addicts, Russia has never hurt me. Idk what to tell you. Empires are evil, necessarily. The usa is the inheritor of the British legacy, they export war and exploitation. I’m sure if Putin led such an empire it would also be ugly, I’d prefer a more balanced world.
Tbh China seems like a sort of bad neighbour (are there states which are good neighbours?) but they seem to generally be in favour of institutions like UN and they don’t militarise the shit out of the world. They’re a better trade partner than the usa.
Oh, but you see, it’s not about you sweetie.
They all kill mindlessly, go there and see for yourself, person from un nameable country.
… Um ok? And the usa doesn’t? Isn’t it like number 1 for imprisoned population on the planet? Ultimately though I can’t judge countries by their domestic situation, because that’s not something I can do anything about.
What I can judge countries by is how they destabilise the world and the ideology they export. The USA enforced, often extremely violently, a deeply exploitative world order which has effects locally for everyone. If Putin executes some dissidents then that is tragic, it is not however a globally significant issue. Something like the usa starting the war on drugs, strong arming nations into imprisoning or executing significant portions of disadvantaged populations is.
Or the usa couping governments left, right, and centre to maintain an exploitative resource extraction international order. Which destabilised the globe and oppresses millions is.
You might say “Iran would do that too!” but a) they haven’t and b) you’re guessing. Very few nations have ever behaved as badly as the usa/britain/france/spain. The others have chilled out, the usa hasn’t.
You’re doing the whataboutism again !
It’s almost as you copy paste that stuff… Hmmm maybe you’re not from “un nameable country” after all?
