• SomeLemmyUser@discuss.tchncs.de
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    Agree with you in general, but I think a lot if people here are not really informed what differences there are materialistic ideologies.

    Yes, Stalin bad.

    But Guevara is not Stalin.

    Marx is not che

    Engels is not Marx

    China is not communist.

    Marxism is not materialism

    Socialism is not communism

    Also the amount of people bringing the “the 3 times people tried socialism were bad, so the whole ideology must be bad” argument are way to high IMHO.

    How many times was capitalism tried? How many times it worked out? Is the USA a “functioning” state with all the oppression, racism, greed, invading other countries out of monetarian interest and environment destruction?

    While I agree with you, that oppression is bad, no matter what the oppressor calls himself, we should talk about policies without resorting to dogmas and generalising people in favor of fear the hegemonic class is propagating to stay in power.

    • Sekoia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      Yeah, that’s not the tankies here; these are “North Korea is a great country, actually” tankies.

      • TrashcanMarxist
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        Should probably listen to Blowback Season 3.

        Not to say they’re a perfect country but to pretend that anyone in the West can critique them when their material conditions are dictated by the actions of the West is just comical.

        If you aren’t a materialist, what are you even doing? As if history happens in the realm of pure thought…

          • TrashcanMarxist
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            Something something worlds largest prison population?

            Again, it’s not like North Korea is some shining example or anything, but to pretend that the west has the moral high ground here is laughable.

            Again, listen to Blowback Season 3, recognize that their country was basically bombed to the stone age Curtis le may style and then maybe reevaluate, just a little, the chauvinist attitude.

            DPRK is not a great country but it’s not as if they were ever given a chance either.

            • Sekoia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              Yeah, the US prison system is absolutely abhorrent and counterethical to all the principles it’s supposed to hold.

              First, the US is basically the only western country like that:tm:, second, more than one thing can be bad. “‘North Korea is a great country’ is a dumb position”, the only (implied) assertion I made about it in my original comment, is still true, even if they got dealt a shit hand (which, so did most of the east after WW2; South Korea was in a pretty similar state (it was actually worse than NK shortly after the Korean war), yet they’re doing… much better than NK at least).

              Being “basically bombed to the stone age” doesn’t mean a dictatorship is inevitable, nor that their government is suddenly blameless; being victimized doesn’t mean you can victimize others.

              Genuinely, if you take “the west” as a whole and compare it to North Korea… yeah, I do think they have a high ground. No, I’m not saying the west is perfect, far from it. No, I’m not saying communism is automatically bad, I’m totally cool with communists.

              Basically my base position is “a functional democracy is the governance system that works the best”. Most western states are much closer to that than North Korea (yes, I know what the Electoral College is and why it’s bad), so I do think their political system is better.

              • RedMarsRepublic@vlemmy.net
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                All of the so called ‘functional democracies’ of the West are abysmal, China has 94% government satisfaction where I doubt there’s one western country over 50% (and the US is at 24%)

              • TrashcanMarxist
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                I still wonder why you’re so obsessed with North Korea. It’s not like the South wasn’t also a dictatorship until very recently. I wonder what the difference in economic outcomes was. Surely not the political system but instead the different material conditions between south and north i.e. embargo and isolation.

                Again, I don’t think that NK is the best example of AES, in fact their country is probably the worst. But I don’t think the people who have produced the economic emisseration of the country and have worked to undermine its regime at every term get to scold them about their political choices.

                Why should democracy be privileged when the choices of that democracy, at least internationally, are immoral. Should we praise democracy when it produces an evil outcome? Why are you so wedded to a system? After all democracy produces trans and drag bans in the south. Is that good? This isn’t to say dictatorship is superior, I don’t think it necessarily is, but to pretend the virtue is in the system rather than the outcome is pretty lib. If democracy produces fascism is it still good? If we throw our trans friends or homeless into the wood chipper because voters say it’s good with 51% of the vote, does that legitimate it?

            • IriYan@lemmy.world
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              The country that holds the record for number and percentage of people in prison is the US. In the US the percentage of black people in prison was higher than the percentage of black people in prison in South Africa during apartheid.

              No other western/industrialized (at some stage) nation has had so many political exilees and people whose citizenship was revoked based on “anti-american” views than the US. At some point the general secretary of RCP was in exile in France with his citizenship revoked. So, not all states are equal, and their historic development as modern capitalist states should be studied within context.

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      When a liberal says “tankie” they mean anything remotely communist-looking. When a leftist says “tankie”, they mean authoritarians who like red flags and self-proclaimed communists who nonetheless support hierarchies and have no plan or intention to bring them down. I think the vast majority of people here knows this already.

    • 𝔊𝔦𝔫𝔧𝔲𝔱𝔰𝔲@lemmy.world
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      Is the USA a “functioning” state with all the oppression, racism, greed, invading other countries out of monetarian interest and environment destruction?

      I hope you realize that this is an incredibly privileged take. The US is rife with issues, but the hardships experienced by the average western citizen doesn’t even compare to the suffering that you would find in, say, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, or (to a less extreme extent) Maduro’s Venezuela. To compare what a US citizen deals with on a daily basis due to capitalism to what a citizen of any of those countries had to go through is very reductive and may be perceived as disrespectful to many who had to live those experiences.

      • Definitely_me@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        The United States, for all it’s faults, is the pretty side of capitalism.you don’t even need to look to the most poor countries to see a standard of living that makes even directly post ww2 soviet union look like a great place.

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        The US is rife with issues, but the hardships experienced by the average western citizen doesn’t even compare to the suffering that you would find in, say, Pol Pot’s Cambodia

        I have some fellas from Detroit that would disagree.

      • SomeLemmyUser@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1. Im not from USA, and from my point of view its mich worse than most other countries (no healthcare, no independend courts, murder sprees in schools nearly every day, opression of half of the world (a half of them just to get more oil to destroy the planet faster), one of 3 of the biggest war-pushers in whole earth, polutes and destroys earth mode than every other country per citizens, etc. PP.)

        2. capitalism mostly opresses and profits from people out of the country to Funktion. if its Bad in Venezuela or Cuba or Afghanistan, or even early russia, thats at least partly fault of US.

        3. Venezuela is not communism, China isnt, russia isnt. Most of them have failed, at least partly because caputalist societys atack them and stop a as soon as they are born and they can’t form a stable democracy. Before reading Marx, your bashing of communism isnt worth anything, as you clearly don’t understand what you are talking about. We never had communism, and some would say not even socialism. You sound like you don’t even know the difference, since you keep talking about communism, which is a utopian society after humanity has stopped a lot of bad habits and has learned to live without working against each other in competition and working together instead, which arises maybe after generations of workig socialism, which we clearly didn’t have.

        4.you exactly prove my point. I dont agree with tankies either, but the number of people around here blindly copying capitalist propaganda while understanding nothing they bash about is too damm high.

        • RaoulDook@lemmy.world
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          You have a warped view of USA that doesn’t reflect reality. You’re seeing it through the lens of sensationalist news media and hyperventilating social media posts.

          The actual reality for Americans is that it’s a vast, beautiful land with an amazing spectrum of various experience. Violent crime is rare overall, and most Americans have never seen or heard any gun violence in person. Health care is available to pretty much everyone, even if you don’t have money. We have state-run healthcare facilities that the poor can make use of like county health departments.

          My life in the USA is great, because I don’t live in a big city. I live on my own land, in a nice house that I own, and I’m just middle class income level. It’s pretty easy to accomplish if you choose a low cost of living area rather than a big metropolis or suburb thereof.

      • Cynosure@lemmy.world
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        Well of course the standard of living in the imperial core is higher than the countries it has exploited or destabilized. A lot of American wealth is the fruit of imperialism.

    • deltec@lemmy.world
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      Seems weird that you want to ignore the fact that communism has never worked once lol

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    I got banned from lemmygrad for saying acab means all cops lmao

    • GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.ml
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      Meanwhile anarchist organizing doesn’t have cops, it has Agents of Community Defense who definitely aren’t cops!

      I have nothing against anarchists, but you need to see past slogans to be anything but a useful idiot to neoliberals.

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        I mean any person or entity that enforces oppressive laws is a bastard. The government of China is far from some sort of benevolent state.

  • BlinkerFluid@lemmy.one
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    Thank fuck. I thought Lemmy was some ultra militant leftist hellhole before the shift.

    I don’t like extreme radical left any more than extreme radical right.

    Fuck Che Guevara. Read a book.

            • river@lemmy.world
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              the US state department dogma must be a much better read😌

              lmao

              How will you perform a non-authoritarian revolution? How will you quash racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.? By being polite?

              the main idea is dual power structures. spreading awareness, and people will do whats necessary, mobilize, organize, all that fun stuff. if u can teach people about the struggles of marginalized groups, they will be able to recognize it in their own lives and stand up against it.

              Or are you going to vote us towards communism🤩

              and there wont be a need for political parties to enforce “compliance”, people are naturally empathetic. well not all people, but the vast majority.

              And I have plenty more books, but go on🤗

              try “Are you an anarchist? the answer might surprise you” by David Graeber, if ur ever looking for something else.

              or “Anarchy works” by Peter Gelderloos for a more comprehensive description of these ideas.

        • ATGM 🚀@beehaw.org
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          Do you know its possible to read books and disagree with them?

          The ML obsession with treating books as religious tomes is getting tiring.

      • BlinkerFluid@lemmy.one
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        Is being a good tactician and being a genocidal, totalitarian extremist an oil and water situation?

        He can be both.

      • pancakes
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        Saw Gerrera is an extremist and must be brought to justice for the good of the Empire.

  • animelivesmatter@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    finds social media developed by tankies

    looks inside

    finds tankies

    fr I’m down with having a good old purge eventually but noone should be surprised

  • buckykat@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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    What are some good actual communist lemmy communities that aren’t supporting the fucking capitalist imperialist russian invasion?

    • WabiSabiPapi@lemmy.world
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      look for anarchists if you desire a classless, stateless, moneyless society.

      communism has been coopted by auth apologists infatuated with the color red.

        • Silverstrings@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          There are an infinite variety of flavors of socialism, at some point you gotta learn to find folks you don’t disagree with on anything too important. In my experience anarchists are generally chill.

        • WabiSabiPapi@lemmy.world
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          https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-are-you-an-anarchist-the-answer-may-surprise-you

          anarchism acknowledges Marxist theory, but rejects the need for a state/beaurocratic apparatus, as it is considered to be fundamentally oppressive.

          the state is an abstraction of capital, and cannot liberate the working class, as it exists to perpetuate its own hegemonic existence, our subjugation.

          governance need not be heirarchichal; I promote collective mutual determination as an egalitarian system by which society can organize.

          can’t dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools

          • kartonrealista@lemmy.world
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            governance need not be heirarchichal; I promote collective mutual determination as an egalitarian system by which society can organize.

            I don’t. I don’t think all hierarchies are unjust, I evaluate them based on their effect on the world. If a hierarchy can solve a problem better, it’s the preferable solution.

            Everyone believes they are capable of behaving reasonably themselves. If they think laws and police are necessary, it is only because they don’t believe that other people are. But if you think about it, don’t those people all feel exactly the same way about you?

            But what if we all have a different idea of what behaving reasonably means?

            Anarchists argue that almost all the anti-social behavior which makes us think it’s necessary to have armies, police, prisons, and governments to control our lives, is actually caused by the systematic inequalities and injustice those armies, police, prisons and governments make possible.

            That’s silly. Systemic inequalities don’t make people park their vehicles on the bike path or murder their wife because they think she cheated on them. If anarchism is all about thinking people are angels unless bad, bad oppressive systems make them do evil things they couldn’t do on their own then I don’t think we’ll ever get along. It’s alternate reality and an incredibly naive way of looking at the world and human nature.

            Edit: could you kindly not respond to this? I don’t have an option to silence this thread on my end, and don’t want to hear about it any further.

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              Edit: could you kindly not respond to this? I don’t have an option to silence this thread on my end, and don’t want to hear about it any further.

              So I have to ask… Why would you respond and then deny someone the same respect?

          • archon@dataterm.digital
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            I promote collective mutual determination as an egalitarian system by which society can organize.

            In practice, direct democracy? Or, how would that work - how would we organize society? Positions would still need to be held, no? Roles appointed, decisions made, lines drawn. No one can be up-to-date on all matters in their local nor global environment. And certainly not at the same point in time. How would anything work with any cohesiveness?

            Sorry to be so dismissive, I’m actually kinda curious on your thoughts. Only ways I see are AI governance or a hive mind. Not sure about either tbh.

          • IriYan@lemmy.world
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            anarchism acknowledges Marxist theory, but rejects the need for a state/beaurocratic apparatus, as it is considered to be fundamentally oppressive.

            Acknowledges Marxist theory as much as acknowledging Newtonian gravitational theory may be a way to put it. Most of the ones I know either accept Marxist general theory as a whole, non-critically, and the rest are anti-communist/anti-marxist idealists, as much as any fascist would be. Because the true essence and reason for the existence of fascism is anti-communism.

            There are many social relations that are oppressive, why limit it to state? Parents are oppressive, teachers, professors, bosses, cops, military higher officers, spouses, parents in law, … prison guards … they are all oppressive. Is it just the state? Is it a different class of people who oppress from those being oppressed?

            the state is an abstraction of capital, and cannot liberate the working class, as it exists to perpetuate its own hegemonic existence, our subjugation.

            Between the late 1800s and early 1900s the state became an insurer of labor law and justice, the welfare state was born, rights to pension, an 8hr day, sick leave, vacation, overtime pay, were all provided and were promised by the state. So we can say the state backed off and became hostile to capital. Between struggle (labor syndicalism) and the capitalist state there was a dialectic transformation, the social democracy was born. Today the state has absolutely surrendered to the powers of the banking financial world system, made out of a handful of banks and financial institutions mainly based in NY, London, Frankfurt, Paris, maybe even in HKong, Tokyo, to a lesser extent. All states owe to private global markets to such a degree that just one or two clicks down on their bond ratings and they are bankrupt and in the hands of IMF and other bankers to implement the most vicious neo-liberal reform anyone can imagine.

            This means that when leninists propose on taking over a state that just means removing it from the markets and sentencing the population to starvation and misery. “Abolishing the state” is just as suicidal. Should there be a thing like political responsibility for genocide proposed by pseudo revolutionaries, who want to enforce their fantasy on people already suffering because of capitalism?

            governance need not be heirarchichal; I promote collective mutual determination as an egalitarian system by which society can organize.

            As long as you speak of “a system” you imply, like it or not, a centralized system, a system that supervises whether the system is implemented correctly or not. That constitutes an authority. Whether this authority and enforcement is conducted by “anti-authoritarians” who as a minority forced their terms and conditions on a society, we are speaking of a revolutionary vanguard, an authoritarian force over the entire society (under the state and within state borders).

            By the way, the collapse of the Syrian state had a gradual effect of Turkey moving sourth, Israel and Libanon moving further east, Iran moving west, I am uncleat of Jordan is taking a piece of the pie, and some Iraqi authorities are eyeballing the Kurdish management of some areas they would like to grub as well. So by abolishing a state these days the remaining states in the globe legitimize the neighbors all grubbing a piece without anyone being a state to protest. Assad’s only friend is too busy fighting the entirety of NATO playing a game on the heads of the residents of ex-Ukraine.

            can’t dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools

            As long as your focus is to destroy and dismantle instead of constructing an alternative and an escape route from capitalism you will be condemned by history as a force of nothing beneficial to humanity.

            As long as you preach -isms- from a high tower looking down on people without ideology, and you refuse to accept that the dialectic between leninism and libertarianism has already materialized, that more than a million people have been living OUTSIDE of capitalism, in autonomous communities, for nearly 30years (this next new year’s eve), decide in their communities EVERYTHING about their own lives, mostly using consensus, and their federation (2 levels) is designed to serve the community not to dictate to the community, you are more authoritarian and stuck up than you really think. Now these people have liberated themselves from capitalism, they live outside it, they are unaffected by it, other by having to fend off some para-military attacks here and there 2-3 times a year, their values and principles are even more strict than the early 1900s CNT constitution, and they laugh really hard and stick a finger up to all revolutionary vanguards, but you keep speaking hypothetically, what if society did this and that and the other thing.

            If you want to be heard, you should be looking up to indigenous peasants, farmers, not down. If you want the residents of the favela to follow bureaucrats and academics to social change, you are in worse shape and dillusion than the average tankies. If you want children industrial workers in SE Asia to look up to your ideology and rhetoric, to buy your story, I assure you they think you are dumber than they are.

            Who gives a flying ** what “anarchism” acknowledges.

          • kartonrealista@lemmy.world
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            I don’t know how any of that applies to what I said here.

            Edit: I skimmed through the text on the first read because I was sleepy. After reading more carefully I guess you’re agreeing with me somewhat: yes, the necessity for certain types of organization in specific situations is why I dislike anarchism.

            I don’t know why a certain ineffective administrative model would have to be coupled with a more equitable economic model. Although I didn’t want to argue that point, rather express a preference.

      • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
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        communism has been coopted by auth apologists infatuated with the color red.

        Which happened almost instantly. I don’t have much hope that other radical leftist movements will fare much better.

    • Captain Minnette@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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      I’m on the FMHY instance and the only political ideology community that’s been showing up in my feed has been Anarchism, so it’s probably the instance to join if you’re libleft and don’t want to deal with Auth shit.

        • Frod@lemmy.world
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          “tankies” criticize the Soviet union, you know? They also criticize the ebil See See Pee but apparently there’s no room for nuance

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            What’s your definition of “tankie”? If you’re willing to call out Putin’s homophobic journalist murdering authoritarian bullshit and the Chinese government’s massacring of protesters and genociding of ethnic minorities you’re not a tankie imo, you’re just a communist.

              • aski3252@lemmy.world
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                Westerners slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Iraqis for decades on end, and it was fine because we labeled them all terrorists.

                No, it wasn’t fine, that’s kinda the point… It isn’t fine when the west does it, it’s not fine when others do it too…

                • ATGM 🚀@beehaw.org
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                  It’s pretty typical tankie behavior that we’re seeing.

                  When you say it’s bad that Stalin implemented genocidal policies such as against the Krim Tartars, Kalmykks and other ethnic groups, they come back with wHaT aBoUt aMeRiCa.

                  They know that both things can be bad, but they have similar incentives to right-fascists. That is to say they’re liars.

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            Okay Stalin’s Moustache,

            Listen there’s more kinds of people than liberals tankies, and fascists.

            There are also anarchist who can critizes these three groups ( and others) with out being within them.

            I have no problem with ML and other comrades of various flavors but if your going to be really Into to stalin your not going to be working with me.

            You should read about the Spanish civil war.

              • Discoslugs@lemmy.world
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                Sure. There are plenty of people who are anarchists, who are people I would not work with. Like armchair anarchists.

                And the word “tankie” does get used by armchair anarchists A lot often inappropriatly.

                But still tankie is a valid crique of Red fascism.

                And if you are a person who believes In communism, and can see it’s benefits but are unable to see it’s faults your probably a tankie.

                Please remember on multiple instances The Soviets turned their back on anarchists. Like in the Spanish civil war.

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            To tankies fascist means opposing whatever flavor of authoritarian “communism” they prefer regardless of the reasons or context. This conveniently allows any number of pogroms, mass slaughters or engineered famines to be reframed as anti-fascist action, rather than a brutal expression of state power at the expense of the working class.

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            Then what would you have me call people who make excuses for invasion, oppression, and genocide just because it was committed by the Russian or Chinese government instead of a western one?

    • HornyOnMain🏳️‍⚧️@lemmy.ml
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      didn’t they have a problem with people doing alt-right dogwhistles about anti-white racism recently? and it got so bad that they had to make a mod announcement telling people to stop doing it and all of the users started trying to explain to the mods how it definitely wasn’t a right wing dogwhistle

  • LemmyAtem@beehaw.org
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    Honest question - what’s a tankie? I feel like I’ve seen them mentioned a ton on Lemmy but I’d never heard the term prior to a few days ago. From the image it looks like a maga/skinhead combo?

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      They’re communists, but not your every day “people should hold the power” communists. More like “tianenmen never happened, and if it did it wasn’t that bad” type

    • agreyworld@lemmy.world
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      Tankie was first used for that kind of communist supporter who kept singing Russia’s praises/defending Russia even when Russia was sent 5000 tanks to crush a popular uprising in Czechoslovakia (the “Prague Spring”) on August 20, 1968. Some people just couldn’t accept that a communist country could do something bad, so defended the action.

      Nowadays, it’s used to refer to those that are strongly supportive of Russia, completely ignoring the awful things they do. Often these days there’s a lot of anti American bent to it. Like, anything anti America and American “imperialism” must be good - even blatant and awful Russian Imperialism.

      These days they calmly explain how Ukraine just needs to come to the table and discuss peace (ignoring that Ukraine wouldn’t exist if they did so) and blame America for the war in Ukraine for… well… they’re America. The people who want war, or are causing the war, are those giving Ukraine weapons - not the country that is literally invading it.

      • atlasraven31@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Thanks for the explanation. I believe they are also called Rashists, at least Ukrainians call them that.

      • Coryneform@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        I think a better term is “Campist” which is the trend within revisionist marxists to side with one imperialist camp to oppose another. it’s the same shit the SPD did during WW1

    • aski3252@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Originally, it was used to describe communists who followed the party line and supported suppressing Hungarian workers with tanks.

      Today it means ultra-authoritarian marxist-leninist.

        • h34d@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          It’s not entirely the same though. Some of the “tankies” in the West seem to be Maoists more than Stalinists, as far as I can tell. Besides, some (many?) Stalinists also consider the term “Stalinist” derogatory, and prefer to call themselves “Marxist-Leninists”.

          • 1rre@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 year ago

            Ok but let’s not pretend that either Marx or Lenin envisaged their form of communism as what Stalin was doing

            It’s no different to “free speech” suddenly meaning “free hate speech, but restricted speech on anything else”

      • Silverstrings@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        Concrete views like the idea that the government being able to jail dissenters at will is bad? That unlimited state power inevitably leads to authoritarianism? That labeling yourself socialist doesn’t necessarily mean you’re actually a socialist state?

      • parlaptie@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        You’re so insufferably cocksure in your positions everywhere else, but when someone honestly asks what a tankie is, you just get defensive and can’t master up the courage to just say what it is that you stand for? I really get the impression that you’re just here to stir up shit.