this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2024
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[–] PugJesus 93 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Being comrades with someone with a Soviet ushanka sounds like a great way to have workers' protests violently suppressed.

[–] latenightnoir 55 points 2 months ago

I second this, coming from a person living in one of the former Soviet Bloc countries, we do NOT want that kind of comradeship again. Nonono. Textbook Socialism (a k.a. not Stalinism) with a basis in secular humanism and friggin' empathy, yesyesyes!

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (4 children)
[–] PugJesus 35 points 2 months ago

It does, unironically. Soviet aesthetics are pretty cool, a shame the Soviets ruined them by being the ones to use it.

[–] latenightnoir 7 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Hey, nobody says ushankas should carry the sins of humans! We can reclaim ushankas as a symbol of empathy and... uuh... general goodness, I guess!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

interestingly, china propagandized this peacetime soldier who died in an accident, lei fang, into this model citizen of kindness and selflessness, and thus the chinese call the hat the “lei feng hat” after propaganda depictions. whether that (and the fact that northeasterners usually wear the hat regardless of politics to combat cold) means it has shed communist symbolism is up to you

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

I believe Anarchist Batman from the Redsun Supperman comic used one.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

Remove the Soviet cockade?

[–] Stovetop 2 points 2 months ago

That's just it. It's fetishism, really. Tankies ignore the modern revolution for the aesthetic trappings of a failed one.

[–] TotallynotJessica 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

It depends on the status of your government. If your country isn't totally controlled by fascism, yes, those optics will make things harder. You can't mince words and avoid making your demands bold, but fuck the Soviets. They're libs in a funny hat at best.

In the US on the other hand, any type of protest is effectively done with on January 20th. Do not protest next year. We're legit past that stage; the law is already dead. Work on keeping people safe from the state, because it will only represent the desires of POTUS.

[–] PugJesus 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Oh, I didn't mean as a matter of optics for the public, just as a general "Association with repressive Soviet shitheads is undesirable"

[–] TotallynotJessica 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It is. They're a cringe cult, but people are looking for answers rn and are vulnerable to cringe cults. I don't love when people trade MAGA hats for Ushankas, and I think that'll be a bigger problem in the future.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Telling people not to protest is a great way to accept fascism.

[–] TotallynotJessica 7 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Trying to protest when freedom of speech doesn't exist is a great way to die. Where we would have protested peacefully, we must riot. Where we would boycott, we must sabotage. Where we would advocate, we must work the railroad. Where we would commit sit ins, we must use strategies from declassified military manuals.

Fascism only understands force. Words are useless as weapons against them. We're in their endgame; it is not time to be nice. They're taking their gloves off, so we must as well. Fawning and freezing will not work, only fight or flight.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Aren't you tired of being labelled?

Don't you want to stop dividing people?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

Yeah, most normal people doesn't live under a single ideal. Labeling people as A or B is literally the way that British Empire used to rule the world and Hitler rises to power. The obsession on alignment is gonna move the world further to the right.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (4 children)

This.

The ramp up of anti-liberal propaganda around here is concerning. If the enemy is the right, why are we targeting the centrists?

[–] TotallynotJessica 38 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (9 children)

Liberalism has become unpopular after repeatedly failing to hold back the right, while letting our problems only get worse. There are parts of liberalism we should carry on, but we should still leave it behind. MLs aren't the answer, as they limit themselves by clinging to the identity more than the praxis. They're both flawed in how they believe their own bullshit, giving evil a pass while believing things will get better.

That said, liberals deserve all the shit they're getting, as their apologetics for parasites cannot be tolerated. Let the wealthy flock to the right. They'll soon realize that they gave up more power than they thought by endorsing fascism. They needed liberalism more than we do. If we survive fascism burning itself out, we'll need to fight those fuckers to let us rebuild a functioning society.

Tldr: liberalism helped the right. We need to let go.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

The only thing I'd temper this with is that MLs are literally not a problem beyond terminally online spaces, particularly the sectarians you mention.

Like yeah they can suck but I'm much more afraid of Proud Boys and the liberals that enable them.

Ultimately I agree with you 100 percent it's just an exhausting thing to always have to be like "yeah sure fuck tankies I guess" when discussing matters of actual life and death.

[–] TotallynotJessica 3 points 2 months ago

I'm just worried about how they hold back the left to terminally online spaces. We need to get out there more, not waste time cosplaying dead empires! Do that for a larp, but not as your identity.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They are not. Neo-liberalism is a plague on the moderate liberal centrist voters that we should be appealing to and educating instead of painting them all with the broad-stroke brush of "enemy." The majority of liberal voters are left-aligned on social issues, and we should be appealing to that.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I'm tired of tankies telling me I need "leftist unity" when I want freedom

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (6 children)

I think the whole authoritarian vs antiauthoritarian split is kinda BS - IMO it's more about who's dictating terms to who. We really badly need land reform, and landlords aren't going to willingly give that up, so we have to be a bit "authoritarian" in order to make them do so. Same thing goes with wealth redistribution, and land back. If you give up on using force to get what you want, how do you get land back to indigenous populations, or stop the genocide in Gaza?

I think we'll be more free if we work together to build socialism than we would be if we keep shitting on each others approaches towards building it. Then we'll just keep refining it until there's a minimum amount of hierarchy or control in society that's used to prevent re-privatisation, exploitation, and the re-establishment of Capitalism.

Signed, a "tankie"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You can have revolution without authority, the true question is should the workers truly own the nation they built or a self appointed "vanguard"? Do the ends truly justify the means? Also we shit on auths because for most of history they felt no need to truly work with us unless they were desperate (and then they proceed to backstab us when they get comfortable).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

So, I think the workers should own the nation and that power should be held at the level of workplace unions and community organizations. I see being "the vanguard" of communism as similar to a 1st place designation in Mario Kart - it's a floating title that depends on who's doing the most for the effort and who other people look to. That vanguard shouldn't get any extra privileges, they're workers just like anyone else.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

In my opinion at that point why even have a vanguard when the power can be held exclusively by syndicates (just to clearify though I do respect your position).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Agreed, power should be held by syndicates, ideally with those syndicates/groups/unions/etc working together by sending delegates to a Congress and then abiding by the democratic decisions made by that Congress.

I think deciding who is or isn't the vanguard is something you can only do when you look back at history - you can point at different groups at different times when they were leading the movement, but if you were living through it things might not be clear. It's pointless trying to figure out who the vanguard is right now, instead we should be organizing.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Given the amount of tankies running around on Lemmy, the "liberal" in question is likely an anticapitalist, anarchist, socialist, radical leftist, and the "comrade" is just an authoritarian who wishes they were born in time to lick Stalin's boots and calls everybody who doesn't deepthroat Putin's hairy balls for breakfast a liberal.

But that's just how it feels in this context. In general, yes, communism > capitalist liberalism.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (1 children)

why would any socialist alligned person like putin. that man is the furthest you could get from a commie

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Exactly!

In my experience tankies are just people for whom being communist or leftist boils down to "west bad" and therefore everything else must be good. I know, it doesn't make sense.

Empire is empire.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

aren't you tired of being a liberal?

don't you want to be a liberal who doesn't understand the point of politics?

free your mind from pesky knowledge and political context, all it does is get in the way of forming autocratic groups and exploiting the people around you!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Aren't you tired of posting?
You have made 1990 posts and 3993 comments in a year.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Just wondering where you get the time and energy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

I usually browse for memes at night as a way to decompress, and post the good ones here.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

Ew not that kind.

I'd much rather take the long road through democracy than give a single ounce of support to half baked autocracy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

No thanks. Rather companion than comrade.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (4 children)
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

both are shit, support the environment instead.

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