Forest of trees : memes

[–] [email protected] 39 points 3 weeks ago (20 children)

nowadays tankie just means someone who shills for china/russia with a communist background

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Communists support the PRC as a Socialist state run by Marxist-Leninists, yes. No Communist supports the Russian Federation outright, however, only reserved, temporary, and highly critical support for Russia's anti-US Hegemony stance, which it only adopts for its own survival and not out of any moral superiority. No Communist "shills" for the Russian Federation.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 weeks ago (18 children)

If China is a socialist state worth supporting then I'm a donkey with a laser dick :P But I'm more anarchistically inclined so different perspective.

I see your point though. What I'm saying is not that communist = tankie, on the contrary. I'm saying that tankies claim to be communists but spend all day parroting their favorite Russian or Chinese state propaganda because they believe everything else is clearly controlled by Obamna™ himself. They rarely actually talk about communism, they just roam Lemmy all day calling everybody who disagrees with them a liberal :D

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

The conversation around China will take a minute, so I'll skip ahead to your second paragraph and circle back to do your statement justice.

The people you describe as "tankies" do not exist in any reasonable number. You are extending a belief in some aspects of anti-western sources as full blind dogmatism. Secondly, in order to even consider oneself a Communist in a western-dominated website means exposure to constant western-narrative, the idea that eastern propaganda is much more effective is more of a smokescreen to avoid discussing hard topics than anything else.

As for the PRC, they absolutely aren't Anarchist. They are, however, Marxist-Leninist, and Socialist. They have a Socialist Market Economy. Their Public Sector has supremacy over the direction of the Private Sector as key heavy industries the Private Sector relies on are entirely State Owned, and the Private Sector itself is trapped in a "birdcage model" whereby the CPC increases ownership and control as Markets naturally form monopolist syndicates.

This is entirely in line with Marxism. Marxists believe that markets naturally centralize and form monopolist syndicates ripe for central planning, and thus are more efficient vectors for growth at earlier stages in development, but that as they centralize this becomes less efficient and public ownership and central planning takes priority.

I recommend the article Socialism Developed China, Not Capitalism.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (42 children)

The use of the word "tankie" these days is so over-used it has become synonymous with "left of the DNC." I've even seen Anarchists described as "tankies," it's getting ridiculous. Still, the word "tankie" is most often used by liberals against Marxists, though they won't admit to having an anti-Marxist bias, mostly because they think they agree with Marx generally but are unfamiliar with Marxist analysis.

Really, more people need to read theory before having an opinion on it to avoid speaking past each other. I wrote an introductory reading list for Marxism-Leninism if anyone wants to get a better understanding of Marxism.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Back when I used reddit it seemed like everyone threw around Fascist in a similar way. Lemmy seems to prefer Tankie. For a lot of people the thinking doesn't go any farther than "I disagree with you, therefore you are ________ist" or whatever.

It is what it is.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

It varies from instance to instance. The main users of the word "tankie" are blahaj.zone, lemmy.world, and sh.itjust.works from what I've seen, most other instances generally aren't as bad about it IMO.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (14 children)

thank you for that and the "what is socialism" post; but i'm encountering that theory is somehow still a HEAVY read for someone like who me has been inside the leftist sphere of influence for his entire life; there's needs to be some sort of sound-bite-able way of sharing these messages and i wish that ml's had the capitalists' deep pockets that guarantees a deep bench of talent that could figure something like this out.

it reminds of my own own experience of going from technical support to software engineering by simply reading. your ignorance makes it daunting as first and you have to put in A LOT of effort to understand it when you don't even know the basics and you'll get there eventually if you stick with it; but most won't stick with it and if you're REALLY knowledgeable at it, it becomes difficult to understand why it's difficult for other people.

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[+] [email protected] 20 points 3 weeks ago (49 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] Alwaysnownevernotme 19 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Lol I get called a tanky for criticizing the Democratic party and Israel and that's literally the only time I've ever seen it used.

Conflating it with supporting a government that hasn't existed since I was 3 is downright hysterical.

I get called a tanky by people who literally support the group using tanks.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

incredible that people can see an actual genocide livestreamed for 13 months on every social media platform available, and STILL think anything comparable to that is happening in China. absolutely mindboggling.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Do you deny the genocide happening in China or in Ukraine? Then you are a tankie.

Do you believe that claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence? Then you're a tankie.

Some people have this idea that if a claim involves genocide, then it gets to bypass the entire process of investigating a claim, because it's technically "genocide denial," so like if someone said "France is committing genocide against Belgians!" you'd just have to accept it without question. In fact, it's the opposite, more extreme claims require more solid evidence.

Since we're on .ml though, we don't have to deal with such absurd censorship standards, and I'm free to point out the fact that the whole "Uighur genocide" narrative is just unsubstantiated propaganda, coming almost entirely from one crackpot named Adrian Zenz. And at this point it's largely outdated propaganda, since the narrative has largely quietly disappeared from the news after the claims about it couldn't be verified.

You're welcome to prove me wrong though. You know, just show me the bodies. How long has it allegedly been going on at this point? We can see what an ongoing genocide looks like by what's happening in Gaza. Strange how there aren't any similar images coming out of Xinjiang, isn't it?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I mean, you are aware that genocide doesn't have to involve mass-killing of a population, right? Causing them serious bodily or mental harm with the goal of destroying that separate culture, i.e. in reeducation camps can still fulfill that definition.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (6 children)

Has there ever been a genocide in history where no one was killed?

Honestly, if we're going to use such standards and definitions that a "nonviolent genocide" is possible, then I'm not sure I understand what makes such a thing wrong. In Japan, the number of people who believe in and practice Shinto is in decline, and more and more people are paying for Western style weddings, so temples are struggling to keep their doors open. Is that an inherently bad thing? Is that genocide? How about in the context of the Allies pressuring the emperor to renounce his claims to divinity, undermining a major aspect of Shinto beliefs? Because it seems to me like that did more good than harm. Does that mean I support the (mostly) "nonviolent genocide" of Imperial Japanese culture?

Or perhaps a better example: After 9/11, there was a wave of hate crimes against Muslims, the US extrajudicially detained people (primarily Muslim) without trial and subjected them to numerous human rights abuses, and there were many people talking about how, "Islam is a religion of violence," and about "Turning the desert to glass," and the country started two wars with Muslim countries in which about a million people were killed. Did that constitute a genocide? Why or why not?

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago (11 children)

Oh, you mean like what the Ukrainian coup government was doing to the people in the east (Donbas) for years before Russia even entered the conflict? Yes, there is a strong argument to be made that genocide is the term we should use with regard to what Ukraine was attempting to do to the Russian-speaking population in their country.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago

Okay then why am I accused of it while not qualifying. Seems like that's not how it's used by liberals, almost like this isn't the colloquial definition

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

It's always funny to me how the go-to examples of like, "See, they just blindly support anything the regime does!" tend to be relatively minor events after the state in question has considerably chilled out. Like, Stalin and Mao did much worse things compared to Khrushchev/Hungary and Deng/Tienanmen. The problem being, communists are generally willing to criticize things like the Great Leap Forward, because, surprise surprise, we don't just blindly support anything they do. The reason for this is that the word tankie isn't meant to describe someone who blindly supports everything a communist country does, as it's claimed to, but rather, someone who supports anything any communist country does.

The fear Western leftists had that led to the term being coined was that people who had previously been critical of Stalin and Mao would respond positively to the countries moving away from their approach, and so they had to create a label to discredit such people and associate them with the previous leaders. It's one of the reasons Khrushchev's approach was questionable, because no matter how much you try to distance yourself from someone like Stalin and paint yourself as "one of the good ones," you're still never going to appease the Western left that demands absolute perfection, let alone the West in general.

[–] moshtradamus666 9 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

The first time I saw this word being used was here on Lemmy, when I arrived during the reddit exodus. I'm not a native English speaker though.

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