Political discourse

That is a total and complete lie. DSA, the largest socialist org in the USA in 100 years is unwaveringly against us imperialism and capitalism, and Trump. There are virtually no tankies in DSA, even the most ml aligned factions in DSA are not “tankies” as you try to slander.

Democratic socialism is opposed to imperialism and capitalism, none too fond of China or Russia (though I’m sure if you bad faith make certain generalizations you could make illogical connections to suit your purpose), virulently anti Trump and “tankies” when they pop up in our org usually become disengaged ineffective sectarian hyper minorities, though they rarely pop up at all.

In fact if you aren’t opposed to US imperialism, you are on the right wing, and have no right to speak on it. Do you think the genocide in Palestine is a left wing position? Be serious

i remember talking about the nuremburg trials with some… now that i think about of it most of them were lawyer friends, and i only have basic education about the nuremburg trials. a few of them have studied them in depth, and now that i think about it the only criticism i ever heard about the verdict was, if you’ll allow me to paraphrase, “you’re going to spend your whole life disappointed if you keep expecting everything to be perfect”.

If you’re not talking about Tankies then what are you even arguing against? I think you’ve just been fighting a strawman in your head rather than against anything I’ve written.

Heres a tip, if you don’t want to be treated like a pro-authoritarian bot then stop defending them and stop throwing your hat in with their lot.

Bernie Sanders early in his career rejected the label of socialist because he didn’t want to be associated with the USSR, China, and concentration camps, you can find countless quotes on that. He also doesn’t even oppose capitalism, in his book “It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism” he outlines that the problem is late stage, undemocratic, uber-capitalism and his ideal system is adding the social safety nets they use in scandinavia while taxing the rich.

Weird how they brought a billion farmers out of poverty. I wonder why they would do that if those farmers didn’t have any influence.

We certainly don’t see that happening in capitalist countries right nextdoor, such as India.

the remainder is committing their own little genocide at home

lol you still believe that? Anybody can literally just go to Xinjiang, there’s no travel restrictions. Don’t you think they would try to keep foreigners from going there and talking to people if they were committing a genocide?

Thank you for being a perfect example of the point I was making, enjoy your dead minorities and your roads paved in the blood of the innocent.

Here I distinctly recall a user calling the execution of Julius Streicher an inhumane act and that we lost our humanity executing unrepentant Nazis.

So that’s fun.

They run TikTok among many other CCP funded operations, I wouldn’t disregard them personally.

I wouldn’t say so, I’m a consequentialist so when I see a pedophile felon in the white house removing the 14th amendment while not a single GOP congressman opposes him, I feel like the entirety of the US right is effectively gone and only the far right remains.

Thank you.

Because being a passive centrist while the world slides towards authoritarianism, global conflict, and environmental holocaust is not morally acceptable.

You don’t have to be a Tankie to want to fight these fascist fucks and their suicidal agenda.

Well if you say anything like ‘we shouldn’t give weapons to Nazis,’ you’re going to be labeled a tankie, too.

Someone misinterpreted the post.

so i’m very much not a fan of the death penalty as i’ve seen the criminal punishment system fuck up. a lot. they’ve gotta be above reproach if we can trust them with literal power over life and death.

at the same time, unrepentant Nazi. if it had been up to me, I’d’ve wanted to give him the ol’ Robert-François Damiens. first: people are allowed contradictions. second: sometimes the brutality is part of the point. hold the unrepentant nazis up for generations as villains. don’t allow them to be buried in normal cemeteries. Take their ashes and spread them around the country to be on permanent display in each and every post office as an example of why you don’t fuck with the postmaster. teach your kids “you end up being one of those damn nazis i’ll put you in the community ash jar myself”. we really could have done better.

I’m not defending tankies, I’m disagreeing with your extremely narrow categories, that would define 90% of non tankie leftists as tankies.

I’m not making a strawman when I say that support for us imperialism is support for the Palestinian genocide. That’s just like common knowledge at this point.

Flattening Sanders entire political career, which started out with him organizing as a socialist, into a narrow category is as dishonest as doing the same with the history of the USSR. There is not much worth defending about the Stalinist bureaucracy that the USSR became. Even throwing the USSR and China in the same bucket when referring to Sanders is a historical revision, since Sanders entire political life began after the Sino/Soviet split. However information about the atrocities of Stalin came from Kruschev. Trotskyists and anti-authoritarian communists, like CLR James, could see that much was wrong with the USSR, but the truth wasn’t revealed until the 60s. Other great american communist organizers like James Cannon mistakenly cooperated with the Comintern, who systematically destroyed the movements in the USA that got us our new deal. Cannon and many others were eventually purged from the american socialist movement, turning it into yet another husk of the workers movement under the auspices of the “communist international.”

After the Vietnam war, the USA and China both supported the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese communists, who were supported by the USSR. Are you a supporter of the USA’s war in Viet Nam? Or the Khmer Rouge? I certainly hope not!

Dealing with reality isn’t a strawman, unless you’re an idealist. I hope you aren’t waiting for the good capitalists to save us from our current situation, because our version of capitalism is irredeemable. We are in the late stage, which only means that we are part of the global financialized economy. An economy that enslaves the third world, and huge swaths of the first world, in order to keep its ruling classes.

If you are in favor of having a ruling class, which would still exist under social democracy, then IMO your position is closer to trumps than any leftist. And I work with thousands of leftists all over the world. Look at how European social democracies are also being taken over by fascist parties. It is not a realistic defense against fascism.

Trumps whole strategy, which is actually the strategy of the global tech elite, is to crash the US economy to force an asset bubble (recession) onto the EU. At which point, anti-immigrant fascistic parties will mobilize their message to overturn the “good capitalist” social democratic reforms and allow capitalist destruction of the welfare state.

Social democracy is falling apart in real time, and I think you can’t see it because you have no theory of change. You see things categorically rather than dynamically, which removes you from actual conditions. As much as I’d like to disabuse you of those notions, you seem pretty committed to your narrow idealist views, which is a shame as we could use more spicy fighters on our side against Trump, and less performative resistance that only contributes to mass confusion.

I mean a lot of people don’t want to have their way of life userped by these radical idiots. One side is calling for a civil war and the other side is effectively campaigning for concentration camps. Normal people don’t want to engage with either brand of insanity. They just want to go to work and go home, spend time with their family.

I think the thing you’re asserting isn’t what the person you’re responding to is saying.

Tankies bad, we’re talking about tankies not leftists.

Another centrist who thinks the left just doesn’t get it.

The way finitebanjo defines it though, as anyone who rightly opposes US imperialism as being a tankie, is what I’m arguing against. I’m arguing against conveniently abstracted generalization of messy histories that support a very very narrow view, which defines most leftists as “evil tankies.”

I’m arguing against any views, coming from tankies or progressive liberals, that statically categorize historical and political relations, which are inherently dynamic and change over time. I’m arguing against sacrificing deep understanding at the altar of some slanderous and IMO dangerous mischaracterization of most leftists.

I think its possible that you, as someone who seems to feel comfortable using the term tankie, don’t understand the way it warps actual political discourse away from radical but sometimes correct positions, and toward ineffectual online camps. I’m aware of the kind of weird super online left that takes up their own ignorant campist positions and defends them with like memes. Sometimes these people even crop up in actual organizing and can wreak havok if they get control, I can think of a few examples of real life “tankies” causing great harm to our movements. But it is very rare.

In fact if you ever meet like a “Stalinist” or as you might call them, “tankie”, from a third world country, they are completely unlike the white western online tankie that you’re referring to. They have certain questionable views which the synthetic online tankies try to copy, but their practical activity, their organizing work, is incredibly serious, well intentioned, effective and engages actual exploited people in a revolutionary way.

But the way Tankie gets defined sometimes, it seems like anyone who reads and understands Lenin is a trump supporter, which is totally wrong, but exactly how I would describe finitebanjo’s polemics. This would put people like Paulo Friere in the category of tankie because he has certain third worldist sensibilites despite being probably the greatest humanist theorist since Marx himself. Considering that this is an author and educator often taught in even christian seminary schools, as well as many secular advanced degree programs, and also studied seriously by every left tendency, the definition of tankie often completely misses the mark.

Maybe I am mis-stating that point a little, I don’t know what is in peoples hearts when they use the term. But as someone who is definitely active on the communist left and not a tankie, even anti-tankie peeps don’t call me that, that is how it looks to me. The way that I avoid becoming a tankie is by studying, reflecting and applying theory in a practical way. Arguing that I am misunderstanding the situation seems to refute everything that makes me a principled leftist. So I have a hard time with your characterization of my arguments.

But sometimes history comes along and says “too bad.” There is no historical precedent for fascism or extreme wealth inequality being corrected by electoral politics.

If you’re able to comfortably sit on the fence, recognize two facts: One, that’s a position of entitlement (Plenty of people are already having their lives destroyed by what’s happening). Two, being passive is choosing to allow authoritarianism to win.

To reiterate, I’m not a Tankie. I don’t whitewash the heinous history of revolutions, upheaval, and failed government systems. And I am positive that I’m screaming into the void. In every historical example I’ve studied, the comfortable middle class eventually sides with elite authority and not the peasants. And the peasants always lose. But the alternative is too awful to surrender to. Centralized techno-fascism and eventual catastrophic conflict with China are what’s in-store.

I’m not gonna stop calling fascists fascists because it hurts feelings or harms them, nor am I going to stop calling out tankies for being tankies.

I hope this helps clarify.

Take care

The left is not calling for a Civil War. They’re demanding basic human rights for everyone, and the capitalists have made it clear they’d rather kill everyone.

If you feel equally threatened by the left and the right, it’s because you support fascism. You just prefer a lighter flavor of it that you benefit from.