Oh, cool, tell me what historically successful, relevant and long-lasting leftist movements you support! Wait, you don’t support any actually existing leftism…
Comment on Personalized Political Spectrum
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I don’t consider tankies lefter than me.
Riverside@reddthat.com 2 months ago
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Hey I found the Tankie who thinks they’re on the left!
Riverside@reddthat.com 2 months ago
You can answer the question too! Which actually existing current or historical leftist movements do you support?
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Bruh just out here punching the air in an empty comment section of a shit posting sub
Go back to your echo chamber tankie. Nobody likes you. Nobody wants you. But I’m sure your fans enjoy your circle jerk.
Which actually existing current or historical leftist movements do you support?
Are you a fucking cop? Get the fuck out of here you loser. I’m sorry everyone hates you. But thats a you issue.
kkj@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Anarchist Catalonia, modern Rojava, more than a few pre-Columbian North American societies, the Paris Commune of 1793… Maybe read some theory instead of making arguments from ignorance.
And you can care about results without having historical results. Anti-monarchism in general had basically zero results post-Industrial Revolution until the liberals won in North America in the late 18th century, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t care about results, just that they hadn’t achieved much yet. The American Revolution was pretty quickly followed by the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, several more French revolutions, Brazilian independence, and eventually the October Revolution, the most recent Chinese civil war, the Cuban Revolution, and so on.
Between 1775 and 1925, the general concept of people voting on matters of statewide policy went from a relic of the Classical Era that had ended more than 1800 years earlier to the norm in North America and Europe. 1800 years of obscurity, then 150 years to ubiquity in the world’s wealthiest states and another 50 to expand to most of the rest.
Sure, anarchism has had a longer period out of the spotlight, not having been the norm since roughly the invention of agriculture ~8000 years ago, but you never know when it might return. Having a concrete, achievable plan to get results is good, but you also want to make sure that the results you’re striving for are just, otherwise you end up with liberalism again. And we all know how that ends up.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
kkj@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Being better at violence doesn’t make you more left, it makes you better at violence. That can be useful, but it isn’t the same thing. Your argument boils down to “might makes right” and could be expanded to classify social democracy as “more left” (after all, it’s left of the global status quo and its citizens are the happiest on average). In fact, you might even be able to use the argument for liberalism; it’s left of monarchy and fascism. Sure, it frequently decays into fascism, but so did the USSR.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Social democracy in the imperial core is to the right of the global status quo, because it depends on imperialism, neocolonialism, and unequal exchange. The USSR, on the other hand, supported anti-imperialist and decolonial movements materially, and set up a socialist economy. Being able to both establish and maintain socialism is a necessary first step for anything that can be considered left, because it’s the only leftism that’s actually real. No, socialism isn’t fascism, and equating the two is a form of Holocaust trivialization with ties to Double Genocide Theory.
To place Russian communism on the same moral level with Nazi fascism, because both are totalitarian, is, at best, superficial, in the worse case it is fascism. He who insists on this equality may be a democrat; in truth and in his heart, he is already a fascist, and will surely fight fascism with insincerity and appearance, but with complete hatred only communism.
kkj@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
The global status quo is liberalism. Social democracy is to the left of liberalism.
And I never said that socialism was fascism, I said that the USSR gave way to fascism. Vladimir Putin’s Russian Federation is fascist. The USSR collapsed, and fascism followed, much like the Weimar Republic collapsed and was replaced by the Nazis. That doesn’t mean that the liberals in the Weimar Republic were fascists.
Riverside@reddthat.com 2 months ago
Being better at violence doesn’t make you more left
Being better at violence against fascism and imperialism definitely makes you more left, though. The lack of proper violence against such regimes leads to a destruction of the left wing.
Your argument boils down to “might makes right” and could be expanded to classify social democracy as “more left”
Social democracy also regularly turns to fascism when it needs to, it’s definitely lacking violence against fascism, amazing that you’d say this in 2026. I fucking wish our mighty social democracies in Europe fought against Israeli fascism and USA fascism, unfortunately they’re buddies!
(after all, it’s left of the global status quo and its citizens are the happiest on average)
By excluding imperialism from the measure of average happiness, you’re committing a sampling error. That would be like polling monarchs of medieval Europe to ask whether monarchy is the system making people happier. Ask the people in India and Sri Lanka and Peru extracting the resources of the goods social democracies consume and sewing the clothes we wear how happy they are with social democracy.
Sure, it frequently decays into fascism, but so did the USSR
So, we have one example of a Marxist-Leninist state decaying to fascism (after saving Europe from Nazism) and several examples of countries not doing this (China, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba). How about we engage in honest criticism of the flaws of the Soviet model that led to its dissolution in order to prevent that from happening again?
5in1k@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Shit, there’s plenty of Non Tankies to my left. Tankies want to use force to control people’s thoughts and actions.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Tankies are drunk on hierarchy and violence.
Drusas@fedia.io 2 months ago
Seriously. Tankies are authoritarians who consider themselves leftists.
deranger@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Authoritarian / libertarian is on a completely different axis from left / right, no?
Mr_Fish@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Only on the political compass, which uses a definition of left vs right that a lot of leftists disagree with. Really, the entire history of “left wing” politics has been about questioning and dismantling authority. The terms “left wing” and “right wing” come from the French revolution, when the people in favour of simply reforming the monarchy sat on the right side of the room, while the people who wanted to fully dismantling the monarchy sat on the left. A lot of more modern leftist thought is about questioning the power that capitalist businesses have.
deranger@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Well said. Still; can you not have authoritarian left and libertarian left viewpoints? I just don’t see how questioning the power capitalist businesses have is limited to the libertarian left.
What’s wrong with the definition of left & right on the political compass? I’m not super tuned into political science but this is the first I’ve heard that many leftists have take issue with it. I have seen the authoritarian left referred to as “red fascists”, but do they not also take issue with the power capitalist businesses have?
I suppose I’d consider myself a left libertarian. The power of the state should be limited and what power is granted to the state should be used to improve the life of the people.
Drusas@fedia.io 2 months ago
Very well said, thank you.
j_overgrens@feddit.nl 2 months ago
Worthwile to note here that the left of the French revolution, the Jacobins, did develop authoritarianism.
Which should have been a warning sign for all leftists to come, but alas…
Riverside@reddthat.com 2 months ago
Tell me which actually existing, relevant, long-lasting leftist projects you support and how they’re further to the left than Cuba.
pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
They’re so left they’ve wrapped around and became fascists
Riverside@reddthat.com 2 months ago
Tankies support systems that have brought about immense increases in life expectancy, worker’s rights, women’s rights, free healthcare, free education, and literally defeated fascism. It’s still baffling to me that in 2026, witnessing the descent to fascism of the west (Trump, Meloni LePen, AfD, Vox…) you’re still so threatened by Chinese socialists who literally don’t have a fascist party or by the Soviet socialists who literally saved Europe from Nazism.
Tja@programming.dev 2 months ago
Replaced Nazism in Europe*
Riverside@reddthat.com 2 months ago
Yes, as I said, replacing it by a system with full free healthcare, worker’s rights, respect of minorities and their languages and cultures, free education to the highest level, anti-imperialism and self-reliance. The dismantling of the Eastern Block is the biggest demographic catastrophe in Europe since WW2.
gmtom@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Cool, you can make literally that exact same argument about capitalist neo libs.
Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
You actually can’t make the argument that neoliberal capitalism has defeated fascism at all, you’d have to be completely historically & politically illiterate to even consider it. Life expectancy increase came as a result of medical research conducted around the world, all others were conceded by capitalist governments begrudgingly and only after years of hard work by organizations that were overwhelmingly made up of anti-capitalists, and every single one is currently being rolled back in every capitalist nation on earth.
DScratch@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
They’re on the Leftest off-ramp that heads back the other way.