Comment on Don't eat that
zephr_c@lemm.ee 1 month agoWhen someone supports fascist regimes and spouts fascist talking points they are what they are, no matter what they like to call themselves. The Nazis called themselves socialist, too.
Comment on Don't eat that
zephr_c@lemm.ee 1 month agoWhen someone supports fascist regimes and spouts fascist talking points they are what they are, no matter what they like to call themselves. The Nazis called themselves socialist, too.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
That’s not correct, though. MLs don’t support fascist regimes.
MLs have a long history with deep theoretical frameworks, which is why just calling them fascists and right-wingers gets you exactly nowhere with them, and ignores their genuine Proletarian perspective.
Even this post, for example, has people correctly pointing out how the USSR kept the Nazi scientists on a tight leash, then deported them after they had sufficient intelligence, while the western states kept the Nazis and allowed them into important offices.
If you want to genuinely combat MLs, then you have to appeal to them from a materialist perspective, and showcase sound theoretical basis to defeat Capitalism and Imperialism globally.
If you just dismiss MLs as right-wingers, you genuinely showcase a lack of understanding of leftist history in general, and don’t actually succeed in combating ML mindsets.
Stovetop@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Well, some people who call themselves Marxist-Leninists do. Those are Tankies.
A rational ML person won’t support fascism, but there are a lot of so-called ML adherents who long for the trappings of the USSR to the extent that they don’t even care about its founding ideology; they care about putting a man into space, about strong nuclear arsenals, and about dismantling the corrupt West. Hence why so many Tankies fall in line behind the Putin regime for no reason other than that he is aesthetically “the glory days of Russia” and has made himself an enemy of the West, despite all of the fascism which fills the gaps.
TokenBoomer@lemmy.world 1 month ago
That kind of dogmatism is not Marxist. Even Marxists can display reactionary tendencies.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
I mostly agree, the issue is that the majority of what gets called support for Putin isn’t support for Putin, but alignment against NATO. There are legitimate supporters of Putin among some few MLs, but what I personally have noticed more is anti-NATO statements being called pro-Putin, because Putin standa against NATO.
The opposite is also common, going against Putin can often get conflated with being pro-NATO.
Stovetop@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I get that. I suppose in this case I just don’t sympathize with the “enemy of my enemy” perspective because Putin and the neo-aristocratic oligarchs who surround him are still enemies of Marxist ideology.
zephr_c@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Wow, that was the longest and most pretentious “nuh-uh” I’ve ever seen. You realize that we are specifically talking about people who support fascists, right? If you think you can rationally talk someone out of any belief, let alone one as irrational as fascism, then I’d love to see you try. It’d be funny.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
I can do a better job than you.
zephr_c@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Sadly there is mountains of ever fence that you can’t. Studies consistently show that trying to rationally argue someone out of a belief just makes them even more defensive of it.