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Comment on Is it me or is everyone in hexbear insane?
TraitorToAmerica@lemmy.ml 3 months agothe original origin of the term was a group british communists attacking anyone who supported the Soviet Union’s crushing of the hungarian uprising in 1956. it then morphed into a term used to attack anyone who supports the use of force and authority in general to suppress counter revolutionaries. it’s final degeneration is that is now used to attack anyone to the left of an american democrat like facebones said.
here is a good article about it. To be clear: this is written from the perspective of a marxist leninist, who are normally the number one target of being called a “tankie”
RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
That’s the gist. Then he goes on with another paragraph of whataboutism but of course not a single mention of the tens of millions of dead both, Stalin and Mao, were responsible for.
Of course he’s also an western armchair socialist. People that actually lived in the Sowjet Union (and not in today’s Russia) draw quite a different picture.
Facebones@reddthat.com 3 months ago
It’s interesting how the only criticism anybody can drum up is “tens of millions dead,” but nobody bats an eye at the death toll of capitalism, capitalist countries, and their endless war machine/endless interference in other countries via funding coups or outright assassinations in support of harmful leaders who will play nice with the corporations.
Your link describes discussion of labor camps as if it’s some long lost relic of a bygone era - but slavery of inmates is, right now, legal and prevalent in the US subsidizing private industries for pennies on the dollar. It references the conditions of the camps, but plenty of current US inmates face subhuman conditions and treatment. You imply that everybody suffered all the time under the Soviets, but a far from insignificant number (depending on how you do the numbers, with more support for the USSR than we have for our own government this past decade or so) remember the USSR fondly, or at least as better than their current governments.
All the things y’all constantly belt about to argue socialism is the great evil of the world is shit we do now that you support as long as it benefits private entities instead of public. I’m not going to argue that everything was perfect, or that nobody was corrupt, but I WILL argue that y’all spend a lot of time defending those same imperfections and corruptions under capitalism with this lazy weak ass “but fixing it would be spooky scary socialism” argument. Per the common reasons people call socialism a failure, so is capitalism. That’s why leftists call for, as you call it, “prettied up” socialism - not to fool people, but because what we’re doing now is FAILING EVERYBODY and tripling down on funneling even more of our economy to 1-3% of the population hasn’t helped anything so it’s time for something different and realistic change is gradual, not “seizing the means of production” overnight.
((I don’t know anything about how to do the thing notating an image so in the off chance it helps someone: Drake No/Yes Meme DrakeNo - tyranny.gov DrakeYes - tyranny.com )) Image
RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
Yet more whataboutism. This thread is about tankies not capitalist slavery.
Facebones@reddthat.com 3 months ago
Maybe you shouldn’t have defended your point with a link using these talking points then if you didn’t want them responded to.
Thanks for proving my point though about liberals just saying shit then going “SeEeEe??!?!” no matter the response.
TraitorToAmerica@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
this is directly preceding it. Even if I accepted your frankly hilarious black book of communism death tolls, the argument here is that the soviet union and China still greatly improved the lives of the average citizen compared to what came before while facing huge problems that you would crumble upon immediately upon encountering, like imminent war from the west that they predicted and prepared for correctly. As far as your other claim, it’s not nearly so simple as you make it out to be:
washingtonpost.com/…/why-do-so-many-people-miss-t… reuters.com/…/us-ebrd-transition-survey-idUSKBN14…
christian@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
This essay resonates with me, thanks for sharing, the author makes her points pretty effectively. I’m not a historian and I don’t know shit, but I think even if I give the critics the concession that everything is absolute rubbish, I still think there’s no convincing argument that the beliefs are dishonest or malicious or not genuine.
There’s so much bullshit and conflicting views about literally every historical event that I find it really hard to penetrate the context of the discussion and feel confident in anything, but I think the fact that I keep seeing people who hold “tankie” opinions dismissed as malicious propagandists pushes me very strongly towards feeling that the critics have not made any attempt to seriously engage with the ideas they’re fighting against.
I think the realization I’m coming to now is that when part of your ideology is that people who claim belief in a specific conflicting worldview can be dismissed as bots or propagandists, finding out that those people aren’t manufactured makes it a lot harder to take everything else you’ve said seriously.
On the other hand, the guy you’re replying to is correct that the author’s points fall completely flat and are ridiculous once you hunt down that specific paragraph and remove the context immediately before and after. Then it becomes obvious to an unbiased reader that the author actually ignored communist death tolls because it was inconvenient for her argument.
TraitorToAmerica@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
glad it managed to reach someone! If you want the best nuanced review of Stalin from anyone anywhere, you will have to read Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend by Domenico Losurdo (free pdf here!). It is well sourced, and also uses western sources that should be biased against stalin to make its arguments! review on the same site as the tankies article here: redsails.org/on-losurdos-stalin/ additionally, some other articles I highly recommend if you want to understand our position better:
redsails.org/why-marxism/ redsails.org/the-case-for-socialized-ownership/ redsails.org/concessions/ redsails.org/what-is-dialectics/ redsails.org/communist-self-confidence/
most of these are quite a bit longer, so sorry to flood you with them, but I’m always eager to share these excellent articles with anyone who will consider reading them!
SSJMarx@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Oh no! Won’t somebody think of the Nazis and Japanese invaders?
michaelmrose@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Stalin and Mao both killed a hell of a lot of their own people that is what they are referring to
SSJMarx@lemm.ee 3 months ago
The Kulaks and the Landlords deserved it.