And no, I’m not saying don’t vote; I’m saying that there comes a point when voting isn’t going to solve the problem
“dOnT cArE, nOt VoTiNg”
-hexbear
As a leftist I find tankies an absolute fucking disgrace. Dunno if it’s the fact that I’m middle aged and Finnish, so not only do I know a lot of people who had to escape the Soviet Union but I’ve visited it, and I had an entire branch of my family tree genocided by the Soviets, but I just can’t fathom how somebody can be so stupid as to idolize someone like fucking Stalin (or Mao or whichever incompetent psycho a particular tankie loves)
Well, you see, every atrocity committed by Stalin or Mao was justified and it’s only CIA propaganda that makes you think otherwise. /s
And everyone I know who has horror stories of life in the glorious workers’ paradise of the USSR is a lying counterrevolutionary who should have been shot by the KGB
MFW I realize genocide denialism follows the Narcissist’s prayer
It didn’t happen, and if it did it wasn’t that bad, and if it was it’s not that big a deal, and if it is it wasn’t (insert genocidal party)'s fault, and if it was they didn’t mean it, and if they did the victims deserved it.
Which follows because it’s perpetrated by the political equivalent of narcissists: dictators and oligarchs.
Basically it is a cult mentality. And dogmatically placing ideology over reality. Ideology puts things in nice clean boxes that people think they find easy to understand.
The problem with ideology is its ideal. But not real. It’s why I don’t dogmatically identify as anything ideologically. Pragmatically I’m anarcho communist/ true or left libertarian. It’s where my beliefs lay but it doesn’t define or restrict them.
ML often just lack critical thinking skills. And are as hypocritical as the liberals they curse. But they don’t do it because it’s logical or based in fact. They do it to belong to a group and feel superior. Just like those they despise.
Funny story. Couple days ago I was commenting on a thread in a community. I didn’t even pay attention to where the community was hosted. (Lemmy.ml lol) But people were complaining about the West, and how it is completely fascist. And how only the West does horrible things like genocide etc. To which I replied 'Russia and China would like to have a word with you". Predictably they screeeed that they “aren’t Marxist Leninist”. Which I pointed out that they had been. And that their evolution was representative of ML. That any groups, given absolute power. Would rather destroyed their societies than relinquish it. Whether they’re capitalist or ML. And stated that no ML government will achieve communism, or even remain socialist. Bam perma ban for “horse shoe theory” bullshit. That’s when I realized the server the community was on and broke out laughing. I take the band as a badge of honor. Previously I had been banned from the same Community for a month. The made up reason for that one was genocide denial. Because I had the audacity to admonish people for conflating actual genocide with enabling genocide. I didn’t deny it. But as I said. ML are whiny hypocrites. Who can’t argue their own positions. And look for any petty out they can find.
Anyone defending genocide isnt a leftist, not a liberal, a “tankie” or anything else.
They’re a fascist who doesn’t want to be called a fascist.
It’s not like people are running around using NK as a straw puppet for why democracy is bad, we all agree they’re just lying about their governmental system.
Anyone defending genocide isnt a leftist, not a liberal, a “tankie” or anything else.
They’re a fascist who doesn’t want to be called a fascist.
Eh, although I agree in principle, facism isn’t a catch-all term for all authoritarian ideologies. Fascism is essentially corporatist (“corporation” in the poli sci sense, not “ruled by private corporations”) authoritarian capitalism with a big focus on private enterprise, completely against eg. welfare systems or anything like that (because weak people doesn’t deserve to be supported, and if anything need to be killed), highly misogynistic, etc. etc. For example the NSDAP privatized a lot of previously public enterprises, which doesn’t seem to be something a lot of people realize.
While tankies are authoritarian, they’re still communists or socialists or whatever.
So you’re saying a “moderate liberal” who supports genocide is more of a fascist than a “tankie”? Or would you call them a “tankie” for saying theyre on the left but openly supporting genocide, siccing police on peaceful protestors, and immediately cutting off any voter/media/politicians who disagree with them?
Sxomeone that openly refuses to step aside unless “lord God” tells them? Someone that insists they’re the only one that can save the country, and if they don’t personally win the country is over.
Would you call them “tankie” or fascist?
So you’re saying a “moderate liberal” who supports genocide is more of a fascist than a “tankie”?
I’m not saying anything like that: you’re saying that.
What I was saying is that fascism is its own kind of ideology, and although yes it’s been pretty fluid over the years, the hallmarks are authoritarian capitalism, emphasis on private enterprise, social Darwinism (supporting “the strong” and loathing “the weak”), misogyny, and the hatred and outright murder of the Other (jews, foreigners, LGBT+ people, people with the wrong religion, people with no religion, whoever).
Lots of folks fit the mold even without necessarily realizing it.
Would you call them “tankie” or fascist?
A tankie is an authoritarian communist. Your hypothetical person doesn’t seem to support communism nor be a leftist, and it’s kinda hard to say if they’re a fascist or not just based on what you wrote. Fascist-adjacent maybe but 🤷
Don’t bother. These people LOVE rewriting your narrative. It’s the only way they can win arguments.
What I was saying is that fascism is its own kind of ideology, and although yes it’s been pretty fluid over the years, the hallmarks are authoritarian capitalism, emphasis on private enterprise, social Darwinism (supporting “the strong” and loathing “the weak”), misogyny, and the hatred and outright murder of the Other (jews, foreigners, people with the wrong religion, people with no religion, whoever).
Well, if you lump misogyny in with other bigotry like it should be…
That’s a pretty good description of “moderate Dems” and Joe Biden’s entire 2024 campaign specifically.
My point is, breaking it all up into every slice getting it’s own special name is ridiculous and just confuses people.
But I don’t think you’re going to magically start understanding any of this if I keep replying.
My point is, breaking it all up into every slice getting it’s own special name is ridiculous and just confuses people.
You seriously think it’s less confusing to use a well-established political term incorrectly for everything that’s even a little bit authoritarian, and that calling different systems by their own and well-established terms is confusing? This is just your version of reich-wingers calling everyone to the left of Goebbels a “socialist” because they can’t be bothered to learn about politics.
And I’m supposedly the dim one here?
No liberal supports genocide. It’s been explained to you time and again. The problem with debating you is that everyone has to wade through the bullshit world you created just to get back to the reality where the actual things happen.
NO LIBERAL SUPPORTS GENOCIDE.
Stop making up bullshit and stating it as a fact. It does nothing but dilute the point of any discussion you’re in.
We support Biden over Trump because we feel curable cancer is a better option than an incurable one. And unlike you, we also understand how nuance works within the context of political events. We don’t just make shit up so that we can win arguments.
Maybe try it? Or are you that afraid to give up the commonality you share with MAGA?
They’re a fascist who doesn’t want to be called a fascist.
I see you have met the auth-“left”.
I mean…
The “moderate” wing and Joe Biden are the ones insisting on genocide these days.
Although with the way Biden has been treating protestors and voters/media/politicians who question him…
Yeah, ok, I guess we can start call Biden and them “auth-left” instead of “moderate”.
Yeah, ok, I guess we can start call Biden and them “auth-left” instead of “moderate”.
It’s pretty simple really
Yes it is. Industrialization helps everyone who implements it. It has nothing to do with the political ideology. Industrialization is good. The funny thing about you posting that. Is that China is not Marxist leninist or socialist anymore in any meaningful way. There is a new bourgeois-xi class oppressing the proletariat. And frittering away all their hard work on get rich quick schemes for him and his friends before everything implodes.
Marxism-Leninism is not tied to one specific one size fits all economic policy, what’s needed depends on the specific material conditions. China managed to open up and allow bourgeois investment to flow in, without allowing the bourgeoisie to take over the government and do regulatory capture. This was what they needed to do at the time to best advance the condition of the people, and it’s also allowed them to emerge as a major global power, while at the same time having too many economic ties for anyone to really do anything about them, militarily. It’s proving to be an incredibly successful strategy, both geopolitically and domestically.
Tell that to emperor bourgeoi-xi in the forbidden city. And his wealthy oligarch buddies. The bourgeoisie never had to take over. Xi happily joined them, and is planning to out bourgeoisie them. He certainly isn’t proletariat and neither are the business owners in China working with him. But tell yourself what you need to to cope.
Do you feel that one isolated graph justifies everything Mao did though? Like, 15 – 55 million people died in the Great Leap Forward, some 20 – 30 million died due to the Four Pests campaign, and so on and so on, but life expectancy got better so that’s OK? How much of that is even Mao’s doing? He kicked the bucket in the mid 70’s after all
No, Mao did a lot of terrible things which I would not defend. But he also made very significant improvements in the lives of a lot of people, and imo the graph puts a lot of things into perspective. During the enormous failure of the Great Leap Forward, that’s where the line stagnates before continuing upwards. The steep climb afterwards was actually during the Cultural Revolution, the chaos and destruction is far outweighed by the implementation of the Barefoot Doctors program, in which doctors were trained quickly and sent out to the provinces to administer the basics of modern medicine, such as vaccines.
Of course you’re right that it wasn’t all Mao’s doing. While life expectancy drastically increased during the time he was in power, people were still living in conditions of extreme poverty. The reforms in the 80’s beginning with Deng led to 800 million people being lifted out of poverty, which amounted to 3/4 of worldwide poverty reduction. But Westerners, not having experienced anything like the conditions that the communists in China eliminated, generally ignore these accomplishments and disavow the entire project as a total failure.
It’s fair to criticize Mao for sure, but there’s a lot of space in between “idolization” and “incompetent psycho.” If you have any sort of complex or nuanced view on him, however, that means that you’re a tankie.
I don’t think people are generally against nuance (or at least they shouldn’t be) but it’s not like actual tankies – ie. authoritarian communists – have very nuanced views. So yes, of course there’s a whole gradient between “idolization” and “incompetent psycho” and I was being hyperbolic, but especially with Mao I’d argue that he really was fairly incompetent. Likely not an actual psychopath like Stalin seemed to be, but a shining example of competence he wasn’t (Four Pests is just one example). This doesn’t mean that nothing good happened under his rule though.
“Actual” tankies don’t exist, outside of perhaps a handful of edgy teens. The way I use the term is defined by common use, regardless of the stated definition. In actual practice, anyone who defends anything a communist government has ever done, even if it’s something as minor as acknowledging the success of Cuba’s literacy program, is liable to be called a tankie by someone. I could try to fight it but I’d be fighting virtually every time the term is used, and I prefer to just reclaim it. You might as well ignore it, or love the word instead, because you ain’t done nothing if you ain’t been called a Red
“Actual” tankies don’t exist
Have you seen Hexbear? Honestly, saying they don’t exist outside of a few edgy teens seems a bit myopic
I see from that graph that in 2190 they should live until they are 124.
You won’t according to their wishes and they won’t according to yours?
Not American, not even a western person, so my comment may not be relevant or welcome.
I think a part of it is bitterness(against the mainstream for letting it get to the current state) and the hope that the people facing the issues instead of a temporary 4 year delay would lead to actual changes.
Personally, I think that people should vote as long as they can safely do so.
Tho, the presidential elections seem weird for me as I’m from a parliamentary system.
You don’t think Biden will step down if he loses the election?
Lol I can’t wait to tell this to all the trumpers.
A) You think this post is specifically about US politics?B) Where the fuck did I say anything of the sort you strawmanning cabbage?Edit: the cabbage turned out to be me
A) Most everyone is going to interpret this in the context of U.S. politics given that we’re a superpower on the brink of fascist accelerationism pending the results of an election 120 days away. You bring up Finland and Russia elsewhere in the thread, but Finnish elections already happened last month and I really don’t hear anyone else talking about Russia’s upcoming gubernatorial and parliamentary elections coming up in September right now.
B) I was being tongue-in-cheek about the fact that the only party that could logically “refuse to step down” is the incumbent, which in the context of U.S. politics would be Biden. It was a joke, don’t be a baby.
Tl;Dr: OP is a troll who posts vague memes and then scolds anyone who attempts to interpret or joke about them.
Fun will be had within the fun zone and will have all required fun criteria.
Dissent or failure to have fun will be punished.
TL;DR: watch as I jump from conclusion to conclusion
Honestly I didn’t even realize you were joking because it’s really hard to tell jokes like that apart from actual idiotic arguments. I’ve been pretty pissed the whole day because reasons so I just assumed the worst and got annoyed.
Edit: Also, for me the feeling of this meme is more inspired by the recent EU Parliament election and the ongoing French election, although our local extremist right-wing government doesn’t help. We have eg. a literal pedophile neo-Nazi as a minister, our Speaker of the Parliament – who is one of the mass murderer Breivik’s idols by the way – has fantasized about murdering a gay man on his blog, etc. etc. and they’re now ignoring the constitution and international treaties when passing an anti-immigration law, and I wouldn’t put doing an Orbán past this bunch.
I didn’t even realize you were joking
This is a meme community
Edit: …
I ain’t reading all that.
This is a meme community
And as we all know, there’s absolutely no people with stupid opinions in political meme communities
That is sad to hear, and fwiw I absolutely was trying to figure this take into the US election situation and not succeeding . . Thank you for explaining.
If the fix was already in . . . if “voting didn’t matter” then conservatives wouldn’t be working so hard to suppress it.
Here in America we’re choosing between being close to this point or past it.
Vote.
Do you believe we are at or past that point?
Who’s “we”?
We Finns? No.
We Americans? Maybe? Getting close at least.
We Russians? Yes.
I don’t think Americans really understand what January 6th was. And what the actual failure to hold anyone accountable four years later means.
We spend decades learning about similar events in school, but when they actually happen we just shrug and keep going.
people don’t want to imagine themselves living in a dystopian hellhole, so they adamantly deny that it’ll ever, ever happen in this country.
as it’s happening right in front of their face
On top of that, folks like to imagine they’d march with MLK but then they bitch about folks doing the kind of peaceful protesting he did.
There are no entirely peaceful mass protests any more. It’s impossible to get a large procession of angry people in this day and age to stay peaceful. As soon as one person acts out, then the police go and squash the protest, which causes chaos and more violence. Then people post videos of the incident claiming that it was a riot to begin with.
Claims like that got made back in the MLK days too, now we got cameras everywhere though.
You’re entirely correct, but we didn’t have the Internet, a misinformation super-spreader, nor did we have Russian or Chinese disinformation agents.
I think a lot of people simply don’t care; even if they didn’t vote for the Face-Eating Leopard Party, they think they’re safe because the leopards have only eaten the faces of people they don’t really personally know or ultimately care all that much about. A generic liberal/centrist may not be an outright 'phobe or racist, but that’s about the extent of their convictions.
When the leopards start eating the faces of LGBT+ people they’ll go “oh dear this is terrible” when they read about it in the news, maybe make a social media post, feel bad for a while, and then move on with their day.
You know you can vote AND protest or perform direct action?
Although people that post memes like this don’t do either…
Reading not your strong suit? This is the body text of this post:
And no, I’m not saying don’t vote; I’m saying that there comes a point when voting isn’t going to solve the problem
So please tell me where I said you can’t vote and protest?
No u.
but but but
Cthulhu/Dagon 2024
“Why vote for the lesser evil?”I’ll take the eldritch horrors beyond my comprehension over the two old white fucks who should’ve died a long time ago.
At least the cosmic horrors from beyond our spacetime are honest
Don’t blame me. I voted for Shoggoth.
I think you are at that point. You can only slow down the inevitable T thos point.
