Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies"

• Cricket@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I wasn’t trying to say that being open to tankie arguments is the same as believing in a flat earth. I was only making the comparison to explain the sense of futility and exhaustion many people feel when they encounter an argument they’ve had so many times. There’s a point where you recognize a fundamental difference in worldview, and that any further discussion is pointless.

  That makes more sense, thanks. I feel the same way about some discussions about this stuff.

  Personally, I think western capitalism is bad and needs to be replaced. But I also think that anyone who denies the genocides recognized by the majority of the world is being willfully ignorant. Many people seem to have a very limited ideology of “everything western = bad” and believe that brutal regimes elsewhere are somehow perfect utopias, despite well-documented evidence of the contrary.

  Without trying to get into a detailed discussion about it, what genocides do you have in mind, so I have a better idea of how to think about what you’re saying? The issue with “recognized by the majority of the world” is that it’s a problematic concept nowadays, and perhaps always was. The West and specifically the people that control the West, very much control the narratives that we receive in the West, to manipulate the people for political purposes. Some things where people start screaming “genocide” are nothing that any average person would recognize as such, or have a much more nuanced story. I think a lot of the heated discussions around this boil down to disagreements about a) the supposed genocide claims being a lot more nuanced and generally less terrible than the narrative that the West tries to push, b) the idea of providing “critical support” for countries that may do some arguably bad things while fighting the Western capitalist hegemony and trying to build actual alternatives. Maybe some people believe that these countries are perfect utopias, but I think that most recognize that those countries and systems have flaws and have made errors (like all countries do), but that they are still worthy of that “critical support” because they represent the only alternative and resistance to the Western system that has any chance of working.

  As I understand it, the term “tankie” specifically refers to people who deny or defend the brutal tactics used by communist leaders, often denying genocide. If someone tells me they agree with tankie ideology, I don’t have much confidence that conversation about it will do anyone any good. So in that regard, I empathize and understand why the person you were talking to went quiet after that.

  My understanding of the term “tankie” is a little broader than that. I don’t think it’s specific to genocide, but it allows for the idea that socialist and communist leaders have sometimes had to resort to harsh and perhaps heavy-handed tactics to maintain their system in the face of a constant barrage of threats and attacks from every possible direction. From what I understand, it specifically started being used in reference to the USSR sending in tanks to quash a worker revolt in Hungary(?) in the 50s(?). A revolt about which we just recently(?) got evidence that the CIA was involved in.

  Thanks for your reply and explanation of your points.

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