Comment on Stay Mad
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 6 days agoA tankie is, broadly, someone who wants to effect left-wing ideology using authoritarian methods. It originally referred to those who defended the USSR using tanks to suppress the Hungarian Revolution, but it could be aptly used to describe those who defend China’s actions in Tiananmen Square. It’s rightfully used as a perjorative, since authoritarian enforcement is antithetical to leftism, particularly communism.
Tankies are hypocrites who didn’t understand their self-proclaimed ideologies. If someone’s idea of communist praxis is lining up dissenters for the firing squad, you’re dealing with a tankie.
Tankies are hypocrites who didn’t understand their self-proclaimed ideologies.
Tankies are very frequently the only people in the room who’ve done the reading. If you believe that so called “authoritarianism” is antithetical to leftism, then I recommend you read the following pamphlet by Engels.
Tankies have read Marx and Engels, yes, but there are many other forms of leftism besides ML. Also, it’s possible to do the reading and disagree with the methods of implementation.
but I don’t believe authoritarianism is the best way to go about it.
Humor me for a moment, which of the following do you consider authoritarian?
I hop off the train at the part where the top-down dictatorship comes into play. Probably a bit before the level of authoritarianism where the Joseph Stalin type starts killing people for having a dissenting opinion, and what not.
Using the state to enforce good wages and end the terribleness of the stock market/landlord culture does not need to involve a top down dictatorship and a lack of democracy.
I know about the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and all that, and in my opinion, it should involve all of the workers, not one person or a small group of people. A top down dictatorship just makes it all that easier for the party to be infiltrated and controlled by bourgeois interests. If said dictatorship is a true democracy, with each worker having an equal say, it makes it pretty hard to control the proles.
You completely disregard, that the soviet union did number 3 and crushed all unions not falling in line. Or that they ignore the will of the proletariat during the 1917 and 1918 elections numerous times.
The authoritarian way isnt being critized for coming down on Capitalists. Its critized for how it treated every deviation from the party line. And especially, how it turned into a political chess game at the top, which prioritized amassing personal power and wealth over the actual well being of the state.
There’s a difference between someone-needs-to-coordinate-and-manage-complex-undertakings “authoritarian” and line-the-dissidents-up-against-the-wall “authoritarian”. Tankies are the latter.
We have class war waged against us by the bourgeoisie, and thousands of people are casualties of that war every single day. Expecting to turn the tide against them without getting our hands dirty in turn is useless idealism.
Uh huh, and historically violent authoritarian transitional regimes are always so willing to step aside after the transition.
Getting our hands dirty means shooting comrades who carried the revolutionary wars for being a bit yucky.
go_go_gadget@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Odd. I’m getting called a tankie because I just won’t vote for Biden (or Trump). Someone must have gotten confused.
TokenBoomer@lemmy.world 6 days ago
By their reasoning:
No vote for Biden is a vote for Trump. Trump is fascist and authoritarian. Tankies are authoritarians. Therefore, you are a tankie. /s
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
Lots of people say lots of silly things, nonetheless Trump is worse for the proletariat than Biden, and turning your nose up at the lesser evil endangers real people when the greater evil wins. You don’t have to vote for the greater evil to help tip the scales in their favor. Accelerationism is authoritarianism with extra steps and no one in the driver’s seat.
go_go_gadget@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Biden doesn’t accept blame for tipping the scales in their favor. Biden’s family doesn’t accept blame for tipping the scales in their favor. Biden’s campaign doesn’t accept blame for tipping the scales in their favor. The DNC leadership doesn’t accept blame for tipping the scales in their favor. People who voted for Biden in the 2020 primaries don’t accept blame for tipping the scale in their favor. Moderaters and political analysts don’t accept blame for tipping the scales in their favor. People like you letting those people get away with that and focusing on telling me to vote for Biden don’t accept blame for tipping the scales in their favor.
I don’t accept blame for it either.
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
IDGAF who does or doesn’t accept blame for whatever. I care about material results; my future, my family’s future, my neighbors’ futures, the future of the people who live in this country, and this world. IDGAF how ideologically pure a politician is, or who’s wrong or right, or who gets away with whatever. I care about the people who are going to suffer if the Federalists, Fascists, and Fundamentalists keep establishing their foothold judge by judge, bill by bill, ruling by ruling.
This isn’t grade school, this isn’t a game, this isn’t about fair. There are real stakes here. People will die. I’m not heartless enough to play the blame game with lives on the line. I’m voting harm reduction because I’m an adult and I play the hand I’m dealt. Righteously losing doesn’t help anything but ego-centric deontology.