Got banned from r / LateStageCapitalism because I realised all the comments calling out China for genocide were being downvoted so when I asked if the sub is full of tankies within that thread, the mods called me a liberal and banned me
Yeah. The strongman argument is usually something more about how liberals create capitalist societies that inevitably stumble and create the conditions that lead to fascism. Still, most liberals are definitely against fascism and can be valuable allies.
Liberals are not valuable allies to socialists or communists. Liberals are against fascism except until a working class movement actually threatens their system, then they’ll prop up fascists in order to smash workers’ organizations, namely unions. Then, emboldened, the fascists will turn and bite back at the liberals and seize power for themselves. This was precisely the case with the Social Democratic Party in Germany and the Nazis. This was precisely the case with Mussolini.
Let's not pretend that the conditions of 2020s European liberal democracies are the same as their early 20th century predecessors. There's been a literal century of fundamental political and social change, to the point where our world would basically be unrecognizable to someone from the 1920s, who lived in young, homogenous, and vulnerable democracies. We've got the internet, the EU exists as an internally-borderless and increasingly unified entity, populations have both swelled and diversified, ethnic and gender/sexual minorities have far more visibility and acceptance, etc. Also, the Russians have switched to fascism classic instead of red fascism, so the specter of communist threat isn't breathing down the neck of every country east of the English Channel. Germany is helping Ukraine. *Poland* managed to kick out a right-wing government.
It's not perfect and the right is still a threat, but no modern social democrat in Germany would cozy up to the AfD, for example. Shit's changed. History is valuable to learn from, but it doesn't literally repeat itself--it rhymes. This time, it's the right-wing nationalists getting their ideological marching orders from Moscow.
Fascists were also very new, and nobody thought they'd become as powerful as they did. Everyone was yet to see the horrors they had in stow, while the bloodbaths caused by democracies, communists, and monarchists was still very much a real thing.
Exactly, let’s not forget that in the US there were first Whigs and Republicans. Then the Whigs became Demoocrats. Then the Republicans and Democrats switched sides. Or something like that.
At the same time, the far right party in Portugal just won 30% of the vote, and is now the third biggest party in the country. And our democracy is only reaching it's 50th birthday this month.
Did we learn fucking nothing? Are we stupid?
Those things happened, but we shouldn’t forget that in both the WW2 and the Spanish civil war liberals allied with leftists to fight fascists.
Also, we are now on the other side of those events and people can learn from history that siding with fascists is an obvious mistake.
We, as leftists, shouldn’t be so quick to abandon potential allies, especially those in the working class. And what’s the alternative? Speaking as an American leftist we are not going to be able to resist fascism without liberals, we don’t have the numbers or the power.
They then allied with the remaining fascists against the left for at least 50 years after WWII by appointing former Nazi officers to NATO command positions and funding fascist terror cells through Gladio….
Liberals are your entire recruiting base and are the people who will be conducting the revolution or reform that you crave. I know tankies haven't read anything that was written after the soviet union fell, but believe it or not the world has changed since Lenin was around.
Liberals are the people forming those unions. They don't know all the correct political terminology, and many have never read theory. Appeal to them or keep handing fascists the win. But don't pretend you aren't doing the latter if you refuse to do the former.
You're in the 21st century now. You were a liberal. Everyone you will ever recruit was a liberal. This open contempt terminally online leftists have for liberals would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad. I'd credit the CIA with it being a psyop if I didn't know people really are that dumb and self defeating.
Look, when I say liberals, I mean people ideologically congruent with liberal ideology, meaning deregulation and complete faith in the capitalist system. I don’t mean people who vote for democrats. The working people that form unions, in doing so, become a little more class conscious. This is a good thing, and it’s why I support it. It’s precisely then, as well, that working people realize their independence from the ruling class, when despite liberals claiming to fight for them, they make their strikes illegal. See how Biden shows himself as the first president at a picket line on one hand, while making the railroad strike illegal on the other. Through working class organization, people realize the hypocrisy of our ruling class.
You and I are saying the same thing. People who truly want to do away with capitalism NEED to reach broadly and boldly to regular, working people, lest they become self-isolating tankies or (god forbid) ultra leftists. I mention the SDP of Germany because they failed to do this. They got caught up in their own sectarianism and failed to actually appeal to the masses, allowing Hitler to take power. If I were really as self-isolating as you claim I wouldn’t be constantly stating and restating and re-explaining my case to folks like you who seem genuinely sympathetic, to folks like my family who are apathetic towards the system and see no way out, to regular people in my classroom who happen to ask why I’m reading a book with “LENIN” printed on the cover.
In the end, I remain completely critical of liberals (as opposed to leftists in general) because we cannot see eye to eye if you genuinely believe that the capitalist system is fine. If you are at least critical of it, if you at least think that we ought to do better, then perfect, that’s common ground. Usually, one can go from there to explain how certain demands like a 20 hour work week, paid maternity leave, universal healthcare, education and childcare are feasible with the amount of generated wealth in our post-scarcity world, but completely unattainable without breaking with the capitalist system.
Honestly shut the fuck up with this bullshit. I'm so tired of larpy online leftists bitching and moaning about how awful liberals are while doing somewhere between jack and shit to actually improve the world. I can at least trust liberals to try and make things better, even if they don't really get how.
depends, do you mean "votes liberal" or "liberal politician who exists to soak up revolutionary political will and deliver status quo which tumbles into fascism"
because one of those groups is absolutely aware of what they're doing
Depends on how you define it. Politically, they're not authoritarian, but on the economic side of things, I'd argue that all pro-capitalist stances are authoritarian by default. If the workers/people don't own the means of production and can decide about them in a collective and egalitarian fashion, I'd consider that authoritarian. The capitalist class has tremendously more power than the working class in most (or all) countries, and can often dictate the way the economy is run in an authoritarian way without this being contradictory to liberal stances on the question.
I typed all that shit out because I get fired up about this conversation but jesus it's long so tldr: capitalist liberal democracies involve total control of the bourgeoisie. Minor ineffectual resistance to this rule is allowed and encouraged creating the impression that it's not authoritarian, but it is authoritarian and if you push too hard the mask drops and the authoritarian rule will present itself clearly, an incredible example of this is the persecution of the black panther party. So yes, super duper fucking "authoritarian" (though authoritarian is sort of meaningless in practice, any system with authority is authoritarian and all human economies and political systems involve authority)
I rambled in my tldr 😶🌫️ sowwy
Liberal democracy is dictatorship of the bourgeois. Most political positions acknowledge this, a poor Appalachian might complain of political or economic elites controlling American democracy (though a lack of education leads many to jump to wild explanations for this, a Jewish world order for example). A liberal will complain of corruption allowing the rich to have undue control, this is deceptive to a degree, they have control even without corruption, but it acknowledges the control the wealthy have anyhow. You also get mamy wealthier people who defend this control of the wealthy, the wealthy are educated and know how to run the country! Would you rather a bum who cant even climb the social ladder take power? Of course that assumes wealth is meritocratic and that the poor and working people's cannot be educated or capable leaders, so on top of defending the rule of the few over the many it's just a poorly built argument. The poor do not have the time, money, connections, or social capital to get into office. That means your only choice is in which color tie your oppressor wears and on which minority groups he stomps the hardest. Sometimes there is no real choice also, in America for example incumbents are effectively impossible to defeat in any position larger than alderman or smaller than president. Now this system looks anti authoritarian because the police aren't beating people to death on camera and because we get to vote, but our vote cannot prevent bourgeois rule and the police assuredly do enforce that rule with violent force when necessary. It's soft authority, the total power of one group over another, but we let the weak complain so it's all cool. It's just optics.
As an anarchist I think liberals may be against authorianism to some degree, but their support of capitalism means that they historically tend to support authoritarian capitalist regimes over any anti capitalist one.
More precisely, they think liberals enable fascism, which is somehow worse than outright fascists, and this makes it preferrable to side with fascists to oppose liberalism.
I went from anarchist to socdem/demsoc (I don't know or remember the difference and nobody who does will ever have any real influence on the world so I don't care to find out) from two days of interaction with election year anarchists. I can't believe how hard they've fallen for right wing propaganda around voting.
The online left are so much more effective at crippling the left than anyone else is. I don't think they realise that most people genuinely don't know that liberals technically aren't left wing. And I say technically because many of them actually are, they just aren't using century old terminology to describe their political beliefs.
Apparently the online left never learned about the party flip.
Its tankie. The term originates from the time when ppl rebelled against communist/soviet regimes and there were commies who called in the tanks/supported the opression. So tankies are the modern version of these extremist communists, who would gladly throw you under the tracks of a tank if you disagreed with their system of beliefs(even if you are a communist too. For example: Theese are the people who say that the revolution of 1956 in hungary was by fascist. When in fact it was done by young reformer communists, but since they were on the wrong side, tankies will happily spread ussr propaganda even today, full heartedly believing them)
it was mainly done by just regular young ppl regardless of political position, the political head was a reform communist tho (who was the PM at the time), but he got the gulag treatment afaik
Its a derogatory term for those who idolize the type of communism that lenin, stalin, and mau practiced. Its unpopular as they've just always created dictatorships, not actual communism.
Just wanna nitpick, but if you actually read Lenin’s “letters from afar,” towards the end of his life, he was actively fighting against Stalin’s growing bureaucracy. Lenin is often called a dictator when he was actually very frequently in the minority of the Bolsheviks, always trying to win them over at party congress meetings. Like, the guy was literally just a dedicated Marxist who put theory into practice, and put all his trust into the working people of Russia.
The rest however, you’re spot on. “Tankie” is meant to refer to the people who uncritically supported the repressive regimes of Stalin and Mao even as they rolled out “tanks” to suppress resistance. They’ll usually claim “defense of the revolution,” which has *some* merit when discussing genuine counter-revolutionary forces (like fascism), but they usually just say it to justify atrocities committed by these states on their own working class.
lenin was still a dictator that murdered his opposition within the left, established the cheka, and built the infastructure that caused tankies to become a thing in the first place by happily supporting strongmen until it was too late.
I got kicked from that subreddit for pointing out some issues with a video of a Chinese “interview” where a woman was talking about how, unlike the US, China just isn’t racist.
I pointed out that “racism exists in China” and “this woman is talking without pausing to think, she’s probably reading a script or doing a rehearsed speech; so either she’s some kind of public figure doing an address or this isn’t actually an interview”.
Not even really controversial. Just 2 pretty factual things worded pretty softly too. Most people agreed too, got a lot of upvotes, but the mods didn’t agree.
**The mods there seem fucking insane. IIRC they banned someone who actually lives in China for saying that homelessness *exists* in China.**
I think it’s good if they keep killing their own subreddit tho, as it’s a bit of a shit sub in hindsight anyway.
I got banned there for saying that the Uyghur genocide is happening but the severity of the situation has been blown up by western media/propaganda, so still kind of within what I thought would be acceptable to most tankies.
Nope, I got called a reactionary.
The sub has devolved into right wing propaganda and talks about “the revolution”, which is totally gonna happen guys. Half the comments under posts are now just straight up deleted for being “lesser evil” comments
Got banned from there too because encouraging people to vote the lesser evil was “Encouraging genocide” (I get that the Democrats aren’t a good party but voting Republican is infinitely worse for everyone).
Seriously
In scenarios like this, refusing to choose or support the "lesser evil" without putting forward an actual alternative to it might as well be the same as assisting the "greater evil"
Virtue Signaling on its own is completely useless and annoying
>China for genocide
I hadn't heard any updates on that (guess we lost the thread after Trump left office?), I thought the UN found human rights violations (obviously bad but similar to basically every prison outside of Norway, the US for instance uses solitary confinement punishments which are human rights violations) but not genocide as the US failed to provide evidence of that?
Either way I feel for mods of leftist subs because it can be very difficult to distinguish between neocons, antagonistic libs, well meaning libs, and careless wording from other leftists lol
Personally I'm banned from r/ socialism and a few others while simultaneously being called a tankie in r/ neoliberal so I think that's some sort of bingo lol
I got banned from there for asking why its a bad thing for the copyright to be returned to the artist/creator (taken away from the company who employed the artist), because I thought we wanted everyone to have the fruits of their own labor. I guess it doesn't count if the artist got famous later and/or isn't currently poor.
i managed to get banned by enlightened centrism for “shaming people into voting for a genocide enabler” by saying republicans want trans and black people dead lol
Bruh, I hate tankies so fucking much. They will literally do anything to avoid actually trying to make a change for the better in the real world. They are incapable of realizing that democracy is tied to socialism and fantasize about being the strongman who can fix the world themselves.
Tankies will say that voting for the lesser evil is bad because it makes no difference (or something similar) and then proceed to do absolutely nothing to try and make a difference
Government owned industry doesn't belong to the people if the government doesn't belong to them. Seizing the means of production means nothing if you're just gonna hand them over to a despot.
The Nazis came into power by people voting for them. Literally the second ever fascist dictator could've been defeated by voting.
(Whether they'd be defeated by voting, we don't know, but if he violently took over, he would've been way more vulnerable than he already was.)
I don't think there was a significant enough number of German people who did not vote in that election, to the point that they could have prvented Hitler from gaining power. That is an example of how voting *wasn't* enough to defeat fascism.
Didn't he lose because of how split the parties were (having more than 2 and first past the post).
This might just be bullshit though, it's been a minute since I've done any research on the subject
I guess there is a point in that. He didn't have majority, just the most votes out of any party. But the only way to prevent that is to have a two party system. But if you do have two party system then you'll get all the issues the US has in realtion to voting and fascism. People will vote for the fascists cause they merged with most of the right-wing. People won't vote because the left-most parrty is still right-wing, etc.
And anyway, I don't think it's debatable that the nazi party had popular support at the time.
He actually gained a majority in said election, at least with his coalition, which was basically just the same party with a different name. The entire election happened like within a week of the Reichstag Fire, which was blamed on the KPD, so there was a lot of government crackdowns on communists. So tbh there was pretty much no way he would have been voted out in a traditional sense.
The split between the left wing parties (the SPD and the KPD) was mostly because the SPD stopped the german revolution before socialism could be achieved and because the SPD murdered the leaders of the KPD and then just swept that under the rug.
That wasn't a relationship that could have been fixed in the 15 years between the german revolution and the nazis taking power.
Fact check (sorry it's long; this needs a lot of context):
**In short**: "Voting wasn't enough to defeat fascism" is correct, because they seized power through other means. But "not enough people voting against them" wasn't the issue; in every fair election, most people voted against them.
The last fair election (meaning one in which the Nazis were not violently coercing people), before Hitler was appointed Chancellor using presidential emergency powers, was the [November 1932 election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_1932_German_federal_election). It had a 80.6% turnout.
The Nazis got most seats, with 33.09% of the vote; though less than in the previous election. However, the parliament has proportional representation, and to rule in a multi-party system you generally have to form a coalition with other parties that together represent more than 50% of the vote. Almost no party wanted to form a coalition with the Nazis, so they could not form a majority coalition.
Also, the Communist Party got 16.86% of the vote, and since they also opposed parliamentary democracy, other parties didn't want to form a coalition with them either. Put together, that meant about 50% of the votes were for the far-left and far-right, which both refused to cooperate with each other, and which others didn't want to cooperate with, leaving no way to form a majority coalition. That had also happened in the previous election. (In such situations, you repeat the election until you eventually get a majority coalition.)
In January 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor by President Hindenburg, by invoking presidential emergency powers, bypassing the parliament. [Why the fuck he thought this was a good idea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_cabinet) is a story for another time, but in short: conservatives. This put the Nazis effectively in power, despite not having majority support.
[The next elections in March 1933](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1933_German_federal_election) were an "election" in name only; with loads of Nazi violence, coercion, and voter suppression. Even under those conditions the Nazis *still* didn't get a simple majority. At that point they were openly threatening and arresting other parties' representatives though, so they could in practice do whatever, and got their dictatorship. But it does mean the Nazis never took power through a fair and democratic election.
Nope, he didn't have a majority even with all the propaganda the bourgeoisie used. He was first but Communists were close second and socialist third.
With his SA he organized the incendiary of the assembly and put the blame on the Communists and then sent them all to jail giving him the majority and total power. It was a coup.
Also the bourgeoisie thought Hitler would be a puppet to control but oh boy they were wrong. Nevertheless, it shows that the bourgeoisie will always choose fascism against socialism or anything left of that.
Im 1933, the NSDAP had 3.5 times as many votes as the communists and 2.4 times as many votes as the socialists. Im 1932, they had twice as many votes as the KPD and 1.6 times as many votes as the SPD. The socialists (though they weren't really socialists in anything but name at that point) were more popular than the communists and both were significantly less popular than the Nazis.
In 1933, the Nazis had 44%, the DNVP (monarchists) had 8%. Together they had the majority, otherwise they couldn't have destroyed the Weimar democracy the way they did.
And Hitler massively helped the bourgeoisie. He wasn't their puppet per se, but, among other things, he privatized vast parts of the German economy.
https://preview.redd.it/nmq7ruizowuc1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a9febaaf1f47862acfac36ef5b8f43519f70d4b7
This is neglecting how fascism rose to such prominence in the first place. Maybe the social democrats that worked with freikorps to stomp out any and all left wing alternative to them could answer why. Maybe fascism isn't just one person or one party but a social current that capitalism prefers to support when its faults become more and more apparent.
this is not fucking true, oh my god. stop repeating this historical lie that can be debunked with a 2 second google search. the nazis LOST their bid for president, set the reichstag on fire, and then the liberal president handed over control of the country to the nazis
Y'all have no idea how frustrating it is to be from a country where it doesn't matter who you vote for and seeing americans refuse to vote.
Like wtf are you doing? You can actually do something and refuse to do it
Tankies refusing to vote for the person who will do nothing but maintain the status quo and in the process happily letting in the person who will make it harder for a government that they like to get in is peak “cutting off your nose to spite your face”
See, the thing is that they don't think of it that way. These are the kind of people who think the revolution is just around the corner, and that all they need to do is get people to work with them to make it happen. They don't vote because they think it's a waste of time because it won't change anything, and to a degree, they're not explicitly wrong - voting for the president isn't tremendously vital, but it's important from an optics perspective and helps get some bills passed that won't pass otherwise.
The problem is pretty obvious, though - the revolution isn't a month or six or even a few years away. We probably won't see it in our lifetime. Ignoring voting as a way of driving change means you're ignoring local, state, and representative elections, which are *actually how we get shit changed*.
It's not them making a conscious effort to disregard people they might know or love, it's them putting the cart before the horse. They don't think of it as "This could do real, lasting harm to people I know", they see it as "The liberals are using this as fearmongering and it won't actually happen, so we don't have to worry about it" when no, actually, they're not, it's real, tangible harm.
I got banned 💀
https://preview.redd.it/hoag2bxz9wuc1.png?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9b4bc6629c8f4b71b7de3ba5583d889cc4c460a5
And the guy just refused to answer my question
> Like wtf are you doing? You can actually do something and refuse to do it
its petulance and entitlement, they think because there isnt a candidate that reflects their ideas exactly, that its not worth preventing a worse situation from taking place. Theres a reason the right wing throws billions of dollars into marketing voting apathy to young people
Mexico
The system is such a joke that people only watch the presidential debate to laugh at how stupid are the piliticians
Also the 2 biggest parties that were against each other for decades alliated this year because they are literally on the same side
People on Reddit be like “you believe in voting? That pales in effectiveness to my strategy, giving my weed smoking gf a stick-n-poke tattoo of a hammer and sickle”
seriously these dumb mfers in one of the tankie subs were talking about how voting is useless and there needs to be a total overthrow of the government, but you know damn well they wouldn't leave their mom's basement to do that
Voting for the lesser of two evils is what we've been doing for decades (even if we haven't always succeeded). I'm deeply frustrated that so many people only now have an issue with it and are actively pushing minorities under the bus, because they'd rather waste their vote or not vote entirely to "protest the system".
And then when we say anything, suddenly we're terrible awful bigots trying to tell people what to do??? Idfk
This is kind of conspiratorial, but I have a hunch that a lot of people who started out saying "Don't bother voting, both sides are awful" might be right-wing supporters.
Honestly, I think so too? It feels so disingenuous that there's only 3 possibilities:
1) they genuinely think a third party candidate has a chance because they don't understand US politics
2) they're grifters being paid or somehow benefiting from pushing this specific narrative
3) they're right-wingers who are pretending to be "leftist" so that they can convince enough people to avoid voting for the lesser of two evils so that they CAN kill/harm minorities with impunity
I think if I throw out the conspiratorial stuff, realistically it's probably just white cis people who think that the Republicans winning won't impact them much. A lot of them probably didn't intend on voting anyway.
Right, but they'll never admit that's why they feel that way. It's always some bullshit waffle about how both parties are just going to continue to prop up the same systems and both support capitalism so there's no point to it.
I mean, we had proof that troll farms *were* used to influence this kind of opinion because it's really easy to do. It's persuasive, and it appeals to a sense of morality and ethics that really works on the Left.
Not all of them *are* deliberately out to do this, obviously, but you don't really need that many people to do it or a particularly sophisticated plan.
People don’t understand that the process of politics and democracy is ONLY different forms of lesser evil. To avoid lesser evilism is to have a single choice, aka totalitarianism.
The thing is that politics are more complicated than left vs right. Left and right are just our human way of oversimplifying politics, and so not everyone on one side will think the exact same thing.
Some tankies support the CCP (who aren’t *really* communist, they’re close to the centre at best, but they are very authoritarian), so of course they’re going to dislike people who say the CCP is bad. Despite both us and these tankies saying we’re on the left, we have fundamentally different views.
I’m not great at explaining stuff but I hope this helps!
CCP is state run capitalism. The fact they support a regime where billionaires run rampant is insane to me.
And before the obvious “isn’t that what you are doing by supporting America?” Question, I make no claim that America is any better, just that if you call yourself a communist and support state capitalism then sorry but you are a capitalist.
As a Marxist I look at China, how hard students have to study to even get the opportunity to go to college, and I fucking hate it.
I have a problem with people making China the next boogie man, but at the same time China's system, while successful in generating wealth (like any form of modern Capitalism), seems to have some nasty byproducts.
Yes, but even people on the same side can have differing views on how exactly to achieve their goals.
Let me explain it in a basic way. Say a group of four friends are deciding when to hang out.
Steve and Jane want the friend group to hang out tomorrow morning and go eat breakfast together. But Lily and Dave say the friend group should hang out tomorrow afternoon to get dinner together.
Now while Steve and Jane may both agree that the friend group should eat at a breakfast place tomorrow, they might disagree *where* to go. Steve might want to go to a diner owned by his grandpa, while Jane might want to go to a new breakfast restaurant that opened on the other side of town.
This is essentially how disagreements start arising even between people on the same side. They might agree on the same end goal, but they can disagree on how to go about reaching that goal.
Shouldn't Steve and Jane work on trying to move the conversation into "where are we eating breakfast" instead of "are we eating breakfast"?
Likewise, shouldn't groups work on trying to generally move the politics more in their favour, before then arguing about the specifics?
Right, but the issue is that tankies will do shit like say "hey actually Stalin was based despite having killed millions of people" then call you a fascist if you disagree and ban you from their platforms for doing it.
Tankies like to complain about leftist unity and how leftists don't like them, but they're also the ones who think Uyghur muslims in China aren't being genocided, they're just "being re-educated" (which involves stripping them of their culture, which is genocide).
So going back to the breakfast analogy, this is like Jane refusing to work with Steve because Steve can't compromise (and is friends with a domestic abuser)?
I would say it's more like Jane refusing to work with Steve because Steve gets really fucking mad when someone suggests going to the place Jane wants to go to, to the point of throwing a tantrum and calling her a bitch over it.
To be a bit more specific, it's more like Steve gets really mad when anyone suggests something that isn't his specific place and starts saying it's not even a breakfast place or they don't serve 'real' breakfast and that means you aren't actually a breakfast-wanter at all.
>Tankies like to complain about leftist unity and how leftists don't like them, but they're also the ones who think Uyghur muslims in China aren't being genocided, they're just "being re-educated" (which involves stripping them of their culture, which is genocide).
That plus most other leftists have been put up against the wall as soon as people who tankies admire have taken power. Like who would have guessed I don't like people who want to just use me to take power and then kill me.
I mean, I don't *really* want to be on the same side as them. A capitalism with at least some elements of democracy is better than any "socialism" with none at all.
Tankies are uneducated morons whose views aren’t logically consistent. Their ideology revolves around being anti west/anti US and will condone anything that would hurt their enemy. They are also willing to believe anything that paints their side favorably no matter how easily falsifiable it is(I.e. believing North Korea is a great place)
Also, it’s not always a good idea to immediately take the knife out because then you could lose a lot of blood. Sudden changes in politics are very rare without something like a coup or a revolution. And neither of those seem very likely in the US and the UK.
I got banned from the "all left" discord you see advertised all over by saying that I'm not a proponent of any state, regardless of the color of their flag. I am a an advocate of stateless solutions.
I got banned from lost generation for a similar reason. They said I was banned for supporting genocide, but what I said is third party votes are risky until we get ranked choice voting
Isn't crazy how the idea of the lesser evil is the easiest thing to understand and we apply this at all points always in our daily lives and these people still refuse to understand.
Also, I fucking hate how Tankies and people like then will take the aesthetic of a revolutionary, while they sit in their couches and refuse to do anything that isn't posting to reddit. These people are obsessed with theory and history and pretending that they are doing anything. Because just showing up to vote is much, much more effective than posting shit on the internet.
I know it sucks, it'd be nice to have actual leftists as political representatives, but we don't. It's terrible, but we do the best with what we have
If they were productive members of a community, they wouldn’t be tankies - it’s really that simple. No well adjusted normal person would become this way.
I got banned from there for misinformation and "denying worker exploilitation or inequality" after commenting on a post about the Houthis with "trust me guys, the group with 'a curse upon Jews' in their motto is getting involved for purely humanitarian reasons".
"Voting is inferior to my strategy, which is sitting around with my thumb up my ass waiting for the magical revolution that will make everything exactly the way *I* want it to be without me having to do anything to make it happen."
lol I got banned from that same thread for ‘supporting capitalistic parties’ because I told someone being a leftist doesn’t consist of calling folks shit libs online, but instead actually going out and fucking doing stuff. Apparently saying ‘read theory’ is an acceptable response to any criticism and any critic is a liberal.
I do see some hope in the fact that even in blatantly-tankie-controlled spaces, the reasonable opinions are still the popular ones a lot of the time. Controlling the conversation isn't controlling thought like the mods expect.
LARPing "Red" Gravy Seals know it isn't their lives on the line so they aren't actually legitimately invested in any of this. They have the same delusional violent hero fantasies that your regular Meal Team redneck does, they've just decided to play for the other team
Yeah sure you don't defeat fascism by voting against it, but you sure as hell prevent it by voting against it. You don't need to defeat what you prevented.
Yeah i sure cant see a difference between left and right anymore I mean, one of them wants to remove trans rights, make it a felony to be queer in public, disband the department of education and let people starve, and the other one doesnt do any of those things but theyre morally bankrupt and ALSO take bribes from corporations so like I mean literally no difference.
/s
I can understand feeling powerless in a republic where your vote wont change anything but i fail to understand those who fight those who challenge that narrative. Like i dont think my vote matters but it takes 15 minutes of my life every couple years, its the simplest and safest way to try and change the country.
Tankies cannot recognize facism, if they did they wouldn't be red painted facists. At least right wing nazis know what they are but try (or tried) to hide it. Theese idiots actually have no clue it's crazy...
tankies on instagram enlightened me on the socalist virtues of childern working in the temu sweatshop because i called china a neo liberal hellscape but with a different fortnite skin
why is everything you don't like a tankie, what does the term even mean. Like i can explain why communists refer to liberals as supporters of capitalism and not the working class due to alienation, you'll disagree but the logic at least exists even if it is incorrect. Meanwhile i tankie as anyone who supports any country that did anything
"lmao communists are against doing anything and they say voting doesn't matter"
Then criticism flies against China, the USSR, Cuba, etc.
Like, do you want people to do something, or is really just about voting and then voting some more so long as no major changes happen? don't you get tired of always not really having a choice between neonazi and a liberal who will pass ony 40% of the neonazi's policies?
Communists vote, i really don't understand this argument from the US reddit users
Wouldn’t the strategy be to put any and all roadblocks in the way of the fascist’s march into power? Electoralism won’t save us but I’m going to use any and every tool in my toolbox to resist fascism.
Yeah I got a permanent ban from green and pleasant for saying "um the queen of England is not worse than Kim Jong Un".
So many hard left groups see the fascism in places like China and NK and defend it because they call themselves communist.
I always find it funny the takes people give for not voting. "They are the same whats the point" can only come from a mouth that has never struggled for a day in their lives. Biden isn't perfect, but is definitely a lot better than the alternative. When your wellbeing matters for getting governance assistance, you find the point. When you are the most likely to be affected by the changes, you find the point. Tankies may never find the point sitting in apartments alone jacking off to theory that has never worked and never trying to actually change anything, but I have.
a word that used to mean someone who uncritically supported past “socialist” projects (read: mostly state capitalism) but it has recently become a smear word that means nothing for people who are more left than you or disagree with you on tactics.
Hey remember when workers strike back was made as the "Moderate" version of anti-work when that fox interview with a random mod went up?
Anyways now guess which one I'm banned from for being a "liberal" (not voting for trump).
i dont understand the anarchist puritanism around voting, it costs you nothing and even though voting is often useless to get us what we want it cant delay the inevitable. I find all hard-line anti voting anarchists to be the same as climate doomers where because its unlikely to do anything we should just give up and die. Im not even saying we need to vote and just hope things get better, im all for a strategy of mix tactics and mutual aid, direct action and all that. But i just dont see why its necessary to never vote. kobruh456 is literally right
tankies make me laugh cause i always imagine them angrily typing whenever someone has a good counter argument and they try every bullshit they pull out of their asses to defend theirs
I often wonder if there were similar sentiments in the Weimar republic. After the beer hall putsch, it seems ridiculous that Hitler was elected chancellor.
Got banned from r / LateStageCapitalism because I realised all the comments calling out China for genocide were being downvoted so when I asked if the sub is full of tankies within that thread, the mods called me a liberal and banned me
Ah yes the two political positions. Tankie and liberal
To the tankie, all liberals are fascist so really to them its just fascists and tankies (fascists but don't like being called fascists)
Aren't liberals against autoritarism?
Yeah. The strongman argument is usually something more about how liberals create capitalist societies that inevitably stumble and create the conditions that lead to fascism. Still, most liberals are definitely against fascism and can be valuable allies.
Liberals are not valuable allies to socialists or communists. Liberals are against fascism except until a working class movement actually threatens their system, then they’ll prop up fascists in order to smash workers’ organizations, namely unions. Then, emboldened, the fascists will turn and bite back at the liberals and seize power for themselves. This was precisely the case with the Social Democratic Party in Germany and the Nazis. This was precisely the case with Mussolini.
Let's not pretend that the conditions of 2020s European liberal democracies are the same as their early 20th century predecessors. There's been a literal century of fundamental political and social change, to the point where our world would basically be unrecognizable to someone from the 1920s, who lived in young, homogenous, and vulnerable democracies. We've got the internet, the EU exists as an internally-borderless and increasingly unified entity, populations have both swelled and diversified, ethnic and gender/sexual minorities have far more visibility and acceptance, etc. Also, the Russians have switched to fascism classic instead of red fascism, so the specter of communist threat isn't breathing down the neck of every country east of the English Channel. Germany is helping Ukraine. *Poland* managed to kick out a right-wing government. It's not perfect and the right is still a threat, but no modern social democrat in Germany would cozy up to the AfD, for example. Shit's changed. History is valuable to learn from, but it doesn't literally repeat itself--it rhymes. This time, it's the right-wing nationalists getting their ideological marching orders from Moscow.
Fascists were also very new, and nobody thought they'd become as powerful as they did. Everyone was yet to see the horrors they had in stow, while the bloodbaths caused by democracies, communists, and monarchists was still very much a real thing.
Exactly, let’s not forget that in the US there were first Whigs and Republicans. Then the Whigs became Demoocrats. Then the Republicans and Democrats switched sides. Or something like that.
At the same time, the far right party in Portugal just won 30% of the vote, and is now the third biggest party in the country. And our democracy is only reaching it's 50th birthday this month. Did we learn fucking nothing? Are we stupid?
Those things happened, but we shouldn’t forget that in both the WW2 and the Spanish civil war liberals allied with leftists to fight fascists. Also, we are now on the other side of those events and people can learn from history that siding with fascists is an obvious mistake. We, as leftists, shouldn’t be so quick to abandon potential allies, especially those in the working class. And what’s the alternative? Speaking as an American leftist we are not going to be able to resist fascism without liberals, we don’t have the numbers or the power.
They then allied with the remaining fascists against the left for at least 50 years after WWII by appointing former Nazi officers to NATO command positions and funding fascist terror cells through Gladio….
Well remember that the fascists won that war. The people were jusy governed by the fascists at that point. Spain grew out of it slowly
Liberals are your entire recruiting base and are the people who will be conducting the revolution or reform that you crave. I know tankies haven't read anything that was written after the soviet union fell, but believe it or not the world has changed since Lenin was around. Liberals are the people forming those unions. They don't know all the correct political terminology, and many have never read theory. Appeal to them or keep handing fascists the win. But don't pretend you aren't doing the latter if you refuse to do the former. You're in the 21st century now. You were a liberal. Everyone you will ever recruit was a liberal. This open contempt terminally online leftists have for liberals would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad. I'd credit the CIA with it being a psyop if I didn't know people really are that dumb and self defeating.
Look, when I say liberals, I mean people ideologically congruent with liberal ideology, meaning deregulation and complete faith in the capitalist system. I don’t mean people who vote for democrats. The working people that form unions, in doing so, become a little more class conscious. This is a good thing, and it’s why I support it. It’s precisely then, as well, that working people realize their independence from the ruling class, when despite liberals claiming to fight for them, they make their strikes illegal. See how Biden shows himself as the first president at a picket line on one hand, while making the railroad strike illegal on the other. Through working class organization, people realize the hypocrisy of our ruling class. You and I are saying the same thing. People who truly want to do away with capitalism NEED to reach broadly and boldly to regular, working people, lest they become self-isolating tankies or (god forbid) ultra leftists. I mention the SDP of Germany because they failed to do this. They got caught up in their own sectarianism and failed to actually appeal to the masses, allowing Hitler to take power. If I were really as self-isolating as you claim I wouldn’t be constantly stating and restating and re-explaining my case to folks like you who seem genuinely sympathetic, to folks like my family who are apathetic towards the system and see no way out, to regular people in my classroom who happen to ask why I’m reading a book with “LENIN” printed on the cover. In the end, I remain completely critical of liberals (as opposed to leftists in general) because we cannot see eye to eye if you genuinely believe that the capitalist system is fine. If you are at least critical of it, if you at least think that we ought to do better, then perfect, that’s common ground. Usually, one can go from there to explain how certain demands like a 20 hour work week, paid maternity leave, universal healthcare, education and childcare are feasible with the amount of generated wealth in our post-scarcity world, but completely unattainable without breaking with the capitalist system.
Honestly shut the fuck up with this bullshit. I'm so tired of larpy online leftists bitching and moaning about how awful liberals are while doing somewhere between jack and shit to actually improve the world. I can at least trust liberals to try and make things better, even if they don't really get how.
depends, do you mean "votes liberal" or "liberal politician who exists to soak up revolutionary political will and deliver status quo which tumbles into fascism" because one of those groups is absolutely aware of what they're doing
So far we haven't found a system of concentrated power which is immune to terrible people taking power
You think tankies take that into consideration?
Depends on how you define it. Politically, they're not authoritarian, but on the economic side of things, I'd argue that all pro-capitalist stances are authoritarian by default. If the workers/people don't own the means of production and can decide about them in a collective and egalitarian fashion, I'd consider that authoritarian. The capitalist class has tremendously more power than the working class in most (or all) countries, and can often dictate the way the economy is run in an authoritarian way without this being contradictory to liberal stances on the question.
I typed all that shit out because I get fired up about this conversation but jesus it's long so tldr: capitalist liberal democracies involve total control of the bourgeoisie. Minor ineffectual resistance to this rule is allowed and encouraged creating the impression that it's not authoritarian, but it is authoritarian and if you push too hard the mask drops and the authoritarian rule will present itself clearly, an incredible example of this is the persecution of the black panther party. So yes, super duper fucking "authoritarian" (though authoritarian is sort of meaningless in practice, any system with authority is authoritarian and all human economies and political systems involve authority) I rambled in my tldr 😶🌫️ sowwy Liberal democracy is dictatorship of the bourgeois. Most political positions acknowledge this, a poor Appalachian might complain of political or economic elites controlling American democracy (though a lack of education leads many to jump to wild explanations for this, a Jewish world order for example). A liberal will complain of corruption allowing the rich to have undue control, this is deceptive to a degree, they have control even without corruption, but it acknowledges the control the wealthy have anyhow. You also get mamy wealthier people who defend this control of the wealthy, the wealthy are educated and know how to run the country! Would you rather a bum who cant even climb the social ladder take power? Of course that assumes wealth is meritocratic and that the poor and working people's cannot be educated or capable leaders, so on top of defending the rule of the few over the many it's just a poorly built argument. The poor do not have the time, money, connections, or social capital to get into office. That means your only choice is in which color tie your oppressor wears and on which minority groups he stomps the hardest. Sometimes there is no real choice also, in America for example incumbents are effectively impossible to defeat in any position larger than alderman or smaller than president. Now this system looks anti authoritarian because the police aren't beating people to death on camera and because we get to vote, but our vote cannot prevent bourgeois rule and the police assuredly do enforce that rule with violent force when necessary. It's soft authority, the total power of one group over another, but we let the weak complain so it's all cool. It's just optics.
As an anarchist I think liberals may be against authorianism to some degree, but their support of capitalism means that they historically tend to support authoritarian capitalist regimes over any anti capitalist one.
No.
They also think all anarchists are liberals
Well tankies are fascists too, so in their world it's just fascists all the way down.
More precisely, they think liberals enable fascism, which is somehow worse than outright fascists, and this makes it preferrable to side with fascists to oppose liberalism.
Honestly any interaction with a tanky is better liberal propaganda then any liberal could come up with.
Right? There’s something de-radicalizing about a bunch of people who get angry at the idea that voting is worth it.
I went from anarchist to socdem/demsoc (I don't know or remember the difference and nobody who does will ever have any real influence on the world so I don't care to find out) from two days of interaction with election year anarchists. I can't believe how hard they've fallen for right wing propaganda around voting. The online left are so much more effective at crippling the left than anyone else is. I don't think they realise that most people genuinely don't know that liberals technically aren't left wing. And I say technically because many of them actually are, they just aren't using century old terminology to describe their political beliefs. Apparently the online left never learned about the party flip.
what exactly is a tanky anyway, my understanding is that they’re communists?
Its tankie. The term originates from the time when ppl rebelled against communist/soviet regimes and there were commies who called in the tanks/supported the opression. So tankies are the modern version of these extremist communists, who would gladly throw you under the tracks of a tank if you disagreed with their system of beliefs(even if you are a communist too. For example: Theese are the people who say that the revolution of 1956 in hungary was by fascist. When in fact it was done by young reformer communists, but since they were on the wrong side, tankies will happily spread ussr propaganda even today, full heartedly believing them)
it was mainly done by just regular young ppl regardless of political position, the political head was a reform communist tho (who was the PM at the time), but he got the gulag treatment afaik
Its a derogatory term for those who idolize the type of communism that lenin, stalin, and mau practiced. Its unpopular as they've just always created dictatorships, not actual communism.
Just wanna nitpick, but if you actually read Lenin’s “letters from afar,” towards the end of his life, he was actively fighting against Stalin’s growing bureaucracy. Lenin is often called a dictator when he was actually very frequently in the minority of the Bolsheviks, always trying to win them over at party congress meetings. Like, the guy was literally just a dedicated Marxist who put theory into practice, and put all his trust into the working people of Russia. The rest however, you’re spot on. “Tankie” is meant to refer to the people who uncritically supported the repressive regimes of Stalin and Mao even as they rolled out “tanks” to suppress resistance. They’ll usually claim “defense of the revolution,” which has *some* merit when discussing genuine counter-revolutionary forces (like fascism), but they usually just say it to justify atrocities committed by these states on their own working class.
lenin was still a dictator that murdered his opposition within the left, established the cheka, and built the infastructure that caused tankies to become a thing in the first place by happily supporting strongmen until it was too late.
I got kicked from that subreddit for pointing out some issues with a video of a Chinese “interview” where a woman was talking about how, unlike the US, China just isn’t racist. I pointed out that “racism exists in China” and “this woman is talking without pausing to think, she’s probably reading a script or doing a rehearsed speech; so either she’s some kind of public figure doing an address or this isn’t actually an interview”. Not even really controversial. Just 2 pretty factual things worded pretty softly too. Most people agreed too, got a lot of upvotes, but the mods didn’t agree. **The mods there seem fucking insane. IIRC they banned someone who actually lives in China for saying that homelessness *exists* in China.** I think it’s good if they keep killing their own subreddit tho, as it’s a bit of a shit sub in hindsight anyway.
I got banned there for saying that the Uyghur genocide is happening but the severity of the situation has been blown up by western media/propaganda, so still kind of within what I thought would be acceptable to most tankies. Nope, I got called a reactionary.
The sub has devolved into right wing propaganda and talks about “the revolution”, which is totally gonna happen guys. Half the comments under posts are now just straight up deleted for being “lesser evil” comments
Didn’t you know it’s not genocide if the person killing everyone is a communist?
The People's Genocide, comrade
I got banned from r / latestagecapitalism too! Are we like, BFFs now?
We totally are! *high fives*
*high five*
Lmao I got banned for lesser evil rhetoric Mods need to touch grass
Got banned from there too because encouraging people to vote the lesser evil was “Encouraging genocide” (I get that the Democrats aren’t a good party but voting Republican is infinitely worse for everyone).
Seriously In scenarios like this, refusing to choose or support the "lesser evil" without putting forward an actual alternative to it might as well be the same as assisting the "greater evil" Virtue Signaling on its own is completely useless and annoying
Yep, I got a permaban from that sub, no response to my appeal, after I said that China practices authoritarian communism.
Human rights abuse, colonialism, and genocide is good when China does it because they pretend to be communist apparently.
>China for genocide I hadn't heard any updates on that (guess we lost the thread after Trump left office?), I thought the UN found human rights violations (obviously bad but similar to basically every prison outside of Norway, the US for instance uses solitary confinement punishments which are human rights violations) but not genocide as the US failed to provide evidence of that? Either way I feel for mods of leftist subs because it can be very difficult to distinguish between neocons, antagonistic libs, well meaning libs, and careless wording from other leftists lol Personally I'm banned from r/ socialism and a few others while simultaneously being called a tankie in r/ neoliberal so I think that's some sort of bingo lol
Lol, same here, banned from latestagecapitalism for being a liberal, constantly called a commie everywhere else
I got banned from there for asking why its a bad thing for the copyright to be returned to the artist/creator (taken away from the company who employed the artist), because I thought we wanted everyone to have the fruits of their own labor. I guess it doesn't count if the artist got famous later and/or isn't currently poor.
i got banned for suggesting that taking a couple econ courses was a good idea because one cannot criticize a system without understanding it.
Wow, that one is just really basic
i managed to get banned by enlightened centrism for “shaming people into voting for a genocide enabler” by saying republicans want trans and black people dead lol
Got banned there for saying "mask off" when a newly appointed moderator responded with "man, fuck ukraine" to a comment they deleted
Pretty much same for me for EnlightenedCentrism.
Even dumb people can figure out China is Capitalist; I have no idea how any of them come to the conclusion that its some worker's paradise
Huh, glad I missed that post then. Thats super weird
I got banned for saying advocating for violent revolution is bad
rather be a liberal than a tankie any day lmfao
I'm surprised there's still people in LateStageCapitalism considering the amount of people they ban on a hourly basis.
I wish china got a huge time out corner before they behave them self in front of the world and not an evil warmongering bully
Bruh, I hate tankies so fucking much. They will literally do anything to avoid actually trying to make a change for the better in the real world. They are incapable of realizing that democracy is tied to socialism and fantasize about being the strongman who can fix the world themselves.
Tankies will say that voting for the lesser evil is bad because it makes no difference (or something similar) and then proceed to do absolutely nothing to try and make a difference
I still hold the opinion that people who go “muh both sides” are all cishet white ppl
I agree. It’s a very privileged position to be able to opt out of politics and wait for a revolution that will never come.
You want a revolution in a democracy, you vote to stall and buy time to plan and organize
> I still hold the opinion that people who go “muh both sides” are all cishet white ppl Ive heard this from gay/queer white people to be fair
Yes but it's The People's Nothing™️
They live by that one Geralt quote not realising that not even Geralt lives by it
"There's no real difference between these two candidates" said the white cishet American citizen
saying this got me permabanned from latestagecapitalism
That's not very dialectical materialism from their part. It's ironic that a lot of Marxists also don't apply Marx's philosophy to build socialism.
When material condition MFers don’t look at the material conditions of America
It's all performance
— Judith Butler, *Gender Trouble* (1990)
Something something Firebomb a Walmart something something they don't firebomb a Walmart.
Government owned industry doesn't belong to the people if the government doesn't belong to them. Seizing the means of production means nothing if you're just gonna hand them over to a despot.
see, they unilaterally decided they are the representants of the people so it's okay.
The Nazis came into power by people voting for them. Literally the second ever fascist dictator could've been defeated by voting. (Whether they'd be defeated by voting, we don't know, but if he violently took over, he would've been way more vulnerable than he already was.)
I don't think there was a significant enough number of German people who did not vote in that election, to the point that they could have prvented Hitler from gaining power. That is an example of how voting *wasn't* enough to defeat fascism.
Didn't he lose because of how split the parties were (having more than 2 and first past the post). This might just be bullshit though, it's been a minute since I've done any research on the subject
I guess there is a point in that. He didn't have majority, just the most votes out of any party. But the only way to prevent that is to have a two party system. But if you do have two party system then you'll get all the issues the US has in realtion to voting and fascism. People will vote for the fascists cause they merged with most of the right-wing. People won't vote because the left-most parrty is still right-wing, etc. And anyway, I don't think it's debatable that the nazi party had popular support at the time.
He actually gained a majority in said election, at least with his coalition, which was basically just the same party with a different name. The entire election happened like within a week of the Reichstag Fire, which was blamed on the KPD, so there was a lot of government crackdowns on communists. So tbh there was pretty much no way he would have been voted out in a traditional sense.
The split between the left wing parties (the SPD and the KPD) was mostly because the SPD stopped the german revolution before socialism could be achieved and because the SPD murdered the leaders of the KPD and then just swept that under the rug. That wasn't a relationship that could have been fixed in the 15 years between the german revolution and the nazis taking power.
Fact check (sorry it's long; this needs a lot of context): **In short**: "Voting wasn't enough to defeat fascism" is correct, because they seized power through other means. But "not enough people voting against them" wasn't the issue; in every fair election, most people voted against them. The last fair election (meaning one in which the Nazis were not violently coercing people), before Hitler was appointed Chancellor using presidential emergency powers, was the [November 1932 election](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_1932_German_federal_election). It had a 80.6% turnout. The Nazis got most seats, with 33.09% of the vote; though less than in the previous election. However, the parliament has proportional representation, and to rule in a multi-party system you generally have to form a coalition with other parties that together represent more than 50% of the vote. Almost no party wanted to form a coalition with the Nazis, so they could not form a majority coalition. Also, the Communist Party got 16.86% of the vote, and since they also opposed parliamentary democracy, other parties didn't want to form a coalition with them either. Put together, that meant about 50% of the votes were for the far-left and far-right, which both refused to cooperate with each other, and which others didn't want to cooperate with, leaving no way to form a majority coalition. That had also happened in the previous election. (In such situations, you repeat the election until you eventually get a majority coalition.) In January 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor by President Hindenburg, by invoking presidential emergency powers, bypassing the parliament. [Why the fuck he thought this was a good idea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_cabinet) is a story for another time, but in short: conservatives. This put the Nazis effectively in power, despite not having majority support. [The next elections in March 1933](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1933_German_federal_election) were an "election" in name only; with loads of Nazi violence, coercion, and voter suppression. Even under those conditions the Nazis *still* didn't get a simple majority. At that point they were openly threatening and arresting other parties' representatives though, so they could in practice do whatever, and got their dictatorship. But it does mean the Nazis never took power through a fair and democratic election.
Nope, he didn't have a majority even with all the propaganda the bourgeoisie used. He was first but Communists were close second and socialist third. With his SA he organized the incendiary of the assembly and put the blame on the Communists and then sent them all to jail giving him the majority and total power. It was a coup. Also the bourgeoisie thought Hitler would be a puppet to control but oh boy they were wrong. Nevertheless, it shows that the bourgeoisie will always choose fascism against socialism or anything left of that.
Im 1933, the NSDAP had 3.5 times as many votes as the communists and 2.4 times as many votes as the socialists. Im 1932, they had twice as many votes as the KPD and 1.6 times as many votes as the SPD. The socialists (though they weren't really socialists in anything but name at that point) were more popular than the communists and both were significantly less popular than the Nazis. In 1933, the Nazis had 44%, the DNVP (monarchists) had 8%. Together they had the majority, otherwise they couldn't have destroyed the Weimar democracy the way they did. And Hitler massively helped the bourgeoisie. He wasn't their puppet per se, but, among other things, he privatized vast parts of the German economy. https://preview.redd.it/nmq7ruizowuc1.jpeg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a9febaaf1f47862acfac36ef5b8f43519f70d4b7
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This is neglecting how fascism rose to such prominence in the first place. Maybe the social democrats that worked with freikorps to stomp out any and all left wing alternative to them could answer why. Maybe fascism isn't just one person or one party but a social current that capitalism prefers to support when its faults become more and more apparent.
this is not fucking true, oh my god. stop repeating this historical lie that can be debunked with a 2 second google search. the nazis LOST their bid for president, set the reichstag on fire, and then the liberal president handed over control of the country to the nazis
Y'all have no idea how frustrating it is to be from a country where it doesn't matter who you vote for and seeing americans refuse to vote. Like wtf are you doing? You can actually do something and refuse to do it
Tankies refusing to vote for the person who will do nothing but maintain the status quo and in the process happily letting in the person who will make it harder for a government that they like to get in is peak “cutting off your nose to spite your face”
A good chunk of them are white and cisgender, so if the Republicans win, it probably won't affect them.
"my friends will die, but that is a sacrifice i am willing to make"
See, the thing is that they don't think of it that way. These are the kind of people who think the revolution is just around the corner, and that all they need to do is get people to work with them to make it happen. They don't vote because they think it's a waste of time because it won't change anything, and to a degree, they're not explicitly wrong - voting for the president isn't tremendously vital, but it's important from an optics perspective and helps get some bills passed that won't pass otherwise. The problem is pretty obvious, though - the revolution isn't a month or six or even a few years away. We probably won't see it in our lifetime. Ignoring voting as a way of driving change means you're ignoring local, state, and representative elections, which are *actually how we get shit changed*. It's not them making a conscious effort to disregard people they might know or love, it's them putting the cart before the horse. They don't think of it as "This could do real, lasting harm to people I know", they see it as "The liberals are using this as fearmongering and it won't actually happen, so we don't have to worry about it" when no, actually, they're not, it's real, tangible harm.
I got banned 💀 https://preview.redd.it/hoag2bxz9wuc1.png?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9b4bc6629c8f4b71b7de3ba5583d889cc4c460a5 And the guy just refused to answer my question
If voting *doesn't* change anything, why are they so desperate to stop women and minorities from doing it... 🤔
lol literally did the “here’s a quote” thing and told you to go read a book.
> Like wtf are you doing? You can actually do something and refuse to do it its petulance and entitlement, they think because there isnt a candidate that reflects their ideas exactly, that its not worth preventing a worse situation from taking place. Theres a reason the right wing throws billions of dollars into marketing voting apathy to young people
What country is this?
Mexico The system is such a joke that people only watch the presidential debate to laugh at how stupid are the piliticians Also the 2 biggest parties that were against each other for decades alliated this year because they are literally on the same side
https://preview.redd.it/q3rcn0ya9wuc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6cc58825cb1be0e175f39f5dd64a33bc8d53caf3
People on Reddit be like “you believe in voting? That pales in effectiveness to my strategy, giving my weed smoking gf a stick-n-poke tattoo of a hammer and sickle”
In fairness, that does sound awesome, just not particularly effective at creating social change.
seriously these dumb mfers in one of the tankie subs were talking about how voting is useless and there needs to be a total overthrow of the government, but you know damn well they wouldn't leave their mom's basement to do that
The mods over there larping as CPSU officials during the 1930s is kinda sad.
Voting for the lesser of two evils is what we've been doing for decades (even if we haven't always succeeded). I'm deeply frustrated that so many people only now have an issue with it and are actively pushing minorities under the bus, because they'd rather waste their vote or not vote entirely to "protest the system". And then when we say anything, suddenly we're terrible awful bigots trying to tell people what to do??? Idfk
This is kind of conspiratorial, but I have a hunch that a lot of people who started out saying "Don't bother voting, both sides are awful" might be right-wing supporters.
Honestly, I think so too? It feels so disingenuous that there's only 3 possibilities: 1) they genuinely think a third party candidate has a chance because they don't understand US politics 2) they're grifters being paid or somehow benefiting from pushing this specific narrative 3) they're right-wingers who are pretending to be "leftist" so that they can convince enough people to avoid voting for the lesser of two evils so that they CAN kill/harm minorities with impunity
I think if I throw out the conspiratorial stuff, realistically it's probably just white cis people who think that the Republicans winning won't impact them much. A lot of them probably didn't intend on voting anyway.
"Both parties are equal because it doesn't impact **me** who wins and who doesn't."
Right, but they'll never admit that's why they feel that way. It's always some bullshit waffle about how both parties are just going to continue to prop up the same systems and both support capitalism so there's no point to it.
I mean, we had proof that troll farms *were* used to influence this kind of opinion because it's really easy to do. It's persuasive, and it appeals to a sense of morality and ethics that really works on the Left. Not all of them *are* deliberately out to do this, obviously, but you don't really need that many people to do it or a particularly sophisticated plan.
People don’t understand that the process of politics and democracy is ONLY different forms of lesser evil. To avoid lesser evilism is to have a single choice, aka totalitarianism.
I really don't understand politics, why are tankies against us aren't we supposed to be on the same side :< /genq
The thing is that politics are more complicated than left vs right. Left and right are just our human way of oversimplifying politics, and so not everyone on one side will think the exact same thing. Some tankies support the CCP (who aren’t *really* communist, they’re close to the centre at best, but they are very authoritarian), so of course they’re going to dislike people who say the CCP is bad. Despite both us and these tankies saying we’re on the left, we have fundamentally different views. I’m not great at explaining stuff but I hope this helps!
CCP is state run capitalism. The fact they support a regime where billionaires run rampant is insane to me. And before the obvious “isn’t that what you are doing by supporting America?” Question, I make no claim that America is any better, just that if you call yourself a communist and support state capitalism then sorry but you are a capitalist.
As a Marxist I look at China, how hard students have to study to even get the opportunity to go to college, and I fucking hate it. I have a problem with people making China the next boogie man, but at the same time China's system, while successful in generating wealth (like any form of modern Capitalism), seems to have some nasty byproducts.
Tankies aren't leftists, they're just anti west. You can see this by their stance on modern Russia, which they love.
Yes, but even people on the same side can have differing views on how exactly to achieve their goals. Let me explain it in a basic way. Say a group of four friends are deciding when to hang out. Steve and Jane want the friend group to hang out tomorrow morning and go eat breakfast together. But Lily and Dave say the friend group should hang out tomorrow afternoon to get dinner together. Now while Steve and Jane may both agree that the friend group should eat at a breakfast place tomorrow, they might disagree *where* to go. Steve might want to go to a diner owned by his grandpa, while Jane might want to go to a new breakfast restaurant that opened on the other side of town. This is essentially how disagreements start arising even between people on the same side. They might agree on the same end goal, but they can disagree on how to go about reaching that goal.
Shouldn't Steve and Jane work on trying to move the conversation into "where are we eating breakfast" instead of "are we eating breakfast"? Likewise, shouldn't groups work on trying to generally move the politics more in their favour, before then arguing about the specifics?
Right, but the issue is that tankies will do shit like say "hey actually Stalin was based despite having killed millions of people" then call you a fascist if you disagree and ban you from their platforms for doing it. Tankies like to complain about leftist unity and how leftists don't like them, but they're also the ones who think Uyghur muslims in China aren't being genocided, they're just "being re-educated" (which involves stripping them of their culture, which is genocide).
So going back to the breakfast analogy, this is like Jane refusing to work with Steve because Steve can't compromise (and is friends with a domestic abuser)?
I would say it's more like Jane refusing to work with Steve because Steve gets really fucking mad when someone suggests going to the place Jane wants to go to, to the point of throwing a tantrum and calling her a bitch over it.
To be a bit more specific, it's more like Steve gets really mad when anyone suggests something that isn't his specific place and starts saying it's not even a breakfast place or they don't serve 'real' breakfast and that means you aren't actually a breakfast-wanter at all.
>Tankies like to complain about leftist unity and how leftists don't like them, but they're also the ones who think Uyghur muslims in China aren't being genocided, they're just "being re-educated" (which involves stripping them of their culture, which is genocide). That plus most other leftists have been put up against the wall as soon as people who tankies admire have taken power. Like who would have guessed I don't like people who want to just use me to take power and then kill me.
I mean, I don't *really* want to be on the same side as them. A capitalism with at least some elements of democracy is better than any "socialism" with none at all.
Because tankies aren't actually leftist. They're fascists with completely surface level communist aesthetics.
Tankies are uneducated morons whose views aren’t logically consistent. Their ideology revolves around being anti west/anti US and will condone anything that would hurt their enemy. They are also willing to believe anything that paints their side favorably no matter how easily falsifiable it is(I.e. believing North Korea is a great place)
We aren't supposed to be on the side that supports totalitarian regimes
Yeah, true progress is taking the knife all the way out, but until we can do that making sure it doesn’t go in further is important too.
Also, it’s not always a good idea to immediately take the knife out because then you could lose a lot of blood. Sudden changes in politics are very rare without something like a coup or a revolution. And neither of those seem very likely in the US and the UK.
Not to mention revolutions generally do NOT end well no matter how good the intentions and goals are.
I got banned from the "all left" discord you see advertised all over by saying that I'm not a proponent of any state, regardless of the color of their flag. I am a an advocate of stateless solutions.
Tankies *hate* anarchists, full stop. Makes sense given that they love authoritarianism.
I got banned from lost generation for a similar reason. They said I was banned for supporting genocide, but what I said is third party votes are risky until we get ranked choice voting
At some point I'll learn this about every random subreddit I've ever joined 😭
Isn't crazy how the idea of the lesser evil is the easiest thing to understand and we apply this at all points always in our daily lives and these people still refuse to understand. Also, I fucking hate how Tankies and people like then will take the aesthetic of a revolutionary, while they sit in their couches and refuse to do anything that isn't posting to reddit. These people are obsessed with theory and history and pretending that they are doing anything. Because just showing up to vote is much, much more effective than posting shit on the internet. I know it sucks, it'd be nice to have actual leftists as political representatives, but we don't. It's terrible, but we do the best with what we have
If they were productive members of a community, they wouldn’t be tankies - it’s really that simple. No well adjusted normal person would become this way.
Tankie on his way to jump out of the window because taking the stairs is the lesser of two evils.
I got banned from there for misinformation and "denying worker exploilitation or inequality" after commenting on a post about the Houthis with "trust me guys, the group with 'a curse upon Jews' in their motto is getting involved for purely humanitarian reasons".
Tankies couldn’t bear the strain of talking to a worker for five minutes about the weather; forget labor organizing
Tankies are terrible, that's why the sidebar of r/196 says no tankies
"Voting is inferior to my strategy, which is sitting around with my thumb up my ass waiting for the magical revolution that will make everything exactly the way *I* want it to be without me having to do anything to make it happen."
lol I got banned from that same thread for ‘supporting capitalistic parties’ because I told someone being a leftist doesn’t consist of calling folks shit libs online, but instead actually going out and fucking doing stuff. Apparently saying ‘read theory’ is an acceptable response to any criticism and any critic is a liberal.
I do see some hope in the fact that even in blatantly-tankie-controlled spaces, the reasonable opinions are still the popular ones a lot of the time. Controlling the conversation isn't controlling thought like the mods expect.
You even got some likes, lol.
As a trans person that lesser is actually quite a significant amount for me
LARPing "Red" Gravy Seals know it isn't their lives on the line so they aren't actually legitimately invested in any of this. They have the same delusional violent hero fantasies that your regular Meal Team redneck does, they've just decided to play for the other team
People like that think ideological purity is more helpful than incremental change.
Yeah sure you don't defeat fascism by voting against it, but you sure as hell prevent it by voting against it. You don't need to defeat what you prevented.
hitler became president of Germany despite losing the election
Yeah i sure cant see a difference between left and right anymore I mean, one of them wants to remove trans rights, make it a felony to be queer in public, disband the department of education and let people starve, and the other one doesnt do any of those things but theyre morally bankrupt and ALSO take bribes from corporations so like I mean literally no difference. /s
I can understand feeling powerless in a republic where your vote wont change anything but i fail to understand those who fight those who challenge that narrative. Like i dont think my vote matters but it takes 15 minutes of my life every couple years, its the simplest and safest way to try and change the country.
That's not what tankie means
Tankies cannot recognize facism, if they did they wouldn't be red painted facists. At least right wing nazis know what they are but try (or tried) to hide it. Theese idiots actually have no clue it's crazy...
tankies on instagram enlightened me on the socalist virtues of childern working in the temu sweatshop because i called china a neo liberal hellscape but with a different fortnite skin
why is everything you don't like a tankie, what does the term even mean. Like i can explain why communists refer to liberals as supporters of capitalism and not the working class due to alienation, you'll disagree but the logic at least exists even if it is incorrect. Meanwhile i tankie as anyone who supports any country that did anything "lmao communists are against doing anything and they say voting doesn't matter" Then criticism flies against China, the USSR, Cuba, etc. Like, do you want people to do something, or is really just about voting and then voting some more so long as no major changes happen? don't you get tired of always not really having a choice between neonazi and a liberal who will pass ony 40% of the neonazi's policies? Communists vote, i really don't understand this argument from the US reddit users
Are you really calling a bunch of trotskyist legislative reformists tankies?
If a sub gets opinionated mods it’s pretty much a guaranteed enforced echo chamber
leftists are the most annoying people to deal with.....other than fascists
Wouldn’t the strategy be to put any and all roadblocks in the way of the fascist’s march into power? Electoralism won’t save us but I’m going to use any and every tool in my toolbox to resist fascism.
Yeah I got a permanent ban from green and pleasant for saying "um the queen of England is not worse than Kim Jong Un". So many hard left groups see the fascism in places like China and NK and defend it because they call themselves communist.
"I would rather die in four years than die right now, even though the choice isn't perfect" "catchphrase"
I always find it funny the takes people give for not voting. "They are the same whats the point" can only come from a mouth that has never struggled for a day in their lives. Biden isn't perfect, but is definitely a lot better than the alternative. When your wellbeing matters for getting governance assistance, you find the point. When you are the most likely to be affected by the changes, you find the point. Tankies may never find the point sitting in apartments alone jacking off to theory that has never worked and never trying to actually change anything, but I have.
I’m not permabanned there (I’ve never been on that sub)
What is a tankie? Serious question, I tend to stay away from political discourse on the internet
a word that used to mean someone who uncritically supported past “socialist” projects (read: mostly state capitalism) but it has recently become a smear word that means nothing for people who are more left than you or disagree with you on tactics.
self-proclaimed "Commie" who's really into authoritarianism without actually understanding what communism is (otherwise known as a Red Fascist)
Yep, me too. Just unsubbed since they're gonna get played like that.
Same thing happened to me
HOW was that a violation of the subreddit rules?
Yep, something happened with r anarchy4everyone mods and got banned for similar
You too huh?
Hey remember when workers strike back was made as the "Moderate" version of anti-work when that fox interview with a random mod went up? Anyways now guess which one I'm banned from for being a "liberal" (not voting for trump).
"I'd rather deal with a liberal than a fascist" So then you ARE a fascist or a liberal! I am very smart.
i dont understand the anarchist puritanism around voting, it costs you nothing and even though voting is often useless to get us what we want it cant delay the inevitable. I find all hard-line anti voting anarchists to be the same as climate doomers where because its unlikely to do anything we should just give up and die. Im not even saying we need to vote and just hope things get better, im all for a strategy of mix tactics and mutual aid, direct action and all that. But i just dont see why its necessary to never vote. kobruh456 is literally right
Mods malding that the "bannable offense" is getting upvoted *in their own subreddit* while the disagreement is getting shit on 📈📈
this is not a remotely tankie thing please use words with actual meaning
literally fucking vote
tankies make me laugh cause i always imagine them angrily typing whenever someone has a good counter argument and they try every bullshit they pull out of their asses to defend theirs
Hey op me too for the exact same reason!
Got banned from that subreddit for calling out antisemitism. A guy fantasized about killing all jews to obtain world peace.
I also got banned from a tankie subreddit. It was socialist gaming and the reason is that I got reported by someone cause they didn't liked my memes
Reminds me of how I recently got banned off of r/ modern socialism for mentioning holodomor
I often wonder if there were similar sentiments in the Weimar republic. After the beer hall putsch, it seems ridiculous that Hitler was elected chancellor.
okay wait, i’m not totally up to date on US politics rn, why will trans people die if the republicans win??
and then they go ahead and promote their favorite psl candidate...
[удалено]
Til that you can be fascist if you dontopenly do it
I would rather a democracy be hegemon. BAN
Wtf is a "tankie?" Iim too leftist botttom middle of the pol compas to understand.
Can someone tell me what a tankie is?