this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
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I quite doubt you'll see such thing as sane leftists generally simply discount tankie talking points out of hand -- you look for certain patterns and the sources they cite and say "eh, not worth reading", and also "eh, not worth replying to" because talking to a tankie is talking to a TV. They have a closed world-view, are able to bend reality itself to fit their core beliefs in the same way hardcore flat-earthers can.
You'll be able to head over to random socialist places and find people who can readily address points, cut through the historical revisionism and selective reading that tankies do, but you'll have to actually, well, ask questions and things might get egg-headed. If you address tankies directly I recommend going for broad-strokes arguments and questions and refuse to let yourself be dragged into areas that can't be wikipedia'd quickly, say, the status of unions in the USSR. An unprepared tankie is not unlikely to flat-out claim that they were independent from the party. Ask them about whether they think people should be sent to Gulag over their interpretation of Darwin, suchlike: They will either deny it, at which point they disagree with Stalin which means that he did, in fact, do things which were not right, which is inconsistent with what they believe in, or they will support it, outing themselves as batshit crazy plain for everyone to see (and also disagreeing with post-Stalin USSR scientific community, much less the world's scientific community).
Coming to the question of "why are tankies the way they are in the first place" though we come, at least from an Anarchist POV, to vanguardism as a core feature everything hinges on: The idea that for radical change to be possible, the masses must be led by a revolutionary vanguard. Marxist-Leninists all tend to fall into that category in one way or the other (and there's plenty of e.g. Trots who are cringe but perfectly fine human beings) but it's tankies who take it up to 11 by declaring themselves (and of course Stalin etc) infallible, and any opposition to their exalted "infallible" positions as counter-revolutionary. Thus, if you are not of the exact same opinion as them you're the enemy and voila you have a cult going that can justify anything to itself.
This "change is caused by small groups leading broad masses" thing then leads to the "everything is a proxy war" type of thinking you see: It is inconceivable for tankies to think that Ukrainians would have a free will, a desire to decide their fate, and as they were drifting further and further away from Russia of course the CIA must be behind that. It's pure projection.
(And, just for the record, yes, even Anarchists technically form vanguards. From "farming commune doing its thing and writing revolutionary poetry" to "Let's stop right-wing militias from slaughtering native people and then live among the natives and talk about humanism", see Chiapas).
(Also, Tankiedom is a CONTELPRO programme, their purpose is to make lefitsts in general look bonkers and inherently oppressive. Convince me otherwise).
I mean my stance is anarchism or left libertarianism, and I agree with most of what you said. But I also am just totally unfamiliar with these regimes. The only thing I’ve ever been taught is “bad”. I don’t really trust what I have been taught to be honest. I feel like there is a lot more nuance than the American POV. Also I’ve traveled enough to know that propoganda is EVERYWHERE. Every country propagandizes every other country. So it’s just hard to know what’s true about geopolitics tbh.
I think China and the USA are both terrible regimes, but in such a way that it’s generally fine to live there, which is a weird modern phenomenon. I bet Russia and Cuba aren’t what the US teaches. I suspect NK is a repressive hellscape IRL same as on TV lol.
Cuba can arguably be called democratic by now, though in a very different form than capitalist democracies. EU media is often apprehensive about the whole issue but acknowledges change, while in the US it's the same old talking points up to "Batista did nothing wrong", depending on where you look. It's a bit further ahead in that aspect than Vietnam, which the US has much better relations with.
Russia tends to get completely misunderstood by everyone but its neighbours: Moscow's rule has been based on conquering and oppressing neighbouring regions ever since the Mongols left. It provides them access to раздолье, meaning both expanse and liberty, a word with right-out mythical meaning to the Russian soul, though maybe Americans might actually understand. There's a wide-spread notion among Russians, looking outside, that they want to be a "normal" country, but what that would entail completely eludes everyone, including the opposition.
Because, well, everyone is dozing, not just the depoliticised masses. Quoth Pushkin:
...quite a lot of soul-searching will be needed for Russia to get its shit together and install a GPS on that cart of theirs. Luckily they messed with the wrong people: Ukrainians, due to cultural closeness, are about the only people capable of cutting off Russia's balls cleanly and thus throw the country into a proper existential crisis instead of trying to find, again, glory in old patterns. There's nothing wrong with Russia attaining glory -- just not like that. It worked out for them in the 1500s conquering what we now call Russia, but the time of imperialism is definitely over. Which is btw why Europe is so "unexpectedly" hawkish: The EU is a decidedly anti-imperial project, "let's band together, united in diversity, so that no empire has a chance to challenge us". Russia's behaviour is an affront to all of that and cannot be permitted to stand.
As far the US is concerned it's good ole cold war memories, they like fucking over Russia because it's the USSR. I mean it would be kinda rich, the US criticising another country for being imperialist...
It may be hypocritical, but that doesn't mean it's wrong.
I hope you've lived in Russia all your life, because it seems pretty gauche to make sweeping statements about the essential character of an entire population you are not a member of
The Revolutions podcast had a good series on the Russian revolution if that's a format you're into. It includes the birth of Tankies as a name and phenomenon.
That’s perfect, thanks!
Look I'm decidedly on the fence because of what I perceive as my own ignorance on these topics, but I'm sorry, if the reaction to the lead dev's link bomb like this is to just dismiss it without rebuttal and take the Western media's word at face value, then I have to at least entertain the notion that they might not be wrong here.
Manufacturing Consent ingrained a deep skepticism of mainstream media in me that has only served me well for over a decade. It's not a dismissal of mainstream sources, mind you, but an understanding of their biases and a healthy skepticism and unwillingness to tow the line without my own independent research or the backing of a source I fully trust.
Unfortunately, I find that my anarchist comrades often hold strong opinions on these issues when they have not done any of this research themselves or have only done surface level research at the same level of an average liberal. This again leaves me on the fence until I feel comfortable having an opinion.
In the meantime, the lead devs may have their own ideological views, but they have really not been pushing anything heavily on this platform and have been accommodating. I don't think the FUD spread over their beliefs helps any of us, and while they may be ML instead of anarchist or liberal, this culture also helps ensure that anti-racism, anti-transphobia, anti-capitalism, and more are cultural staples of the platform and acts as a deterrence to trolls and real, outright fascists from viewing this platform as a place to call home.
A Reddit clone with a leftist, not liberal, culture is one I fully embrace, personally.
The former is true, the latter very much not so. There's only so much historical revisionism and selective reading one can take before, indeed, categorising a source as untrustworthy and not worth the bother. Tankies cross that threshold quickly if you know anything about actual USSR history... just as the other side does with their black book.
This "listen to and engage with all sides no matter how dishonest their engagement is" sounds rather lib-pilled to me, TBH.
You cannot be anti-capitalist and simultaneously stan the CCP, or state capitalism in general, doesn't compute. Those devs are also deleting threads about things like homophobic laws in Russia -- while they're themselves pro queer rights they also can't countenance any kind of critique of Russia.
That's two-faced and intellectually dishonest.
OMG Noam Chomsky. You know he's a persona non grata in Europe for his genocide denial? He's also guilty of that "USA bad therefore anti-USA good" type of thinking, the hard-left kind of American exceptionalism. He should've stuck to formal linguistics.
If you want to read American Anarchists may I recommend Bookchin.
how is this sane? tankies might well be wrong, but I don't see how they're obviously wrong. the west does lie about its enemies. a million iraqis died on a lie in our lifetimes. i'm not here to fight a court case, i just find the dismissal baffling.
Do you continue to listen aften hearing "jet fuel doesn't melt steel beams"?
as a sane person, I actually did look into it, and found that structural steel does weaken significantly at the temperature jet fuel burns at.
And, knowing that, does it seem worth your time to continue listening to people implicitly denying the existence of smithing?
If it's morbid curiosity, sure, fine, go ahead be my guest but even that will have its limits.
was it ridiculous for people to doubt that iraq had wmds?