Many people on lemmy.ml deeply respect and admire authoritarian governments and organizations.
Iran, China, North Korea, Soviet Union…
The West has many flaws. But our flaws are nothing compared to these guys.
Iran hangs homosexuals. Iran shot 30,000 people in less than than 2 weeks. The Soviet Union had to build a fucking Iron wall to prevent people from escaping. The Soviets lied about the Chernobyl nuclear explosion. China censors the internet. China wants to eliminate Islam. North Korea is a totalitarian hellscape. Watching anime is a crime.
Why is lemmy.ml so fascinated with authoritarians?
Okay, with this having been said, maybe I can reframe this in a way more agreeable to you. We can both agree, I think, that communist states in history have made some mistakes, have had some… lapses in judgement. That’s not a comment on the intentions of the people who did those things, no accusation of malice at all, just a statement that mistakes and lapses in judgment occurred. We may not agree on which events should be considered as such, so I won’t pick examples so we don’t get derailed, but we can probably at least agree that some events occurred that should be so considered.
Tankies are those who embrace and laud events that are widely, but clearly not universally, perceived to be mistakes or lapses in judgement, especially when the mistake was one where their authority was used in excess to the significant detriment of at least some of their people. Even some communists consider tankies to be a particular kind of communist. Maybe you would argue they’ve fallen into the “false consciousness” that you speak of, but honestly, the one take I almost never hear is that tankies don’t deserved to be considered a separate kind of communist. I think I’ve heard it once or twice, buuuuuut before, it’s always from someone who is very clearly a tankie and just doesn’t like to be called one.
These people don’t really exist, though, and that’s my point about “tankie” being a strawman. The vast majority of people labled as “tankies” do not laud events understood by communists to have been mistakes.
Nah, I’ve seen enough communists agree that tankies are a thing to see this as just a No True
ScotsmanCommunist fallacy. Anyone, even a professed communist who disagrees with you, must just not properly understand the true nature of communism. Honestly, should have known to drop this hours ago. I do, but against my better judgment, I thought maybe there’d be a good point here somewhere. Very typical tankie who hates to be called a tankie behavior.Who have you seen? Random online self-professed communists, or actual serious organizations? And for what it’s worth, I’m not offended by being called a “tankie,” just like I don’t get offended when I get called “woke.” My issue is with anti-communists pretending they aren’t against communism by inventing a strawman to levy against communists in general.