this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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Lemmmygrad supposedly is for people who support communism, but when talking to them, they really are supporting totalitarian countries which have nothing to do with communism.
It’s amazing what some state-sponsored troll farms can convince people of. Some people can’t evaluate content they see online critically and gobble up the propaganda
The tactics and attitudes definitely make me think of that. It seems like the same people who showed up and fucked up a bunch of subs on reddit 6-7 years ago, like how conspiracy went from discussing things like UFOs and MK ULTRA to conservative political conspiracy theories and opposing the Democratic Party and politicians.
Are you saying MK ULTRA is just a conspiracy theory and never happened? I've watched documentaries on PBS, BBC and the History Channel. Clearly the program existed, as for what clandestine operations it ran, that's certainly loaded with conspiracy theories.
If everything is a conspiracy theory, nothing is a conspiracy theory.
https://www.history.com/topics/us-government-and-politics/history-of-mk-ultra
No, I didn't intend any meaning like that. I just said it was the sort of thing discussed on the sub prior to a bunch of bullshit.
Whenever communists or socialists gather, the tankies take over.
It's been like that since the past 100 years.
I'm not even sure they're really tankies anymore (or the meaning of the word is changing). Actual tankies still ostensibly support communism, but all too often, it's blatantly apparent that they're actually right-wing totalitarians cosplaying.
Yep, it's easy to bait them too. You make a post or comment calling out tankies for supporting authoritarianism, and out of the woodwork scurry all the "socialists and communists" to downvote you.
Thing is, a real socialist or communist hates authoritarianism too.
They’re tankies in the original sense. The word came from an incident where there was an actual honest to god socialist movement when workers were seizing the means of production, and “communist” Russia sent literal tanks to shut it down. A reporter happened to observe the whole thing in person and tried to write up the story, but his editors would only print the official U.N. statement that the tanks were stopping a fascist movement.
Thanks I've been wondering where the term originated
Isn’t that an oxymoron
Tankies support russian or Chinese versions of communism, which really isn't communism at all.
[Looks around nervously]
Aren't we gathering here too? This defederation seems like tankies not taking over.
Anecdotally I was in a bunch of actual leftist subreddits; I only departed because capitalists enshittified the whole website.
Maybe you just didn't recognize it. Reddit leftist spaces were famously led by tankie mods.
Yup, you would call out their BS and you get banned. The system was perfect and no one is allowed to fully criticize it.
Notably - this applies to any governing bodies.
Fuck communism, it will never work you dumbasses.
Oooooooh, I see. Capitalism should fuck communism, and give their social democratic love-child to us folks in the USA!!!! Woot.
This but unironically.
I didn’t realize I was being a little too ironic, like rain on my wedding day.
The bit that really irked me was that it was purely performative. It seemed like literally the exact same community that populated the_donald with memes and Trump train bots and the photoshopping of Trump’s pic onto Rambo. Their posts have fuck all to do with communism just like the trump posts had nothing to do with conservative politics. It was just edge faux-outrage and basically taking an opposite position for its own sake. They could simultaneously criticize Gov Newsom for not signing a trans rights bill while praising Putin who is doing his level best to make being gay illegal. It’s a mistake to see it as political discourse when it’s really just trolling. Like on the_donald, they egg each other on and have their in jokes and memes (in both the picture sense and in the actual meme sense) about walls the same way the trumpers did with helicopters.
Defederation is the best response imo.
It is funny to mention Trump around tankies and watch their heads explode. They can't pretend Trump is a communist, but their propaganda masters don't want them to turn against the Republicans, so they're just in this weird space where the only thing they can do is aggressively avoid the topic at all.
hexbear had an entire thread with hundreds of comments where they all agreed they hated trump and viewed him as an odious fascist
https://lemmy.ml/post/4040923?scrollToComments=true
The closest thing you find to support for trump in there is some of them thinking he is a less effective imperialist.
I've seen them actively celebrate that they don't suffer from "Trump derangement syndrome" like liberals (supposedly) do. The longer you watch them, the more pro-fascism you see slip through
Don't forget the classical "liberals are the real fascist allies"
Just be aware that "liberal" has a complete different meaning in the political discourse compared to what it means in the current (low quality) american political discourse. Historically liberals have been allies of fascism, indeed.
Liberalism birthed capitalism, the greatest hierarchical economic system this world has ever seen. It supports and feeds capitalism with its cult of individuality, a reverence of wealth and power, and its almost dogmatic need for competition in order to sort the best from the worst.
Fascism is a logical extension of this. All it does is shrink the in-group and expand the out-group.
Nazism was basically just liberalism taken to its conclusion. Rich people get to live in comfort as poor people die in a mass genocide.
Uhhhh. No. That's not how it went at all. Rich Jews did not get to live in comfort, they had their wealth stolen and were killed all the same. Nazism was ethnic cleansing, antisemitism, and purging society of the "unideal", rich or poor. The only German Jews who I think could get amnesty were those who fought for Germany in WW1 -- soldiers do not tend to be rich, and their families were not extended the same amnesty, from what I recall. Otto Frank had military service but it did not save his family.
It's rather disgusting to ignore the antisemitism and homophobia that led to genocides and reduce it to only economics.
The anti-semitism was populism, an attempt to steer the public to support them by repeating their own beliefs back at them. Germany was already heavily anti-semitic. Nazism was a colonial project, literally copying and pasting the US conquest of the West to Europe.
The nazis rose to power because they were backed by capitalists and the German establishment, and the reason they were backed was that they helped suppress a resurgent socialist movement in Germany and redirect the frustration of the german middle class toward scapegoated minorities and away from capitalists. Nazis co-opted socialist language and messaging, but were staunch capitalists and class-collaborationists who carried out mass privatization and crushed labor organizing.
I don't think you're really considering that liberalism does a lot of the same shit, only their targets are different groups which you don't consider because it makes you feel uncomfortable.
If you truly believe liberalism is akin to Nazism, I really don't think there's anything further productive for us to say to each other.
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I'll clear that one up since everyone here seems to be boldly making inaccurate claims. They say that because media outlets and people will spend more time analyzing and critiquing Trump eating McDonalds or typing covfefe than the US, say, drone striking innocent Afghani people or the utter shit show that Libya has become due partially to the efforts of Clinton and Obama.
You could have just sait it's whataboutism.
I’ve actually once seen a tankie scream something about how the “imperial coreTM” (America) allows gay marriage, codifying Obergefell into law last year just in case SCOTUS and some red-state AG decide it needs to go and make a serious attempt at it. Some of them actually do think it’s “capitalistic degeneracy”
That's my problem with it. For some reason they support countries which have nothing to do with being socialist or communist. It makes their philosophies and claims seem really inconsistent and not based on any real ideology. It seems like at most an anti-US, anti-EU ideology, and for some reason they scorn the same US politicians that conservatives here do, while never mentioning any problems with the people in the US who are even more against workers rights and in favor of unbridled capitalism. Also, the tactics of groups of people mocking people and comments reminds me of the shilled-out shit that showed up on reddit several years ago.
You can't understand why or how communists and socialists would be anti-US and anti-EU? Really? Seems fairly self evident to me that that'd be the case. Why would you expect anything but hostility towards the ultra capitalist systems in the US or EU from communists and socialists? Seems like an odd complaint, anti-capitalist sentiment is part of the core of the ideology as I see it.
My question is why they'd support Russia and China instead, which are as currently as capitalist as the US and EU. And also, as noted, have scorn for the more socialist politicians in the US while not criticizing the ones that support the even more abusive capitalist policies.
Buddy, if you really believe there are active socialist politicians within the US system, I don't know what to tell you.
Also, it's kind of wild to call China "as capitalist as the US and EU". Russia sure, its current system is very predatory capitalist in its makeup, even if they have particularly Russian characteristics to it. I mean, it's hard to imagine Biden have Musk or Bezos dressed down on live television while stripping them of their assets, the way Putin did with a number of oligarchs early in his rule. But it's very capitalist all the same. But China as capitalist as the US? That's just nonsense. State capitalist I could understand, but capitalist like the US is just plain nonsense.
There are politicians who support more socialist policies than others, and the so-called leftists in question reserve their mockery and scorn for them, vs. ones who are openly pro-billionaire, anti-government and anti-union. Perhaps you can explain why.
"State capitalist" is a competent of fascism, if you're not aware. And yes, Putin abused various political opponents in the past. Nothing about current Russia or China has much to do with communism.
You're avoiding the point though. Why would supposed socialists and communists support Russia and China?
Given the number of social programs in the EU, bunching it with the US just denotes ignorance.
It's all they've got. There are no real Socialist or Communist nations as those ideologies are fundamentally incompatible with groups of people larger than about 150, at least in a world that isn't truly post scarcity.
It's a shame really but that's just how people are.
As tankies often do. They are just a different colors of fascist, but damage the reputation of all lefties