You mean to tell me authoritarians gonna authoritarian?
The author sounds like an authoritative voice on authoritarians authoritating.
To be fair though. It’s not something anyone needs to be authoritative on. It’s an observation even a five year old could make. Though I don’t know if that makes it better or worse. LOL
It was just a little alliteration.
Fair enough heh
No, everyone on the internet deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Do they though?
Sorry, that was sarcasm and your earnest response scares me.
Here I thought I was continuing the joke, guess it didn’t come across well in text only
I guess I meant, I’d be scared if that were an earnest response.
Inb4 anticolonialist and linkerbaan rage reply.
Fuck all imperialist and hierarchical power structures. Fuck colonialism and fuck the police. Fuck fascists and the libs that enable them.
Having worked in some non-hierarchical non-profits and teams, sometimes you want an head chef to make a call when there are too many cooks in the kitchen.
Yes, but not hierarchy for hierarchies sake. Organization via consent is fine and encouraged. The problem is when it’s done by force in an attempt to justify the hierarchy.
You are correct. “Unjust hierarchies” is probably the term I should have used. Some hierchical structures are going to be necessary in certain settings. What’s important is that they’re non-exploitative and entered into with real consent from all parties.
Careful. I got banned from the news community in Lemmy.ml for that.
You too eh?
My favorite part is the ‘moderates’ who insist they aren’t tankies/conservatives yet spend all their time playing apologist for the same.
I got banned from memes@lemmy.ml for pointing this out. I’m an anarchist, so these authoritarian cohorts look fairly similar to me.
do you mean memes@lemmy.ml?
Sorry, yes, probably.
If you are tired of tankies, just stop talking about them. They are NOT representative of the actual communists (at least worldwide). And by communism, I’m talking about the real one, the one which its final objective is a stateless and classless society.
Removed by mod
It’s almost like “left” and “right” are bullshit alignments, and instead we have a wide array of stances on different issues; in this case on the tolerance of personal freedom and expression.
It’s almost like “left” and “right” are bullshit alignments
Uh… No they’re not. They’re very useful words to refer to a range of ideologies and principles that, although not perfectly defining, make a lot of sense to use.
and instead we have a wide array of stances on different issues
That’s why there are subcategories in the left and the right.
Left and right can be useful, but it’s only a single data point. If you get all of your political beliefs from a single data point then you’re an idiot. As with everything, there is more nuance than that. It’s not useless. It just isn’t that encompassing.
Isn’t it the opposite of a data point? Left and right are very broad categories, each of which includes a lot of data points
Well, it’s (theoretically) the average position of every position they hold, which is one point. The issue is that everyone values different things in different ways, so it’s not the most useful thing.
I don’t agree that it’s an average as much as it’s a set containing many data points, but sure, just semantics I guess
Are tankies in the room with us? If you anti-communist types spent 1/10th the time criticising the actual existing fascists (Trump, Putin, LePen, Abascal, Meloni…) than your made up tankies, you’d use your time much more productively.
Lmao
I spend most of my political insults on Trump, Putin, LePen, and Meloni, tyvm
Are tankies in the room with us?
Yes they are.
In which government or party around you?
Why is that suddenly the definition of “room”?
So you’re just crying about fringe people on the internet without political power or public prominence?
Oh so you’re just minimizing the effects of propaganda spread via social media.
Gee, I wonder why you’d do that…
Yes, they’re in the room with us. Their instance is lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml
yeee not quite horseshoe theory tho, is it?
after all, the meme is just pointing out that both conservatives and tankies are pro-authority. said nothing about left and right
It’s all they have! How dare you take their only argument from them! /s
You are 100% right though. It’s a ham fisted deflection technique. I will defend them from people outright calling them fascists. Because there is a difference. But they are both authoritarian and in the end do a lot of the same things. Which should be discouraged no matter their intentions.
THERE IS NO LEFT AND RIGHT ONLY MASTER AND “THE LIBS”!
The problem isn’t with the meme conflating tankies with fascists in authoritarianism, it’s with the usage of the word tankie to refer to anything left of liberalism, that’s when this meme doesn’t apply. Tankie in the original sense (i.e. Stalinist), sure.
Leftists are so committed to destroying each other they’ll reinvent horseshoe theory.
If the fascists take over, some of y’all will be strangling each other on the gallows.
Tankies aren’t leftists. Tankies are fascists.
Ok, can you describe what’s a tankie?
Tankies are people who see this and root for the side with the tanks:
So, barely anyone at all in the modern world? Basically only fringe Stalinists and Maoists? So why do you devote so long in your heads to them?
So, barely anyone at all in the modern world?
Lots of people on Lemmy though. You know that, of course, but you find it much more fun to pretend otherwise.
No, I genuinely see a lot more of concern about tankies than I see tankies, and I don’t think you can argue against that
Lmao
A tankie is anyone who supports a highly authoritarian flavor of communism, whereas a fascist supports a highly authoritarian flavor of capitalism.
The two flavors of authoritarianism that are the primary source of human misery.
So, basically nobody is a tankie? Only fringe Stalinists want that, and that’s extremely uncommon to the point of me not knowing any platform in my country that supports those values. Whereas there’s literal protofascists in the US, EU and Russia in governments. So why do you guys focus so much on tankies??
Not what I said, tankies still exist, their ideology is still a bad one that relies heavily on centralized authoritarianism, but we’re currently in a situation that the populist political movement that has gained so much traction in the current moment heavily leans toward fascism with capitalist authoritarianism as opposed to when tankies were much more common during the Cold War at the height of the Soviet Union’s geopolitical power enfo.
As to why leftists do spend so much time fighting against the tankies, it’s that most present day leftists do not want to let an authoritarian ideology gain any kind of foot hold in the more anarchist/anti-authoritarian leftist movements of our time. The geopolitical question of our era is Authoritarianism vs Democracy.
I know you didn’t say it, I’m saying there’s basically nobody in the left who supports authoritarianism. There’s an effort in many leftist communities to conflate Marxism-Leninism with authoritarianism in a sort of anti-communist leftism. There are plenty of Marxist-Leninists, but would you call them authoritarian? What about the organization of government in worker-elected soviets is authoritarian?
Marxism-Leninism inherent to the ideology requires a centralized authority to seize control of the means of production on behalf of the proletariat and establish a one party state and has no plans to actually distribute that power back to the people. They are authoritarians and simply shift the totalitarian power from the totalitarian capitalist few in control of the means of production to a new totalitarian communist state in control of the means of production. That’s authoritarianism dresses up as a benevolent dictatorship.
The ideas of worker led industries where leadership is elected is a great idea and many implementations of worker coops and worker run corporations in the day have worked quite well, but centralized economic planning like what we saw in the days of the soviet union throughout the Cold War ended up failing quite spectacularly on multiple occasions.
I could go on a whole tangent on worker owned and led coops, and ideas on how to leverage the responsiveness of a free market with the incentive systems focused on solving distribution rather than maximizing profit, but that’s veering into a tangentially related essay instead of staying on topic about tankies and authoritarianism.
Liberals and living in a completely made up reality, no better combo!
Yep everyone that disagrees with you is just a liberal. It couldn’t be that many different ideologies disagree with you.
Even if you still somehow mistakenly think that Marxist leninism is a valid and worthwhile ideology to pursue. After it’s been disproven so many ways. (As liberalism also has) Feeling the need to defend those who lack even more critical thinking skills like tankies. Will always make people still think less of you.
everyone that disagrees with you is just a liberal
Even if you still somehow mistakenly think that Marxist leninism
So everyone you don’t like is a tankie? Now tankies aren’t just Stalinists, but all Marxist-Leninists?
Hardly. Neither did the op. There’s a difference between ML and Stalinist just like the difference between liberals and fascists. The one thing I can say for liberals that I can’t for ML. Is that while many of them get very defensive and disagree vehemently. Surprisingly not one of them has banned me claiming horse shoe theory BS. For pointing out the simple fact that authoritarians are authoritarian before anything else.
pointing out the simple fact that authoritarians are authoritarian before anything else
How is Marxism-Leninism authoritarian? And especially, how is it any more authoritarian than the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie that we have in capitalism?
What about “dictatorship of the proletariat”, especially the flawed interpretation every ML government has used. How isn’t it authoritarian?
What traditionally has happened when you try to create your own party to run against “the party”. Or just push back against the party in general.
Not that a ML country, much less an actual communist country should have billionaires. But what about what happened to Jack Ma, Bao Fan, Xiao Jianhua, or Guo Guangchang. Even if they committed crimes. You apprehend criminals. Not abduct/disappear them. The events around then were very opaque and suspect. Not that I have much sympathy for billionaires. But we only hear about this because they’re billionaires. They aren’t the only ones this happens to however.
As I said it’s not just billionaires either. Not to Dogpile on china. They are just the biggest example. And Russia has given up all illusion of being Marxist leninist or laughably much less communist. What’s been going on with the Uyghurs? That seems pretty authoritarian. Or the silencing of people and influencers pertaining to them like Nadine Wu. Who also just happens to point to another good issue. Why did she have to live as a young boy for her entire childhood. Neither she and her parents wanted it. But it was forced on them by external factors. Why was that? What could that have been? Sounds like some powerful authority had them very rattled just trying to live their own lives.
I could go on and on. But you get the idea. Now I’m not a hypocrite. I acknowledge the effectiveness that many ML governments have helped industrialize their host countries. (Much like the capitalists) And the research and innovation that has sometimes created. That the Soviet Union, China etc aren’t/weren’t the hell holes many capitalists claim. Well outside of often spartan, brutalist architecture. But that isn’t unique to them. But they aren’t a utopia either. And aren’t in any way significantly morally superior than the imperialist capitalists they love to decry.
What about “dictatorship of the proletariat”, especially the flawed interpretation every ML government has used. How isn’t it authoritarian?
The dictatorship of the proletariat refers to an early phase of socialism in which the bourgeoisie hasn’t been eliminated as a social class yet, but in which a revolution has triumphed and given the power to the working class. Until the elimination of privately-owned means of production, this society would be ran by the proletariat uniquely, mostly against the interests of the owning class. That’s the sense in which it is a dictatorship of the proletariat. If that power is exercised in a democratic manner, for example, through the decisions of worker councils and their representatives catalyzed through a communist vanguard party, I don’t see how that’s authoritarian, except against capitalists.
I don’t have much to argue against what you say about china, other than it obviously isn’t Marxist-Leninist and it’s not the model of country I defend.
What traditionally has happened when you try to create your own party to run against “the party”
Multiple-party systems don’t ensure democracy, and single-party systems don’t ensure authoritarianism. A Marxist-Leninist will defend the idea that the power should ultimately reside in the worker councils, known as Soviets in the former USSR. The objective of the party in this case isn’t to rule authoritatively and from the top down, but to translate to Marxist language and policy the demands of the workers and bring them to fruition. There should be nobody in the party’s higher spheres whose position can’t be revoked at any time at the will of the masses. When those conditions apply, it doesn’t matter much.
Or just push back against the party in general.
Depends on what you mean “pushing back against the party”. If the party is the institution that carries out the will of the workers as I explained before, then pushing back against “the party” as a whole is reactionary. If you mean pushing back against some of the decisions, that should be welcome as long as it’s done in a constructive way, as is the historical case, with different tendencies opposing each other within the parties of countries like Cuba or the USSR.
That the Soviet Union, China etc aren’t/weren’t the hell holes many capitalists claim. Well outside of often spartan, brutalist architecture. But that isn’t unique to them. But they aren’t a utopia either. And aren’t in any way significantly morally superior than the imperialist capitalists they love to decry.
Again, I’m not here to defend particularly the role of given countries (although I don’t see what you have against brutalism, it’s cool imo). I’m here because I’m a Marxist-Leninist who wants to build upon the successes and the mistakes of past attempts at communism, and seeing how the only successful revolutions have been led my Marxist-Leninists (I’m Spanish so my country knows very well what a frustrated liberal-democracy attempt at socialism is), I see it as the way to build forward.
Staliboo fascists and appropriating aesthetic from actual leftists to pretend they aren’t just fascists who swap “the nation” for “the working class” in their rhetoric.
Slim difference, though it is a difference. And they aren’t fascists. We have a word that accurately describes both though. Authoritarian. And yes, it doesn’t matter where you derive your “authority” from. Authoritarianism is always wrong.
