[characters surround a flowchart]
Do you agree with me ideologically?\
- No: Then you are not a leftist\
- Yes: Proceed
Did you ever disagree with me online?\ - Yes: Then you are not a leftist\
- No: Proceed
Have you ever read theory?\ - No: Then you are not a leftist\
- Yes: Proceed
Did you reach the same conclusions as me?
No: Then you are not a leftist
Yes: Proceed
Do you believe in left unity?
Yes: ??? -> just kidding -> loop back to the same question
No: Proceed
Are you to my left or to my right ideologically?
Right: Then you are not a leftist
Left: I hate you because you are a tankie -> Bruh -> Then you are not a leftist
We agree: I hate you because you are a liberal -> Wait what -> Then you are not a leftist
https://thebad.website/comic/true_leftism_flowchart
I feel like the left in the US is almost seen as center by people in other countries. The overton window has drifted a lot to the right along the years
I like how I’m considered a liberal and a tankie by different people here
On this website alone I’ve been called a lib, tankie, anarkiddie, russian bot, Chinese bot, Russian psyoperative, and fascist.
They can’t all be true lol.
My takes are things like “We should understand the material and political realities behind the actions of the USSR so we can replicate the triumphs and avoid the tragedies, some things the Chinese government does are pretty good and people are broadly very satisfied with their government there, western powers feeding Ukranian men into a meat grinder to weaken Russia is bad actually and conscription is evil, governance committees that cannot be held accountable by the people they govern without violent revolt are bound to hurt the people and wander astray from their purpose, and so called ‘liberal democracies’ are neither really”
The classic anarchist situation
I get the tankie label a lot, moreso on Reddit, but sometimes on Lemmy too.
You’ll get the label for such burning hot (?) takes as “the cold war wasn’t about good vs evil” or “I don’t support NATO” or “Cuba did pretty good given its circumstances actually”, some people let the CIA live rent free in their head and really do believe anything to their left is automatically authoritarian.
I hate authoritarianism though :( I even wrote an entire manifesto on how the USSR went wrong when Lenin purposefully ignored Marx’s remarks on radical recallability of vanguard party members back when I was a lil wee revolutionary teenage lad, before the neoliberal 2000s crushed the revolutionary spirit of the millenial youth.
reddit has always been a cesspool, the reddit sentiment is that you only believe in communism if you are a teenager trying to be edgy, and if you are not that you are obviously a troll
Yeah, I scroll smugideologyman on reddit sometimes and see that.
On some irish subreddits I see people calling our president a tankie for things like saying that sanctions on syria aren’t helping the situation there, or condemning kneecap for not speaking against the cuban government when they visited the island.
Yeah, I scroll smugideologyman on reddit sometimes and see that.
Case in point,
kneecap
I love kneecap btw.
Don’t care for their music, but they’re beyond based humans and I sincerely wish them the best.
History will remember them fondly.
I generally feel that someone is a tankie when they become emotional about some topic that is not worth the emotion as if you thinking something slightly differently is a personal attack.
What do you mean with NATO? Other than the US being currently involved, I am pretty neutral about its existance.
Also, isn’t cuba quite authoritarian?
NATO is a coalition of imperialist countries, designed to protect them from backlash from the global south, and to isolate and break up communism.
Cuba is a state, so by definition it’s a monopoly on violence. It’s also democratically run by the Cuban working classes. You can call that “authoritarian” in that it’s a tool to oppress the capitalists, landlords, and fascists, but it’s also democratic and uplifting for the working classes.
I mean authoritarian as in, castro was the leader since its creation, and when he died it was passed onto his brother. Really dont see how it can be democratic.
To clarify, is your position that democracy means regular change in position of the head of state? In that case, President Miguel Diáz-Canel isn’t related to the Castros at all, so your cause for concern should be alleviated. Personally, I don’t see authority and democracy as contradictory, all States are monopolies on violence, as I said. Democracy in my view is rule by the majority, which I see as rule by the working classes. Cuba has a complex system of democracy that goes above western conceptions of democracy.
Cuba has what they call a participatory democracy. People participate in all levels of government, and the government is led by the PCC. The democratic structure relies on delegates sent to the various organs of government from among the people, and this translates into popular rule by the working classes themselves.
Long-serving leaders are not indicative of a lack of democracy, but more towards stability. In the context of a country under siege, stability is critical, and regular turnover introduces chaos that they cannot afford. In fact, the low term limits of leaders in countries like the US are there to prevent lasting change from ever happening, and instead let the ongoing background processes take priority, those processes being capitalism and imperialism.
The entire point of NATO was to extend the power of the usa and prevent communism spreading/open a front against the USSR if war broke out.
It is a racist imperial project architected by the worst people in the world.
After WWII the Americans put Nazi leaders into positions of power within NATO.
Finally a thing we can all agree on
Waiter, one purity test about purity tests please.
Purity testing is worth criticizing, even if it is arguably “purity testing” to do so. Your meme resonated with me because I keep stepping on rakes in socialist spaces for being not quite socialist enough - generally, because I criticize objectively wrong/stupid things socialists do, not because they’re socialist but because they’re objectively wrong/stupid for doing the thing. In other words, I don’t pull punches just because someone is a socialist, so I’m purity tested and removed. One less ally. One less piece of constructive criticism. Brilliant.
Objecting to “purity tests” like yours reminds me of the Paradox of Tolerance; intolerance is generally bad, but if you tolerate intolerant people, your tolerant society will become intolerant. As a consequence, you must be intolerant towards the intolerant.
TL;DR: Yes, we should “purity test” purity testers, because they are actively harmful in that they make socialists look like catty idiots.
No comment on your overall point, but the paradox of tolerance is very overused and misused. It’s ultimately a proposition, not a prophecy, and the intended resolution of the paradox never seems to work in practice (see: Germany’s defensive democracy). Also the paradox isn’t about tolerating bigots; it’s about tolerating movements and ideas that seek to limit or infringe upon the rights of others. Again no comment on your overall point, but it seemed to be that you were using the popular (and fallacious) version of the paradox of tolerance so I wanted to point that out.
I’m currently reading Zizek’s “Less than nothing” and he criticizes Marx for not being Hegelian enough. Resetting my thermostat now
It’s a nice theory, but we all know this flowchart has never been tried.
Do you believe in left unity?
The leftists are as bad about this as any liberal, conservative, or fascist. “We all need to rally together… around me. Anyone who diverges is a splitter who has undermined the party!”
Re: Hillary Clinton / Kamala Harris stans
Claudia De la Cruz is electable if you fucking vote for her, you swine. It’s HER TURN!
Bruh, you can’t just point out how different ideological groupings suffer from the same underlying human cognitive biases like that.
Yes, but have you considered a stray comment from a week old account called ‘commiecoomdumpster42069’? Their comment is unhinged and irrelevant, but they must represent leftists and leftism everywhere, past and present. You must answer for it! It’s clearly your alt account!
No? Well I don’t believe you! Checkmate in the marketplace of ideas.
we agree
I hate you because you’re a liberal
hmmmm
