How do people actually fall into the "Tankie" mindset?
After seeing a megathread praising Mao Zedong, an actual mass killer, and a post about a guy saying "99% of westerners are 100000000000% sure they know what happened in 'Tiny Man Square' [...] the reasons for this are complex and involve propaganda [...]," I am genuinely curious what leads people to this belief system. Even if propaganda is involved when it comes to Tiananmen Square, it doesn't change the atrocities that were/are committed everywhere else in China.
I am all for letting people believe what they want but I am lost on why one would deliberately praise any authoritarian system this hard.
Can someone please help me understand why this is such a large and prominent community? How have these ideals garnered such a following outside of China?
EDIT: Thank you to everyone who has responded! This thread has been very insightful :)
As a couple of poster here are already demonstrating, they discover that western nations have lied about communist nations, but they don't learn the more fundamental lesson that they shouldn't trust everything a nation says. So instead of adopting a nuanced view, they just counter believing everything a western nation says with rejecting everything a western nation says and instead believing everything a communist nation says.
Yep.
I'm perhaps older than some here, so I saw something similar after 9/11.
Western media, especially American media, were often blatantly biased in favour of the US government and the so called 'war on terror'. Especially when stuff leaked out about torture, mass killings and abuses. People turned to alternatives and often found channels like Russia Today. And to be fair, at first glance Russia Today did (certainly at the time) appear to be far more nuanced than mainstream media. It was certainly and often justifiably critical of what the US and its allies was up to around that time. But people who spent a lot of time uncritically watching Russia Today, often ended up believing the Russian government propaganda mixed in with truths.
I think it's also in large part due to the human tendency to simplify reality. Reality is often complex, but we prefer to thing in categories, like black and white. And so you often see people thinking in or blindly accepting false binaries. Side A bad, so side B
badgood. (e: brain fart)It's surprisingly common. I mean, look how common it is to think of Germany as the bad guy in WWI, when the reality was far more nuanced. The British empire really wasn't great.
And in WWII the nazis were obviously evil, but that doesn't mean the allies were particularly good either. For example, Roosevelt didn't do that much to stop the deportation of up to 2 million Mexicans and Mexican Americans, putting Japanese Americans in concentration camps wasn't moral, America was still virulently racist, and contrary to what you may have been led to believe about the Soviets up to 1 in 4 rapes by allied troops were perpetrated by Americans. Churchill arguably helped kill up to 4 million Indians during the war. Etc. etc.
Agreed.
Nuance is difficult, and arguably more to the point, it's sort of vague and insubstantial, not least because an awful lot of it necessariky boils down to "I don't know." People generally prefer something more solid to which to cling, so tend toward absolutes and unjustified certainties. And the most attractive ones are binaristic, because then you don't even have to provide support for your claimed position - all you have to do is find fault with the (generally falsely dichotomous) alternative.
The Post 9/11 situation with Mass Media and RT is why it's so desperately important for a Government to not lie or cover up it's actions. Another example of this is Al Jazeera. The US Government's dedication to hiding its dirty deeds opened the door for AJ to establish credibility which they later used against the US and it's Government.
Your comment is on point, but it is your username that makes it perfect
Burn the palaces, baby 😎
Not a tankie, but this kind of framing is reductionist and condescending. It's possible for someone to study the spectrum of political ideology and rationally decide that Communism is the best system. It's honestly disheartening that a non-falsifiable claim presented with zero evidence would garner this many upvotes on this platform.
THANK you. I was considering saying something similar here, and did in response to another ignorant, self-assuaging user elsewhere in the thread. So I'll just say the same thing I said to them, as a response to WatDabney above:
And to add to that, when first coming to realize the lies you've been told by the state you live under, it is a lack of nuance to immediately jump to the false premise that just because your state is bad, that must mean all states are bad. That's just the easy and childish answer. That doesn't make it inherently wrong, but it does make it the one that requires further examination and sometimes a hard look at ones misconceptions. MLs are the ones who have done that hard work, not the ones who have fallen for the easy, un-nuanced end point. As someone else here went into a lot of detail describing but I can't find at the moment, the typical and more easy trajectory for a young leftist is to go from disillusionment at their own state to anarchism. It is only after a lot more learning, examination, and recognition of nuance, that a person comes to see that the understandable kneejerk reaction that "all of them are evil!" is naive, simplistic, and totally lacking the nuance these things need.
It takes more internal work to conclude that "oh wow, all these other things I assumed were just the flat truth, common knowledge, - like how evil the communist states were and how bad they were for their people - were actually just more lies I was being told for a reason." Which is why we have so many young anarchists who over time become ML's but only rarely the other way around. @[email protected] has it exactly backwards.
Uh, I don't think you understood their point. Tankies aren't communists, they're authoritarians with a red paint job. We're not talking about nuanced Marxist thinkers, we're taking about people who think "Just line everyone who doesn't accept my exact interpretation of communism up against the wall" is rational praxis.
There are plenty of ways to rationally arrive at Communism, but really the only way to get to Tankie is, as the top comment says, rejecting Western propaganda in favor of the propaganda of so-called "communists".
You're making a semantic argument and wrapping it up with a "no true Scotsman" fallacy.
OP is making an assumption about his opposition with zero evidence to support his claim. It's a claptrap for people who want to feel intellectually superior, even if it's to a straw man.
Not really, no. Words have definitions. It's not a "semantic argument' to clarify the definition of a word. It's not "no true Scotsman" either, that's when you define a group by some unrelated or incidental quality. What I've referred to is the definition of a tankie. The quality described is neither unrelated nor incidental.
Oh, I see, you're the authority on definitions, so whatever you say goes. Even the term "semantic argument" will be bent to mean whatever is convenient for your argument. Can you define "bad faith argument," lol?
Uh, no. I just have the ability to look up definitions. The word means what it means
You said...
Per the definition:
So you have the ability to look up definitions, just not to read them, apparently.
Those people don’t exist. You’re making things up.
Unfortunately not, I have had conversations with them. And I know your next line is going to be "But they're just trolling, no one really thinks that", and I call horseshit. That "trolling", when so religiously adhered to, inspires weak-willed onlookers into sincere belief.
Any examples? As it stands, you're not beating the "I use a strawman as a club to terminate discussions" allegations.
This is just intellectual dishonesty. We both know that every side has its extremists, and to deny their existence simply makes you look like a liar.
Sure, so we can say the people OP is referring to in their post do not actually share the views described by the comment I replied to, if that makes you feel better. The people that get the word "tankie" thrown at them that actually meet that comment's description are extremely few in number, perhaps a dozen on the entirety of Lemmy.
No, I don't think they're trolling. I think that you mistake any comment that is vaguely supportive of China or Russia or that contradicts the mainstream western narrative about those countries as wholesale support for anything those countries do.
Communists know that the theory and the real world are not the same and that people can see thing in different light.
Tankies and fascists can't. And for the same reason: they see the world in black and white. "100%with me or you are the enemy". Not the rival or the opposition. The enemy.
You would be incorrect, I do no such thing. I'm speaking about a specific phenomenon, as I described.
Can you link to an example? Because I haven’t encountered such a person yet in my 6 months on Lemmy (admittedly not a long time).
These people don't exist, so effectively the purpose for maintaining this as your definition is to use it as a discussion-terminating club against those that uphold socialism as it exists in real life, tacking on the sins of this strawman like a scarlet letter A.
Seems you're assuming all communists are tankies, when they wrote about communist nations, ie, communist states which are all some variety of Marxism-Leninism, not general communism. Who's being reductive here?
Hey I can understand your frustration at their supposedly misplaced reasoning. But you have to let them have that view for some time so their own experience can align it closer to what you believe is happening. It shouldn't be disheartening that people might have incorrect explanations of how the world works for some time.
You are right that we cannot know and understand the life of every individual in a group, but we may observe typical or aggregate behavior, and we may seek reasonable inferences.
Tankies express a general pattern of behavior that is bad faith.
They quote passages instead of explaining from personal comprehension. They attack individuals against an opportunity to discuss ideas. They defer to doctrine instead of reasoning independently. They anchor to absurd lies about anarchists. They lie and deny instead of admitting to problems. They rely on disingenuous rhetoric such as the motte-and-bailey fallacy.
Such observations converge on a pattern of anchoring to convictions for reasons that are unrigorous, prejudiced, and generally misguided.
The problem with your argument is that it relies entirely on anecdotal evidence and personal experience, which is heavily influenced by confirmation bias.
Politics is not an empirical science.
I see, so your personal experience -- rife with confirmation and composition fallacies -- is how we should debate politics. That's clearly valuable.
Everyone's experience is important.
Where are these tankies? Are they in the room with us right now??
Literally, yes, there are people in comment threads in this post doing the read theory meme. You not acknowledging their existence doesn't mean they aren't real. You make leftists look like fools.
"read theory" is never a valid response. Articulate the point to me or forfeit.
Telling someone to look into something is only a valid counterpoint in reference to evidence. Theory is not evidence.
Tankie is just the flavour du jour for the modern version of red scare. It's easier to call someone a tankie when they disagree with the current narrative about the war in Ukraine or the Palestinian genocide than meet them at their argument and have an honest discussion. To this day nobody has been able to explain to me, if Putin elected Trump and the pedo is a Russian asset, why did Putler decide to invade precisely when his asset was not in power. Also, why did Macron and Scholtz beelined to Moscow to stop a war while Bojo and Biden went full hawk? An aggressor is always in the wrong, period. That said, if Mexico and Canada entered a military alliance with North Korea or China do you think the US would sit idly by? Is it so hard to believe that Biden, after the traitorous IRA (stealing industry from the EU), was all too happy to wreck the EU industry by just precipitating the war rather than collaborate on its avoidance? Nobody ever does the "qui bono" analysis before they chest thump about "DeMoCrAcY". That's why the name tankie exists, it's too hard for the average hollywood consuming joe to understand the grey in international politics. They just understand absolutes, especially within the anglosphere, which if PISA is anything to go by, is fast losing reading comprehension and ability to process complex problems. If you go agaist the narrative you're a tankie, even if you're on the side of the victims of genocide or argue we should support Ukraine because it's the only way to assure a positive outcome for the EU rather than "we're the good guys".
It happens with other things. If you hear a new Linux user, a reborn Christian, a new WH4K player, ... you'll hear them say that the "new" thing they like is the best thing in the world and has no flaws. Then you find the flaws and can happen two things: either you grow up and admit it has flaws or you stay a child and ditch that thing for another "new" thing.
Kinda like how when someone finds god, they go hardcore devout-mode, only surprisingly…. More ignorant.
People deify their favorite State and overlook the bad it does. All States commit atrocities so it is easier for everyone to look away rather than say "I like x about how y nation handles z" and be specific about it.
But that last part is included in the "maturing" part of your life. About countries and about people.
Oh man this was one month ago? It feels like years.
What you are seeing in 'tankie' and “read theory” communities is an anti scientific epistemic style that treats ideology as a filter that outranks evidence. When they say the reasons are “complex” and involve propaganda, they are not doing ordinary source criticism that checks documents, reconciles contradictions, and updates beliefs under constraint.
In the sciences, “theory” is a deliberately fragile summary of what has survived contact with data, it must expose itself to being wrong through clear predictions, and good practice means you actively cultivate the ability to withhold belief when the evidence is thin or messy; in a lot of sociology, and especially in Marxist derived subcultures, “theory” often functions less like a falsifiable model and more like a lens, a vocabulary, or even a doctrine that tells you ahead of time what counts as evidence and what must be discounted as “ideology,” which flips the direction of inference so that evidence is recruited to serve the framework rather than constrain it.
Tankies are invoking a built in rule that inconvenient data about a favored regime can be dismissed as structurally tainted by bourgeois institutions, Western media, liberal academia, or intelligence services
That move makes the worldview functionally unfalsifiable, because counterevidence is reclassified as propaganda while any supportive anecdote is treated as proof. Historically this connects to Marxist Leninist political practice where the vanguard party claims privileged access to historical truth and where “correct line” competes with open inquiry, so truth becomes something defended for its political usefulness rather than tested for its correspondence with reality.
The Cold War did involve real propaganda and information warfare on multiple sides, and that kernel of truth gets inflated into a blanket permission slip to disregard any hostile reporting and to treat doubt as ideological contamination. Online this becomes a status ritual in which fluency in canonical texts substitutes for empiricism, and where moral anger at capitalism plus anti imperial identity incentives push people to defend any state positioned against “the West.”
The result is that atrocities are minimized, rationalized as necessary, or outright denied, not because the evidence is genuinely ambiguous but because the community’s habits convert theory into a replacement for falsifiable claims.
While your prose is a little embellished, I think it's a good diagnosis of the situation.
One thing I'll say is that your appeal to the sciences might not be the most persuasive. Science can certainly inform the realm of philosophy and ideology, but I don't believe that it's equipped to answer the sorts of questions the latter broach. Axioms cannot be proven in the real world.
It's funny though. I know .world blocks hexbear, but even in this thread, I've seen Marxist-Leninists call themselves materialists/empiricists - just as you claim them to be dogmatists.
I always appreciate seeing discussion on Lemmy with MLers tho. I'm apprehensive to adopt their ideology in full, but as someone who's American Gen Z and growing up in the decline of an Imperial Core nation, I'm looking for ways that can get us out of this real, perceivable, falsifiable hellscape of a country. American Conservatives can't do it, American Liberals got us here via the Rachet Effect. The only other option is Left, but I see dangers in moving that direction as you have to avoid falling into the same traps that fascists do.
That's a very long and convoluted way of saying "tankies treat communist theory as dogma". As a tankie: I didn't become a tankie by reading theory, I became a tankie by reading demonstrable facts.
I don't support the Soviet Union because "it followed Marx and Lenin", I support the Soviet Union because it provided universal healthcare, free education to the highest level, it abolished unemployment, it guaranteed housing and abolished homelessness, it created the lowest levels of economic inequality seen in the history of the region, it defeated Nazism and saved tens of millions from extermination, it almost tripled life expectancy and saved tens of millions from abject poverty, hunger and disease, and it gave support to emancipatory anticolonial projects everywhere in the globe. Running the numbers is not "atrocity minimization" as you claim, it's pragmatic experimentalism.
For me, it's actually backwards: it just so happens that the projects that in my view have achieved the most liberating and emancipatory goals in history were following Marxist doctrine, which for the unfamiliar, is explicitly materialist and experimental in nature.
It's been fun to watch the tankies dribble in and do exactly what they are accused of. Thanks for going along with it and making everyone here's point for them.
Your original comment (translated to understandable English from your pompous-ass style): "tankies treat theory as dogma, disregard empirical evidence and data as propaganda, and mold their worldview as a contest to see who's more anti-western".
My reply: "me being a tankie is actually the result of data comparisons between capitalist and AES states for the measurable empirical improvements in quality of life and the reduction in victims, together with the support for emancipatory projects elsewhere"
Your reply: "tHaNkS foR pRoViNg My PoInT"
Imagine unironically typing like that, lmfao
do you often make a habit of mocking people for how they talk or communicate? Not very proletariat of you, elitist scum.
Surely the proletarian way of writing is overly pompous using obscure latinisms?
And no, I don't make a habit of mocking people for how they type, my original response was detailed and serious, but when the commenter above decided to become a smug shit, I lost any reason to respect them.
CS undergrad I bet, they all talked like that when I had to share lectures with them. It's just funny that this particular specimen is waxing on about data and evidence based thinking and not just doesn't present any but actively ignores it since it's in this very thread 🤣
What do you think a tankie is?
It used to mean a communist who supported the USSR’s decision to send in tanks to Hungary to protect the revolution from reactionary forces, but now it’s just a thought-terminating straw man for the modern red scare.
lol comparing being a genuine communist during the red scare to your plight of being trolled on the internet by actual working class people is so out of touch.
What part is out of touch?
A red scare is manifestly happening - see Maduro being kidnapped this morning. Trump constantly talks about jailing and deporting socialists. And online, the term tankie is being used as a way to discredit and slander all communists. People are very serious about their tankie hate here.
And it’s 2025, things that happen on the internet have real impacts on IRL society.
I get that you’re just trolling me (great SLAM, btw), but if you’re actually a leftist, you might want to think about who you’re serving when you try to undermine other leftists.
The out of touch part is that you feel comfortable posting your thought crimes online while simultaneously trying to push a "tankie is the new red scare :<" narrative.
There is so much wrong with this I don’t even know where to begin. Why wouldn’t I publicly push against a the beginnings of a red scare? Especially in a leftist space?
I suspect you’re just a troll though, so I’m going to stop feeding you now.
Btw: tankies aren't leftists. They are authoritarians. That's not leftism.
I wasn't talking to you
Go read "on practice" and "on contradiction" by mao zedong. Hilarious conjecturing based purely on vibes, nothing to back anything up. The fact that you're waxing on about tankies getting radicalised by ignoring data while ignoring every "tankie" telling their story about radicalisation in this very thread and not presenting anything to back up your steep claims makes it pure comedy.
They really keep doing this and then wonder why no one likes their tired repeated points.
More data for you to ignore I guess lmfao
absolutely no self awareness bud
Award for least self-aware lib of 2025 goes toooo....... It was a hotly contested category folks but TropicalDingdong was able to snatch it with seconds to spare
You really are pathetic.
Yes, every tankie tells me facts are 'propaganda'. and 'everything is propaganda'.
Which is, as you said, a worldview in which there is no such thing as truth, facts, or objectivity. Everything is ideology and nothing can exist outside of it. It's a form of relativism, wherein mass atrocities, oppression, and violence are totally cool, as long as it's your side that is doing it. If the other side does it, only then is it 'bad'.
Hey buddy, from one academic to another, you sound dumb as fuck.
Oh your an academic? Name every academy.
sorry sir u didnt graduate college so even tho i could apparebtly write a comment totally pwning u, instead in going to talk down to u!!!
Shut up, trash.
imagine typing this unironically lmao
Reply some more.
Sure.
Edit: quick edit btw but dog, you realize every time I reply, it's because you replied, right? "Reply more". Embarrassing.
Go ahead, reply again. You look so good right now.
Sorry, did you somehow think this comment would do anything other than embarrass you?
I'm happy to swat down smarmy dilettantes. It's fun, especially because folks in academia don't type like that in their free time, which leads me to think this was an undergrad. Which is hilarious.
Okay elitist lol
Good talk, champ.
It's a tiny fringe, just here on Lemmy they can be quite noisy 🤷
This goes for almost any obnoxious behavior on the internet. It's about 5-10% of people who are just assholes (of whatever description), and everyone else is fine. It only seems like the whole place is jerks because of how noisy the jerks are, and how skilled they are at amping up the normal people into noisy arguments that go nowhere.
Any time you're in one of those comments sections, take a step back and look at the number of people who are actually initiating the dickishness and you'll see that it's a tiny tiny minority.
not really my experience now that they have legitimate fash instances. getting Sybil downvoted is pretty hilarious though.
"Communities"
Top community: 15 subscribers, 5 users/month
I rest my case
.worldis fascist…the jerks also go around... harassing and insulting people. and like take a personal quest to ban/report you because you upset them.
normal people who disagree with you don't do that. like i read internet comments i don't like, laugh, and move on with my life. and if i engage in reply I'm not insulting/harassing the person, going into their comment history to report old comments, etc.
commies are eternal protesters
nice to have something to do i guess
Too often these criticism's of "tankies" involve calling questioning blatant cold war lies as tankie behavior and very often i get accused of being a tankie by both liberals and "anarchists" because i oppose the democrats its far past time to retire the word.
Actually existing socialism actually exists: imperfect, flawed, with tragic excesses and rightist deviations. But it exists.
And I'm interested in the real world, not creating an ideal world in my head that can't actually become reality.
Nuance? In my hate thread? You get out of here with that nonsense!
It's more or less the same position the rest of us "tankies" have. We push back on bourgeois framing of the flaws of real socialism, be it fabrications, exaggerations, or minimizations, but we acknowledge that there are real flaws.
Omg someone who is named specifically!
Can I ask you what you believe/want to happen?
Real talk homie, I'm genuinely curious!
What do you mean by "named specifically?" Either way, I want the end of the era of imperialism, and the completion of the already begun global transition to socialism, and then the global transition to communism. I want a better world, one I believe we are in the long, queer, protracted, messy process of bringing about, and as such I support the movements that further this process.
Someone said your name further up in the comments.
And that sounds dope as fuck from an objective pov.
"Queer" as in complex and not easily defined, though communists are very often queer sexually.
I think I'm going to refer to myself as queer from now on.
How socialist is a system that crushes the working class beneath it's boot heel, though? Is that really the working class seizing the means of production because that just seems like someone else beating us to the punch and becoming our new overlords.
By the time it achieved industrialization, USSR had universal healthcare, free education to the highest level, had abolished unemployment and homelessness, had the lowest income inequality rates seen in the history of the region, and materially supported emancipatory anticolonial movements all over Latin America, Africa and Asia.
Was it imperfect? Yes. Was it the most emancipatory project humanity has ever seen? Absolutely.
You're judging them while they have the boot heel of Western imperialism on their necks.
There it is! The goalposts just got kicked into another galaxy.
The goalpost is "actually existing socialism actually exists"
That's it. The fact that it exists under siege simply means that our goal should be to lift the boot off their necks, instead of wasting time criticizing them. Are they imperfect, flawed, with tragic excesses and rightist deviations? Yes. That's beyond the scope of anything we can possibly do. Our project, if you actually believe in anything other than capitalism, is to use our privileged position within the core to fight for the defeat of the empire: lift the blockades, end the espionage, stop regime change.
Right now it's Venezuela on the chopping block. You will help them far more by fighting the US than by criticizing Maduro.
Defenses of "AES" always equivocate on whether it is actually socialism.
At best, the term is a deliberate lie, but the situation is much worse.
As soon as the characterization of socialism is challenged, it is walked backed, and the challenger is gaslighted for saying that what was said moments earlier was ever said.
"AES" is a nonsense concept defended by nonsense arguments.
It's the only socialism that actually exists, hence, actually existing socialism.
So, choose. Do you want capitalism, or the only existing alternative? In Venezuela you can support Maduro, or you can support Trump's regime change. Those are the only options that exist. Pick one.
You insist it is socialism.
When someone correctly objects that socialism not yet exists, you deflect and make excuses.
Socialism is worker control of production. Chinese workers being employed by companies in China is not socialism.
"AES" is obscurantist nonsense.
In what way is AES "nonsense?" Countries where public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy and the workint class in control of the state factually exist. It isn't a "deliberate lie" because you either disagree with that or with the understood definition of socialism.
No, you're just desperate for an excuse to dismiss valid criticisms
Thanks for the feedback.
You're welcome!
Simple, that shit is fictional
The working class in China are not being crushed under anyone's bootheel, though. They really do enjoy a dictatorship over the bourgeoisie, which has been used to great effect to improve working class lives. Yes, a dictatorship of the proletariat as mediated by the party, but vast swathes of the working class people are the party. And those who are not, well, there is a reason the party has an over 90% approval rating and it's not some disgusting racist trope about Asians being sheep. It is because they've watched their quality of life rise by leaps and bounds, repeatedly.
Yes I'm sure the suppressed LGBT really enjoy the weight of that boot as much as you enjoy its taste
Yes, a country that 70 years ago was feudal has some backwards social policy. Is that an own?
The difference betweent China and the west in this regard, is that social justice victories in China are not constantly threatened by right wing parties and far-right Nazis.
Cope harder buddy, nobody buys that shite except you lot.
You should check out hexbear, plenty of pro China queer people there!
Which is naturally a disgusting phenomenon to see queer people support oppression of people like them. But I guess needing to fit in is indeed a strong counter to cognitive dissonance.
I'm nowhere near well versed enough on the topic to chime in. But isn't this the same excuse people try to throw against supporters of Palestine? "Oh yeah you support ending the genocide in Palestine? Did you know they throw LGBT people off the rooftops".
Regardless of the truth/inaccuracy of the statement. It seems like it's not really that relevant to the conversation and just thrown out there as a cheap gotcha. Does the suppression of LGBT individuals mean that their overall quality of life hasn't improved? Does a country have to be perfect and not have other social changes that need to be worked towards in order to acknowledge progress? This is not an endorsement of China, again I'm not knowledgeable enough on the topic. But just a criticism of this rebuttal.
And it’s actually dystopian and murderous. because it exists does not make it good . the irony of your name and how hostile they are to lgbt is priceless
Anything's possible when you make shit up kiddo
I enjoy admitting when I'm wrong. That means I learned something, and that I become right again, which means I win.
Interesting, is it difficult for people to admit they are wrong? As someone who's almost always wrong, I cannot fathom why it would be so hard to admit wrongness.
because it's shameful. it invites shame and ridicule.
being correct is good. being wrong is bad. people don't want to be bad.
being comfortable with wrongness, fault, etc, requires a lot of education and maturity that very few people ever attain. and it also requires having an ego that can tolerate the ridicule/rejection that comes with admitting fault you will receive from a lot of people, which is kind of a lonely position. admitting you are wrong is opening yourself up to social rejection.
basically if you never admit you are wrong you can hang out with other like minded morons and never feel alone and sad. hence why such communities tend to be so emotionally compelling for people, and so hard to get out of. you have to be willing to go be alone to break out of such mindsets, and as social animals, a lot of human beings are pathologically afraid of being alone.
To quote Bertrand Russell: "Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power."
To put it simply, a lot of tankies crave power but just don't want to admit. They are simply faux concerning for their own ulterior motive. I saw a meme from one of the .ml instances stating that communism simply "wants to improve" society. But I was like: didn't you guys suppress free elections and speech and persecuted anyone who simply disagrees at the slightest?
It's not uncommon for many authoritarian communists to eventually become fascists, especially after the end of the Cold War. The ex-leader of Red Army faction became neo-fascist in 2000s. A local politician in my country ran on xenophobic platform, but was a member of a Marxist-Leninist party in the 1970s. All that said, it means these people simply run on whatever ideologies, so long as they can attain power for power's sake.
Edit: grammar
Edit: The amount of conjecture and thought terminating cliches in this thread is through the fucking roof lmfao. Peak reddit.
A lot of tankies are actually posting how and why they believe what they believe. If anyone's seriously interested in an answer look at this thread from https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/60633370?scrollToComments=true
There are 206 comments in total at this time.
My journey started here:
https://hexbear.net/comment/3763871
How they piqued my interest:
https://hexbear.net/comment/5606499
The reason I switched:
https://hexbear.net/comment/5355388
It was a combination of them just not being horrible "redfash" monster everyone says they are, them being able to consistently back up their seemingly "obviously wrong" takes and me and seemingly no one else being able to come up with better answers.
In discussions tankies were the only ones who had good faith discussions, obviously they didn't always, but if it wasn't just an internet slapfight the tankies were the ones citing sources and having incredibly nuanced understandings while me and the other libs didn't really. All I ever saw was a "nuh-uh" backed up by "obvious" claims that "everybody" knows like your "mao zedong was the worst mass murderer".
There is a post I could make about this "black book of communism" statistic now, having read about these sorts of claims, but not on my phone.
Is this a parody?
At the time I was a lib even if I didn't identify as such
No. The great majority of MLs on Lemmy were born, raised, and still live in the imperial core, just like most other people on Lemmy. We got the same education, indoctrination, and propaganda as everyone else, so most of us started out as liberals with largely the same beliefs as everyone else. We believed all the same Cold War propaganda as everyone else. Investigating and peeling away the layers of propaganda and lies is actually a long, slow, and not particularly pleasant, effort.
Speak for yourself, peeling off cold war propaganda is an incredibly liberating process for me. It actually gives me hope that revolution is possible and that not only things can potentially be done, but have already successfully been done.
So you support Russia invading Ukraine, China doing a genocide?
Because that’s literally what Tankies believe in
I didn't support Russia until I learned the history of the region going back to 2013. Now I critically support it like most other marxists.
I used to condemn China for committing genocide until I learned that it actually isn't. Even installed xiaohongshu and could see for myself.
That's what I meant by
See this comment for an example of a typical debate between a tankie and a lib.
I don't think they're redfash monsters, I just know most historians disagree with what they say, and as someone who is not an expert, I will trust the experts over the people I see post 18 paragraphs that the one time I looked into was not very relevant and often just cause more confusion. An easy example is china's treatment of the uyghurs, I have yet to see a response that isn't, as you say, a thought terminating cliché.
See that for me was quite the opposite. The people everyone was piling on as tankies had demonstrably better knowledge of not just both history and current events but could trace a lot of the claims levied against them, like the uyghur genocide hoax, to their source, in this case Adrian Zenz, and really completely decimate them.
Those contradictions kept piling on, tankies were rebutting "common knowledge" and backing up seemingly ludicrous claims in depth and clearly previously researched. Whereas the libs were just consistently out of their depth, either insulting, claiming without anything to back it up or in the best case throwing around tangentially related articles or wikipedia entries that were obviously just the first results from an ad hoc google search. Until just sort of all came crashing down and sent me reeling, my whole worldview coming undone. My family and especially my wife got really worried even, but it kind of tapered away and settled into a new approach to things that feels like I am actually able to take at all these complex and finally have the tools necessary to understand them if I invest the time to do so.
I do not know better than the united nations or several peer reviewed journals. The journal also has references to dozens of historians. It is possible some small group on the internet know more than they do, and are interpreting it better than people who do it as a job, I just find that unlikely. The UN believes it is a persecution if not a genocide. I am a layman on this topic and will defer to experts, because I know there is a lot of astroturfing and I have previously seen arguments that seemed flawless but were missing key details that an expert showed why they were flawed.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-xinjiang-rights/muslim-minority-in-chinas-xinjiang-face-political-indoctrination-human-rights-watch-idUSKCN1LQ01F/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2020.1848109
I’ll spare people a wall of text and just drop a couple of links for those interested: [1] [2]
The sources used in your link are sourcing Chinese tabloid Global times. I am fully convinced it's astroturfing at this point.
Yours is essentially an appeal to authority, davel obviously went through the trouble of researching the entire history behind the conflict.
Your rebuttal? "Wow you must be a paid troll actor"
And that's how I became a tankie 😄
Thanks for the live demo
Brother this took me 15 seconds to find, this is very low effort astroturfing https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/22-08-31-final-assesment.pdf
e: also all the interviews with matching details https://www.npr.org/2018/11/13/666287509/ex-detainee-describes-torture-in-chinas-xinjiang-re-education-camp But again the entire UN agrees this is happening, and the only one who says it's not is the country that benefits from saying it's not.
Wow, one of the twenty-odd links isn’t from a Western source? Must be a foreign secret agent!
Deeply unserious.
No they are sourcing a Chinese tabloid which is governed by China to prove that China did not do something, while every other country's reporting, including Chinese historians interviewed, says it is happening. This is the only link I checked to see if it was worth looking over the rest. I am using the most likely conclusion that either they did not care to see the source was from a Chinese tabloid because it confirmed what they already believed, or they are a foreign agent, which have been confirmed to exist on every social media platform. You should be wary I am one too. Either way it's not worth anyone's time.
Serious contemporary historians, not airport bookstore historians, do agree with much of what we say, because after the fall of the USSR, they got access to troves of Soviet government documents spanning decades, which dispelled much Western Cold War propaganda.
Yes, mostly agree is not a difficult bar to pass when the US was lying about 99% of what they say. Of course almost everything the US said was a lie and historians agree with tankies on most of what actually happened. I can say "The US lied. Communism benefits the average person. These countries were handicapped by the US. China is not committing human rights abuses." A historian would agree with 3/4 of those, but that doesn't make what they said reasonable. This is why every argument feels like bad faith, because saying they agree with most of what tankies say implies the other claims must have credence as well.
A lot of people get fed up with slow or no progress, so they fall for supporting approaches that "get things done." Even though they go very wrong, and by that point, some are too lost in the sauce to admit it's wrong or severely off-base.
Being involved in anarchist and decentralized leftist orgs, it's very discouraging how few people care and how little power we have.
Often times it takes weeks of planning and everybody's collective effort and spare resources to provide meals to a few dozen people, or to host a single information booth or class at a larger leftist meet up.
After years of that, the temptations of centralized power to just dictate to the masses what will happen is very strong. The justification goes something like, "yeah there are a ton of problems with XYZ, but at least they are accomplishing ABC!"
I feel it too when I look around my country of the USA. Sure China is State-capitalist, authoritarian, pseudo-dystopian police state, and super politically repressive. But god damn it, they have some of the best public transport in the world, a kickass tech and manufacturing sector, solid public healthcare, and the actually imprison and even execute billionaire scumbags...
When I have to encounter the level of American idiocy on a weekly basis, listen to the most asinine politicians and talking heads, and endure capitalist bootlicking propaganda everywhere, I start to get really tempted to advocate for the China way...
So it boils down to "at least the trains run on time"?
Not OP but I think they are sold on the "consequences for billionaires" part
Wumao shills are everywhere now.
"Everyone who disagrees with me is corrupt and lying" lol cope
Tribalism
They opposed one tribe so they joined another
Until those beliefs attempt to control others who don't share the same beliefs. That's the limit. I don't understand why it's so difficult for certain groups to leave people alone.
That's exactly the complaint against tankies. Tankies are specifically authoritarian "communists", who defend the violent enforcement of "communism" by authoritarian states. Tankies explicitly want to control others who do not share their beliefs, that's the material distinction between a tankie specifically and a Communist in general.
"Tankie" is just a pejorative for those who recognize and uphold the legitimacy of existing socialist states. If you ask any self-described leftist if they support socialists stopping fascists, murderers, slavers, landlords, etc through violent means, 99% will support it. Marxists do not wish to "contril others who do not share their beliefs," but instead recognize that the state violence committed against genuine fascists, slavers, sabateurs, imperialists, and so forth in real life was and is necessary. Anarchists also wielded force against fascists in Spain, but "Tankie" is reserved as a special pejorative for those who also uphold the socialist state projects.
because they aren't liberals, in the libertarian sense.
they don't want freedom, they want control of other people. freedom of belief and others having different belief is viewed as a threat to be met with hostility. other people being different, acting different, etc is all viewed this way.
What does being a decent person have to do with political ideologies?
Most people come to Marxism through being disaffected by the liberal systems we grow up in, work in, etc, and look to Marxist theory for answers. I actually came to anarchism first, found myself dissatisfied with it theoretically, then came to Marx. This leads us to organizing in real life, reading more theory, and gradually beginning to read western framing of socialist states and other designated "baddies" more critically, seeking a multi-sided and comprehensive view. There's a lot to unpack in your comment regarding preconceptions you have about China, largely being western, Red Scare style framing, but what I answered is why I'm a Marxist-Leninist and uphold socialist states as legitimate.
For a look at theory, I made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list you can take a peak at.
How do you reconcile all the queer people and dissidents your dream states murder with the theory you read?
I don't have "dream states." No socialist country has ever or will ever be perfect. If we look at Cuba, they originally criminalized homosexuality. However, because Marxism-Leninism is an emancipatory ideology, socialist states generally were more progressive than the regimes they replaced, and continued to improve. Cuba now has one of the world's most progressive and queer friendly family codes, and has apologized vehemontly for how they treated queer people in the mid-20th century. By placing the working class in control, social progress is expedited.
As for "dissidents," the large majority were landlords, slavers, fascists, capitalists, murderers, terrorists, etc. I won't cape for them, and instead state that it's sheer brutal necessity that building up state power in socialist society is a necessary evil to protect the gains of socialism.
"Terrorists" seems general enough to include anarchists.
Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn't. Anarchists largely joined the red army and the bolsheviks, with a minority joining the whites or forming their own cells. There wasn't a blanket "kill anarchists for thought crime" order, nor did the soviets sit back when groups like Makhnovschina started their banditry against soviet villages and camps.
I admire the inclusivity.
So state sanctioned murder is fine as long as you agree with who's getting murdered? That tells me all I need to know about your values, thanks.
Killing fascists, landlords, slavers, etc. is a good thing, yes.
Killing evil people is good, fucking duh
not a tankie, but how would you deal with fascists, parasites, slavers, murderers, terrorists, etc.?
I just don't think giving the state license to mass murder its political enemies is a smart idea. I think steps need to be taken to prevent bad actors like that from harming people, but I'd favor an approach based more on education and rehabilitation than outright murder. Every innocent you wrongly deem an enemy of the state should be an unforgivable occurence, not the cost of doing business.
Ultimately I'd prefer no state apparatus exists that could wield that sort of power to mass murder members of the population. Even if constructed with the best of intentions it's corruptible and fallible.
I concur with you completely, but again, how do you prevent fascist genocides, landlord hostile evictions, slavers, state murderers (cops), terrorists, etc.? Education and Rehabilitation hasn't worked on them for 143 years, and science keeps proving why. RN, fascist are genociding in China, Gaza, US, Cambodia, etc.. And educated folks are letting it happen.
I disagree with your premise that it doesn't work, I don't believe many people have ever put serious effort towards that.
The criminal justice system seems more than capable. Mass murder & a hierarchy of uncontrolled government power/authority to abuse individual liberties aren't necessary.
By not being fucking gullible lol
Relevant revolutionarythot
Actual answer: It's pretty much just teens who get radicalized by youtube channels such as wow_mao, yugopnik, hakim, badempanda and most notably thedeprogram podcast, and young students joining ML/Maoist book clubs in their unis though that's more of a hit and miss since some book clubs actually read Marx and Lenin. They have audiences in the hundreds of thousands, sometimes even millions so it's not a "small, underground current".
Through these communities and channels they learn what I'd describe as "falsified pop theory" that usually manifests as exclusively Stalin/Mao and out of context quotes from actual Marxists like Lenin. This results in uncritical support of China and other ML countries like Vietnam and Cuba (all of whom are bourgeois states and literally nothing about them resembles DOTP), embrace of nationalism, maoist third-worldism which is where the "unlimited genocide on the first world" comes from and just endless moralism that you've heard time and time again which is explicitly anti-marxist. At times, they might also show support to Islam for some reason.
If my tone sounds a bit harsh, that's because they've completely bastardized marxism and just continue being more and more annoying with their "agitprop" (making communist memes and throwing them into social media void to spread "marxism" or something, revolution through reddit and lemmy), quote farming, absolute glazing of certain historical figures and just dogshit takes in general.
Saying that Hakim is almost exclusively Stalin/Mao is actually an impressively uneducated take. I'd say half of Hakim's videos are atrocity propaganda of western imperialism, which is absolutely necessary, and I've learnt more about the horrors of capitalism through him than through anyone else.
The majority of the theory I read is Marx, Engels, Lenin, and modern theorists. I do read Mao and Stalin too, of course, but the groundwork for Marxism-Leninism is in Marx, Engels, and Lenin, of course. The fact that I have read Marx, Engels, and Lenin is why I support socialist states, rather than do everything in my power to cherry pick quotes to avoid supporting existing socialism and make a mockery of Marxism. I recommend Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the Theory and History of Socialist Governance.
If my tone sounds a bit harsh, it's because the goal is to understand the world so as to change it, not just doompost.
Yugopnik is a tankie? I don't listen to deprogram, just his channel
Not sure how you didn't pick up on it but Yugopnik is indeed a Marxist, which is what "tankie" is a pejorative for, for the most part.
precisely this, I would say with a touch of "just wanting to belong". I think a lot of people who end up in tankie circles are chronically online, and have a hard time socializing. echo chambers don't really care, and will treat anyone who regurgitates the same talking points as an equal. maybe that's just around here though, there's plenty of leftists around but I have yet to see specifically ML/maoist groups that aren't just more than reading theory. I imagine it's easy to fall into that kinda "western country bad" thought pattern when the only people who you interact with tell you it's righteous and justified with zero nuance.
I'm a socialist and am lucky enough to meet a lot of leftists irl, and I get along with all of them regardless of specific viewpoints. unfortunately, the people who are the loudest on lemmy aren't the kind of people you meet walking down the street, so they end up lacking the "challenging your own ideals" bit of developing rational and sane viewpoints.
aren't those groups funded by China?
No, in the same way how feminists aren't funded by The Big Feminism™, online incels aren't funded by The Big Incel™ or Linux evangelists on Lemmy being funded by GNU project. Not everything has to do with geopolitics or geopolitical influence, it's sometimes just a matter of ideology and communities around these ideologies.
If anything, I'd argue that ML's are closer to being a CIA psyop than some agents of China or some shit
Some people just have a Right Wing mindset. They're drawn to concepts like loyalty & obedience to authority and gravitate to political doctrines that stress those values. If Communism makes economic sense to you but you're politically uncomfortable with shallow/non-existent hierarchies or don't feel that everyday people can be trusted with political power you gravitate towards being a ML. If you're willing to force those views on others by threat of state violence you're now a Tankie.
But anarchists are definitely also in favour of forcing their views on others by a threat of violence? Like, I'm a Spaniard, the anarchists famously resisted fascism in the Spanish Civil War using weapons. Projects often praised by anarchists such as the Rojava or Zapatistas also have plenty of violent power in their region, and exert it when needed to defend their project and ideology.
I don't like your framing of "right wing essentialism" in Marxists, it sounds almost eugenicist the way you're describing it, as "people predisposed to authoritarianism". I'm a tankie not because I love state violence, but because the only large societies that have managed to actually collectivize the lands and resist western imperialism have been Marxist-Leninist. Failure to utilize such state repression mechanisms against fascists and capitalists is what led to the fascist coup in Spain, to the failure of the German revolution, or to the murder of Allende.
Right? We get to this place only after having exhausted all other options, not for bloodlust or a “will to power” or whatever-the-fuck horseshoe theory straw men people make up in their heads. The Paris Commune and other methods have all failed, and to this day no other method has been successful.
I agree with that "right wing" and "authoritarian" are two different things, but lots of people, including tankies are absolutely "predisposed to authoritarianism". It has nothing to do with eugenics though, because the genetics behind it are universal to humanity. It's all about how people are brought up, the social influences they encounter, and level of education.
I don't think many non-tankies, or even anti-tankies, would disagree with this statement. However, it does seem to be a frying pan to fire situation. It's no good escaping the grasp of "the west" if the cure is worse than the disease, and that's almost always the case.
The Soviets are gone and modern Russia is little more than a Mafia state. China is ascendent, but it's also growing more capitalist by the hour, and even with the current US administration, we still have more freedoms in America than in China. Whether that remains true is yet to be seen, but if America falls to authoritarianism and joins Russia as a second Mafia state, we know we can count on tankies to cheer it on, oblivious to how much worse that will be for pretty much all of humanity.
This form of sloganeering sounds nice on paper, but isn't actually what happened. If we look at various movements led by Marxist-Leninists, we can see the following general rule:
Russia turned from a brutal Tsarist semi-feudal backwater into a socialist state.
China turned from a colonized agrarian country into a socialist state.
Cuba turned from a fascist slave colony into a socialist state.
Vietnam turned from a colonized agrarian country into a socialist state.
And many, many more examples. In many of these examples, life expectancy increased by 50-100%, the economies were democratized, literacy rates skyrocketed, land reform dramatically reduced risk of famine, and more. The idea that the working classes have it worse in socialism than what came before is fundamentally absurd.
The US Empire is far more brutal to the working classes than China could ever hope to be, especially at an international scale. China isn't "becoming more capitalist," it's gradually developing to greater degrees of socialization and is already a socialist state. What Marxists are cheering on is the end of the US Empire's hegemony, its negative impact on the world is declining due to this downfall.
Pretty standard radicalization pipeline stuff I think. Groupthink gets enforced by mockery and removing dissenting views, accessible memes to get new people interested, sense of community and belonging that is conditional on being uncritical about the dogma. Everything gets framed as being about which side you are on, and discourse is seen as a means to advance the cause and not a way to consider what is true. They are visibly criticizing the US empire, people recognize that as correct and unfortunately buy into the idea that the other side must be the good guys.
I find myself endless reminding people that there isn't always a "good guy". Sometimes it's bad guys vs bad guys or bad guys vs worse guys.
telling people they are bad people usually doesn't go over well with those people.
most everybody wants to be the hero and be on the side of good. very few people actively seek to be evil, but a lot of them are totally ok doing evil if they think it's for a greater good. mass murder and human suffering is totally justifiable if the goal of it is to advance your utopian beliefs, it's not so justifiable for its own sake.
Yeah, this is spot on.
It's all about playing into the bias of psychology and controlling the narrative. Truth is to be ignored, and everything/everyone is to be subordinated to the 'cause', which is usually a form of idealism wherein the ends justify the means, no matter how awful the consequences of the means would be.
Hence the 'killing a few million folks is necessary for the 'freedom' of 100 million' types of rationalizations.
They can't see that any government is going to create corruption so they picked the government they have the least experience with to side with. Of course at the heart of the tankies is a huge amount of fud being generated by russia and the ccp.
I empathize with some of the thinking, but I don't necessarily agree with it. To keep it simple, imagine how many different world powers are working to sabotage openly Socialist and Communist governments. What kinds of tools and resources might these world powers have at their disposal? I can't imagine being part of a disfavored leftist government and not becoming haggard and paranoid beyond reason.
Tankie brigade incoming in 3... 2... 1...
I wouldn't describe myself as a tankie, but I do think I am more sympathetic towards the various communist projects that have been tried in one way or another. The difficulty talking about this is that there is all sorts of misinformation, so it can be hard to have a complete, coherent discussion on these issues. (and of course I know it can be coming from both sides, so it really makes things confusing) What's more important to me though are the interpretations people have of these issues and how that informs their politics in the context of the real world that we live in.
What do I mean by this? While of course it's important to critique past and current governments, it should be so that we can learn from their mistakes and do better in the future. I don't really want to be defending some atrocity or failure of a state. I want to have an honest and productive talk about it. But in the context of living in the west, and especially the US, the propaganda line is to treat these governments as a complete and unique evil in order to justify both imperialism abroad and suppression of the left at home. They make it sound like their actions are just a continuation of our role in WWII fighting against fascism for freedom and democracy. But clearly that's not the case. The US does absolutely awful shit all around the world and is buddy buddy with various oppressive/undemocratic governments. And this isn't whataboutism. I'm not saying "well we did awful shit so it's ok when they do it too." What I'm saying is that by overly focusing your ire on these left wing governments, you reinforce the idea that the US is the good guy for fighting against them, that even if you have problems with the US, the other guys are way worse and it's worth supporting US military interventions because of that. With that mentality, the military budget keeps growing, we keep bombing people who didn't deserve it, we continue to justify our own authoritarian measures as being necessary for fighting against these existential threats. etc.
I'm sure for most on the left, especially anarchists, who participate in this, that isn't their intention. They just want a better, fairer world and want to recognize injustice regardless of who does it. But the effect is still unfortunately to feed into the more right wing position on this. You're working in an environment where the average uninformed person you talk to will at best not care about any atrocities the US has committed and at worst will view you as a crazy conspiracy theorist for telling them about publicly available information. Meanwhile they'll gladly join in on getting angry about anything you say about a place they've been told is evil, even if it is a conspiracy theory. You have to consider that when you decide what to spend your limited time and political capital on.
That said, I don't really know what to do with all that. I don't think it's right to go out of your way to lie about or defend actual atrocities, but how do you manage to do that without contributing to the oversimplified narrative of these places being cartoon villains? How do you get people to not fall for the manufactured consent for war time and time again while still acknowledging the things people treat like original sins that can never be atoned for?
We complain all day long about the US but occasionally complain about countries and some of those other countries are ostensibly Left Wing. That MLs consider that "overly focusing" is everything wrong with their political movement in a nutshell. That people will call out any bullshit they see is unfathomable.
I like your take, but i feel like, though it is clearly legitimate to criticize the unfairness between how we treat auth comm regimes and occidental ones, saying "USSR is good, we should do like them in our countries" won't bring the bomb / military budget down. It just will change the target of the weapons, not their use or production. And at least in my experience here in France, people pushing for less militarization are clearly the one despising state communism, while the remnants of state communists support our war economy.
Well for sure one of the reason is that even in non marxist communities they show up and write comments in a style that many people resonate with. I mean using citations, good grammar, appealing to logic, (seemingly) good argumentations etc.
This makes them look reasonable and even if you do not read all their sources, you might remember their comments and talking points in a pretty positive light.
I dont want to say this style of arguing is bad, but I think it gets valued higher than arguments based on intuition and emotion with a less "scientific" style, because that is what many people are taught when growing up, going to school etc.
Also I would like to say, in some cases this "showing up" is done in a way that feels invasive to (parts of) communties. Like an online version of Jehovas Witnesses.
We are told we're sick by snake oil salesmen who promise us the cure
The MLs answering in good faith despite the question being framed in bad faith have exceptional grace.
Oh hey I know that guy. If anyone who wants to know more about propaganda & media literacy, please see also: previously.
it's easier to believe in a fantasy than deal with the complicated reality
Imo this has been a good thread with opportunities for large and well thought out posts from marxists who are being responded to with well thought out positions, and responding in kind. There's a lot of the classic dross, but I like seeing people's posts appear to be getting up and downvoted based on content.
Not the usual entertaining brigading, but a good read nonetheless.
For the same reason people fall into fascism. Capitalism is putting the screws to people. Rent is too high, food is too expensive, people are on a treadmill, and dissatisfaction hangs in the air like miasma. People are mad, and they don't know at what. They sense something is rotten, they dont have the words. Fascism co-opts leftist talking points, but pulls a bait and switch with the Jews and migrants and whoever.
Tankies also start from this choking miasma, you look at Tankie propaganda, its compelling. The US commited genocide and war crimes, and is more racist than you know. Capitalists are terrible, yadda yadda you know it. Tankie propaganda also frames politics as a team sport. When you look at the US (or you can look at it as the "Nato Empire," which can be an interesting way to think about it), as the ultimate evil, can be easy to see anyone opposing them as good or worth supporting.
“But [state] is actually pretty cool. They’re leading in-“
POV
There is no one answer. Dr. Bob Altemeyer‘s book “The Authoritarians” sheds some light on the psychology.
Regardless of what you think about vanguardism as a means to leftist ends, they also seem to miss the logical point that vanguardism and the state are meant to wither away. It is a theoretical rightist means to a leftist ends, it is not itself leftist.
But again, if you read The Authoritarians you find that logic and reason do not matter to them. Trying to reason with an authoritarian is pointless.
I’d argue that they functionally don’t exist.
Sure, here you run into them here in this universe…not a great sample size. I’m a really social person who spent years in deep leftist Canada…and I’m one of the most radical socialist (whatever you want to call it…all the terms are fraught) folks I’ve met. I’m definitely nowhere near a tankie.
I’ve met exactly one true “tankie”. Good friend…always making excuses for atrocities…it spills over into radical support for modern day Russia etc…but dude is also a silver spooner who works for his dads investment firm.
I honestly wish there were more tankies…and among the lower classes where they should be…but many of the poor people I know are conservatives or nihilists/anarchists.
How do people fall into any mindset. Scientology is more wacky but also way more prolific than Tankies. Why do you have a hard time wrapping your mind around Tankies if something even crazier exists.
Tiananmen square is one of those things Tankies are generally correct about. There was no massacre, but they also fail to realize there could have been one if things had gone differently that day.
They use this as a decent proof that Western propaganda is lies. Of course it is, so is China's propaganda. There are no good guys. As someone who discovered the awful truth of the US early on I spent a lot of time contemplating alternatives.
I could see how if I had stopped studying and just landed on the "West is wrong" I could have adopted many of their views. I didn't though, I kept digging.
As other posters point out they are not really large. They also hit above their weight with their constant pushing of propaganda along with many alts and suppressive behavior on their instance. This is why I found them so distasteful. Their admins were outright abusive. I blocked a few and that solved 99% of the problem.
According to these guys, they're a CIA strawman operation.
Other than that, it may have started with "I'm 13 and this is deep" and persisted with ideological thinking. 🤷
Propaganda and self interest. Pick whatever story is being told that you feel like picking and that's it.
same way people fall into conservative mindset, propaganda. you hear a little snippet of here and there, and ragebaiting or drama, add in a little racism and authotarianism, which both extreme loves. you fall on either opposites of the spectrum politically. they also dont bother to research on the actual material of being "hard left"
The defining characteristic of tankies is authoritarianism just like with fascists.
The world is too absurd right now and in order to best fit into it the easiest way possible you must take on the mantle of absurdity yourself. There is not a lot of self-awareness or self-knowledge within these lazy thinkers.
historically, it's not absurd. it's a return to the historical mean. it only feels absurd because people think post ww2 western prosperity is what we are suppose to have.
for most of history the nobility and wealthy and powerful controlled 99% of everything and everyone else has a existing of poverty and subsistence. the idea of a robust and large middle class is largely a product of industrialization and post ww2 order.
we are moving back into the historical norm of a subservient population who mostly exists to build the wealth of the elites with zero chance of ever obtaining any of that wealth themselves. and a lot of the tankies and other weirdos lean into this by mythologizing peasant/serf life as if it is so much better than modern middle class life. they claim they are going to bring in some utopia of utopia, but their vision ultimately will result in a highly unequal society that is more medieval than it is modern.
What the fuck are you talking about?
I'd wager half or more of the tankie posts are bots, paid posters in 3rd world countries, or slave labor in 3rd world countries. The rest are a combo of incest, edge lords, nihilistic, and some vanishingly small number of actual true believers in the power of Fascist accelerated forced Communism.
Marx and his allies believed Communism can't come about by force, only by natural progression following the unavoidable natural collapse of capitalism. Our experience seems to demonstrate that attempting to force any of it only ever sets the process back.
I won't claim to know objectively, although I roughly agree with a lot of the theories people are offering in other comments. One thing to add: The lack of critical thinking ability, I think, is crucial in letting this stuff develop. I think a lot of what's going on there is just conversations between people who just all make decisions based on emotion (how well what's being said "resonates" with them, how confidently it's presented, how it lets them be part of an "in-group" which then gives them a feeling of belonging, etc) instead of because they have the tools to be able to evaluate the arguments and have decided they believe in them. That's why it is entirely unconvincing to put arguments in front of them. They simply don't care to evaluate them and they don't have the tools if they did want to. It's just not how they operate.
I saw an extremely revelatory post on lemmy.ml on some kind of math principle with an objectively accurate answer (with a pretty straightforward proof of that answer included), and the comments were full of people presenting the wrong answer and arguing why, using exactly the same super-confident presentation and style of "resonant but empty" argumentation that they use when they talk about politics.
And I thought, oh. Makes sense. They just like sounding like they know what they're talking about, and everyone else is the stupids. That's how they interact. It's not really new, there have always been political theories that don't make a ton of sense with wide communities of people who fall in love with them anyway. It's just on the internet now, and so it's easier for them to find each other and self-select themselves into little communities where critical analysis on the topic is actively attacked if it ever rears its head.
It'd be cool if you could find that. Seems interesting.
Simple answer: The things you think you know aren’t the truth. They’re just propaganda.
It's the same question as how do people fall into the "liberal" mindset?
After seeing people worship enslavers and their state... These people literally enslaved millions of people and genocided millions more. And their state continues to invade and murder people around the planet... So how do seemingly rational people accept and support this violent, racist, system that's literally destroying the planet? How can people be mad at Mao but not also every president? How do they feel complacent and self-righteous about voting for people who support genocide? The rationalizations are all over Lemmy, much more so than tankie rationalizations.
The point is that libs and tankies are basically the same thing, just worshiping a different empire. People want to feel like they're part of some global movement, regardless of whether the movement is actually evil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_religion
First thought: Mattias Desmet's book The Psychology of Totalitarianism, may offer some insights.
... Oh, I thought I was going to have a long list of thoughts about this. But none better not already covered in that^ are yet springing to mind.
Time for you to study socialist/communist theory - https://redsails.org/
Brain damage and a inability to find balance.
If you're "finding balance" in an inherently imbalanced world, you're tipping the scales.
But no, that has nothing to do with why people arrive at Marxism-Leninism as a lens through which the world can be accurately seen and as a tool with which to change it. That comes only through a lot of difficult self examination and contrasting that with a thorough and honest examination of the broader world - not just your own immediate surroundings and not just your own time period, but empathizing with other cultures the world over and learning about the history that led things to be as they are now. That is how people arrive at a Marxist-Leninist view of the world.
Some people’s needs aren’t being met in the west or they’re rightfully upset of the mistreatment of the global south so they decide to become contrarian to oppose the western oligarchs and politicians.
So they become contrarian. I don't think it's a decision.
The process is probably identical to how people fall into the alt-right/far-right mindset. Their life sucks, they have connections to no-one, nobody fucks them. But then this one group start showing them sympathy and camaraderie and things start to look better.
And some of them just get born into it.
If you read the many comments in this thread, not to mention other threads on this topic, a significant chunk of western leftists who are ML arrive at Marxism Leninism only after going through a more anarchist phase, and only through a lot of examination of the world and themselves, coupled with a lot of study and reading, do they move from anarchism to come to recognize the undeniable accuracy of Marxism Leninism to reflect the real world and to offer an actually-working methodology for revolution.
Your fallacious description of people's process towards becoming Marxist Leninists as being the same sort of way that poor, ignorant, emotionally needy people latch onto a cult, is ridiculous, and the kind of things liberals like to say of all of us on the anticapitalist left to comfort themselves into maintaining their simplistic "I'm right but they're wrong" worldview and avoid having to engage with the many real reasons people become anticapitalists. But that's what you're doing. Don't be like the liberals. Try to understand the real why of things, don't make up nice little bedtime stories that ensure you don't have to examine your own misconceptions.
No one is born into Marxism Leninism, anarchism, or any other ideology, and saying that is a grotesquely anti-anarchist thing to say.
Did I touch a nerve or something? Did I too accurately describe your origin story?
Oh, of course not. I am a liberal. Proudly. And I don't mean the kind of wishy-washy liberal that American center-left calls themselves, but the real thing.
That's naive. Of course people who are born in China will be indoctronated more into the chinese version of communism versus any other ideology. And people who are born in America will be indoctronated into a slightly different direction by default. I'm talking about the masses, not the 1% or whatever who decide about these things mostly for themselves.
The real thing? So, are you proposing economic liberalism and laissez-faire? This is ridiculous
Wikipedia
ie, not an economic philosophy.
Britannica
Primarily about individual freedom.
Cool story.
I saw some comments suggesting Mao had a lot to teach us.
Hopefully it goes beyond killing everyone who wears glasses.different guy! Pol Pot only killed a million or two.I think you'll find it was Pol Pot that targeted people wearing glasses
You're quite right, thank you for the correction.
It's probably the famines. Those pesky sparrows had it coming. /s
You're mixing up Mao and Pol Pot. An extremely tiny minority of "Marxists" uphold Pol Pot, while the large majority of Marxists uphold Mao.
I was indeed, thanks.
Even if his revolutionary politics were laudable, it's hard to ignore his either intentional or incredibly stupid choice to sacrifice millions of lives to modernize the economy.
I mean. It worked, but ouch.
He didn't, though. The most controversial decision was carrying out the cultural revolution, which modern China sees as a misstep, but life expectancy doubled under Mao precisely because of industrialization and the expansion of safety nets under him.
It didn't work out. Only after Mao's death and a near total turn around in policies did the Chinese economy modernize. And the claim that in the parallel comment about life expectency doubling because of Maoist policies is a blatant lie based on malicious misinterpretation of statistics.
Incorrect. In the People's Republic of China, under Mao and later the Gang of Four, growth was overall positive but was unstable. The centrally planned economy had brought great benefits in many areas, but because the productive forces themselves were underdeveloped, economic growth wasn't steady. There began to be discussion and division in the party, until Deng Xiapoing's faction pushing for Reform and Opening Up won out, and growth was stabilized:
Deng's plan was to introduce market reforms, localized around Special Economic Zones, while maintaining full control over the principle aspects of the economy. Limited private capital would be introduced, especially by luring in foreign investors, such as the US, pivoting from more isolationist positions into one fully immersed in the global marketplace. As the small and medium firms grow into large firms, the state exerts more control and subsumes them more into the public sector. This was a gamble, but unlike what happened to the USSR, this was done in a controlled manner that ended up not undermining the socialist system overall.
"Malicious misinterpretation of statistics" my ass.
Though life expectancy increased during Mao Zedong (from 41 to 61.2 years), it didn't double.
GDP per capita was mostly flat (modest growth from €733 to €1017 in purchasing power parity) during Mao Zedong & took off only later.
GDP grow figures say little about how modern an economy is and in general Mao's policies did more harm than good.
Thanks for proving my point with sharing this graphic. See that "Mao slump" there in the 1950-1960? No other similar country had that, including other nominally socialist countries. The increase of life expectancy was a recovery after WW2 and a global phenomenon brought through by the broad availability of antibiotics and other modern medicine. Again, Mao did more harm than good and his policies certainly didn't cause a doubling of life-expectancy.
You keep stating that "in general Mao’s policies did more harm than good" without backing any of those claims. China was a semi-feudal colonized country prior to the founding of the PRC, and under Mao and the introduction of Five Year Plans, China began rapidly industrializing. The only major decision China evaluates as having been actively harmful (outside of individual missteps like the Four Pests campaign) is the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
GDP growth is absolutely a valuable metric when considering that China was transitioning from an agrarian economy to an industrialized one, it's not like it was transitioning to a finance-based service economy. This is raw industrial output improving in the context of a majority planned economy.
You're calling rapidly rising life expectancy a "slump?" This is ridiculous. The rise in life expectancy came from dramatic improvements in agriculture ending famine, rapid industrialization, a massive expansion in the social safety net, and land reform from landlords to the peasantry. Recovery from World War II helped as well, but the biggest impacts were in creating a socialist economy. Deng's reforms did not start modernization, they improved an ongoing process.
You don't back up any of your reasoning on why you claim "Mao did more harm than good." Both Mao and Deng are seen as critical for China's success today, trying to attribute it all to Deng and throwing Mao under the bus when Deng made serious but overstated tweaks to the system created while Mao was in power is historical nihilism.
Anarchists vs knowing who and what they are talking about (gone wrong) (gone sexual) /s
I don't think I'm an anarchist, but I made an honest mixup.
By reading and comprehending
Reading yes, but zero comprehension takes place. If they comprehended anything, they wouldn't be tankies.
Anything's possible when you make shit up kiddo
"Tankie" is just a pejorative for Marxist, I came to Marxism from anarchism precisely because I read and comprehend it. The assumption that people support socialism in real life because we don't understand theory is deeply chauvanistic, and just serves as a way to mischaracterize those you disagree with to avoid having a conversation.
No it’s not. I would also consider myself an ideological Marxist, but I am no tankie.
A tankie is someone who claims to value leftist ends of any kind (including Marxism-Leninism) but supports or defends authoritarianism, classism, stratification, or any of the inequitable historical socio-economic paradigms. Vanguardism is not meant to be perpetual, it is a means borne of desperation with the aim of a fundamentally opposite ends. It is not the ends itself, as it is a form of extreme rightism, but one specifically meant to be transient.
This doesn't actually apply to the vast majority it's applied to, though. Functionally, it's a strawman with the characteristics you've described, applied to shut down conversation from those supporting socialist states.
This is a misframing of vanguardism. Vanguardism is transient, but it's by no means extreme rightism. All it means is that the most politically advanced of the revolutionary class should formally organize and prepare for revolution, a concept Marx himself participated in.
Marxist does not mean tankie. You can be a Marxist and a tankie, or you can be Marxist and not a tankie.
It's just a pejorative for Marxist in practice. Everyone has their own version of what a "tankie" is and what a "true Marxist" is in their heads, but invariably tankie is levied most against those who uphold socialist projects as they exist in real life as legitimate.
Brother, you're brainwashed and bigoted.
Hey can you explain to a person who thinks CIA is evil but also think CCP committed atrocities how I am brainwashed? It feels like extremism to believe one atrocity but not the other.. in either direction.
Your underlying assumption is that if the US Empire is evil, then any meaningful alternative must be just as evil, or comparably so. This isn't based on factual analysis so much as it is the baked-in distrust of the idea that others might actually be doing alright.
but there is no "assumption" I am operating under. My default position for any institution is distrust. People as individuals I empathise. People as groups I don't trust.
I have no illusions that others are doing alright. On the contrary. I think "doing alright" is an insidious way of sweeping your dead bodies under the proverbial rug for the sake of "the greater good". Easiest way to lose your humanity.
No amount of greater good can justify doing evil.
Factual analysis is a myth. People draw their own conclusions as they see fit, let alone assuming there is no bias or error in the data. Introspection, admitting to failure, looking out for one another are the missing gems to find nowadays.
This is just your own personal justification for not doing any investigation, yet feeling comfortable with repeating claims a group we already have established lies about their enemies. We aren't talking about any sort of moralism here, but analyzing concrete reality and continuously engaging with it to further and deepen our knowledge of it.
There's absolutely nothing insidious about me saying that the enemies of the US Empire are not the evil empires the US alleges them to be. To the contrary, my goal is to understand the world so as to change it for the better. Conjuring up ideas of dead bodies where they either do not exist or exist in far smaller quantities than portrayed by geopolitical enemies does a service to the far greater evil in legitimizing their demonization, furthering their goals.
the gaslighting continues.
You seem smug about your own "well learnedness" but fail to think about the claim
But I am not the US am I. And I am not arguing this. I am saying atrocities are conveniently dusted off saying "there is no evidence" while also asking people to waste their time to provide said evidence only for you to dismiss it as hearsay.
you're unwilling to admit the skeletons in your own closet for which evidence exists.
which is it? as a neutral observer you're just playing the same goalshifting and fingerpointing as western imperialist apologists. Don't pretend you're any different.
I'm not gaslighting you, your comment is assuming there's concrete evidence we are not acknowledging. That's the fundamental basis point, and your justification is that we know the US Empire is bad. I didn't bring up the US Empire because of assuming you're statesian, but because it's the world hegemon.
I don't give a fuck about the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Not even the horseshit Western take on those events. I don't care if you think that China is bad. Your opinion means nothing to me.
Its not even the allegations that you and others are arguing don't exist. It's this attitude of not acknowledging other people on the platform.
Right then I can just say the same magic words to make uncomfortable questions go away. That's not how you convince people you are neutral.
Then good luck convincing others to care about your opinions then?
Wow, oh no, I'm not convincing people I'm neutral!
I am not neutral. I stand by workers, people, facts, and good faith. I also still don't care about you.
Recognize that you have an anti-Tankie mindset. One where its important to side with your Nazi CIA rulership's narrative that is only interested in promoting their fascist evil supremacy by diminishing others.
Mao definitely went over the top with a purge, IMO. The Chinese narrative for the event 40 years ago now, is they put down a riot. Don't think you are capable of invalidating that narrative when you also say "it doesn’t change the atrocities that were/are committed everywhere else in China." which happens to be more falsifiable CIA propaganda and terrorism.
The problem with the anti-Tankie mindset, that innevitably includes calling everyone who corrects Nazi CIA lies a tankie, is that your are siding with corrupt oppressive regimes who are stealing your prosperity, and against governments genuinely trying and improving their people's lives. When you permit divisive and fraudulent speech, CIA/oligarchist speech is louder than all other speech, Nazi/CIA puppets gain rulership to oppress people for CIA backed corporatist supremacy over them.
In anarchist context, the Paris commune is a real world exemplary ideal. It's eventual failure was from insufficient security and control over divisiveness, which in real world, invited demonic oligarchism to infiltrate and sabotage it, while gaining narrative for their jack booted thugs to come in to destroy it for good.
Ha ha "tankies" aka people who break through the empire wall of propaganda programming. So choosing to stop believing western propaganda rags and CIA psyops to answer your question
"Authoritarianism" isnt even real, its jus another CIA op from the 60s so they could label any bad scary commie country as it
I like how you didn't even remotely attempt to answer the question
Comon, at least put some effort into your liberal trolling, I even put in "to answer your question" right there ha ha!
How exactly does "So choosing to stop believing western propaganda rags and CIA psyops to answer your question" answer any of these three questions? Like it's ridiculous to think that {rejecting CIA propaganda} => {immortal science of Marxism-Leninism}, i.e. people can and do reasonably disagree with Marxist-Leninists and other state socialists out of an organic theoretical and practical desire to do things differently.
Also, western leftists have a problem swallowing CIA and pro-Western propaganda (myself included, something I'm trying to unlearn) — including western "tankies".
Go through my comment history. 95% of my comment history is screaming at liberals for being fucking liberals 😮💨
Sorry if I'm being curt but you came into our space and started being a jerk to people, and now you're all surprised Pikachu face that we're being less than polite back. If you want to actually have a productive discussion then great, but you're just not doing that right now.
They corrected you and you didn't even address it, you're losing
It is difficult for me to imagine how someone could possibly convince themselves of this. What do you call it when a leader consolidates power around themselves, removing checks on their position and making unilateral mandates that are enforced through state violence against all who dare oppose?
I remember seeing this argument before. It's something like all states are authoritarian, so you can't call out any single state for being authoritarian. Like the label only exists for some states to de-legitimize others even though the ones doing the labeling are also authoritarian. It appears to me to be an intentional attempt to strip the word of meaning so that authoritarians can no longer be criticized as such.
All states are authoritarian, some moreso than others. It's true that some states do cynically accuse others of doing what they do themselves to delegitimize them, but it is completely valid still to single out certain states that are particularly authoritarian, and to compare them to others.
This is why it's necessary to investigate the nature of authority and the state. The state is simply the tool by which one class establishes supremacy, and the degree to which said authority is used depends on the conditions the state finds itself in, and not on any individual's decision. Socialist states where the working class is in control have to develop instruments of state power to protect the gains of socialism, even anarchists do this as well in practice. Capitalist states where capitalists are in control oppress the working class to protect the free flow of capital and continuous circulation.
Trying to treat the level of authority employed as a policy choice, rather than a response to existing conditions, delegitimizes the use of necessary tools to defend the gains of socialism.
How you respond to existing conditions is a policy choice, and authoritarian methods are not necessary for defending the gains of socialism.
For example, one existing condition in the US is the fentanyl crisis. The US government has chosen to respond to this existing condition by continuing the criminalization of drug abuse and using the crisis as justification for imperialism in Venezuela. The US could have chosen to respond by funding addiction treatment centers and decriminalizing drug abuse.
Another example, an existing condition in China was population growing faster than their economy could keep up (ostensibly). China chose to respond with a one-child policy, restricting reproductive freedom. China could have chosen to respond by encouraging contraception and creating financial incentives and disincentives.
What you suggest is political determinism, implying that there is only one way that a state can respond to existing conditions, when in fact there is a vast range of possibility.
Flip it around. The US Empire didn't randomly choose to attack Venezuela, the imperialist system itself found justification for doing so. The mode of production takes priority over the what actions a system takes, its internal contradictions are what drives its change. The US Empire is in a state of decline, and thus needs to re-exert itself millitarily. The conditions are that imperialism is weakening, the outcome is the violent re-assertion of control. Had imperialism been working fine and Venezuela colonized by the US, it would not be attacking Venezuela right now, but the capacity for doing so already exists.
In 1954, condoms and cervical caps were already promoted over abortions for family planning. They continued to promote birth control, in the early 1970s they sent "barefoot doctors" to the rural areas where birth rates were higher to teach about contraceptives and provide abortions if needed. It wasn't until 1979, 25 years after they started promoting modern methods of birth control and incentives for lowering birth rates that they implemented the One Child Policy, exempting ethnic minorities. It wasn't the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth tactic, but one finally employed after 25 years, over a decade and a half from the baby boom in the 60s. The state responded to crisis in increasing measure because simply promoting awareness of birth control and providing it for free did not work at the rates needed.
Not quite. My point isn't that choice doesn't exist, but that the extent to which measures are employed and the types of measures employed depends on the class character of the state and the existing material conditions the state finds itself in. Modern Germany doesn't have a lesser potential for authority than Nazi Germany, it just hasn't had the need to thanks to benefiting from decades of imperialism. Now that imperialism is crumbling, it's trending to the far-right again. This isn't because of any choice for authority, but the state responding to real conditions.
We call it a dictatorship. The term "authoritarian" was developed by the west to antagonize its enemies. It means nothing except "this country is bad" in the exact same way that "terrorist" means nothing except "this person is bad".
Look, western nations do often hypocritically point out authoritarianism in their geopolitical rivals for cynical reasons, but to pretend that the word was invented for this purpose and is meaningless just makes you look like an autocrat worshipping moron. It's the same as how Trump supporters after being accused of being fascist insist that the word is a meaningless insult. The word authoritarianism exists because there's a spectrum between a democratically elected benevolent leader and a ruthless dictator. You don't want to confront the fact that they may have a point.
Read it again and again until you learn.
People who try to convince you that words are meaningless are never up to any good. I'm sure it makes you feel real good about yourself to pretend I'm too stupid to understand instead of smart enough to see that words that are often misused still have meaning.
No pretending required, you are too stupid to get it.
I call it "class society"
Which is authoritarian in nature.
That's circular
Explain.
I don't really believe that authoritarianism is materially possible in classless society
I believe that authoritarianism is the origin of class. All that it takes is for one person to draw a boundary, state "this is mine," and then enforce that with violence. There is no end of history. Even if we do manage to create a classless society, there's no guarantee that it will remain that way. To maintain such a society will require maintenance, and that means identifying and resisting authoritarianism when and where it inevitably emerges. It is therefore essential to have a word to describe the types of behaviour that can result in the reemergence of class society.
Actually I think this comment unintentionally answers OP's question.
I think a common tankie story is:
Realization that much of western media is propaganda or influenced by propaganda.
Finding that enemies of the American empire (and Europe) with some semblance of power agree that western media is propaganda, and these people are MLM communists.
After they've established credibility with their accurate criticisms of western capitalist society, tell you that, oh, by the way, those propaganda outlets in the west also lie about us, actually almost all of what we do is awesome and people who claim otherwise are automatically suspect.
Number 3 is a mistake, I think, but it's an understandable one. This isn't super fair to tankies but the analogy I'd give is to people who fall under the spell of someone like Jordan Peterson: he sounds smart, and he lulls you into a sense of security with good advice about taking care of yourself, keeping your house clean, etc., and then once he's gotten your trust he gently introduces stuff like "oh by the way evolution proves that men and women shouldn't work together" or whatever, and because he's made sensible points up until then, your guard is down and you don't critique it in your head before accepting it.
That almost works, except critics of western propaganda exist everywhere especially in academia & intelligentsia. The west doesn't try to suppress them. So why out of everyone, those guys with a salient agenda over the critics without a discernable one?
Campism, aka team sports. Critizism from academic figures is (not entirely incorrectly) identified as managed opposition, and for sure they are not a team you can simp for with the hope of them "winning".
Worshipping states is cringe
And what state was I worshiping??
Any that calls themselves socialist by the looks of it
So China and Russia aren't authoritarianisms?
"OUR glorious Ministry of Truth has determined that their hated Ministry of Truth is full of lies. Our glorious ministry of truth also assures us that they never lie."
Sure, bud.
I didn't realize that the CIA even existed in 1883.
Username checks out.