this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2024
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Tankiejerk
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Dunking on Tankies from a leftist perspective.
A tankie is someone who defends/supports authoritarian or even totalitarian regimes who call themselves "socialist". The term originated from people supporting the 1956 invasion of Hungary by the Soviet Union. Nowadays they are just terminally online, denying genocides, and falling for totalitarian propaganda and calling such regimes "true democracies". remember to censor usernames when necessary.
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This is my experience as well. It's also laughable that they call themselves communists and love China and Russia. Those people aren't communists, they are authoritarians.
Isn't that pretty much exactly what a "Tankie" is? An authoritarian communist? One that believes the revolution can only occur through state violence?
I think it should be updated, as Russia and China are not communist and those people love them.
I feel like the "communism" was used, because "authoritarianism" sounds worse.
That's why I too am not a believer in horseshoe theory and actually agree that communism hasn't been practiced properly before. A peaceful emancipation of the common person is still unpracticed. If this is all tankies said, I'd be fine with it. But they say communism has never been practiced before along side arguments that the Soviet Union and China are communist. They are parroting real modern communists without understanding them and mixing in their revisionist history to create a paradox they don't seem too concerned about.
I think it's more about rebelling against their Reagan loving, USSR hating dads than sound political theory.
Communism in practice is USSR and China type dictatorships. Fantasising about "real" "peaceful" communism ever existing is delusional.
If you want to abolish private property and there are people who disagree (and there will always be) the central power will need to "neutralize" them.
This is what Marx envisaged socialism as - the transitional stage between capitalism and communism.
Shame that every single time this has been attempted its been quashed externally or coopted internally by bad actors.
Communism is inherently authoritarian. Thus they're Communists.
All communist regimes are authoritarian by nature
Is this a comment on the inevitably of human nature, or a misunderstanding of communism (which if done properly is stateless)?
Communism if done properly is Stateless insofar as it means there is no Class, and therefore no aparatus like the Police that uphold the dominance of one class over another.
Communism was always, in Marxist tradition, meant to have a democratically accountable world republic.
You may or may not be referring to Anarcho-Communism, which rejects both the transitional state of Socialism and prefers more decentralized networks of Mutual Aid.
Probably just that every rendition of communism so far has been authoritarian.
Hippie communes are a counterexample.
Every large scale rendition, then.
I would argue that an authoritarian state cannot be communist, though plenty have called themselves so.
Is it better if I rephrase it as “all regimes founded on communist ideas and visions are authoritarian by nature”?
A truly communist "regime" is not something that should ever exist as communism is a stateless philosophy thus inherently not authoritarian by its very nature.
It's the bit in between capitalism and communism that historically has been coopted by bad actors to create authoritarian regimes, these regimes tend to still call themselves communist because "lol fuck your revolution I'm in charge now" doesn't have the same PR value.