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These "tankies" are conservative right-wing shitbag trolls trying to convince the normal people that supporting oppression and dictators is somehow "left-wing". Do not fall for their conservative bullshit.
Just like any other conservative, every word they utter is deception or manipulation. Tankies are conservative trolls through and through.
That's a no true Scotsman argument.
There are plenty of actual tankies here. In fact, the Lemmy software is created by tankies and one of the larger Lemmy instances is run by them.
From what I've seen, there's a big divide amongst the tankies. There are those who are basically Stalin MAGA, base their political opinions on Soviet aesthetics and don't consider much the practical implications of their actions. Some simply lash out against mainstream liberal ideology and others are just trolls.
Ane the other camp is made of people who read a lot of communist philosophy and are absolutely convinced the only way to achieve an equal society is by forcing everyone into it. This has its own problems, but they at least have an internally coherent ideology.
That's not to say I agree with either camp. Their ideology promotes a vanguard party which can quickly spiral into "some are more equal than others". Absolute power corrupts absolutely and all that. But I do understand where the second camp is coming from. I think the path to a better world lies in trade unions and people coming together to defend common interests.
When they are actively censoring and banning people who make critical comments about the PRC, the USSR, or even present day Russia, I don't care where they come from.
I was banned from lemmy.ml myself for saying something about the Tiananmen Square massacre.
or even present day Russia,
How did this even happened? How can anyone not right-wing ban for opposing Putin's oligarchs like Usmanov, Roldugin, Rotenberg, Yakunin and Putin himself?
West bad, not-West good
That's literally all they care about.
If you push them they yell "just joking bro" or ban you immediately.
I was just banned from leftymemes because I was having a conversation about Democrats. They essentially said that the Democrats suck because they don't want to sink the levels of depravity of the Alt-Right. I pretty much said, whatever happened to "Be the Change you want to see?" They want a government that works together. You can't do that be being savage, raving, lying lunatics like the Alt-Right.
Apparently that's enough to get you banned by the Alt-Left. Fuck them
You got banned for a month because you posted an off topic anti-China meme in the thread looking for moderators of the memes sub with the text “Why, so you can censor some more posts critical of China? The modlog of this sub is absolutely ridiculous:”
The ban expired a month ago so I guess feel free to go back.
E: after more carefully scrutinizing the images in the modlog, you posted a screenshot of people being banned or having posts removed for posting gore and debunked sinophobic stuff.
Debunked sinophobic stuff like what? In my experience, that category includes anything critical of China, including Tiananmen Square.
I think there were two links to the gore page people post and a couple of responses saying you couldn’t even talk about tiannamen square.
The first is clear what it is, I’d call the second one sinophobic because it’s patently untrue and is basically an anti-china buzzword now. Idk why mods did what they did.
Genuine question, is criticism of the Israeli government, even based on falsehoods or misunderstandings, antisemitism?
To say that reference to a historical event that the CCP doesn't believe happened the way the west does is sinophobic is on the same level. At best you'd have people with unjustified animus towards the government of China but not its people. After all, is the claim that the people of China collectively slaughtered those student protesters demanding reasonable changes to a corrupt system or that the government did so?
Genuine question, is criticism of the Israeli government, even based on falsehoods or misunderstandings, antisemitism?
It isn't inherently but it definitely can be. It's absolutely possible to criticize Israel's government in an antisemitic way. In the same way, you can look at anti-Japanese posters from WWII that have racist charicatures and recognize and criticize the racist element, while acknowledging that Imperial Japan was absolutely vile.
I don’t understand or care about your question.
No subject of this conversation is saying “gosh, I get my information from sources which disagree with the Chinese governments official statements”.
The thing referenced in the modlog was a couple of people saying you can’t even talk about tiannamen square in China, which is false.
The reason why I would call it sinophobic is that that statement reifies the lie that Chinese people don’t understand their own history, wouldn’t defend themselves against an unjust government and would simply accept not being allowed to discuss events that happened in their living memory or else suffer punishment.
It would be like suggesting that my American government won’t let me talk about January 6 or I’ll be thrown in prison, except that there’s not the context of centuries of imperialist racist propaganda painting Americans as fundamentally lazy and subservient owing to our skull shape.
Which is what would make claiming Americans can’t talk about January sixth false, but not racist.
And it’s what makes claiming Chinese people can’t talk about tiannamen square false and racist. Since we’re talking about Chinese people, sinophobic.
The thing that makes those stereotypes racist is that during the British empires rule over parts of China and the period of time when the west as a whole received a big Chinese diaspora (using the broadest language possible here to include literal slavery), those stereotypes were used to justify mistreatment of Chinese and other people based on their race.
I don’t think it makes someone necessarily a Nazi when they say racist stuff, but it’s important to recognize.
I have a hard time imagining you didn't understand the question but I do understand why you wouldn't care to answer it. Just in case there is a language barrier or some other reason why you didn't understand a basic English sentence, I'll try putting it in simpler words:
Is it antisemitic to disagree with the Israeli government or their position on historical events?
The analogy here is that animus against a government says nothing at all about animus towards a people. Even if you are correct about the West having animus towards the government of China, that doesn't equate to animus towards Chinese people. You can certainly argue that their is racist animus, but the example of that couldn't be disagreement with the government's position in the same way that disagreement with the Israeli government's position is not evidence of antisemitism even though antisemitism is a real thing that exists.
people saying you can’t even talk about tiannamen square in China, which is false.
I'd be curious to read any sources you have for this claim. Why would the government ban information about the event in addition to arrests and intimidation towards people who want to memorialize the anniversary of the event? Would it be ok for the US to ban information about J6 and arrest people who wanted to organize a protest in remembrance? (Setting aside the morality of the changes sought by the J6 protesters vs TS protesters, they both have a basic human right to protest and hold memorial events)
The reason why I would call it sinophobic is that that statement reifies the lie that Chinese people don’t understand their own history
So, again the claim you are responding to is about the Chinese government's position on TS. As you just said a moment ago, the claim is that you can't talk about TS because the government doesn't allow it. Why does the government want its citizens to not know about TS? As you say, their own history?
As an analogy, racists in America say that black people are inherently more violent than white people. Is it racist to acknowledge the objective fact that black people are arrested for violent crimes in disproportionate numbers? Does that statement say anything at all about the inherent nature of black people? Can we not even talk about poverty being the root cause of crime and the systemic racism in the criminal justice system without it being racist?
In the same way, if the government of China is trying to hide information about their history, is calling out that government action racist? If so, then you have just given a blank-check to the CCP.
wouldn’t defend themselves against an unjust government
Maybe you kind of missed the whole point of what the West says happened at TS, but the student protesters were doing exactly that when the PLA got sent in. That's kind of the whole point. The protesters were there to defend themselves and their fellow citizens against an unjust government when they were violently quelled by that very government.
would simply accept not being allowed to discuss events that happened in their living memory or else suffer punishment.
Maybe you don't know much about how authoritarian governments operate. If the punishments exist and are sufficiently terrifying you can keep most citizens from believing the things you don't want them to, or at least from speaking those thoughts in public. And again, the whole point of the anniversary protests in HK that China went in to shut down was that they were there to reject not being able to discuss those things when China took control of the government. Is it just a coincidence that those protests don't happen anymore or could it be that the fear created by the government's actions against protesters have succeeded in their goal for the most part?
Again, this entire conversation is about the actions of a government. Whether or not they overlap with racist tropes isn't relevant to the truth of the claims. Acknowledging that the treatment of Palestinians is unjust and genocidal is not antisemitic even though there is a stereotype that Jews lie. Acknowledging that the treatment of TS protesters was unjust and murderous is not sinophobic even though there is a stereotype that Chinese people don't fight for their freedoms.
I'm not interested in having the fight you're trying to have. stop trying to have that fight with me.
no one in the image referenced (it's in the modlog, go look.) is "disagreeing with the chinese governments position", they're saying chinese people can't talk about tiannamen square. that statement is patently false and reifies a set of assumptions that are racist.
broadly, when a person makes racist remarks against chinese people its called sinophobia.
I would call it sinophobia.
I don’t understand or care about your question.
Way to turn OPs meme into a slam-fucking-dunk.
Turn around and find a new thread if you're not gonna honestly communicate with others 👌
No thank you.
That person asked the question I replied to and a much longer series in what seems like an attempt to debate me about if it’s sinophobic to disagree with the Chinese government, an idea I never expressed or even hinted at.
I don’t understand why they would try to do that and I don’t care about it.
How, in any way, is that turning the ops meme, which relies on holding western neoliberal governments and communist or socialist governments to a different set of standards regarding violence, into a slam dunk?
There are plenty of actual tankies here.
When a term becomes an insult, it's very difficult to use it as anything other than an insult.
I more often see "tankie" used to decribe anti-war liberals than pro-war leftists.
There are two useful tests when evaluating the value of words like this:
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Do people use it as a form of self-identification? If they do, that's probably the real definition. If they don't it's probably just an insult.
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Does the word have a consistent definition? If the definition frequently shifts to suit the needs of the speaker, it's probably not a real definition.
I really like your first point! Second one is a little tricky. It's not just a fluctuation with an individual, but rather the difference between groups. Bottom line, the consistent definition depends on your own exposure to it, if you're not going by what others claim to be "is the most frequent."
The second one is definitely a bit trickier.
I think there are two major forms of inconsistency that matter most.
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When the parties in a conversation use different definitions for a word, they will just argue in circles. They may both have good points but neither party will understand the other. That's often fairly easy to resolve, "I can understand your point if we use your definition of X. We can also see how my point stands if we use my definition of X. How about we call them X1 and X2 so we don't get confused?"
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When one party uses different definitions of the word it's fair to ask them to pick one or to be explicit about when they're shifting definitions. When someone says, "I believe Y because X is TRUE and I believe Z because X is NOT TRUE," they've introduced a huge logical hole which needs to be addressed.
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Both r/conservative and lemmy.ml are equally frightened of facts.
In my own experience with actual Communists (I do live in a country which has them), they're some of the most conservative people around.
I mean, these people are holding on really hard to political slogans which often are a century old or near it and they genuinelly an uncritically think all that stuff is Leftwing even in the face of all evidence that such forms invariably led to the creating of new Elites and to lesser or greater extent Dystopian Societies, never the promised Equalitarian Utopia.
Plenty of Lefties around who trully believe in Leftwing Principles without the insane tribalism of following the dictats of The Party.
Personally I just saw this meme as referencing such traditionalist unthinking muppets who think of themselves as Lefties all the while defending the well installed and entrenched establishment and elites of a few specific countries.
Russia was and is a culturally conservative country. The USSR made some early progress towards equality for women and LGBT folk, and turned it right back around a bit later. Russification under the Czar--trying to get all the diverse ethnic minorities to just be Russian--was simply turned into a Stalinist version of the same thing. The fundamental authoritarianism of the Czar never left, but it was given a Marxist coat of paint.
Having lived 20 years abroad, including my core years of personal adult development, and having returned to my homeland were I became a member of a small Leftwing party, I keenly notice just how much people are, seemingly unaware of it, frequently shaping their thinking and even practice of being Leftwing on local cultural factors: pushing up in the party the sons and daughters of old hands or selecting people for positions of responsibility based on liking them rather than merit isn't really being Leftwing (it's quite literally the opposite of Fair and by being unmeritocratic one actually reduces the chances of success of the party) and people making speeches of the "give shit to my group" (women, teaches, pensioners, whatever) variety isn't being Leftwing, it's disguising one's greed as being "for the group" and has little to do with the common good.
The point being that all political ideologies get adjusted by those who practice tehm and they do it based on what they thing is normal, and most people think "normal" is what they've seen around themselves their whole lives, so it's expect that the political ideologies that end up being successful in a country "go along with the grain of the wood" and adopt the local's ideas of "normal".
No, you do not see comrade. All of the people of mother Russia are Eurasians, which is it's own unique people that have a culture that just so happens to be identical to Russian culture. You westerners just wouldn't understand our eastern ways.....
Well a lot of that can be explained by the fact that conservatives co-opted the left wing movements for communism and largely turned them into dictatorships. These governments endured several decades before collapsing, which allows newer conservatives to think of them as "the good ol days."
It doesn't mean they ever were communists. They just stole the name and ruined its reputation.
A simpler explanation is that the people who seek power are the worst of the bunch and they'll say whatever it takes to get there and keep it - it's a pretty well know thing since Ancient times that the best rulers are the ones who do NOT want to rule.
Sociopaths will just as easilly sing praises to Marxism-Leninism as they will to the Free Market, so don't confuse whatever bullshit they spout to get to and stay at the top of the pile in an the power structures created by a specific ideology with their actual beliefs and don't excuse the failures of the structures created by that ideology that allow such people to get to the top.
Even if the "Revolution" isn't led by assholes, any power structure which centralizes power and doesn't have hard to subvert mechanisms for constant change of who is in power, attract the worst vermin and they're the one who will knifes as many backs as it takes to get it and keep it so they're far more likely to get it than "good people". This is true even in Power Duopoly systems like the US, and much worse in power monopolies like the Soviet Union and even Modern Russia.
That blaming of "others" for one's own failures is just you having internalised the typical propaganda from the power hungry assholes (just as much from the ones portraying themselves as Fascists or from the ones portraying themselves as Communists) to deflect the blame for their own actions away from themselves.
Back to the specifics of your point, the inherent weakness of Socialism and Communism as opposed to more Democratic systems like Social Democracy, is that the former require a Dictatorship Of The Proletariat to reach the final utopia which was Equality For All, and invariably that supposedly temporary step were power and the Means Of Production are centralized becomes permanent, and they're exactly the kind of structure that pulls is the worst assholes: Lenin was probably somebody who, at least to begin with, had his hearth in the right place (though with him too, the Power Corrupts dictum applies), whilst Stalin was a pure Sociopath.
I don't disagree with you, but I wasn't trying to explain the origins of communism, but rather why conservatives would feel nostalgia for it today.
I get the impression that a lot of conservatism (in the original sense of word) is really old people yearning for something from their old days, which is just the image they have of their youth beautified by the passage of time.
I can see that with old Communists in the country I lived in: they grew up with the fire of their youthfull belief in Communism, back in the days of Fascist Dictatorship and even more so in the days of the Revolution which overthrew that Dictatorship, so they yearn for that feeling back, not for the Fascist Dictatorship but for that "simple" Communist and the fire of believing it and acting it from their youth.
The thing is, it wasn't that Communism back then was simpler (sure, the practical implementations of that ideology invariably had simple emotion-appealing slogans accessible to all people of all educational levels, but that was just the Propaganda and the reality of it was never simple), it was they themselves who were comparativelly simple as teenagers and young adults compared to their much older selves of present day.
Then around that you have a lot of young people who are attracted to simple explanations for things - same for Politics as for Religion - many of whom get swayed by those older people who trully believe that Communism of old was simple and pure.
So my theory is that it wasn't as much conservatives who took over Communist, it's that the ones who have been there and stuck with it their whole lives became conservative.
I'd bet that most of them aren't trolls. I have friends who were liberal as you could be, but they let cynicism turn them into tankies.
Well there's basically two kinds of tankie:
The grifters who run the cult and sell the rhetoric in exchange for clout, authority, arrogant self-importance, and the extraction of material support through abuse and exploitation,
And the cope-starved simps who are desperate to feel like they are doing something practical about their material conditions but have been too enervated after being fucked raw by corporate liberalism to actually do anything.
Remember Caleb Maupin? Exposed as a coercive sex pest? Ran a "commune" that was little more than a shoddy knockoff of a human trafficking operation? Yeah. That's tankie "leadership" for you.
Wut
The association with the left-wing is the point. Otherwise it would just be calling right wing trolls conservatives and fascists, and there's a resistance to that for some reason.
Haha no, they are real. Horseshoe theory of politics and all, what comes around goes around.
And thus we have Poe's law. No matter the fiction a grifter dreams up, society will produce an emtire group that truely believe worse.