True but only for terminally online liberals. I still haven't heard anyone in real life ever use that word.
this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2025
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Authoritarianism is authoritarianism. Doesnt matter how you paint it.
Not really, no. To a capitalist, all forms of leftism is 'authoritarian,' because they consider private property natural and oppose leftists 'stealing' in.
'Authoritarianism' just isn't a particularly useful term because nobody who uses is is ever actually categorically opposed to forcefully compelling people to do or not do things. They will always have a build in exception for what ever they consider to be 'legitimate authority', and what they consider justified authority will just depend on what political philosophy they ascribe to. So really calling the word just means "someone with a different political theory to me with regards to legitimate authority."
Just because some people might not use the term correctly doesn’t mean it isn’t a useful term
I left lemmy.ml because there were too many people defending or denying historical acts of political violence. That’s what we mean when we say tankies are authoritarian.
If you'd actually read my post, you'd know my point wasn't about it being used "incorrectly".
people defending or denying historical acts of political violence. That’s what we mean when we say tankies are authoritarian.
Defeating the Nazis was an act of political violence, freeing slaves was an act of political violence, over throwing the feudal system was an act of political believe, driving out colonial empires is an act of political violence, enforcing property rights is an act of political violence, ceasing the means of production is an act of political violence.
See? This is exactly, exactly what I was talking about.
I mean we both know I’m talking about specific acts of political violence, but you are right in that I should have clarified.
To be clear what makes it authoritarian is when it’s the state/government/leadership that is using acts of violence against citizens with political ideas that would threaten their power.
And tankies get the name specifically from either defending or denying that specifically the Soviet Union used violence to suppress attempts to leave their union. When I was on .ml I also frequently saw defense or denial of China using violence that way such as the infamous Tiananmen Square Massacre.
People from lemmy.ml love to shout that people who want them defederated are “capitalist” and hexbear has decided accusing people of being anti-trans is their move, but those are simply strawmen, and really poorly constructed ones at that.
when it’s the state/government/leadership that is using acts of violence
So when a corporation uses or sponsors acts of violence it's not authoritarianism? I guess Coca-Cola-funded fascist death squads are just smol bean libertarians fighting the oppressive tankie socialists!
You can't even get your talking points in order. The main people on lemmy.ml are anti-capitalist, they would accuse those who would censor them of being anti-communist.
So when a corporation uses or sponsors acts of violence it's not authoritarianism? I guess Coca-Cola-funded fascist death squads are just smol bean libertarians fighting the oppressive tankie socialists!
Until Coca-Cola is its a government, no, that’s not authoritarianism. That doesn’t mean it’s good. Things can be bad without being authoritarianism.
You can't even get your talking points in order. The main people on lemmy.ml are anti-capitalist, they would accuse those who would censor them of being anti-communist.
Yeah you’re right I was caught between two phrasings and I mixed them up. I edited it to fix it. Thanks for pointing out my mistake!
Until Coca-Cola is its a government, no, that’s not authoritarianism.
Which was more authoritarian: slavery or freeing the slaves? Slaveowners were not the government, therefore, according to you, nothing they did could be considered authoritarian, right?
It seems pretty arbitrary to single out one single heirarchy and say that only that heirarchy is capable of being authoritarian.
Idk what you think we’re arguing about but I’m curious where this is going.
It seems pretty clear to me that applying the definition I gave previously of “authoritarian violence” as “state-perpetrated violence against citizens with ideas the state finds threatening”, slavery could be considered “authoritarian violence” but “freeing the slaves” couldn’t.
If you are specifically talking about the US Civil War, I do think that counts as “authoritarian violence” to the extent that the war was about stopping a group of citizens from rebelling against the government.
It seems pretty arbitrary to single out one single heirarchy and say that only that heirarchy is capable of being authoritarian.
To be clear, I’m going off of the Wikipedia definition which defines “authoritarianism” as:
Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the rule of law.
I read that as pretty specifically applying to governments, but I could see how you could apply the idea to describe things like anti-union efforts.
Bwah bwah bwah what about coca cola, what about Gaza, what about south America, what about Iraq bwah bwah
The problem with tankies like yourself is that they can't recognise that the CCP is evil, Ukraine was not full of nazis needing to be invaded and not everything is western propaganda.
The US is a fucked up evil empire, Europe has a violent colonialist past and is still doing bad shit around the world, but your Communist Utopias are just misery spreading machines on everything they touch.
the CCP is evil, Ukraine
Do, uh, do you know which country it was that invaded Ukraine?
And tankies get the name specifically from either defending or denying that specifically the Soviet Union used violence to suppress attempts to leave their union.
I fucking knew it, Lincoln was a soviet plant all along, fucking tankies.
"Liberal" is just
Tankie doesn't really mean anything to me anymore. Even self-proclaimed tankies often have trouble defining it in a way that is consistent among leftist groups.
Tankie = derogatory term for Marxist. It's that easy
I believe in reclaiming "tankie" in the same way as "queer." Schoolyard bullies don't really care to distinguish between the many different labels encompassed by LGBT+, and so they inadvertently invented a term that could be very inclusive and all encompassing, even if you're still figuring out who you are, you call always fall back on "queer" to give the general idea.
In the same way, the term "tankie" gets applied to people of all sorts of different left ideologies. There are significant differences between different leftist ideologies, but our critics don't care to understand or distinguish between them, so I consider tankie to be a similarly inclusive term. Do you support anything that any socialist government has ever done? Do you think Cuba had an effective literacy program? Congratulations, you're a tankie, welcome to the club.
Note that my identifying with the term isn't really an invitation for people to use it. But, you know, if people want to keep using it as this broad, meaningless term that lumps a bunch of people together, as I see it, it only works to our advantage as "tankies," it pushes people towards us and helps us remember what we have in common instead of fighting over our differences. So I'm not exactly going to fight the label particularly hard.
Tankie always meant a fan of authoritarianism but not of the nazi variety. And hand to hand with that goes hate for America, but hate for America isn't enough on it's own, it should be paired with love of Strong Hand Of The East.
Tankie thinks China, Russia, North Korea are just swell, and not because of some underlying ideology, but because they have an authoritarian model of governance and generally in opposition to the west to some degree.
And that's the reason why it's so hard to define for some people, boiled down to it's definition, it's very hard to spin into something universally good, so talking to a general public they have to do what authoritarian lovers from the other side of the spectrum call "hiding the power lever", which muddies the water.
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I'm not into that authoritarian stuff. Worshipping a fascist authoritarian state is not a leftist make.
Communism and fascism are entirely different, and conflating the two has roots in Double Genocide Theory, a form of Holocaust trivialization and Nazi Apologia. The Nazis industrialized murder and attempted to colonize the world, the Soviets uplifted the Proletariat and supported national liberation movements such as in Cuba, China, Algeria, and Palestine. I recommend reading Blackshirts and Reds.
What in the everlasting embrace of god. Soviets, who - I'll admit - simply chose to work people to death painted as the good guys? The same soviets that starved, beaten and let people freeze to death? The same that put people in cattle wagons and rode them out to syberia in nothing more than clothes they had on their backs?
The USSR was perhaps the single most progressive movement in the entire 20th century. It was not free from flaw, of course not, but in total it was a massive leap forward for the Working Class not only within the Soviet Union, but its very existence forced western countries to adopt expanded social safety nets (along with the efforts of leftist organizers within these countries).
From a brutal, impoverished backwater country barely industrialized, to beating the United States into space, in 50 years. Mid 30s life expectancies due to constant starvation, homelessness, and outright murder from the Tsarist Regime, doubled to the 70s very quickly. Literacy rates from the 20s and 30s to 99.9%, more than Western Nations. All of this in a single generation.
Wealth disparity shrank, while productivity growth was one of the highest in the 20th century:
Supported liberation movements in Cuba, Palestine, Algeria, Korea, China, Palestine, and more. Ensured free, and high quality healthcare and education for all. Lower retirement ages than the US, 55 for women and 60 for men. Legalized, free abortion. Full employment, and no recessions outside of World War 2. Defeated the Nazis with 80% of the combat in the entire European theater. Supported armistice treaties that the US continuously denied.
The bad guys won the Cold War, and they did so by forcing the USSR to spend a huge amount of their resources on keeping up millitarily, as the United States had much more resources and could deal with it that way.
I'd have to challenge that "the bad guys won the Cold War" rhetoric. If the USSR was as successful as your argument claims, why did so many Soviet republics seek independence?
For the same reasons California or Texas keep entertaining independence ballot initiatives every 4 years; internal politics.
Did they support liberation movements in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland etc etc?
Bit of a cheap pivot, isn't that? Not all nationalist movements are good, many are highly reactionary, even fascist in nature. On the whole, Soviet foreign policy was cleary in the interests of the working class, from helping Cuban workers liberate themselves from the fascist Batista regime, to helping Algeria throw off the colonizing French, to helping Palestinians resisting genocide, to assisting China with throwing off the Nationalists and Imperialist Japan.
I don't think it's a cheap pivot at all. If you want to say "look at all these places where the people there wanted freedom!" While completely ignoring that they were violently surpressing those same scenarios within their own annexed territories? That's just willful blindness.
Soviets also played a big role in helping India achieve independence which is one major reason why relations between India and Russia are so good to this day. https://actofdefiance.wordpress.com/2022/09/05/soviet-support-for-indian-independence/
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Do people genuinely take badempanada seriously?
He starts a lot of shit, but dammit if he isn't right most of the time.
Do MLs consider anarchists liberals now?
No, but a lot of liberals consider themselves anarchists.
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Truly. Any moderate support for AES? Immediately labeled a tankie, I've seen Anarchists and even Liberals labeled a tankie. The term only exists to punch left from the Liberal POV, just like "Woke" is used to punch anything left of fascism.
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