Tens of millions of communists have died fighting for the emancipation of the working class. Half the world was communist at one point. The people you call “MAGA communists” are an online micro-ideology of a few hundred infantile Westerners, who most communists are not even aware of, and who all communists who are aware of them reject as explicitly anti-Marxist and crypto-fascist. They have no relevance to communism whatsoever.
This is one of the purposes of the ‘tankie’ slur - to associate Marxists with people who are explicitly opposed to them and so fringe as to be otherwise irrelevant. In this way the ideas of communism can be confused and distorted in the public consciousness.
Tabitha99
joined 1 year ago
Lenin did not hate other leftists. Kropotkin, for example, was one of his favourite writers. His own brother was an anarchist. He did consider non-Marxist ideologies to be incapable of effecting real change or defeating capitalism. It was ‘other leftists” who, in the early days of the revolution, aligned themselves with reactionary forces, attempted to overthrow the revolution, and tried to assassinate Lenin himself.
Would you call Malcom X a “tankie”? Were the Black Panthers reactionaries? Was Albert Einstein a fascist? Were the tens of millions of communists who died in the 20th century fighting for human liberation equivalent to Nazi’s?
This is an honest question. I would be fascinated to understand the thought process of anyone who answers yes, which presumably should be anyone who uses the term ‘tankie’.
I came from wealth. It certainly didn’t make me a communist. What did that, was the years I spent working in healthcare in various developing countries, and watching people die because they couldn’t afford proper treatment. Although I suppose thinking about where I came from also helped.