this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
1105 points (88.1% liked)
Memes
45886 readers
1329 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This post is proof Tom Lehrer was wrong about exactly one thing
You're not a tankie. Tankies deny the oppressive nature of Russia, China, North Korea etc., deflecting all critique with whataboutism by pointing at shortcomings or atrocities of Western nations. Some like to call you Nazi or imperialist if you disagree with them, while in many aspects their ideology and that of their paragon countries is much closer to Nazism than that of liberal democracies like the ones you mentioned.
No you are not a tankie. You are very painfully a liberal.
Please keep reading and understand there is a difference between authoritarian communism and communism
Please see Thomas Sankara.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sankara
Your not doing very good job. Your just coming off as an idiot too me.
Can you be more concise? Your run on sentences make me want to stop talking to you.
Im not here to go over the specifics of Sankaras's Decisons: But From what I do know. He fought corruption, he pushed literacy programs and fought malnutrition. All While resistsing western imperialsm.
Im sure he made mistakes and did some problematic things. As an anarchist I can appreicate the good things he did and be open to the concept that he also did bad things as well.
Just like the USSR CPC and other communist governments.
Your going to have to rewrite, this i dont understand what you are saying. Are you referring to me or Sankara?
Well you got me. Maybe im not in the mood for jokes. I am so tired of having these conversation. It makes me so sad to see people supporting these countries.
Russia and china are not examples of a good government. Neither is the usa. I feel like im taking crazy pills.
Because i know about him and agree with many things that he did. Not everything, but he didnt build an imperialst nation. He fought for literacy and nutrition and anti corruption.
He didnt build a survelence network or invade another nation to my knowledge.
He fought for his people using the principles revolutionary communism and ML. This I support.
Just like i can recognize that the CPC does provide many valuable things to it citizens . While also recognizing that they are still authoritarnian.
I dont know. Im not here to tell you how sankara could of avoided assassination. But I do feel that acting like Sankara is the same as the cpc/russia in any real way is kinda absurd.
Cuba is better example of communism than cpc. Once again they have problems.
Ultimately i am an anarchist, i dont think communism is the solution long term, but i would work with communists, As long as they didnt support large authoritarian governments.
So is the USSR not communist by your definition?
I feel this is like syamtics. Anarchist are socialists as well. but if some told me "I dont think anarchy is the way foward"
I dont think it would be fair for me to say to " no you mean socialism, Anarchy is the Goal! not the current situation"
It doesnt make sense to think that communism isnt the solution? This makes me feel like communists are unable to have real discussion with anarchists about the flaws within communism.
I feel anarchy is the only real way to gaurentee long term that people will be continually liberated. I think that any real hierarchical system will enventually turn back into a police state. We saw this in the USSR. And we see in in the CPC too.
They once had revolutionary components which I support. But those begin to dwindle the minute they took power and likey before.
From the origins of revolutionary communism came a police state. How do MLs deal with the flaws shown in The USSR? By saying that it wasn't communist?
This is what I mean when I say i dont think communism is the solution long term. That communists governments have a tendency to turn toward police states. Call it what you want but lenin was a marxist from my understanding and marxist are considered communists. Right?
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-alexander-berkman-bolsheviks-shooting-anarchists
"But of all the revolutionary elements in Russia it is the Anarchists who now suffer the most ruthless and systematic persecution. Their suppression by the Bolsheviki began already in 1918, when — in the month of April of that year — the Communist Government attacked, without provocation or warning, the Anarchist Club of Moscow and by the use of machine guns and artillery “liquidated” the whole organisation."
Emma goldman
Do you have any evidence that this is false or do you just not like it?
Alls I hear is a lot of what aboutism.
"Emma goldman is writing about anarchist being murdered but whatabout the the bad things anarchists did? "
Emma goldman was a russia born anarchist critiquing The USSR.
Are you going to respond the to claims they are making or are you going to cherry pick out the racist stuff?
We can stop honeslty. if you believe that anarchism is eurofacism we have very little to talk about.
Yeah the racist Republicans in the US use whataboutism all the time to skirt around actual critiques. They really hate it when you call them out on it
Did anarchist attack and kill communists during that time period? Yes. Does that make thier critiques about soviet authoritarianism invalid or make emma Goldman letters false. No. It just means there is nuance in history.
I dont categorically support emma goldman. And Im not surprised they said some racist things. Thats why I am able to separate the good things they did while critizing the bad.
You should try it!
It is a known fact that the USSR consolidated power within russia after the october revolution. They killed and jailed anarchists and many other opossing groups.
And when lenin died and stalin took over, he did it too. This is what large goverments must do to maintain power.
The fact that you can't admit that means you a defintiately a tankie.
You sound like a jackass when you write this way. imo.
@robinn2 @Sprinklebump, it is because it is so easy to deceive people with labels, be it socialism, communism or democracy. All of them have been or are dictatorships ruled by an elite. It does not matter a "communism" where an elite of supposed representatives governs or a democracy where these representatives of lobbies govern instead of the people.
A country where there is no sovereignty of the people is still a feudal dictatorship of capital, that sooner or later always fails.
Think on it until you do, because as of now you're useless
How could it be bad trolling if you fell for it
The last part reads as being in reference to you, since the socialist states you hate took measures to survive whereas ones like Allende's Chile folded and their progress brutally reversed.
If Sankara had been more effective in protecting the revolution, you very likely would hate him too because he would be smeared just like Fidel and the rest as "authoritarian" etc. Imo this wouldn't be because of whatever specific measures he took, but the mere fact that he would have posed a more substantial ideological threat to the west for living and being able to keep making progress.
Sankara was ML, like me and all the people you're calling "tankies" or "authoritarian" communists
We've read plenty of Sankara, time you to to read a little Jakarta Method