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It should be noted that Feddit.org was included to represent Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
I did not include Baraza.africa as that was too encompassing as it covers the whole African continent.
Hopefully this post inspires more countries to join the blue club!
Ironic how this doesn’t include communist countries.
Do any exist?
I think there's like 12 countries that still claim to be communist. Cuba, China and Russia off the top of my head and there's a handful of island nations that are doing quite well with it
russia decidedly does not continue to claim to be communist. putin's parties have all been various forms of anti-comm far right nationalist parties. the idea that russia is still a champion of communism worldwide is some weapons grade tankie copium
And tankies actually think China is communist.
Oh man I made the mistake of saying the word Russia and now I must be evil. You're right, they're not technically communist and after double checking yeah they don't claim it anymore either. Last time I really cared about Russia's internals was quite a while ago, and despite few changes to their economic system they definitely used to at least claim to be communist. Or that was my understanding at the time.
The point still stands, a handful of countries claim to be communist. A handful of countries are communist. Whether that's a good or bad thing is up to you to decide
i don't think you're evil. i just think it's fascinating how pervasive "russia is still communist" is as a talking point when it's decidedly not
I remember googling "which countries are still communist" back around 2018ish and Russia being at the top of many lists. It's just another ripple effect from propaganda that hasn't died out yet.
That being said, fighting propaganda is much easier with gentler words instead of name-calling in my experience
where did i name call? i was just pointing out that it's some tankie propaganda. i think your post was overall fine. ohhhh, wait did you think i was calling you a tankie? shit, i didn't mean that, i just meant the propaganda was tankist in origin
It's also US propaganda to discredit communism
"Tankie" is a generalist term, the same as "leftist" and whatnot. The goal of terms like these is to put people into camps that are divided and label them as anything other than "human" because it's a lot easier to say "100 dead tankies" than it is to say "100 dead humans"
My point is that terms like this detract from communication because they obfuscate the meaning behind what is being said. Using these terms, even if it is to fight against propaganda, makes it easier to continue using other terms that are similar in nature. This encourages people to use less people-centric language, which dehumanizes those around them and makes them easier targets. Best to just avoid using them at all IMO
Actually the goal of terms like that is efficiency. We could say "supporter of aggressively implemented authoritarian communism" if we wanted, but tankie is shorter.
Helps if you have the background to understand the specifics of what different "isms" support and thus what they disagree on that leads them into genuinely fighting each other. A fascist, a lib and a tankie really do have very core disagreements that cannot be realistically compromised on. At the most basic, a fascist wants a unified society with a strict hierarchy, the tankie wants a unified society with no hierarchy, the lib doesn't want any kind of unified society. If any one of these people gets their way, the other two do not, which leads to conflict.
Left/right are more economic arguments with some wiggle room due to being more or less a spectrum, but also tend to feature significant real world disagreements.
Anyways, I do agree that it's important to have conversations about these underlying details, but when you're talking amongst other people who know the background already, some shorthand terms are going to start appearing. Since these are overarching governance philosophies that any person can adopt or discard at will, they're also a little different from more inherent divisions, like ethnicity for instance. Being a tankie, lib or fascist is a choice, where being Arabic or gay or something is not.
Choose the most efficient phrase from these options:
Notice how the message still gets across with that third one? It still tells you "these are lies or exaggerations that have misled you" without needlessly classing the source with a catch-all term that obfuscates their position as human beings with the right to live?
Nothing about the term tankie does or should deny their right to live. Advocating for the deaths of people who disagree with you is profoundly against everything liberalism (the freedom-based guiding principle of what we'd call "the west") stands for.
To the contrary, as a pretty standard liberal American I fully support their rights to advocate for whatever they wish. Since there is no realistic way to accurately and objectively determine what is or is not propaganda, I support their right to create that as well.
Regarding the utility of recognizing where propaganda comes from, it can occasionally be useful to know, as it tends to follow certain patterns based on the goals of whoever created it.
Can you realistically accurately and objectively determine that the source of the claim was a tankie?
So it makes more sense to make wild claims about the person behind the message than it does to classify a piece of information based off of its linguistic characteristics?
Also, identifying propaganda isn't difficult, I had to do it for classes in school several times. Here's a helpful reminder on how to do so.
how you recognize propaganda is that everything is propaganda. your comment, this comment, the original article, the concept that russia remains communist, it's all propaganda. the key isn't learning to recognize propaganda, it's learning to analyze the biases of who's presenting the propaganda.
here, i'll tell you my biases. i'm an anarcho communist located in the united states. there. now that you have that intel, you can start to assess what kinds of propaganda you'd expect to see from me. more, when i don't put out the kinds of propaganda you expect, you can question the following:
the kinds of classes we receive on how propaganda works in elementary and high school are meant to get us to rigidly stick to the status quo that benefits the authoritarian rulers of society. they are, themselves, propaganda. in fact, this notion you have that we can talk about propaganda without context i actually find a little bit dangerous. by stripping context and discussion of origins of propaganda, we actually create the exact form of non critical environment that benefits the misinformation peddlar.
then again, you don't have to find my perspective compelling. that's why i told you up front what it was, as well as what my propaganda is.
I don't believe that you can speak about propaganda without context, and I didn't claim that either. The "efficient phrases" thing is part of a puzzle, not the whole puzzle. What I do believe is that terms like "tankie" fill the same role "Jew" or "Gay" fill for the right. It's a term used to change the perception of the speaker from "person/human being" to "undesirable with a bad opinion"
How? Even though Lemmy has lots of commies, it has nothing inherently to do with communism.
The whole federative idea is communism
All communist countries used the communism idea to trick their people into a fascist government.
All fascists have always used leftist promises to gain support. That talk has never matched their actions. Some people learn to not trust lying, many don't.
Bad actors don't usually go telling it outright, it needs to be masked with something people need, without delivering.
That's true, but it doesn't mean truly communist ideas don't exist. Both the Fediverse and Free Software, as concepts, are pretty darn "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" if you think about it, ya know?