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.

[–] JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Since there is no realistic way to accurately and objectively determine what is or is not propaganda

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.

[–] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

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:

do i have a blindspot? are my politics and my propaganda out of alignment because there's something that's been normalized to me that you should point out in the hopes i'm capable of growth (that's what i did when i said russia remaining communist simply isn't true)
am i misrepresenting myself or my propaganda? maybe i'm just saying i'm something i'm not to get my propaganda to people who are susceptible to not knowing my misinformation is misinformation, and then they'll be shifted. or, is my propaganda lie meant to draw people to my misinformation stream. in this case, it's best to disengage. block+report+ostricize+move on. this is what i would have done if i thought you were a tankie
do you have a blindspot? are my politics and my propaganda out of alignment because you, the recipient, are missing some piece of the puzzle. do you need to look into the validity of my claims to find out if you need to learn and grow and change? the equivalent to this would be if i found your message and your politics compelling enough to change my views

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.

[–] JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

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"