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this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts
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Things that are mainstream in British politics would get you called a tankie by american liberals though, because they have no left and have no idea what level of radicalism is required to get welfare and healthcare in europe and then maintain it.
Jeremy Corbyn defends the USSR.
Diane Abbot defended Mao on national tv.
John McDonnell's job is "to overthrow capitalism". Or the time John threw Mao's little red book at Osborne. Etc etc.
Mainstream elected British MPs in Britain's soft left, saying and doing things that have absolutely zero negative effect on anyone's opinion of them in Britain. But anything they believe or say would get them called a tankie by americans. Corbyn's christmas message a couple years ago extolling the virtues of the Black Panthers (an ML party) would send some people here into a fit, especially if they noticed the CCCP figure in the bottom right of the video at 2:10.
We have people like Frankie Boyle on national television funded by the taxpayer saying we should kill all the rich. and making pretty clear tweets about his own political position(before he quit managing the account himself). It's just a completely different environment.
Defending the USSR is indeed tankie shit. If the UK has a problem with communists being represented and taken seriously, they should do something about that
This is why I love the internet, for such takes as "Jeremy Corbyn, former leader of the labour party that 40% of people (12.87million) voted for is a tankie".
There certainly are tankies in the labour party and the british hard left. But all of the people above are the soft left, not remotely tankies. The issue is that american libs are so far right that you can't differentiate between the demsocs and those of us that want and support revolution.
With that said if you want to see more communist representation in mainstream britain you'll enjoy learning about the Durham Miner's Gala which I made a short post on after attending the 137th year of it just a couple weeks ago.
You're not getting communists out of mainstream european politics mate, communists built the entire labour movement, trade unionism wouldn't exist without it. Ironically it's also communists building your current american unions such as Amazon's union, you just aren't aware that people like Chris Smalls read Lenin because you're not tuned into the underground american left.
And this is why I love the internet lol
Keep telling yourself that the amazon union just spontaneously appeared out of thin air and wasn't the result of an absolutely massive organised salting effort by socialists then. Just deny reality.
I have literally never written words "Amazon union" until this comment right here. You sure did show that man of straw a thing or two, though.
I said that Corbyn said tankie shit. He's also an antisemite. Communism is clown shoes.
Also unironically I think Jeff Bezos should buy the Amazon Rainforest and change "Amazon" to the Amazon logo, officially.
IT'S TWENTY TWENTY THREE AND NEOLIBERALS ARE STILL SAYING THIS RUBBISH
Embarrassing.
You seriously don't have an opinion on The Amazon Rainforest Brought To You By Amazon?
That makes me sad
Eh?
I don't think any of the examples you linked are things which could credibly be called Tankieism in my eyes. Corbin saying that those regimes on balance did more good than harm is not the same as directly defending genocide as some of the programmers of this site do.
I'm a Bernie Sanders democrat and disagree with both the Tankie positions of the programmers and those you link to, but I don't consider both to be examples of Tankieism.
This is literally what all MLs believe. All MLs acknowledge the mistakes of past socialist experiments the people that don't are a literally tiny insignificant number of people inflated into a meme that is used to attack socialism in general. There are only too positions that have been used to create this myth and that is the idea that holodomor was intentional (it absolutely was not) which is used by nitwits to claim a genocide was performed by way of famine, and the xinjiang issues that were inflated into nonsense and then backtracked on by the US state department.
The point generally is that tankie is a nonsense word used to attack the entire left and eliminate nuance. It prevents conversation. It is a thought-terminating word dumped into conversation by everyone that opposes socialism as a means of preventing any and all discussion that might make people think critically or understand any nuance that people in the left actually have.
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If you think that, then I don't think you understand the term Tankies. Tankies are apologists for the genocides and wrongdoings of Communist regimes.
Just wanting welfare or healthcare doesn't come anywhere near the level needed to be called a Tankie.
So like defending Mao, the USSR and praising and recommending the Black Panthers, who met with government of north korea and defended juche thought then. Like, literally everything I just linked to above?
Lmao what part of "my job is to overthrow capitalism" do you not understand?
Jeremy Corbyn is a notorious antisemitic twat who was so shit people literally voted for Boris fucking Johnson to avoid having Corbyn in power! How terrible do you have to be to get people to support Johnson?
Give it a rest with the fake news. Anti-zionism is not anti-semitism. Opposing Israel is not anti-semitism. And the claims of antisemitism in labour being terrible were always fucking nonsense. The extent of this being nonsense were all unveiled in The Labour Files investigation, I strongly advise you watch it.
It's fucking absurd that you neoliberals are still pushing this rubbish in 2023 lmao. Embarrassing.