I appreciate you calling me smart and trying to have a conversation, however I want to stress something you said:

I’m saying that tankies claim to be communists but spend all day parroting their favorite Russian or Chinese state propaganda because they believe everything else is clearly controlled by Obamna™ himself. They rarely actually talk about communism, they just roam Lemmy all day calling everybody who disagrees with them a liberal :D

What you are seeing is one aspect of people, and moreover the ones with “favorite state propaganda” that distrust all western sources as liberal propaganda don’t exist. Even just seeing people debating endlessly on Lemmy.ml is just one aspect, people frequently have different accounts or discuss Communism on different threads than the ones they get into debates in.

Additionally, I encourage you to look beyond the western veil. There are plenty of Russia-critical sources and China-critical sources in the east.

With respect to China, I encourage you to look into processes like Whole Process People’s Democracy, State Owned Enterprises, and other aspects to see how Socialism with Chinese Characteristics works. I encourage you to read the article I linked, as well. Additionally, while I know you said you are an Anarchist, your point on centralization being a bad thing goes directly against Marxist understanding. I recommend the article Why Public Property?

Capitalism concentrates itself and centralizes, which prepares the productive forces for the mechanisms required to centerally plan them after folding them into the Public Sector. Central Planning is the only way to truly democratize production in the eyes of Marxists.

One thing that is different is the lack of government-critical sources available from China, also Russia. Freedom of Speech in the West is wobbly, but in China and especially Russia it is even worse (from everything I’ve read).

What have you read?

Your freedom of speech is tolerated in the West to the extent thst it doesn’t threaten ruling class interests. The ruling class already owns all of the papers and TV channels and think tanks, they drown you out. You can never hope to push socialism through their apparatus. That is how effective their cemsorship already is: you’re told you have freedom of speech and then deplatformed. If you get a little louder, you might get a platform on occasion, but will then will still be drowned out by “competing” views.

And if you fly too close to the sun, you will get direct government censorship. Ask Germany how “free speech” is going with regards yup Palestinian solidariry. Ask comrades in the US how free speech is going with Samidoun declared a terrorist orgsnization. Ask a former Black Panther for free their speech was while being soued on snd martyred by the feds and cops.

If you actually do anything that matters, if you truly challenge the ruling powers in the West, you will need to be realistic and expect oppression. The idea that you have free speech is just pure propaganda.

Re: China go on Weibo you will find plenty of criticism of the government. The idea that you can’t criticize the government in China is xenophoboc propaganda.

Re: Russia: okay, but what is your point? There are bad things that happen in Russia so… their role against US imperialism is bad? Because that tends to be the only thing supported by “tankies”. The Russian Federation is a capitalist project created by capitalist revanchist shock therapy on the USSR that killed 7-10 million people. The West created the RF, its “oligarchs” are hust centralized capitalists like in othet countries in Europe, except the West continued to exclude Russia from the imperisl core, attempting to force it into the periphery (extraction snd poverty). What you see today is a regional capitalist power that is respinding to that. One where the national bourgeoisie are dominant rather than the international bourgeoisie, due to circumstances imposef on them. As a consequence, they often align against Western imperislism.

This is a lovely segue into our China sidequest, and while I agree on the definition, I have doubts on how public the public sector really is. The way that national election results look and the way vocal dissidents or political opposition are treated does not give me the idea that the people truly have all the power here.

Which is to say, you don’t actually know anything about it. Public means state-owned, by the way. Do you believe they aren’t actually owned by the state?

Capitalism concentrates power in the capitalist class. This class can then subvert democracy, resulting in oligarchy.

This has the false premise that the historical course of capitalism is to enter spaces that were already “democratic” in the bourgeois democratic sense. This is not true. Instead, capitalism itself gained power through the replacement of feudalistic giverning powers (like monarchies) with structures they could control, compatible with their ideas of “progress”. In short, they created bourgeous democracy. They were already in control. The question of concentration of capital changes the words but not the fact of who is in control.

In a similar way, central planning concentrates power in the central government, which actually makes it even easier to abuse that power.

In countries run by socialists, central planning is an exercise of power that already exists. The power is maintained through the oppression of competing classes and, traditionally, party bureaucracy.

I don’t know what it could possibly mean to say it is “easier to abuse that power”, it is so vague and decontextualized thst it just sounds like something you’re makinh up on the spot. Socialists endeavour to speak in terms of concrete realities and draw conclusions from them. What is your standard of abuse? Of power? How are you comparing these things?

btw central planning is not unique to countries run by socialists. Highly concentrated capitalism also has central planning aspects, as do their governments in times of emergency. But it is, in that case, central planning for bourgeois interests.

Chinese government is not transparent

How so? Tell me how the Chinese system works for, say, someone working to get a hospital built in their town.

nor federal enough

This sounds like America-centrism. There is nothing inherently democratic about federalism and it is often antidemocratic. If you are in the US, do you applaud the electoral college?

for me to call it democratic or owned by the people.

Tell me which other peripheral countries hsve done so much for their people. Tell me who has alleviated so much poverty, built so much infrastructure, and by their own hand rather than imperialism and capitalist ventures. The proof is in the doing.

I’m very critical of American imperialism but I fail to see how the US is using Ukraine to hurt Russia.

The US and its proxies have constantly escalated using Ukraine as a proxy for over a decade and since the war started they have continued this pattern. There is no path to victory for Ukraine. If the RF wanted to end it they could run mass bombing campaigns like NATO members do. They are making the opposite calculation: that the status quo of a military meat grinder for Ukraine is better for the RF. Given that one of their goals is a demilitarized Ukraine, there is some logic to this idea.

It has been painfully obvious that Ukraine cannot win from the beginning. Nobody trying to escalate, provide Wunderwaffe, etc really things Ukraine will win, that is just not what any serious person thinks. This is also why there is such an intense and absurd propaganda campaign to say that Russia is losing more people and equipment, with the source nearly always being Azov Batallion, the UA MoD, or a combination of the two. They need to sell the public on the idea that Ukraine just needs your support and dang it they mogjt pull this thing off!

So then, if UA can’t win and the heads of state know they can’t win, what is their logic? What is the angle on who benefits? Well, the singular common thread of brinksmanship with Ukraine as proxy has always been to try anf peel Europe away from economic integration with Russia and to instead keep it in the EU bubble, with more American integration. And, lo and behold, look at how Europe has destroyed its own industry and made itself even more dependent on the US. This has the added effect of isolating Russia from Europe. While Europe still buys their fossil fuels from Russia, trade overall is way down.

In addition, there is the simple calculus that it requires manpower and productive capacity to wage war, capacity that could be directed elsewhere. Iran would likely have more and better air defense systems if Russia weren’t focused on Ukraine.

At no point does the suffering of the Ukrainian people enter the equation. There are no anti-war voices on the mainstream media about this aside from self-serving right wing “this is not our problem” rhetoric.

The fault always lies with the invader, Russia did this to itself. If I see someone getting stabbed and throw him a knife, implying I’m using him to hurt the other person attacking him is silly. Russia can leave anytime.

There are few countries thst tolerate a civil war on their border targeting the ethnicity of your own country, let alone an encroachment of the primary aggressor military force around the world couping them, let alone that neighbor remilitarizing despite agreements and not honoring their agreements. This is geopolitics, not a bar fight. War does not occur in a vacuum, it has a material basis. One does not need to justify war in order to understand that this did not occur in a vacuum and there is blame to go around.

I do agree tankie is thrown around far too much, I’ve been called one myself just for talking shit of the military, even though I never mentioned an other country or a political idealogie.

Yeah it’s really just a way for national chauvinist liberals to quiet their own cognitive dissonance. I also think it’s extra funny when a Trotskyist gets called tankie, since they invented the epithet.

The spread of the word as well as the constant villainization of China seems like prep for red scare 2.0, so we can have the population support bombing villages full of civilians (again).

Yes the US is trying to decouple on its own terms. Its constant attempts to provoke the PRC with Taiwan is also similar to what they did to Ukraine. To have the consent of their population to sacrifice their own well-being and justify whatever military action might occur, they will needs to be more racist and xenophobic towards China. It may not be Taiwan. It might be Korea or Myanmar. But constant escalation and provocation is the US game. Maximalist, relentless foreign policy pushing towards war and death.

Russia entered a conflict that was already in progress, a civil war where the Ukrainian coup government was attempting to ethnically cleanse the Russian speaking population in the east. This coup was orchestrated by the US (this was obvious, admitted to in recorded phone calls, and was rife with high US politicians (John McCaine for example) going there to celebrate. The US/NATO also funded the training and arming of openly neo-nazi militias like Azov Battalion, (and others) many of whom were the ones shelling the people in the East long before Russia intervened. All of this was done by the US to exert pressure on Russia. And this is just scratching the surface. So no, Russia did not “do this to itself” and your framing of it is naive and simplistic and just plain false.

I am genuinely glad to see you reognize the villainization of China, but please also apply those same critical thinking skills to what you have been told about Russia in the Ukraine conflict and do some digging into the history that doesn’t rely on western propaganda.

The Russian Federation did leave Ukraine be. It was only after Western meddling, a coup, a civil war, not implementing agreements, toying with NATO membership, and resuming a civilian shelling campaign that the RF invaded.

The imperial core Western powers poked and prodded and used Ukraine as a pawn until the RF hit its limit.

Given that you likely live in one of the countries doing the relentless escalation, why not work against them doing so?

The reality of language is that people like op rely on the negative connotation of the definition I just gave.

Imagine of they just said, “advocating for” instead. Wouldn’t have the same impact, right?

Anarchists are liberals who like LARPing as leftists. You share the same ideology and focus on individualism above all else.

It is your repetition of radlib talking points to punch left.

gonna stop reading right here since I’ve stated I’m anticapitalist and it feels like going in circles.

Anyone can call themselves anything. Are they always correct?

If you deigned to keep reading, condescending liberal, you would find that I explained how this works.

sorry but can only answer so many of these huge comments in a day. If there’s an argument you really want me to engage with please let me know

No. You can reply to what I said if you want to discuss this topic or you can acknowledge that you aren’t ready to discuss these things. This is not asking very much. I’m not asking you to read a book. It is about 3 average-sized paragraphs worth of text. I am not holding you to a deadline, either. But you can’t just dance around in bad faith and expect patient responses.

Holy fucking shit what a coward you are. This person @[email protected] has done more in good faith to actually educate you about things no leftist should be ignorant about than you deserve. You have this tremendous opportunity to genuinely learn from someone with a wealth of knowledge and actually deepen your understanding of the world and even the ideology you claim to subscribe to, but instead you plug your ears and pretend there’s nothing to be gleaned from this generous education you’re being offered all because it conflicts with your preconceptions, your misconceptions which is cognitively uncomfortable. But that really does just come down to cowardice. I hope one day you can recognize this, recognize the importance of and necessity for self crit. If not, you’ll forever be stuck as you are, the proverbial useful idiot for the same empire you claim to wish to see an end to.

I did not give an extensive definition because the self-description of liberalism, by liberals, is at odds with the historical actions of liberalism. It could be distracting and take a while to get the point across.

For example, liberalism self-defined with maximizing individual liberty while it also advocated for the “freedom” of corporations to work you as many hours as it could while shitting down your unionizing effort with violence. Liberalism also self-defined as favoring democracy and everyone having a say, but implemented this in a racist and sexist way that placed capital in charge while also colonizing others and depriving them of self-determination.

The common thread is really just that it is the dominant ideology of capitalism, its function is to extoll the virtues of capitalism and tying it to an illusion of liberation and self-determination while actually working against both of those things, as under capitalism, capital works against both struggles. The person that liberals have you read as foundational to liberalism, John Locke, worked to support an American settler colony and its slavery rules and explicitly supported child labor. Then, as today, there is a difference between how political figures present themselves and what their advocacy actually entails.

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These are people I know personally. So no, not online people. And some are organized, some were, it varies. They are at best ambivalent on China. The idea that if you identify as a communist, talk like a communist, or are member of a communist organization, you should automatically support China would be frankly absurd in my circles. A strong minority of communists were at best ambivalent on the USSR even back in the day, so this is not new. And yes there are also those who will identify with and feel the need to support any regime that is in name or in some of its practices “communist”. Whereas others will take a more critical stance. I am in Europe by the way, this may matter, I find that the way words are used across the pond sometimes varies. Even within Europe, in much of Eastern Europe I understand that “communist” and “Russophile ” are thought to go hand in hand. Not so in my country, not necessarily. Anyway, it’s complicated.

i’m convinced that if i had fewer vulnerable identities that i would never have been able to see through practice all the “common sense” bullshit levied against me all my life and i also think that’s the only reason why i try when others with identical backgrounds, like my family, don’t bother; i’ve learned the hard way that ignorance will hurt me long before it will hurt them.

i’m starting there because i’ve learned that audio books are the best way to cheat at “reading” lol

That quote is extremely hinged on context in which it was made, and it would serve you well to internalise that context before throwing this quote around pretending it to have been something Marx lived by.

Secondly, you have no idea what you’re talking about if you’re pretending Lenin came up with the idea of revolution and using the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to suppress fascists and the bourgeoisie.

That was not my claim, but thank you for so generously misinterpreting what I said. Lenin implemented the violent oppression of dissenters and opposition in a socialist system. That was carried further by Stalin, under whom ‘counter-revolutionary’ became an extremely malleable term that could mean anything not fully aligned with his ideas. The fact that you think political violence and terror is a core tenet of Marxism tells me that you’re the one who might need to brush up on their history a little bit.

In fact, authoritarian socialism - as practiced in virtually every single Marxist-Leninist country that ever existed - was completely counter to the ideals of Marx and Engels. The people we have to thank for creating the violent authoritarianism that pervaded communist countries in practice are Lenin and Stalin. “Dictatorship of the proletariat” may have been a phrase used by Marx, but he never fully elaborated on what that should or could look like. And fascism as created by Mussolini and unleashed upon the world by Hitler didn’t even exist during Marx’s lifetime. Even Marx’s views on religion were a lot more complex and multifaceted than what Marxist-Leninist governments turned them into.

I don’t know if either of you have ever lived in a Marxist-Leninist country (as in lived, not just visited). I was born in one. I lived in another for five years. I’ve seen the before and after, first-hand. That’s my pedestal. How’s the weather up there on yours?

When you get anywhere near making a point, just send up a flare, ok?

People changing their culture on their own volition is obviously different from people being forced to by those in power.

Is it? Genocide doesn’t necessarily have to be conducted by the state. If a a roving militia or gang of mercenaries went around killing a certain kind of people en masse, then it could still be considered genocide. So if we’re allowing for this idea of a bloodless genocide, then I’m not sure it’s obvious how non-state actors taking nonviolent actions that cause the decline of a culture don’t meet your definition.

The main argument for genocide though is, that a whole population is forced to erase their culture.

“Forced,” but not through killing.

There’s often a disconnect between first generation immigrants and their kids, who often end up adopting the culture they live in over their home culture through various social pressures. The fact that the US has road signs only in English forces people to learn English, doesn’t it? Are those road signs genocide? If public schools fail to make accommodations in terms of language, if they teach history from a different perspective than what their parents grew up with, is that genocide?

It’s absurd. What a coincidence that the first “nonviolent genocide” in history happens to come from the US’s chief geopolitical rival. It’s a dilution of the word for political reasons that attempts to put much less bad things on the same level as the mass extermination of a people. The primary reason that genocide is wrong is the violence accociated with it.

The population of japan could have chosen to ignore the obviously forced statement and continued to believe in their faith. And it seems like they did if shinto is still a thing

No, they did not. The emperor’s divinity was one aspect of Shinto, and a significant one, but Shinto was never like a monotheistic tradition.

Eastern Ukrain was genocide, then what is happening to the Uygurs is definitely also genocide.

Except in Ukraine people did die and their heritage and language were being actively suppressed, etc. We know this because it is documented all over, even in pictures on the net. These specific things are readily confirmable. It was even a large impetus for a broader war, as hopefully you’re aware. There is zero question that Ukrainian nazis were shelling Russian-speaking civilians in the Donbas and that Ukraine as a state was passing laws detrimental to Russian speakers.

In Xinjiang, no such evidence exists because nothing of the sort happened. It’s based on a lie dreamed up by one Christian fundamentalist Adrian Zenz. Every source on this “genocide” traces back to him, and none of the claims are confirmable. Even to the UN! In fact you, yes, even you if you have the means to travel, can go there today and see for yourself that the Uyghur population is thriving and they will laugh if you tell them they’re being genocided. I’ll leave the academic discussion for exactly where to draw the line for the definition of the term genocide to others for now. But based on how you were defining it, Ukraine was committing genocide, but no, China was doing quite the opposite by encouraging ethnic diversity. Again, go see for yourself like this person did: Oh yeah, just look at all that genociding going on!

If what happenend in Eastern Ukrain was genocide, then what is happening to the Uygurs is definitely also genocide. But if what is happening to the Uygurs can’t be genocide, then what has been happening in Ukraine also can’t be genocide.

What the hell are you talking about? Ukraine was launching artillery shells at civilian targers in Eastern Ukraine. How is that nonviolent?

That is true. What the west is doing in Palestine is worse.

I understand that you hate Marxists, and yes, you’re most likely a liberal. It isn’t a coincidence that leftists tend to have similar stances to each other, when working from the same theoretical framework similar conclusions follow.

lol hatred of leftists is more associated with fascists than liberals. Don’t flatter yourself.

If you are demanding everyone vote for the people bypassing Congress to send more bombs to the obviously grotesque war criminal country, people are gonna think you support them, because you are.

People are actively censoring and denying any responsibility from the Democrats regarding the genocide in Gaza.

People are utter the words “Kamala was not perfect” while she is an active participant in a genocide.

It is not “Israel can do nothing wrong because history”. Democrats are the main responsible party. Seemingly they can do no wrong because lesser evil.

Have you ever watched one of the dystopian Biden state department briefings? It is lie after lie after lie.

should apply to China, seeing how most of their bad shit happend internally with the notable exceptions of Taiwan and Hong Kong

Those are still internal to China. I can understand that people are ignorant of the fact that Taiwan is part of China given the rhetoric around it and the fact that it is still provisionally ruled by the ousted rump-state nationalist government that still thinks it’s the legitimate ruler of Mongolia too. Taiwan IS part of China, but there IS something being actually being contested there. But Hong Kong? Hong Kong unambiguously is in China, it’s just one of the Special Autonomous Regions, but even they themselves consider themselves part of China, not “external” to it.

Also, it’s not “bad shit,” it’s treating reactionaries with relatively kid gloves.

There is a distinctive difference between Russia and China, despite both belonging to same political alliance and both have a dictatorial leaderships.

China does not have a “dictorial” leadership. As for Russia, well it’s leadership is no more “dictorial” than that of any western “democracy” leadership. Their “political alliance” is still relatively loose, and the only way in which they could be considered part of the same “axis” (not a word you used, but still kind of implied) is because the US’s belligerence against them both has driven them closer together.

Hating west/USA and loving either of them would make one a campist,

Hating the west/USA is just a matter of simultaneously knowing history and being a compassionate, empathetic human being. And I would bet that most of the people you would say “love” either Russia or China rather just support their actions and goals, probably very critically in the case of Russia, and do so for rational reasons based on the true behavior of those countries. That is not campism. Campism is when you support (or “love”) a country not because its actions genuinely align with your own ideals or ideology but purely because you identify with it. Interestingly, it largely stems from a failure of self-awareness. There absolutely are campists for Russia and for China, I am not denying that at all. But despite what the libs here say, you won’t find very many of them on lemmy. Most of the people on lemmy support these countries for very rational reasons regarding ideology and their geopolitical conduct.

but I’m not sure about that qualifyng as tankie.

I always understood it to be a derogatory term for the general authoritarian communist/pseudo-communist block more so than applying to all national supermacists.

This is more or less correct. Most campists on lemmy support the US/NATO and they certainly aren’t tankies by anyone’s standards. You’re right about it always having been solely a derogatory term for certain radical leftists, nowadays usually those who support countries whose governments are fighting western imperialism. But like many others have said in this thread, it is becoming so diluted that merely not supporting the fascist DNC has been enough to get a person labeled a tankie. The silly “authoritarian” part mostly came into play once liberals started using the term and (as usual) completely not understanding its origins (origins that have to do with a specific uprising in Hungary in the 1950s).