this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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Blehh yeah it feels a little astroturfy, all the push to conflating leftists with china-loving authoritarians. Makes a man wonder if libs actually stand for anything at all.
I think there absolutely is a contingent of Communists, especially new "converts" who get over zealous about their newfound ideology and veer into some flippant and ignorant hyperbole.
And I think there absolutely are groups of left-leaning folks who are still well and deep in the Red Scare culture.
Part of the issue is that many more... reasonable (for a lack of a better word) people see hyperbole and inanity and just close the post or not respond and the comments and posts tend to come from more passionate folks from the different camps of thought.
It doesn't help that the tankies are trying to push the idea that "Tankie is a slur against all communists/leftists!" The word "tankie" was invented by communists as an insult against those specific "communists" the cheer on brutal oppression of civilians -- particularly when those civilians are communists themselves.
The irony is tankies hate the "wrong kind of leftist" just as much as their other ideological enemies.
I've known many tankies (myself included) and I've never met a single one that thought it was a slur, but ok. Those civilians were fascists uprising BTW.
Yes, the famous "fascist uprisings" where students demanded things like a return to democracy with free elections, putting local communist politicians in power in the interim, end of occupation by a foreign power or state military, end to media censorship and oppression of dissidents, and the return to local rule.
Yep, all of those revolutions were clearly the work of fascists.
Those are the things tankies defend. They self identify as communist, because anyone can call themself a communist. Tankies are the "communists" that blindly celebrate the instances of failure and oppression instead of denouncing or learning from them -- that is what separates a tankie from normal, sane communists.