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- Removed posters comments
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Mod log
- Original comment that was deleted with reason of “Tankie apologia”.
- When another user comments has suspicions of mods actions, Mod replies with this.
- Poster replies in exasperation explaining perspective, rationale, and offline experiences. Comment gets deleted and purged.
Explanation
The original comment I made was stating that alienation of someone by frustrating their political beliefs is not a way to convince them of anything.
That being their genuine friend goes a long way in helping someone rather then attacking them.
That together they both can work together for a better future.
That you can be annoyed, but that should be swallowed because that is what it means to be part of a community.
You will always be annoyed one way or another in a community, that is the beauty of a community, that there are different people that may annoy you slightly, but working together to still be a community.
The moderator disagrees with this, viewing it as “tankie apologia”.
When I replied, explaining why I made my post and my background, My post was removed and I was banned from the community.
Thank you @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com for reminding me on this missing context: https://lemmy.ml/comment/17251624
In my reply post, I wrote that “advocating for war on any country is not political flavoring”.
That cannot be swallowed, and one should not befriend such a person without sufficient care for ones own wellbeing.
I had wrote explicitly thinking of people who suport Russia against Ukraine, Israel over Palestine, and Assadists etc.
My purged comment also states that “people seeking to punish / attack LGBTQIA+ people is not political flavoring”.
I whole heartingly believe trans rights are human rights.
Free HRT and gender affirming care for all!
To remove an otherwise popular comment advocating for support what I feel are healthy behaviors, then name call someone as a “authoritarian” and a “tankie apologist” is disingenuous and corrupt to me.
Remedy
Personally I would like my comments restored so at least others see a different way of looking at things. I have no qualms with remaining banned.
Perhaps I should have not commented in reply to the mod, but they had already removed my post and I had little to lose.
Otherwise, I am very tired of this on the internet, I am tired of tribalism and the lack of empathy in this world.
What do you all think, should I have even made my original comment if I already knew it would be fruitless?
Claiming to not be authoritarian while also accepting the tankie label is a bold strategy.
I didn’t say that. Everyone gets libertarian on the political compass test unless they just randomly hate gay people. Stating that I get Libertarian on the political compass test is not some claim to being Libertarian. Every single “tankie” or Marxist-Leninist I know tests Libertarian, because it’s a very stupid test for a very stupid model.
Libertarian vs authoritarian is not a useful dimension for understanding politics. Like everyone else, I’m a “libertarian” while I’m out of power and an “authoritarian” while in power, the only difference is that I’m honest enough to admit it.
“Authoritarian” just means the government doing stuff you don’t like. And the average anti-tankie “leftist” doesn’t like any leftist project that doesn’t immediately deliver a perfect utopia - happily accepting the capitalist status quo as a “lesser evil” over trying to improve society somewhat.
“I’m only an authoritarian when I’m in power”
Yeah, that’s why I’m not going to ally with you to help you get power, genius.
And again, you’re not denying the tankie label. I assume you know the etymology of the phrase if you’re as well read as you pretend to be, so sincerely, fuck you.
So you’ll get a different “authoritarian,” an authoritarian who serves the bourgeoisie. Or, you somehow manage to get a “libertarian” in power, and then they lose power to an authoritarian who serves the bourgeoisie, like what happens every time it’s been tried.
(The Jakarta Method)
To prove me wrong, point to any historical “libertarian” leftist project that you consider successful.
Oh really? Does it? That’s a convenient definition.
If you think Russia is heading in the direction of less authoritarianism and more communism then I hate to break it to you, but the exact opposite is happening. It failed to deliver an immediate utopia. It failed to deliver a medium-term utopia. And it seems like in the long run this war will result in a complete collapse of the Russian economy. But I’m sure they’ll get there one of these days.
I think what the average anti-tankie leftist doesn’t like is the idea that we should replace one bunch of power hungry authoritarians with another bunch of power hungry authoritarians flying a different flag, but doing more or less the same shit.
Then provide your own.
I’m not sure what gave you the impression that I think this. I’m quite sure that I’ve never said anything that suggests that would be the case.
I support direct action, unionization, and revolution, I just don’t also support states that suppress unions, like you do. Improving society somewhat doesn’t look like implementing a military dictatorship.
You can’t support hierarchical dictatorships that take away the rights of workers and call yourself a communist, leftist, etc. etc. You are an authoritarian even now with no power.
so you support every revolution except for the successful ones?
life is not a map painting game
Two questions:
Were Marx and Engles communists?
Have you read “On Authority” by Engles?
On authority : notoriously the worst Marxist essay ever written.
What you think of it is irrelevant. What’s relevant is that it plainly demonstrates the author’s perspective on this issue. Meaning that anyone who claims “You can’t call yourself a communist if you’re an authoritarian” has to either make the absurd claim that Engles wasn’t a communist or pretend the essay doesn’t exist.
Of course, On Authority is just the shortest and most to the point work demonstrating the view in a way that is completely impossible to deny. If you (God forbid) read Lenin (particularly The State and Revolution), he cites Marx extensively to defend his position and refute the idea that Marx didn’t support the use of “authoritarian” state power.
What’s funny to me is that for all the time Lenin spent refuting these ideas in his time, the people saying them today don’t actually read any of the people whose intellectual tradition they’re inheriting. The modern day Kautskist won’t read Lenin, but they certainly won’t read Kautsky. There’s no theory to even be critiqued really, it’s just memes, streamers, and recycled propaganda lines.
Or, hear me out here, that Engels was just fractally wrong .
Lol
So you’re saying he wasn’t really a communist then.
I’m saying he was stupid wrong about what “authority” is.
Why do you cling to the words of old dead men
Because the things that we discuss today have been tried - and implemented! - in the past. It’s only though the utmost arrogance that people like you reject all historical examples and treat every historical figure as simply dumb or morally impure in some way. Us “tankies” are considerably more humble in that we are willing to accept the fact that historical projects - even those that were flawed and ended in failure, like the USSR - belong to our intellectual tradition, which thereby allows us to analyze their successes and failures and to learn from them.
Of course, no matter how hard you try to distance yourself from us or from things like the USSR, you will still be tied to them. They called Obama a communist, you think they won’t do the same to you? This is literally how we got into this mess in the first place, all the major labor unions in the US purged communists and radicals to prove that they were “one of the good ones” and then, wouldn’t you know it, the capitalists didn’t fucking care, they were still unions and still opposed to their interests (and they’d just defanged themselves too!) so they just called them communists anyway. Eventually it got to the point where even the word “liberal,” which literally means someone who supports capitalism, became a dirty word. You can’t be afraid of getting called names, it just gives the other side power.
Of course, even if you reject all of that, there have been countless examples of libertarian socialist/left-wing movements in the developing world. They’re just not around anymore because they were violently suppressed. Whether it was Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, or any number of other places. Ultimately, arguing that libertarianism is the way to go is either denying/ignoring all of those examples (as your lot generally does, reveling in ignorance), or denouncing them as impure for not delivering utopia overnight. Anyone who refuses to learn the lessons of history is, as I said, either an aspiring martyr who doesn’t care that they’ll be killed and replaced by a fascist, or an armchair intellectual who has no pretense of ever even attempting to get close enough to the levers of power to actually accomplish anything, and can safely criticize from the sidelines.
You sure put in a lot of effort to call yourself a humble authoritarian. I don’t believe there is some magic switch that can be pulled to achieve socialism over night, but a nation that commits all the same wrongs as a capitalist nation doesn’t seem like an upgrade of any kind. I’m not going to believe someone suppressing my rights is going to be able to deliver on any promise to implement socialism. I should note I’m mostly talking about states like the USSR and the CCP, and other so called communist states.
Anyways, you can’t do anything without unions. Communism won’t happen under dictatorship, nor through some “democracy” swamped by capitalism or whatever other horror people can conjure. Change can only be achieved by all of us working together, not under some tyrannical oligarchy or leader.