this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
35 points (61.1% liked)
Asklemmy
43159 readers
1560 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
YES
Just like calling someone a "witch" or heretic in the middle ages, a "barbarian", or "savage", or "commie" or "pinko" in the 20th century, these terms are less about the actual meaning, and more about a demonization, scapegoating, or a power relation between the dominant class, and a group they seek to malign and rally their people around.
Creating a useful enemy promotes group bonding, unity, a sense of strengthened identity, and self worth.
"Tankie" had a meaning that generally referred to non-pacifist leftists (or those that agreed with using violence to defend socialist projects), but now it just means, "any leftist I don't like".
It functions in the exact same way that "commie" did in the the McCarthy era, as a xenophobic and western-supremacist scapegoating of socialist countries, and an internal purging of the working-class communist movement.
It's additionally useful because it deters people from reading or engaging with the worldwide communist / socialist movement.
If someone uses this term, this is what they're doing without realizing it:
None of them are considered Marxist or even Socialist in the country now unfortunately. They have been successfully whitewashed as nationalist heroes.
With respect, there's a bit more to it than that.
The way political discussions are often policed on ML instances (This one, Lemmygrad, and Hexbear) is not conducive to helping new people see your point of view. If a, let's say, social democrat says something critical of the CCP and then is immediately censured or banned, they are going to be left with a very negative impression that feeds into the stereotypes that already exist about these instances.
Aren't people on ML instances also doing the exact same thing when they shout down and decry the wretched "liberals" (which seems to refer to anyone left-of-centre who doesn't support communist party rule)? Whether it's "tankie" or "liberal", it only further entrenches the us vs them mindset.
It's a shame that leftist infighting exists to such a degree when we often share about 95% of the same views, compared to the general public.
If you ask in earnest, you'll get good responses. A good number of people ask questions not to learn a different point of view, but to reinforce their own existing biases, which naturally becomes exhausting. Kind of like how POC get tired of justifying their existence to white supremacists, communists often for good reason get tired of trying to justify the existence of countries who choose to follow their own path, outside of the model of bourgeois democracy.
Liberal, unlike tankie, has a fairly precise meaning in political discourse. It can be used too loosely IMO, but it generally means pro-capitalism, pro-individual freedom (including to exploit labor power to earn surplus value), pro free-market, pro-free speech (for all including reactionaries), pro wage-slavery, as well as specific limitations imposed on those considered outside of the "community of the free". Its important to realize that even the US mis-definition of liberal (as vaguely socially progressive) includes all of the above, and the internationally accepted definition of liberal, is right wing (for example, the right wing party in Australia is the liberal party). The best book I can recommend here, is Losurdo's Liberalism - A counter-history.
Not only that, but liberals rule most of the world, and especially most of the economies and governments of anglo-speaking countries, extracting a surplus from the sale of their labor power (who are mostly extremely poorly paid proletarians in the global south), and are responsible for most of the suffering of working-class people worldwide.
That is understandable, however I was more talking about good-faith attempts to express views that are contrary to ML orthodoxy being dogpiled, removed, and banned. I have personal direct experience with this, as do many others who have attempted to engage in political discussions in ML communities. Perhaps users of the ML persuasion are used to being attacked and this why contrarian views are so heavily moderated on ML instances, but quite often this defensive response only leads to alienating other leftists who could be sympathetic to your point of view.
Also, I already understand quite well the differences between classical, social, and neo-liberalism, and how the term is used in the US; I have a degree in political science. My point was that users on ML instances weaponize the term in the same way that other users utilize the term "tankie" in order to dismiss people who disagree with them, ad hominem.
Don't like people putting up a mirror to you?