MeanwhileOnGrad
"Oh, this is calamity! Calamity! Oh no, he's on the floor!"
Welcome to MoG!
Meanwhile On Grad
Documenting hate speech, conspiracy theories, apologia/revisionism, and general tankie behaviour across the fediverse. Memes are welcome!
What is a Tankie?
Alternatively, a detailed blog post about Tankies.
(caution of biased source)
Basic Rules:
Sh.itjust.works Instance rules apply! If you are from other instances, please be mindful of the rules. — Basically, don't be a dick.
Hate-Speech — You should be familiar with this one already; practically all instances have the same rules on hate speech.
Apologia — (Using the Modern terminology for Apologia) No Defending, Denying, Justifying, Bolstering, or Differentiating authoritarian acts or endeavours, whether be a Pro-CCP viewpoint, Stalinism, Islamic Terrorism or any variation of Tankie Ideology.
Revisionism — No downplaying or denying atrocities past and present. Calling Tankies shills, foreign/federal agents, or bots also falls under this rule. Extremists exist. They are real. Do not call them shills or fake users as it handwaves their extremism.
Tankies can explain their views but may be criticised or attacked for them. Any slight infraction on the rules above will immediately earn a warning and possibly a ban.
Off-topic Discussion — Do not discuss unrelated topics to the point of derailing the thread. Stay focused on the direct content of the post as opposed to arguing.
You'll be warned if you're violating the instance and community rules. Continuing poor behaviour after being warned will result in a ban or removal of your comments. Bans typically only last 24 hours, but each subsequent infraction will double the amount. Depending on the content, the ban time may be increased. You may request an unban at any time.
view the rest of the comments
I disagree. The defining characteristic of the left is the belief in owning the means of production. Authoritarian right still believes in privately owned corporations owning the means of production, while the authoritarian left believes in state ownership of the means of production. (Which, IMO, is slightly worse than corporate ownership, as you have no higher authority to whom you can appeal.) The anti-authoritarian left believes that the people themselves should directly control the means of production, without an intermediary like the state.
The problem is they don't under leninism. Not in any actual sense. The vanguard party does. Everyone else are disposable proletariat. To be imprisoned or slaughtered should the vanguard party feel threatened.
Modern Russian oligarchs were given their wealth and position by the vanguard. Not by the proletariat. China is a similar story. Leninism/maoism has never, and will never work. It's just a system that creates the same wealthy ruling class via slightly different means. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Not all of leftists are Leninists though. Certainly some are, maybe most. But Leninism is only one form of leftist belief. I'm personally much closer to an anarchist than a Leninist. (...And I'm very, very aware that anarchists end up getting executed as soon as leftist coalitions take power.) I also recognize that a truly non-hierarchical society is functionally unworkable at anything larger than a tribal level, and that there's a strong tendency for non-hierarchical socialist societies to devolve into authoritarianism at the slightest provocation.
I don't think that I ever implied that they were. Because that would be really silly me being a left anarchist/libertarian. I have no problem with leftists or knowing what leftists are. I just have problem with authoritarians whether they pretend to be left or right.
And yes hierarchies are not completely avoidable. But they should be as local and as granular as possible. And we can have a really vociferous and act of debate on that. But National level organizations have always been one of the biggest problems.
I agree with that 100%. No matter how good the local group is, it can quickly be poisoned by the national org. I understand wanting to organize nationally, because that's how you start to wield real power, buuuuuuuttttttt...
Yes they may be a necessary evil to some extent but they should always be the ones answerable to others and not the one to be answered to. So many of our current problems with parties here in the United States stem from over concentration/centralization. Large unanswerable on accountable organizations that ignore the General Public. And especially when it comes to Democrats do not invest locally.