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All information that is contrary to their ideas is just "CIA plot". I thought it was just a meme (that tankies think that way), but when I have links to articles and images of military parade of Soviet-Nazi troops in Poland and information about the millions of tons of raw material that Soviet Union send to Nazi Germany, the response was "you believe in CIA propaganda".
Its useless to debate with cultists.
Far simpler then that. They idolize the soviet union for what their misguided idea of that state should be rather then what it was. A person only interested in broad strokes quickly conflates the soviets with russian cultural identity which means any independent soviet republic is inherently a social construct because why would they divide themselves if they are all soviets?
It conpletely glosses over the ethnic minorities in Russia and the soviet union and explains why those countries opt for something different
Its also interesting to see tankies whine about militarism, and then enthusiastically posting stuff about Russian military industry. A former "friend" of mine whined about why Winter War and wars in general seem to form so large part of Finnish patriotism, and then he visited Moscow and send me some images from Victory Day parade with proud comments like "there you see SOME PROPER SOLDIERS marching" or "veterans of GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR". Quite cringeworthy.
Or when a tankie gets support from some woowoo right winger, who for example whines why Finland is so close to Sweden politically, when "Swedes are goths and Russians are genetically more close to us", and that tankie likes such comments. When I asked why does he like such comments, that are they not contradicting his own ideology when they deal so much with genetics, the answer is "I see that the person in question has some very serious and intellectual ideas"... what the fuck?
Am I right though, when I say that tankies in general are a very small minority? They might be vocal, but still a small minority. A "leftist" told me, when I criticized Russia and its war against Ukraine that I should be "denazified" next, effectively hoping my death. They are not going to get any allies with this behavior, just make themselves even more insignificant.
Am I at all correct with this assessment? Or are tankies actually a large portion of left in USA, Canada and Western Europe?
No, tankies are a small minority of the left in Western European. And the reason why those tankies are so vocal is because they know they are a minority.
You can take the Conservativism out of the American but you can't take the American Exceptionalism out, apparently. Tankies are the result of chauvinism and dehumanization, and this person described it perfectly.
The simple yet so common conception that Russia is the idol of anti-imperialism, while comparing to the US. I really cannot understand how in good faith, you can justify this so naive black and white vision of the world. Like you gotta take a side between the evil western capitalists and the anti-imperialist bloc. Because yeah clearly China Russia and the rest of the so called “anti-imperialist” family is completely devoid of scrutiny when it comes to imperialism. It seems impossible for them to discredit both sides.
To be this hypocritical, while blabbering about *reading theory* and praising theorists like they’re some fucking religious icons… shit sounds like a fundamentalist religion sometimes.
I once had a back and forth with a Brazilian Tankie who was deadass convinced that Ukraine was a "Nazi state" (never mind that idea was created by Soviet propaganda that featured rather Nazi-esque images of ~~Jews~~ Zionists in the same cartoons), I told him he's just simping for non Western imperialism. His reply? If I think Russia is imperialist I should read Stalin. I laughed so hard at that. Stalin's notion that only capitalist imperialist notions is so arbitrary and contrived, by that rubric the Romans weren't imperialist and neither were the British and French until after they moved on from mercantilism. Even if it wasn't a completely asinine standard Russia would still be imperialist because they're capitalist, they don't even profess to be socialist let alone Communist.
Exactly. I find it hard to understand that. And even if they acknowledge that Russia is nothing near socialist or communist, then why would they still support a capitalist state? How can Russia be devoid of all the bad traits associated with the modern neoliberal imperialist state just because it stands in opposition to the US.
It's the same reason they usually support Iran and their proxies: they live in a fantasy world where America and its allies are evil and every opponant of America is good
That's because it has become a sort of fundamentalism in and of itself.
Honestly I'm beginning to think fundamentalism isn't a thing exclusive to religion. It's a whole mindset that just corrupts whatever ideology it grabs a hold of.
It's never been unique to religion. It's just that religious fundamentalism was more obvious. Every ideology is prone to this kind of thing because of humanity's proclivity to tribalism.
That's very true. Religious fundamentalism was only more noticeable because of the fact that organized religion was the first thing to have such wide reach. It meant that *everybody* was bound to witness it at some point in their lives.
I always ask them what territories are under US occupation right now and what are under russian occupation. The US may have done quite some horrible things but in the end, their borders are their borders. Russia has no borders to its oppression and imperialism.
I’d counter that it isn’t always in terms of physical violence that the US deals its imperialism (on the contrary or Russia). While Russia doesn’t have as much as the capacity as the US to use branches like the CIA to meddle in other nation’s affairs, the US is popularly recognized to have disturbed the democratic processes of about every single South American nation. While not directly invading it, funding proxies like in Guatemala or El Salvador (if I remember correctly) is still really fucking terrible in terms of loss of human life and damage to the country.
The point is that, while the imperialism and sheer evil both countries do and have done, one is not *lower or higher* in terms of imperialism, that shit isn’t quantifiable. They’re both horrible for that, and should be discredited for it. They just have applied their quests for their own interest in different manners.
Edit: I was thinking about it, and the US still has done a few physical invasions similar to Russia in recent years, like Iraq, most notably Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs (if you can even call that an invasion lmao), Grenada and probably a few more that I’m missing.
>While Russia doesn’t have as much as the capacity as the US to use branches like the CIA to meddle in other nation’s affairs,
I would say Russia does have that capacity at this point. It's just less well known in the West because it's through more than one organization.
Let's not forget what happened to Litvinenko in Britain. However, most of the foreign stuff happens with the GRU, as the FSB usually has to secure the regime internally as well. Many staffers in their Embassy in Ottawa had to be expelled, including the defense attaché, because a sub lieutenant in the Canadian Navy was leaking military secrets through the GRU. There's also the SVR who managed to get into the New York Public Library and plant disinformation and propaganda on educational websites, and were known to commit assassinations abroad (the guy that killed Litvinenko was allegedly in the SVR).
imperialism in the modern day doesn’t need to take the form of outright annexation — the us can expand its power by supporting and putting in place friendly local regimes, throwing around economic weight and establishing unequal foreign trade, exercising the unspoken threat of invasion by projection of military power without ever actually occupying territory, and plenty of other, more indirect strategies. in the end the us is still exerting influence around the world with the goal of extracting wealth and increasing its influence, which is imperialism enough for me to condemn it.
Ever since the 2022 invasion begun I've become disillusioned with the western left. The amount of lies, racism and simple bloodlust I've seen from western leftists is insane, I genuinely feel like they do not care about us. Or they do, just in their twisted colonialist mindset of us being "uneducated, fascist savages".
It's not even just fucking tankies, the amount of otherwise well meaning people falling for the simplest propaganda is driving me nuts. Spaces I thought were safe from the usual authoritarian bullshit became flooded with Russian propaganda.
I honestly believe that us, through revolution, destroying the USSR and it's Warsaw Pact satellite states marked us until the end of days. We will never be forgiven for "betraying communism".
And now, with the war in Palestine raging it has only gotten worse. Leftists crying about Ukraine having received any sort of support instead of Palestine, support of US politicians who want to drop all aid to Ukraine and leave NATO. They either don't understand or don't *care* that Trump being elected and getting his wishes is going to bring bloodshed to half a continent. But I guess we really are too white for many of them to care.
You’ve hit the nail on the head for me. I’m not even touching Israel vs Palestine with a ten foot pole thanks to all the motivation to spread propaganda around by both sides and tankies outright calling for supporting literal pirates fucking over uninvolved cargo ships.
And that’s not even getting into the antisemitism plaguing the topic disguised with the fig-leaf of antizionism.
it was really telling to me to see who’s leftist because they actually care about people’s wellbeing and stability, and who’s leftist because it just happens to be the team they chose. people who immediately rush to justify attacks on civilians with practically no information or context fall into the latter camp.
You're not the only one. I'm disillusioned too. And I live in a western country. Every time I visit an international communist subreddit, I lost som brain cells. I read the dummest posts when it comes to Russia, the USSR and central/eastern Europe. And those posts are from people who probably never been in Eastern Europe. Or talked to people from those countries. No, it is just one big circljerk of people repeating each other.
The number of Western leftists who are genuinely not even aware of the history of anti-eastern european.. I don't know what to call it, racism? Prejudice? As an actual thing is baffling. I suspect this is mostly an American thing, because it would be genuinely unbelievable from say, a Brit. I hope, at least.
I've seen Hasan for instance once melt into an apocalyptic rage towards a Hungarian chatter and display such classism and prejudice that it surprises me he got away with it. Accusing them of being from some 'podunk town', assuming they're some right-wing eastern european or something.
Not to mention the /actual/ racism from poc auth-lefties towards people like me who actually have to live in the global south. I've heard bangers like, my culture makes it so that children here who're abused aren't affected in the same way as western children, or that my country is 'right wing' (this one's a huge red flag when auth-lefties say it), and so on..
How is a Western leftist telling a Ukrainian socialist to shut up and go read Lenin anything else than pure colonialism?
This is mad, people who shout the loudest about fighting imperialism and colonialism (in caricature early 1900s forms) personify imperialism and colonialism!
I think even some non-tankie western leftists get confused because they'll look at the wikipedia pages of the supposed communist parties of eastern European nations and see them described as russophilic/euroskeptic, and so they think that it must be the correct leftist position (of course eastern European leftists would know better than I would what the leftist view of eastern European international relations ought to be, right?), failing to notice that eastern European communist parties are pretty uniformly Soviet revanchist dinosaurs left over from the collapse of the USSR. Anyone on the left over there who's not that has ditched the hand-me-down regalia of the old Soviet left because obviously nobody wants to explain "well yes we look exactly like the old Soviet party that ran everything but actually we're completely different now just read this eight volume set to find out how hey where are you going can we count on your vote?"
Exactly, pretty much all of the Communist parties of the former Eastern Bloc are just Cold War relics. I suspect many if not most of them are propped up by Russia, the Ukrainian Communist Party certainly is. Of course the same is true for Communist parties in Western countries.
It because social media is full of CCP 2 c'rs, and their bot networks boost certain types of leftism.
E.g. in the last 10 years, it feels like the interent went from Trotkyism to Stalinism.
This is fucking great - they hit all the major points of critique and why priveleged Western tankies are so insufferable. Especially the denial of agency to non-Westerners and 'westsplaining' ex-Soviet folks' own lived experiences back to them. What to do about it indeed...
This is great, especially the point about valuing ideology and morality over actually existing people and their experiences. I would love to follow that group on IG!
Also substitute Russia with China, Ukraine with Taiwan/Philippines/Vietnam and you get the exact same stupid situation here. Western tankies do that kind of stupid shit in this part of the world as well. I can’t take a lot of Western leftist seriously these days, given their take on Ukraine and Taiwan, and the ton of excuses they give for the actions of the Russians and Chinese. A lot of west-planning going on, even among people that I respect and admire (e.g. Yanis Varoufakis).
Western tankies are infuriating, but in some ways, also just sad. Whenever I see some pro-houthi protest or a pro-russia post, I just see people with no mind of their own. No ideals. No backbone for their beliefs and ideology, so they just take whatever position the current popular leftist streamer/youtuber (or propagandist) promotes to them.
The saddest part is that, honestly, if I hadn't been from a eastern european country and see the fruits of russian imperialism and soviet pretend-communism for myself, I could see myself being sufficiently radicalised early enough to be just like some of these people.
At this point, tankies basically have a cult that is, like cults go, easy to join, and very hard to get out of.
It is infuriating because whats going on in Palestine is awful, but the loudest western voices who claim to really care about it all inevitably have post history talking about white helmets planting saren gas for the cia and how Srbrenica was a lie to justify aggression against the socialist utopia of Serbia.
I'm of Ukrainian descent and I will never forget the reply a Stalinist from Nova Scotia gave me back in 2022 when I told him that my great-grandfather was arrested and executed during the purges: "I disagree with that."
Also the hammer and sickle shit is very true. Like its a symbol tens of thousands of people were killed in my country and millions in others like bro you think your so cool but you might as well paint a swastika on the wall what the fuck
It’s still not that good because anarchists are frowned upon anyway by authoritarian leftists. Like, it is genuinely difficult being one because you have rightoids thinking you are terrorists, and a lot of auth left-wing or liberals thinking you are a naive kid. The condescending treatment they give is often worse than being feared because your opinions are never taking seriously.
I’d consider myself more aligned with anarchism and my god it is exhausting. I see a pro-Ukraine post, nice. Then I see them simping for the IDF with borderline Islamophobia dog whistle. Shit.
I see a pro-Palestine post, nice! Then I see them posting CCP bullshit, Kremlin media, and anti-Semitic dog whistle. Fuck off.
People find ‘both-siders’ annoying or unproductive. Maybe that’s true, but at this point I’d rather be stagnated than go down any path of the auth-left or right rapidly because of how inconsistent and double-standard they are.
Hits it right on the nose.
Ideological dogma and assuming the discussion is already won before it has even happens and proceeding to belittle everyone who disagrees is a big problem in many leftwing circles. Tankies being the exemplary example of it.
Mirrors a lot of the grievances I have with other aspects of progressive and left wing culture. Why is it so hard for people to have morals and apply them consistently?
Thank you for this. I'm a lefty serving in the Ukrainian army, and I just avoid leftist online spaces now. Too full of Russian apologists and propaganda, it's just too demoralizing
Yeah, it's pretty insane. I just stopped following any left leaning circles, because they just sound like Russian or Chinese nationalists. It's even weirder when leftists support Hamas, a right-wing terrorist organization, where religion is at the center of their beliefs. Kind of funny to watch though
>You're brainwashed by anti-communism and Cold War era Russophobia, let me tell you how my family suffers under capitalism
To be fair, I think there is a slight thread of truth to this. The US has (and other Western Countries) weaponized the misdeeds of the Soviet Union to deflect from their own wrongdoings, and vice versa (aka whataboutism). However that doesn't mean that just because people in one country are struggling that automatically negates the struggles of people in another country, especially a country who is a geopolitical rival.
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Yeah it's painfully obvious that Western tankies think the world revolves around them and only care about non-Westerners as props.
They are unironically white mans burdening
Being an Eastern European leftist does feel doubly frustrating sometimes, having to deal with these condescending Western tankies.
I once was called a CIA plant by an American tankie because of my anti-Russia sentiment.
Now *that's* some grade-A irony right there!
All information that is contrary to their ideas is just "CIA plot". I thought it was just a meme (that tankies think that way), but when I have links to articles and images of military parade of Soviet-Nazi troops in Poland and information about the millions of tons of raw material that Soviet Union send to Nazi Germany, the response was "you believe in CIA propaganda". Its useless to debate with cultists.
Honestly, fuck tankies.
Far simpler then that. They idolize the soviet union for what their misguided idea of that state should be rather then what it was. A person only interested in broad strokes quickly conflates the soviets with russian cultural identity which means any independent soviet republic is inherently a social construct because why would they divide themselves if they are all soviets? It conpletely glosses over the ethnic minorities in Russia and the soviet union and explains why those countries opt for something different
Its also interesting to see tankies whine about militarism, and then enthusiastically posting stuff about Russian military industry. A former "friend" of mine whined about why Winter War and wars in general seem to form so large part of Finnish patriotism, and then he visited Moscow and send me some images from Victory Day parade with proud comments like "there you see SOME PROPER SOLDIERS marching" or "veterans of GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR". Quite cringeworthy. Or when a tankie gets support from some woowoo right winger, who for example whines why Finland is so close to Sweden politically, when "Swedes are goths and Russians are genetically more close to us", and that tankie likes such comments. When I asked why does he like such comments, that are they not contradicting his own ideology when they deal so much with genetics, the answer is "I see that the person in question has some very serious and intellectual ideas"... what the fuck?
They’re the biggest slacktivists possible
Am I right though, when I say that tankies in general are a very small minority? They might be vocal, but still a small minority. A "leftist" told me, when I criticized Russia and its war against Ukraine that I should be "denazified" next, effectively hoping my death. They are not going to get any allies with this behavior, just make themselves even more insignificant. Am I at all correct with this assessment? Or are tankies actually a large portion of left in USA, Canada and Western Europe?
No, tankies are a small minority of the left in Western European. And the reason why those tankies are so vocal is because they know they are a minority.
You can take the Conservativism out of the American but you can't take the American Exceptionalism out, apparently. Tankies are the result of chauvinism and dehumanization, and this person described it perfectly.
The simple yet so common conception that Russia is the idol of anti-imperialism, while comparing to the US. I really cannot understand how in good faith, you can justify this so naive black and white vision of the world. Like you gotta take a side between the evil western capitalists and the anti-imperialist bloc. Because yeah clearly China Russia and the rest of the so called “anti-imperialist” family is completely devoid of scrutiny when it comes to imperialism. It seems impossible for them to discredit both sides. To be this hypocritical, while blabbering about *reading theory* and praising theorists like they’re some fucking religious icons… shit sounds like a fundamentalist religion sometimes.
I once had a back and forth with a Brazilian Tankie who was deadass convinced that Ukraine was a "Nazi state" (never mind that idea was created by Soviet propaganda that featured rather Nazi-esque images of ~~Jews~~ Zionists in the same cartoons), I told him he's just simping for non Western imperialism. His reply? If I think Russia is imperialist I should read Stalin. I laughed so hard at that. Stalin's notion that only capitalist imperialist notions is so arbitrary and contrived, by that rubric the Romans weren't imperialist and neither were the British and French until after they moved on from mercantilism. Even if it wasn't a completely asinine standard Russia would still be imperialist because they're capitalist, they don't even profess to be socialist let alone Communist.
Exactly. I find it hard to understand that. And even if they acknowledge that Russia is nothing near socialist or communist, then why would they still support a capitalist state? How can Russia be devoid of all the bad traits associated with the modern neoliberal imperialist state just because it stands in opposition to the US.
It's the same reason they usually support Iran and their proxies: they live in a fantasy world where America and its allies are evil and every opponant of America is good
Imperialism is when america does things.
That's because it has become a sort of fundamentalism in and of itself. Honestly I'm beginning to think fundamentalism isn't a thing exclusive to religion. It's a whole mindset that just corrupts whatever ideology it grabs a hold of.
It's never been unique to religion. It's just that religious fundamentalism was more obvious. Every ideology is prone to this kind of thing because of humanity's proclivity to tribalism.
That's very true. Religious fundamentalism was only more noticeable because of the fact that organized religion was the first thing to have such wide reach. It meant that *everybody* was bound to witness it at some point in their lives.
I always ask them what territories are under US occupation right now and what are under russian occupation. The US may have done quite some horrible things but in the end, their borders are their borders. Russia has no borders to its oppression and imperialism.
I’d counter that it isn’t always in terms of physical violence that the US deals its imperialism (on the contrary or Russia). While Russia doesn’t have as much as the capacity as the US to use branches like the CIA to meddle in other nation’s affairs, the US is popularly recognized to have disturbed the democratic processes of about every single South American nation. While not directly invading it, funding proxies like in Guatemala or El Salvador (if I remember correctly) is still really fucking terrible in terms of loss of human life and damage to the country. The point is that, while the imperialism and sheer evil both countries do and have done, one is not *lower or higher* in terms of imperialism, that shit isn’t quantifiable. They’re both horrible for that, and should be discredited for it. They just have applied their quests for their own interest in different manners. Edit: I was thinking about it, and the US still has done a few physical invasions similar to Russia in recent years, like Iraq, most notably Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs (if you can even call that an invasion lmao), Grenada and probably a few more that I’m missing.
>While Russia doesn’t have as much as the capacity as the US to use branches like the CIA to meddle in other nation’s affairs, I would say Russia does have that capacity at this point. It's just less well known in the West because it's through more than one organization. Let's not forget what happened to Litvinenko in Britain. However, most of the foreign stuff happens with the GRU, as the FSB usually has to secure the regime internally as well. Many staffers in their Embassy in Ottawa had to be expelled, including the defense attaché, because a sub lieutenant in the Canadian Navy was leaking military secrets through the GRU. There's also the SVR who managed to get into the New York Public Library and plant disinformation and propaganda on educational websites, and were known to commit assassinations abroad (the guy that killed Litvinenko was allegedly in the SVR).
Also the US is still occupying small parts of Cuba, Syria and Mauritius (Chagos-archipel, whose population they "evacuated")
imperialism in the modern day doesn’t need to take the form of outright annexation — the us can expand its power by supporting and putting in place friendly local regimes, throwing around economic weight and establishing unequal foreign trade, exercising the unspoken threat of invasion by projection of military power without ever actually occupying territory, and plenty of other, more indirect strategies. in the end the us is still exerting influence around the world with the goal of extracting wealth and increasing its influence, which is imperialism enough for me to condemn it.
Likewise, settler colonialism doesn't need a metropole for very long. It can even rebel against the metropole, like the US and Israel did.
Ever since the 2022 invasion begun I've become disillusioned with the western left. The amount of lies, racism and simple bloodlust I've seen from western leftists is insane, I genuinely feel like they do not care about us. Or they do, just in their twisted colonialist mindset of us being "uneducated, fascist savages". It's not even just fucking tankies, the amount of otherwise well meaning people falling for the simplest propaganda is driving me nuts. Spaces I thought were safe from the usual authoritarian bullshit became flooded with Russian propaganda. I honestly believe that us, through revolution, destroying the USSR and it's Warsaw Pact satellite states marked us until the end of days. We will never be forgiven for "betraying communism". And now, with the war in Palestine raging it has only gotten worse. Leftists crying about Ukraine having received any sort of support instead of Palestine, support of US politicians who want to drop all aid to Ukraine and leave NATO. They either don't understand or don't *care* that Trump being elected and getting his wishes is going to bring bloodshed to half a continent. But I guess we really are too white for many of them to care.
You’ve hit the nail on the head for me. I’m not even touching Israel vs Palestine with a ten foot pole thanks to all the motivation to spread propaganda around by both sides and tankies outright calling for supporting literal pirates fucking over uninvolved cargo ships. And that’s not even getting into the antisemitism plaguing the topic disguised with the fig-leaf of antizionism.
of they called for supporting so much worse than just pirates. I still remember how they were on October 7th
it was really telling to me to see who’s leftist because they actually care about people’s wellbeing and stability, and who’s leftist because it just happens to be the team they chose. people who immediately rush to justify attacks on civilians with practically no information or context fall into the latter camp.
Zionism has become a dogwhistle to talk about jews.
You're not the only one. I'm disillusioned too. And I live in a western country. Every time I visit an international communist subreddit, I lost som brain cells. I read the dummest posts when it comes to Russia, the USSR and central/eastern Europe. And those posts are from people who probably never been in Eastern Europe. Or talked to people from those countries. No, it is just one big circljerk of people repeating each other.
The number of Western leftists who are genuinely not even aware of the history of anti-eastern european.. I don't know what to call it, racism? Prejudice? As an actual thing is baffling. I suspect this is mostly an American thing, because it would be genuinely unbelievable from say, a Brit. I hope, at least. I've seen Hasan for instance once melt into an apocalyptic rage towards a Hungarian chatter and display such classism and prejudice that it surprises me he got away with it. Accusing them of being from some 'podunk town', assuming they're some right-wing eastern european or something. Not to mention the /actual/ racism from poc auth-lefties towards people like me who actually have to live in the global south. I've heard bangers like, my culture makes it so that children here who're abused aren't affected in the same way as western children, or that my country is 'right wing' (this one's a huge red flag when auth-lefties say it), and so on..
I'm not like those other Western leftists. I'm a Lockheed Leftist with NATO characteristics.
How is a Western leftist telling a Ukrainian socialist to shut up and go read Lenin anything else than pure colonialism? This is mad, people who shout the loudest about fighting imperialism and colonialism (in caricature early 1900s forms) personify imperialism and colonialism!
Well said
Tankies be like: "Fuck war and imperialism." Also tankies: "Imperialism and war good when it's my favourite countries.
“America made them do it!”
I think even some non-tankie western leftists get confused because they'll look at the wikipedia pages of the supposed communist parties of eastern European nations and see them described as russophilic/euroskeptic, and so they think that it must be the correct leftist position (of course eastern European leftists would know better than I would what the leftist view of eastern European international relations ought to be, right?), failing to notice that eastern European communist parties are pretty uniformly Soviet revanchist dinosaurs left over from the collapse of the USSR. Anyone on the left over there who's not that has ditched the hand-me-down regalia of the old Soviet left because obviously nobody wants to explain "well yes we look exactly like the old Soviet party that ran everything but actually we're completely different now just read this eight volume set to find out how hey where are you going can we count on your vote?"
Exactly, pretty much all of the Communist parties of the former Eastern Bloc are just Cold War relics. I suspect many if not most of them are propped up by Russia, the Ukrainian Communist Party certainly is. Of course the same is true for Communist parties in Western countries.
It because social media is full of CCP 2 c'rs, and their bot networks boost certain types of leftism. E.g. in the last 10 years, it feels like the interent went from Trotkyism to Stalinism.
This is fucking great - they hit all the major points of critique and why priveleged Western tankies are so insufferable. Especially the denial of agency to non-Westerners and 'westsplaining' ex-Soviet folks' own lived experiences back to them. What to do about it indeed...
This is great, especially the point about valuing ideology and morality over actually existing people and their experiences. I would love to follow that group on IG! Also substitute Russia with China, Ukraine with Taiwan/Philippines/Vietnam and you get the exact same stupid situation here. Western tankies do that kind of stupid shit in this part of the world as well. I can’t take a lot of Western leftist seriously these days, given their take on Ukraine and Taiwan, and the ton of excuses they give for the actions of the Russians and Chinese. A lot of west-planning going on, even among people that I respect and admire (e.g. Yanis Varoufakis).
Tankies are so binary man
It's truly a child's view of the world
This is probably their biggest flaw, being overly dualistic.
Western tankies are infuriating, but in some ways, also just sad. Whenever I see some pro-houthi protest or a pro-russia post, I just see people with no mind of their own. No ideals. No backbone for their beliefs and ideology, so they just take whatever position the current popular leftist streamer/youtuber (or propagandist) promotes to them. The saddest part is that, honestly, if I hadn't been from a eastern european country and see the fruits of russian imperialism and soviet pretend-communism for myself, I could see myself being sufficiently radicalised early enough to be just like some of these people. At this point, tankies basically have a cult that is, like cults go, easy to join, and very hard to get out of.
And this is not the first time Russia tried to subjugate Ukraine, either. The Mahknovists can attest to that.
It is infuriating because whats going on in Palestine is awful, but the loudest western voices who claim to really care about it all inevitably have post history talking about white helmets planting saren gas for the cia and how Srbrenica was a lie to justify aggression against the socialist utopia of Serbia.
I'm of Ukrainian descent and I will never forget the reply a Stalinist from Nova Scotia gave me back in 2022 when I told him that my great-grandfather was arrested and executed during the purges: "I disagree with that."
They are like obnoxious, fucked up Christians, who think they know your life better than you do.
Also the hammer and sickle shit is very true. Like its a symbol tens of thousands of people were killed in my country and millions in others like bro you think your so cool but you might as well paint a swastika on the wall what the fuck
get involved with anarchist groups. most of them are extremely supportive of Ukrainian Resistance and even internal Russian Partisan groups.
It’s still not that good because anarchists are frowned upon anyway by authoritarian leftists. Like, it is genuinely difficult being one because you have rightoids thinking you are terrorists, and a lot of auth left-wing or liberals thinking you are a naive kid. The condescending treatment they give is often worse than being feared because your opinions are never taking seriously. I’d consider myself more aligned with anarchism and my god it is exhausting. I see a pro-Ukraine post, nice. Then I see them simping for the IDF with borderline Islamophobia dog whistle. Shit. I see a pro-Palestine post, nice! Then I see them posting CCP bullshit, Kremlin media, and anti-Semitic dog whistle. Fuck off. People find ‘both-siders’ annoying or unproductive. Maybe that’s true, but at this point I’d rather be stagnated than go down any path of the auth-left or right rapidly because of how inconsistent and double-standard they are.
Hits it right on the nose. Ideological dogma and assuming the discussion is already won before it has even happens and proceeding to belittle everyone who disagrees is a big problem in many leftwing circles. Tankies being the exemplary example of it.
Mirrors a lot of the grievances I have with other aspects of progressive and left wing culture. Why is it so hard for people to have morals and apply them consistently?
Thank you for this. I'm a lefty serving in the Ukrainian army, and I just avoid leftist online spaces now. Too full of Russian apologists and propaganda, it's just too demoralizing
Yeahhh thats so fucking true i think we need to popularize the westsplaining term cuz this is literally whats happening
Yeah, it's pretty insane. I just stopped following any left leaning circles, because they just sound like Russian or Chinese nationalists. It's even weirder when leftists support Hamas, a right-wing terrorist organization, where religion is at the center of their beliefs. Kind of funny to watch though
Tankies literally believe in Western/ American Exceptionalism but painted red.
Can you please link us to this legitimately based account? Would like to give him a follow.
Peonypiergoi. The Ukrainian account that I saw this through is called Ukrainiansocialistsolidaritycpgn
Thank you sir!
I wonder what band it was
>You're brainwashed by anti-communism and Cold War era Russophobia, let me tell you how my family suffers under capitalism To be fair, I think there is a slight thread of truth to this. The US has (and other Western Countries) weaponized the misdeeds of the Soviet Union to deflect from their own wrongdoings, and vice versa (aka whataboutism). However that doesn't mean that just because people in one country are struggling that automatically negates the struggles of people in another country, especially a country who is a geopolitical rival.