Discuss anarchist praxis and philosophy. Don't take yourselves too seriously.
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Authoritarian psychology. Roughly 30% of any given population would much prefer to live in a society of strict hierarchies, rules, and consequences where everyone knows their place.
See: the entire career of Bob Altemeyer. Specifically I recommend "The Authoritarians" it's a free PDF on his website.
What makes you say the term has lost its meaning, OP?
I watched Badmouse's video on tankiesm. There are just too many different definitions of the word tankie.
I can't say I agree with that video, as it only seems to muddy the waters to claim that there's all these different obscure interpretations of what tankie means, when the original and core definition is still the most used and accepted one, especially by Anarchists. By his logic, the term 'Anarchist' would've lost all meaning since some right-wing libertarians call themselves Anarcho-Capitalists, which is nonsense.
A tankie refers to someone who glorifies the authoritarian actions of 'socialist' dictators and regimes. It's a simple and agreed upon definition by virtually everyone on the left except by the very people it describes, who dislike the label even when applied accurately.
Bear in mind that Badmouse once considered himself a Marxist-Leninist, and was likely called a tankie at some point despite his efforts to seemingly reform ML circles to stop denying all the bad authoritarian stuff they did historically, so that may influence his stance on the term, and desire to de-fang it somewhat, despite him now turning back to Anarchism more recently after those reformist attempts failed.
Anarchists have used the term Tankie very consistently since its inception, and the definitions have not changed. Anarchists are against Authoritarianism in all forms, and Tankies are by definition for authoritarianism, often pointing to On Authority by Engels to justify the atrocities committed against Anarchists by tankies, such as the massacre of the Kronstadt sailors, as well as the betrayal and executions of Anarchists in the Russian Revolution and the Spanish Civil War.
People who believe violently murdering socialist allies that don't believe in the dictatorship of the proletariat and follow their every order, and who glaze dictatorships, have very much earned the label of Tankie. There is no ambiguity in that sense.
Fair enough.
You get called a Tankie when complaining about human rights violations in the middle east
You then get called Tankie for using Tankie Sources which are the only sources that document these violations
You then get silenced and labeled fetishist of war when posting direct evidence on the grounds of those violations as an alternative
Then you get cold shoulder treatment and a "you deserved it for using Tankie sources" after talking people through all the above you went through
And finally you check out what Tankies are stay in Tankie spaces
Tbh just watch BadMouse videos to get a deeper view into tankies minds
Isn't BadMouse a post-Anarchist now?
My understanding is that BadMouse is back to anarchism / libertarian socialist, but even before he seemes pretty critical ot tankies.
Thanks
Several times in their life a person learns that something they were taught to believe is bullshit. For example, one may buy into the idea that their own country is the best and their enemies on the global stage are pure evil, only to later learn that life is more complicated than that. Thing is, there is a phenomenon I've personally witnessed where a person confronted with one of these realizations overcorrects instead of actually learning the lesson about nuance. In the above example, this person would adopt the idea that their country's enemies are the best and their own country is evil. They still see the world in black and white just as before, but with the roles reversed. They're so angry about being lied to that they'd uncritically accept the propaganda of said enemy at face value, refusing to consider the idea that they might also be lying because "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".
I'm certainly not an expert on human psychology, but I think this could explain why people end up in these spaces.
no different from becoming a conservatives, they seek out media, posts about tankies propaganda/ right wing propaganda and starts drinking the koolaid without understand the actual politics behind it. or have not taken courses of certain political ideologies, how it evolved.
One potential driver of it is that ML/Stalinist groups are not too dissimilar from a secular religion; it has a group of people ready to welcome you as a friend and ally as long as you agree to a certain worldview and a very specific reading of history from approved texts that always pose historical Maxrist-Leninists as righteous figures who didn't really do anything that bad, and if they did, it was for the greater good, and justified.
Those texts can even make a certain amount of sense if you're disillusioned with the status quo, and distrust western media. It's also likely extremely comforting to believe that while the western world is fucked up and exploitative, there are at the same time powerful allies elsewhere in the form of the AES states, which in their view are making steady progress towards the promised socialist utopia.
So ML groups can offer a feeling of belonging, friendship, a comforting worldview, and the belief that if we just follow the directions of long dead prophet-like historical figures (like Lenin or Stalin), then we will someday have heaven on earth. These are extremely appealing aspects to someone who may be very lonely, or who may have suffered a severe trauma and may not have their basic needs met (which may also be what leads to some people being attracted to the MAGA cult)
To someone well versed in history and a desire to find multiple viewpoints for a historical event to avoid propaganda bubbles, the true nature of ML/Stalinism and its authoritarianism becomes self-evident. But for those who never went down that path and are in a vulnerable state, a 'scientific' cult offering you hope, meaning, and companionship is very easy to fall into, and thus willingly self-delude themselves to attain in-group status.
Just like with normal religions/cults, once they are deep inside it, they are heavily encouraged by the in-group to suspect any outside information that challenges their narratives or isn't approved by the group, and thus the cognitive dissonance they could create if looked at more objectively can mostly be avoided.
Also similar to religions; a ML member is strongly encouraged not to have doubts about the validity of the approved sources/texts/history. If doubts are voiced, the group will attempt to re-affirm the validity of the texts (keep the faith). But if that fails and the member continues to voice doubts, they are likely to be ejected from the group, which is very traumatic for most people, but especially so if there is no other support groups to lean on. This likely results in many keeping doubts to themselves, or convincing themselves those doubts are just CIA lies, similar to how Christians try to reject their own doubts with the concept of Satan spreading lies to tempt a Christian from their faith through logic or archeology.
just to build on this a little further, disillusioned people are more attracted to the familiar than something that requires more internal effort to change. in my observations many of the most adament ML/Stalinist adherents are more supportive of imperial structures with a liberatory aesthetic than they are of structures that are truly challenging to their named enemies. ML/Stalinist thought offers a form of resistance to capitalist structures that doesn't require as much internal change than anarchism, zapatismo, or trotskyism.
what i find interesting though, and that i'm still examining, is that self reported MLs have a tendency to announce that ML/Stalinism/Maoism is the movement of the global south even though leftist movements in the global south tend to hew much more closely to anarchism and trotsyism with a little bit of maoism mixed in. i haven't fully drawn a conclusion yet, but i think a form of confirmation bias is at play. they've divided in their heads the world into East vs West with East being the great global protector of South. they think themselves, as all people do, the good guys. so they look for things in the global south that confirms their perception that they're the good guys rather than examining how leftist movements in the global south differ greatly from the ML model of vanguard revolution
Everything is a team sport now. So that means you have to drop all critical thought processes and just mega stan for "the other side". Or something ;)
Nuance is dead, long live Nuance.
I see you are a pretty good defender of nuance
They get recruited. It’s like any other cult. They find vulnerable and minority groups, and claim they support them. A good example is the trans community of the US. A large number of them (on Lemmy) are very very brainwashed by the Chinese tanks, yet they would have the same or fewer rights over there. Call them on that and wait for the explosion.
That and the actual numbers of tankies are far less because they employ bots and alt accounts to inflate their numbers.
Example, countless times have I made a comment that triggered a tankie. Then, out of the blue a dozen other accounts will swoop in to back up the tankie. This is propaganda, manipulation, gaslighting, and whatever other words you like. It’s likely this is all controlled by one person, and not a dozen individuals who were not instructed.
Not just the trans, any of these tankies, talking their woke shit in China or Russia they would end up in a re-education camp or gulag, you better believe it. They are being used, a long palsied arm of russian intelligence.
Haha right
they likely used bots to brigade you too, same tactic as right wing bot.
yet they would have the same or fewer rights over there. Call them on that and wait for the explosion.
tbh they would probably just say "we admit that China isn't perfect"
out of the blue a dozen other accounts will swoop in to back up the tankie
if your comment isn't at least buried under a chain I don't find that suspicious. comment engagement is higher across the broad here. i think it's better we assume it's a human (cult) so as not to underestimate, and so we engage without losing sight of the biggest thing we have that they often lack—empathy—against their tribalism.
I do think we shouldn’t underestimate their numbers but put it this way, I’ve sent tracking images in private messages under other accounts to multiple users who have commented on mine within a suspicious time frame using identical language, and many, many times it came back with the same IP.
Depending on the receiving instance, the image caching option being on could explain that completely.
It was a house in Sacramento.
Also, it wasn’t just one time.
To add to this:
There's a fairly simple organic path to becoming a tankie (it's also the path to anarcho-authoritarianism) - some number of people, and particularly notably young and impressionable ones, don't invest the nevessary time and effort to fully wrap their heads around the necessary realities of a society truly without hierarchy and are too impatient to accept the fact that a stable classless society will almost certainly not come to be in the near future, and quite possibly not even within their lifetimes, and between the two, they just sort of jump to the conclusion that then the best (or even only possible) strategy is to claim the authority to institutionalize their desired system, completely failing to grasp the fact that institutionalizing it will immediately and permanently make it something other than what they claim to desire.
And from there on out, it's just cognitive dissonance and compensatory behavior.
Few people have the self reflection that they do not have to have a tribe be their whole personality.
Seeing the horrors of centuries of capitalist exploitation, and being raised in and still swamped with propaganda that the USA is the model of freedom and liberty despite plain evidence to the contrary right in front of your face, makes a reasonable person wonder if the countries the US government demonizes might be "the good guys" and makes it hard to believe criticism of, for example China, unless the source of that criticism comes from China itself (which admittedly might we'll be suppressed).
Wealth and capital pours endless resources to attack, belittle and co-opt anything that might threaten its dominance.
Almost nobody truly believes in anything, modal shifts are incomprehensible, deeply internalizing ideas is hard, and even the dumbest mother fucker, even a fucking Nazi, can see shit's fucked and the only thing worse than where we're at is where we're going.
Add in the basic convictions that people dont deserve different shit based on birth (racism bad, monarchy bad, 60/40 sexism bad), people should have shit like food and houses, education is good, and get really angry about how everything is shitty, learn it can be otherwise without learning self criticism. Do not comprehend that the medium is the message.
Find yourself tankie.
Alternatively: capitalism bad what was biggest thing on map to fight capitalism? I'm USSR now. Rawr.
For the same reason people become anarchists: copious amounts of moralism and social media influencers, rarely due to irl groups