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[–] 136 points 7 months ago (42 children)

I don’t consider tankies lefter than me.

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  • [–] 96 points 7 months ago (22 children)

    Seriously. Tankies are authoritarians who consider themselves leftists.

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  • [–] 23 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    Authoritarian / libertarian is on a completely different axis from left / right, no?

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  • [–] 73 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    Only on the political compass, which uses a definition of left vs right that a lot of leftists disagree with. Really, the entire history of "left wing" politics has been about questioning and dismantling authority. The terms "left wing" and "right wing" come from the French revolution, when the people in favour of simply reforming the monarchy sat on the right side of the room, while the people who wanted to fully dismantling the monarchy sat on the left. A lot of more modern leftist thought is about questioning the power that capitalist businesses have.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Well said. Still; can you not have authoritarian left and libertarian left viewpoints? I just don’t see how questioning the power capitalist businesses have is limited to the libertarian left.

    What’s wrong with the definition of left & right on the political compass? I’m not super tuned into political science but this is the first I’ve heard that many leftists have take issue with it. I have seen the authoritarian left referred to as “red fascists”, but do they not also take issue with the power capitalist businesses have?

    I suppose I’d consider myself a left libertarian. The power of the state should be limited and what power is granted to the state should be used to improve the life of the people.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    can you not have auth left and lib left viewpoints?

    Yes, but actually no. The distinction is fundamentally unstable. If the left is constantly questioning power structures, it will inevitably turn to whatever structure the auth left comes up with.

    what's wrong with the definition of left and right on the political compass?

    It's specially economic left/right, which is almost always defined by taxation, government spending, and social welfare. While leftists usually say social welfare is a good thing, it's not changing the fundamentals of how capitalism works, which is the current dominant power structure that leftists are against.

    do auth left not also take issue with the power capitalist businesses have?

    Yes, but they usually put something just as bad in its place. You might have heard people saying that the USSR was "state capitalist rather than communist". This means that the workers and customers had just as little say in how things are run than they would under capitalists, only is was directly with the state rather than individual business owners.

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  • [+] -12 points 7 months ago (11 children)
  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    support systems that have brought about immense increases in life expectancy, worker's rights, women's rights, free healthcare, free education, and literally defeated fascism

    Cool, you can make literally that exact same argument about capitalist neo libs.

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  • [–] -1 points 7 months ago (9 children)
  • [+] 1 point 7 months ago* (8 children)
  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Worthwile to note that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were longstanding allies before Operation Barbarossa and a critical amount of steel and oil that supplied the Nazi war machine after the allied embargo was supplied by the Soviet union.

    Which says nothing of the monumental sacrifice given by Soviet civilians, but let's separate that from Stalin's policy, perhaps?

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Anti imperialism? How did they become the largest country on earth?

    Respect of minorities? Tell that to the tens of thousands of people executed in forests. Or starved to death. Because of their identity.

    Industrial development? Yes, current Russia having an economy the size of Italy is a testament to that.

    Plenty of countries have free education and Healthcare.

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  • [+] 0 points 7 months ago* (2 children)
  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Yes, muscovites just made friends, that's not imperialism. Sakha just wanted to give it's oil and minerals to Moscow. Yakutia just wanted desperately to learn Russian. It's not imperialism if there are no boats involved!

    Estonia? Now their GDP per capita is not 20% higher, it's 200% higher than Russia. Yes, triple as high. Obviously Russia was robbing them blind, and holding them back. Same as most other republics and Warsaw pact nations. GDP explosions after ditching the red parasite.

    Ukraine had borders just fine when Soviets invaded them. If not for the war they lost against Poland in 1920 they would have kept invading and repressing nations. Belorussian language is almost extinct nowadays after all the russification. Same for Ukrainian in Eastern Ukraine.

    French killed 1 million Algerians? Rookie numbers, they should have learned from the holodomor.

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  • [+] -7 points 7 months ago (18 children)
  • [–] 13 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    Hey I found the Tankie who thinks they're on the left!

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  • [+] -5 points 7 months ago* (4 children)
  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Bruh just out here punching the air in an empty comment section of a shit posting sub

    Go back to your echo chamber tankie. Nobody likes you. Nobody wants you. But I'm sure your fans enjoy your circle jerk.

    Which actually existing current or historical leftist movements do you support?

    Are you a fucking cop? Get the fuck out of here you loser. I'm sorry everyone hates you. But thats a you issue.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Anarchist Catalonia, modern Rojava, more than a few pre-Columbian North American societies, the Paris Commune of 1793... Maybe read some theory instead of making arguments from ignorance.

    And you can care about results without having historical results. Anti-monarchism in general had basically zero results post-Industrial Revolution until the liberals won in North America in the late 18th century, but that didn't mean that they didn't care about results, just that they hadn't achieved much yet. The American Revolution was pretty quickly followed by the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, several more French revolutions, Brazilian independence, and eventually the October Revolution, the most recent Chinese civil war, the Cuban Revolution, and so on.

    Between 1775 and 1925, the general concept of people voting on matters of statewide policy went from a relic of the Classical Era that had ended more than 1800 years earlier to the norm in North America and Europe. 1800 years of obscurity, then 150 years to ubiquity in the world's wealthiest states and another 50 to expand to most of the rest.

    Sure, anarchism has had a longer period out of the spotlight, not having been the norm since roughly the invention of agriculture ~8000 years ago, but you never know when it might return. Having a concrete, achievable plan to get results is good, but you also want to make sure that the results you're striving for are just, otherwise you end up with liberalism again. And we all know how that ends up.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (10 children)

    Being better at violence doesn't make you more left, it makes you better at violence. That can be useful, but it isn't the same thing. Your argument boils down to "might makes right" and could be expanded to classify social democracy as "more left" (after all, it's left of the global status quo and its citizens are the happiest on average). In fact, you might even be able to use the argument for liberalism; it's left of monarchy and fascism. Sure, it frequently decays into fascism, but so did the USSR.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (8 children)

    Social democracy in the imperial core is to the right of the global status quo, because it depends on imperialism, neocolonialism, and unequal exchange. The USSR, on the other hand, supported anti-imperialist and decolonial movements materially, and set up a socialist economy. Being able to both establish and maintain socialism is a necessary first step for anything that can be considered left, because it's the only leftism that's actually real. No, socialism isn't fascism, and equating the two is a form of Holocaust trivialization with ties to Double Genocide Theory.

    To place Russian communism on the same moral level with Nazi fascism, because both are totalitarian, is, at best, superficial, in the worse case it is fascism. He who insists on this equality may be a democrat; in truth and in his heart, he is already a fascist, and will surely fight fascism with insincerity and appearance, but with complete hatred only communism.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (7 children)

    The global status quo is liberalism. Social democracy is to the left of liberalism.

    And I never said that socialism was fascism, I said that the USSR gave way to fascism. Vladimir Putin's Russian Federation is fascist. The USSR collapsed, and fascism followed, much like the Weimar Republic collapsed and was replaced by the Nazis. That doesn't mean that the liberals in the Weimar Republic were fascists.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (6 children)

    Liberalism and social democracy in the imperial core are imperialist. This is to the right of liberalism and social democracy in the global south. Erasure of imperialism in the question of whether or not a society is progressive historically or reactionary is a mistake, as the imperialist countries are the ones holding back global progress right now. It's kinda like saying landlords are progressive and tenants are reactionary.

    As for the USSR bit, I misread you. Saying it descended into fascism I took to you meaning that it was progressive in the first few years or so but then turned fascist, not that the RF was that fascism. I disagree with the idea that the RF is fascist, it's certainly run by nationalists and is an utter tragedy how far they've fallen from their soviet roots, but that's a different discussion.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago* (5 children)

    India is well to the right of e.g. Norway. Brazil only recently moved to the relative left. Argentina is also very right-wing (and also a lot more settler-colonialist than most of the countries not allowed into the White Countries Club). Iran and Afghanistan are about as far-right as they come, despite being very much opposed to the global order as it stands today. I wasn't discounting the so-called "Global South," I just also don't think that an imperialist past (or even present) is the only factor in determining whether a country is right-wing.

    In fact, I'd potentially go so far as to say that the majority of poorer countries are farther right than wealthier ones. The exceptions that come to mind are Cuba, Vietnam, Burkina Faso, Bolivia, and Mexico, but on the other side you have the ones I've already mentioned, plus Qatar, Lebanon, El Salvador, Pakistan, and more. Not doing imperialism is good, and refusing to do it is better (as opposed to simply being unable), but it doesn't singlehandedly make an extremist theocracy leftist. If your country does not interact with others at all but is still an absolute monarchy with laws that explicitly discriminate against marginalized groups, it's an isolationist right-wing state, not a leftist one.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    The question of being right or left is which role you play, a progressive role or a reactionary one. For all of the ways the nordics may be more progressive internally, it is of a Herrenvolk style, only for them and at the explicit expense of the global south. For all of the social faults of some countries in the global south, their rise is progressive against imperialism, and this rise facilitates social progress internally.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (3 children)

    There is no way to be a leftist or progressive dictatorship. There is no leftist or progressive way to have unequal laws for women, or to prevent gay people from marrying, or to deny people medical care. It's a contradiction in terms. You may believe that Iran or India becoming more powerful is an overall good thing, but it is objectively and definitionally not progressive or leftist.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (2 children)

    Where do you think social progress comes from? It isn't purely economic, of course, but what's critical is that social progress is hampered by imperialism and neocolonialism. When the primary obstacle to global progress, including socially, are these economic systems of brutal plunder, considering countries like the social democracies in the imperial core based purely on their internal policy and not at all on their foreign policy is a grave error.

    Again, it's like you're pointing to a group of landlords and calling them more progressive than their tenants. It's a form of Herrenvolk progressivism, progressivism at the expense of the global south and working against global progress.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    Well, yeah, all you have to do is look at Iran under Mossadegh to realize that reactionary forces often stem from colonial oppression. What doesn't make sense is denying that those forces are reactionary. You can understand why something is happening and still call it what it is.

    The US is largely at fault for how reactionary Iran is, but Iran is still reactionary. If you never learned to swim because your parents wouldn't let you near water, it isn't your fault that you never learned, but you still shouldn't jump in the deep end.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    I am not denying social conservativism as reactionary, I am rejecting the idea that imperialist and neocolonial countries can be considered left of center when they are larger obstacles to forward progress than socially reactionary anti-imperialist countries.

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