Oh man this was one month ago? It feels like years.

The Post 9/11 situation with Mass Media and RT is why it's so desperately important for a Government to not lie or cover up it's actions. Another example of this is Al Jazeera. The US Government's dedication to hiding its dirty deeds opened the door for AJ to establish credibility which they later used against the US and it's Government.

I think it’s also in large part due to the human tendency to simplify reality. Reality is often complex, but we prefer to thing in categories, like black and white. And so you often see people thinking in or blindly accepting false binaries. Side A bad, so side B bad.

Agreed.

Nuance is difficult, and arguably more to the point, it's sort of vague and insubstantial, not least because an awful lot of it necessariky boils down to "I don't know." People generally prefer something more solid to which to cling, so tend toward absolutes and unjustified certainties. And the most attractive ones are binaristic, because then you don't even have to provide support for your claimed position - all you have to do is find fault with the (generally falsely dichotomous) alternative.

Your comment is on point, but it is your username that makes it perfect

It’s possible for someone to study the spectrum of political ideology and rationally decide that Communism is the best system.

Seems you're assuming all communists are tankies, when they wrote about communist nations, ie, communist states which are all some variety of Marxism-Leninism, not general communism. Who's being reductive here?

THANK you. I was considering saying something similar here, and did in response to another ignorant, self-assuaging user elsewhere in the thread. So I'll just say the same thing I said to them, as a response to WatDabney above:

If you read the many comments in this thread, not to mention other threads on this topic, a significant chunk of western leftists who are ML arrive at Marxism Leninism only after going through a more anarchist phase, and only through a lot of examination of the world and themselves, coupled with a lot of study and reading, do they move from anarchism to come to recognize the undeniable accuracy of Marxism Leninism to reflect the real world and to offer an actually-working methodology for revolution.

Your fallacious description of people's process towards becoming Marxist Leninists as being the same sort of way that poor, ignorant, emotionally needy people latch onto a cult, is ridiculous, and the kind of things liberals like to say of all of us on the anticapitalist left to comfort themselves into maintaining their simplistic "I'm right but they're wrong" worldview and avoid having to engage with the many real reasons people become anticapitalists. But that's what you're doing. Don't be like the liberals. Try to understand the real why of things, don't make up nice little bedtime stories that ensure you don't have to examine your own misconceptions.

And some of them just get born into it.

No one is born into Marxism Leninism, anarchism, or any other ideology, and saying that is a grotesquely anti-anarchist thing to say.

And to add to that, when first coming to realize the lies you've been told by the state you live under, it is a lack of nuance to immediately jump to the false premise that just because your state is bad, that must mean all states are bad. That's just the easy and childish answer. That doesn't make it inherently wrong, but it does make it the one that requires further examination and sometimes a hard look at ones misconceptions. MLs are the ones who have done that hard work, not the ones who have fallen for the easy, un-nuanced end point. As someone else here went into a lot of detail describing but I can't find at the moment, the typical and more easy trajectory for a young leftist is to go from disillusionment at their own state to anarchism. It is only after a lot more learning, examination, and recognition of nuance, that a person comes to see that the understandable kneejerk reaction that "all of them are evil!" is naive, simplistic, and totally lacking the nuance these things need.

It takes more internal work to conclude that "oh wow, all these other things I assumed were just the flat truth, common knowledge, - like how evil the communist states were and how bad they were for their people - were actually just more lies I was being told for a reason." Which is why we have so many young anarchists who over time become ML's but only rarely the other way around. @WatDabney@lemmy.dbzer0.com has it exactly backwards.

Uh, I don't think you understood their point. Tankies aren't communists, they're authoritarians with a red paint job. We're not talking about nuanced Marxist thinkers, we're taking about people who think "Just line everyone who doesn't accept my exact interpretation of communism up against the wall" is rational praxis.

There are plenty of ways to rationally arrive at Communism, but really the only way to get to Tankie is, as the top comment says, rejecting Western propaganda in favor of the propaganda of so-called "communists".

Hey I can understand your frustration at their supposedly misplaced reasoning. But you have to let them have that view for some time so their own experience can align it closer to what you believe is happening. It shouldn't be disheartening that people might have incorrect explanations of how the world works for some time.

You are right that we cannot know and understand the life of every individual in a group, but we may observe typical or aggregate behavior, and we may seek reasonable inferences.

Tankies express a general pattern of behavior that is bad faith.

They quote passages instead of explaining from personal comprehension. They attack individuals against an opportunity to discuss ideas. They defer to doctrine instead of reasoning independently. They anchor to absurd lies about anarchists. They lie and deny instead of admitting to problems. They rely on disingenuous rhetoric such as the motte-and-bailey fallacy.

Such observations converge on a pattern of anchoring to convictions for reasons that are unrigorous, prejudiced, and generally misguided.

the necessity of employing state power against literal fascists, landlords, capitalists, sabateurs, etc, then you're implicitly making the point that we should let these groups run free for a sense of greater "freedom,"

Firstly, fascists came much later as response to the growth of communist movements. Communism did not start to prevent fascists, it's the other way around, not that I am condoning the latter but this is simply the historical truth.

Second, Marxist Leninist communists killed even other different flavour of communists. A famous example were the Kronstadt sailors who simply wanted actual horizontal distribution of power like free and fair electione, and actual worker-run businesses. Instead, the Marxist-Leninist Bolsheviks killed them in the name of "vanguardism", ie to maintain state power that you just invoked. The state power is merely the centralisation of power and authority for the few.

In reality, communists become so because of disaffections with present capitalist systems, and seek answers from Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc. The fact that some party members are opportunists doesn't make that a fact of communism.

Yes, yes, theory, theory and all that; but that doesn't ignore the fact that empirical realities negate the idealism that communism purport to espouse. Going back to Bertrand Russell's quote: it quite literally is a veiled attempt to grab power. Actions and end results must comply with idealism but alas, that didn't happen even in communism.

I would argue that Democratic Socialism works somewhat better than the perverse form of capitalism that exists today. It does have its flaws also. See the increasing surveillance of the population in the EU that is being pushed by politicians as a start.

At some point in the future, socialism will fail just like every other form of governance humans have devised.

Free for all Communism has never worked in any meaningful way. Now, the always ready retort is “it’s never had the chance to!” to which I’d reply: it never will. If it can compete with other forms of governance let it rip, but… ? where is the success story?

The problem is that this is false. Socialist countries led by communist parties have consistently brought dramatic, radical improvements over what came before in a way that far surpasses any upsides of capitalism. Metrics like life expectancy, in many cases, increase by 50-100%, poverty rates plummet, land reform helps end famine where it was once common (a huge part of life expectancy increases), and their economies are democratized in a way that fundamentally doesn't exist in capitalist countries. Socialism works.

Communism is a post-socialist stateless, classless, moneyless society. Communist parties have always governed socialist countries, because communism has not yet been achieved, and is itself a global phenomenon.

Not sure what you mean by "free for all."

Democratic Socialism works very well in other countries all over the world: they recognize there are certain services that are critical to provide in order for democracy to function: fire, police, healthcare, disability affordances, so many things that government is uniquely situated to promote and provide.

You're confusing social democracy for socialism. Social safety nets within the boundaries of capitalism are not socialism, socialism is not when the government does stuff. Capitalism is a mode of production characterized by private ownwership as the principle aspect of the economy and capitalists in control of the state, with socialism being public ownership as principle and the working classes in charge of the state.

"Democratic Socialism" itself is a a vague term. Socialism is already democratic, rule by the majority is a necessity when the working class is in control of the state. What it ends up meaning in practice is socialism relying heavily on electoralism and reformism, such as in Chile under Allende and in Venezuela.

The important factor here is that the social democracies that are doing the best, their safety nets are largely funded by imperialism and unequal exchange. These are not internally driven systems, but closer to landlords in country form towards the global south. Now that imperialism as a global system is weakening, we can actually track the erosion of safety nets in these social democracies, and in the general shift to the far-right.

I’m happy to change from free-for-all-capitalism, welcome it, but you can’t point to a hypothetical end point that’s never ever existed AND won’t be allowed to exist as long as resources require capital.

We can point to the real existing socialism in the real world and uphold their gains. No socialist country has been perfect, of course, all have had problems and struggles. They have, however, always been progressive and emancipatory as compared to what came before, and more effective at providing for their people compared to peer capitalist countries, without relying on imperialism.

not really my experience now that they have legitimate fash instances. getting Sybil downvoted is pretty hilarious though.

the jerks also go around... harassing and insulting people. and like take a personal quest to ban/report you because you upset them.

normal people who disagree with you don't do that. like i read internet comments i don't like, laugh, and move on with my life. and if i engage in reply I'm not insulting/harassing the person, going into their comment history to report old comments, etc.

because it's shameful. it invites shame and ridicule.

being correct is good. being wrong is bad. people don't want to be bad.

being comfortable with wrongness, fault, etc, requires a lot of education and maturity that very few people ever attain. and it also requires having an ego that can tolerate the ridicule/rejection that comes with admitting fault you will receive from a lot of people, which is kind of a lonely position. admitting you are wrong is opening yourself up to social rejection.

basically if you never admit you are wrong you can hang out with other like minded morons and never feel alone and sad. hence why such communities tend to be so emotionally compelling for people, and so hard to get out of. you have to be willing to go be alone to break out of such mindsets, and as social animals, a lot of human beings are pathologically afraid of being alone.

"Tankie" is just a pejorative for those who recognize and uphold the legitimacy of existing socialist states. If you ask any self-described leftist if they support socialists stopping fascists, murderers, slavers, landlords, etc through violent means, 99% will support it. Marxists do not wish to "contril others who do not share their beliefs," but instead recognize that the state violence committed against genuine fascists, slavers, sabateurs, imperialists, and so forth in real life was and is necessary. Anarchists also wielded force against fascists in Spain, but "Tankie" is reserved as a special pejorative for those who also uphold the socialist state projects.

What does being a decent person have to do with political ideologies?