Post in question: https://lemmy.zip/post/49704665
They also seem to have learned a new word to use instead of “Tankie”: ML
Unlike anything evangelicals believe, the Soviet Union existed.
What MLs say: Actually existing socialist states are revolutionary projects that deserve the chance to protect their revolutions. They aren’t perfect, but we should fix the imperialist system that holds them back before we extensively critique them.
What these people hear: when the glorious revolution happens everything will be magically fixed
???
Sufficient
brain washingeducation by renowned state institutions willmake you bark like a dog against strawmen and only be able to hear what conforms to those strawmengive you the information you need to discern those pesky authoritarians fromspineless opportunist reformersreal leftists!And also it’s worth giving them some critique anyway both for the purpose of benefiting their resistance and also just general human benefit (e.g. homophobia bad, though it doesn’t invalidate the whole project because it is not inherent to the project)
Hot take of the day: a worrying number of liberals are actually just evangelical Christians with the serial numbers filed off
The world is
sinfulfull of republicans, but we just have to wait for thesecond comingnext election where everything will be the fixed (i.e. the same)Even more so since liberals outnumber leftists by quite a lot and have had what they desire for many years; yet everywhere the far-right is gaining power and crushing things that they claim to have created. Also, the original comment is a platitude; every system of ideas can be made to sound absurd by putting the core of its idea in that way.
This could apply to anyone with:
- grievances
- a preferred end-state
- people they criticise
- practices they criticise
The Kingdom of Conscience will be exactly as it is now. Moralists don’t really have beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child’s toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded. Centrism isn’t change — not even incremental change. It is control. Over yourself and the world. Exercise it. Look up at the sky, at the dark shapes of Coalition airships hanging there. Ask yourself: is there something sinister in moralism? And then answer: no. God is in his heaven. Everything is normal on Earth.
Bars
mfw I explain to the concentration camp guard that I’m not a tankie and they should let me go because I don’t agree with authoritarianism
I thought this was the Barbara Pit emoji
The evil communists did both to my grandpa.
Wait WE’RE the ones who block progress? What universe do these libs live in
They’re progressives. If we don’t help their agenda along, we’re blocking progress, QED
MLs are not passive wishcasters for revolution and liberals don’t fight for “actual progress”, they just vote for what is on offer and barely even complain when the “actual progress” doesn’t happen, if it’s even promised in the first place. In fact, they attack those who are critical of this failure to improve conditions. Communists are constantly doing work that is not revolution an helps others / resists oppression, but they also understand that the necessary changes will never be permitted short of revolution - which is why liberals consistently fail and backslide on promised reforms when they aren’t just overtly oppressing the global south.
MLs are usually the least naggy when it comes to personal consumption choices, that’s more of a faux lefty liberal thing. But we will make fun of your Tesla and other things that make you ridiculous. Also none of this has anything to do with praxis. Liberals treat words like kids treat toys they find on the ground.
But they got one thing right: MLs correctly identify capitalism as the current overarching force for oppression. I don’t think they really thought that one through, though, because I guarantee none of them can defend capitalism. Most probably can’t even define it.
Also what is more cult-like?
Identifying a problem with the world and working to try and fix it in a material way? Or ignoring all of reality of worsening conditions and staying in denial, believing that history has ended and heaven has been achieved and everything will be fine if we do nothing?
I can’t speak for everyone of course but for me at least a big part of why I was attracted to socialism/communism in the first place was the fact that commies really do have the most thorough explanations for everything. Libs can sometimes get close but every problem and solution that they identify falls apart at the some point in a way that marxist ones don’t
all the existing tools I had before reading Lenin boiled down to trying to pray away colonialism and incredible wealth disparity under capitalism.
I think this “heaven has been achieved” mindset is missing what’s really going. The predominant manifestation of modern day liberalism is a form of nihilism. Sure the world sucks, but under liberal capitalism it sucks less than it otherwise could. The world can’t get better because human nature is evil and selfish and any attempts to create a different system will be corrupted. There are scarcely any liberals who will outright say that the current paradigm is good, much less heaven on earth. What they will say is that anything better isn’t possible.
yeah, it’s that “Democracy Is the Worst Form of Government Except For All Others Which Have Been Tried”
Nihilistic Violent Extremist’s, one could say (if one was the Trump admin).
Yeah, Liberalism isn’t perfect, it’s the “best of all possible worlds.” which means we shouldn’t challenge it because it will only make things worse. They usually love to quote Churchill on this, because liberals love their great man theory and think that influential people were just all soundbite generators.
that’s what I mean by heaven, I just mean the afterlife that they desire. I don’t mean a literal perfect world, but a liberal ‘least bad’ world. you’re right that they’re nihilistic, and when pressed hard enough will abandon liberal niceties before they abandon property or position. Still, they think that they are at the end of history. That the apocalypse already came and went, and they were the god chosen victors of it (colonialism and the ongoing horrors of industrialization).
scientific socialists (aka TANKIES) specifically don’t believe ‘the revolution will fix everything’. We are not utopians. The revolution is necessary though.
Engels: “I wrote 500 pages contrasting scientific socialism with utopian socialism”
Libs: “The problem with Marxism is it’s utopian”
Marx never considered human nature
Yeah, if anything it would be more accurate to say that the revolution is the groundwork that makes incremental change from that point on viable (by formal democratic processes).
Right. The creation of a proletarian republic basically just makes possible the lib dream (incremental progress through vooooting)
Yeah, if anything this critique is fairly in line with the critique of western Marxists, but those are famously rarely ML. Millenarianism is a common critique of Trotskyists and Ultras. At first, without reading the title, I thought it was an out of context (and not greatly worded) critique of western leftists from an ML until I saw ‘ML’ and realized this was weird
If we’re evangelicals, shouldn’t they as liberals be trying to appease us and get our votes?
Alienating religious MODERATES like us is just purity politics, tsk, tsk
Got one to at least they weren’t doing purity politics. Although then they went on about how it’s them fighting against evil so it’s a polarity test now
Oh this person? lmfaoo, just your average Pro Hong Kong separatism, China Innately Bad, Hamas-are-just-like-the-Zionists-actually, Uyghur-Genocide-Believing chud.
They got all the usual lib zingers in that very thread, and it’s hard to tell if they’re a troll or they’re completely serious.
Should be sent to the place all genocide supporers deserve to arrive at
إن شاء الله 🙏
(I wish cross-instance access to emotes was a thing)
My tip for this is that you can access another instance’s emotes by copying and pasting them from someone’s reply, or from the other instance’s sign-up page essay question
whoa, this guy is actually the one who shares a bunch of the same vile repugnant positions as Evangelicals and all his bullshit was just projection? No way, who could’ve seen that coming
The world is
sinfulanti-democratic backsliding but we just have to wait until theSecond Comingthe Election happens when everything will be magically fixed. Any attempt to make actual progress makes you alukewarm Christiantankie anything less thanthe Apocolypsethe Election (which is definitely fair and free and democratic full of extremely popular and nice politicians) is completely useless. Also consuming certian media or makin certain lifesytle choices issinful and unchristianmakes you a tankie or a rebellious ineffective anarchist or a secret conservative.
Aw hell yeah, Eugen V. Deb’s ghost used my copypasta
“Revolutions come to those who wait.” - Lenin
This is just nonsense, “Tankies” famously support countries that have had revolutions (which clearly haven’t magically fixed everything). Pulling off a revolution obviously involves putting in a lot of work organizing, maintaining AES after revolution takes a lot of work, and successfully changing the mode of production takes an enormous amount of effort. The Hexbear line is that everyone should join an org and do real work.
Internet posters are also real people, and ML real people do real organizing. I’ve spent decades, probably in the 10s of thousands of hours, organizing and engaging in mutual aid in my local community, and my work has seen real results.
And just because we don’t believe elections will solve our fundamental problems, it doesn’t mean we’re just sitting around for a magic solution. To give notable examples of real change in the current system, the PSL was really active in stopping a data center from being built in Tucson, and communists were really active in supporting civil rights and racial equality, even way back in the 20s all the way to the civil rights movement, and then all the way to now.
There just aren’t many of us in the United States, so you might not see us organizing, and a revolution might seem impossible (but unlike Rapture, it is very possible).
31·14 days agoThere just aren’t many of us in the United States
Yeah, some people like there to be few leftists, and it’s not the ML’s.
Shame they’ve deliberately chosen to populate an echo chamber where no opposing views are permitted or someone could go tell them the USSR existed.
Any media consumption isn’t bad praxis, its just not praxis. ML theory says nothing about media consumption, and it does literally nothing to further our goals.
Like, praxis is just putting theory into practice. Obviously not everything in a persons life has to relate to theory, not doing praxis is nothing like a sin.
Bad praxis is more like trying and failing (like right action, wrong material conditions), or being counter-productive. Whether its actually a problem or sin equivalent is entirely context dependent, plenty of people who did bad praxis are hailed as martyrs.
ML theory says nothing about media consumption, and it does literally nothing to further our goals.
Media isn’t the same as entertainment media, so reading theory is media consumption.
But yeah, the only real ML line I’ve seen about entertainment media consumption is about how it is used by the establishment for the sake of conservative ends (whether by villifying an Other or by being performatively anti-capitalist as a release valve of personal catharsis). I haven’t seen very much about entertainment media in a positive sense except within socialist states (where it was mostly handled rather poorly, imo).
