This instance is federated with Lemmygrad which is considerably more hardline. Hexbear is softer and full of demsocs and anarchists, there’s no justification for Hexbear not being allowed while Lemmygrad is.
I think it’s a bit different to not tolerate people that ideologically want the extermination of others for their immutable characteristics, compared to people that are working towards achieving a different economic and political system.
Not only that, but in discussion the fascists do not participate in good-faith whereas those of us on the left certainly do. I tend to find less good-faith participation from neoliberals compared to other communists actually, the softer liberals that seem more like fence sitters tend to be alright to talk to though.
I’m trying to understand which communists don’t fall into whatever your definition of tankie is, and that’s pretty hard without understanding what you actually mean by that. If I were to assume that you mean something like “people that defend authoritarians” or something:
Trots: Defend and venerate lenin. Hate marxist-leninists. Support Trotsky killing off all the anarchists though. And support the USSR pre-Stalin. Trotsky’s own book basically says he would have done most of what Stalin did too?
Marxist-leninists: Defend and support Lenin, Stalin, Mao, among others.
Maoists: Defend and support Lenin, Stalin, Mao. Mostly oppose Deng reforms.
So uhh… Which communists would you not include in your definition of “tankies” ? These are like the three main largest groups of communists.
I’d like to mention that most IRL trots don’t “hate” MLs - it’s recognised that there are in general far more points of agreement than disagreement nowadays. This of course can greatly vary by specific Trotskyist and ML tendencies, but the major exceptions are very fringe.
Tankies, fascists. Close enough to the same thing tbh.
Any platform which supports tankies is in itself tankie. If they want “unity,” they wouldn’t associate themselves with people who don’t believe in the core fundamentals of freedom. Otherwise they’re just like PCM where the worst elements will take over.
Tankies, fascists. Close enough to the same thing tbh.
“Nazis, people who liberated Auschwitz, what’s the difference?”
On a more serious note, fascism is a particular political movement with particular features. Communism is also a particular political movement, with different features. They are different.
You’re welcome to think they’re equally bad (you’re wrong), but they’re factually not the same thing.
How on earth is that protecting the workers? Now there’s just a new class of bourgeoise, the party leadership who enshrine themselves in perpetual power while they exploit the workers in the sweatshops making cheap goods. The party takes their labor, exports it to the West, and lines their own pockets.
That’s what tankies want? How on earth is that any different than fascism, in practice?
But those claims are “western” and therefore automatically incorrect. Because we know China has a free press and open reporting! Their 1982 constitution protects freedom of speech, which is why they arrest people who talk about Tibet!
You’re not going to listen to any of this, because you’ve completely missed the point. My point is modern communism has not gotten anywhere near the ideals espoused by Marx, and has outright rejected them (paying them lip service at best). It has been replaced by something pretty much identical to fascism, and tankies love it. Since evidently you need a reminder as to what fascism is:
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement,[1][2][3] characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
Everything other than “far-right” can apply to the CCP in its modern form. (And even saying China isn’t far-right is debatable… gay marriage is illegal in China still. Hardly “socially left”.)
Authoritarian: Elections in the People’s Republic of China occur under a one-party authoritarian political system controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Direct elections, except in the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau, occur only at the local level people’s congresses and village committees, with all candidate nominations preapproved by the CCP.
Authoritarian is a meaningless buzzword, communism isn’t opposed to authority and the use of authority to suppress counter-revolutionaries and the still existing bourgeoisie in the transitional phase isn’t only materially necessary, it’s use is prerequisite for any revolutionary organisation. If you’re unwilling to suppress the exploiter-class of capitalists, you are not waging class war against that class, you are therefore not building socialism and you’re most definitely not working towards the abolition of said exploiter class and therefore class society itself. You are therefore not a communist.
Hence saying ‘authoritarian’ and ‘communist’ exist on opposite ends of the spectrum betrays simply your total lack of understanding of both terms. Insinuating the working class and its organization suppressing the exploiter class is equivalent to the most violent forms of the exploiter class suppressing the exploited, is legitimization of that violence. In its ultimate consequence it’s just literal horseshoe Nazi apologia.
Ultranationalist: Using Chinese nationalism, the CCP began to suppress separatism and secessionist attitudes in Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and among the Uyghurs, a Turkic minority in the far-west province of Xinjiang, an issue that persists. (Also: Taiwan.)
Nationalism isn’t per se right-wing. If you had any understanding of people’s liberation struggles in history you’d understand this. Nationalism of the victims of colonialism and imperialism isn’t equivalent of the nationalism of the colonialists and imperialists. Nationalism as a tool to suppress the actual counter-revolutionary ethno-nationalist movements isn’t right-wing in any way and simply linking a Wikipedia article, as if that were an argument, is embarrassing.
Also: Taiwan is the product of the literal fascist, reactionary movement in China fleeing the successful revolution of the people it was opressing and only still exist due to the US imperialists protection of said reactionary tendency. Using that counterrevolutionary tendency’s existence as an argument to…show that China is - right-wing somehow is ludicrous.
Dictatorial leader: China’s Xi allowed to remain ‘president for life’ as term limits removed
There are no term limits in Germany. Was Merkel therefore a dictatorial leader?
Centralized autocracy: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Yes, communists don’t allow reactionaries and capitalists in their countries. How you thought not allowing right-wingers in China’s political system is a good argument for China’s supposed right-wing character, is beyond me. ‘right-wing’ isn’t defined by ‘have many party or no’, but by the class character of the tendency, movement, organization or state. China being a dictatorship of the proletariat, which your own point proves since it oppresses the bourgeoisie, is the single best argument for its communist character. You not understanding this simply means you do not understand class, class struggle or what states are and this honestly simply disqualifies you from talking about this in any serious capacity.
Militarism: Chinese coastguard and navy ships intruded into Malaysian waters in the disputed South China Sea 89 times between 2016 to 2019, and often remained in the area even after being turned away by the Malaysian navy. (See also: Taiwan.)
Militarism is when navy in contested water. Not that a wikipedia-citing liberal is expected to argue on a higher level than this…but come on.
And again, the militarism of communists to struggle against imperialism is not only not right-wing, it is in fact tantamount to anything revolutionary and communist. Militant struggle against capital and imperialism and the struggle of capital and imperialism to exploit are not the same, believe it or not. The armed struggle of the slave against his master isn’t the same as the threat of that master’s whip.
See also: Taiwan. China not allowing the imperialists to arm a secessionist movement within its own recognized borders isn’t right-wing. Imperialism arming reactionary, secessionist movements within socialist countries, however, is. So too, if you want to talk about reactionary militarism, is the encroachment, encirclement of China and the countless provocations in its waters and on its land by the imperialists.
Forcible suppression of opposition: The Tiananmen Square protests, known in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, during 1989. The protests started on 15 April and lasted until 4 June, at which point Chinese government troops carried out a crackdown on the demonstrators around the city and the Square in what is often referred to as the Tiananmen Square massacre. (Better scrub your history for that one before the CCP sees that link)
You don’t even know the proper name of the Communist Party of China, but somehow are qualified to talk about the nature of this state and, again, as argument you link a wikipedia article? Linking an article isn’t an argument.
And again, suppression of capitalist and counter-revolutionary movements is inevitable in class struggle. You can’t be a revolutionary if you can’t defend your revolution. You can’t be a communist if your refuse to suppress and fight your exploiters. China engaging in this class struggle makes the exact opposite of what you’re trying to say.
Also le ebin funni CPC will arrest you for reading Tinyman link meme. +500 FICO score for your incredible wit and ingenuity.
Ignore btw the absurd violence the imperialist subject the world to in their neocolonial holdings. Those millions upon millions, not to mention the hundreds of thousands that get brutalized at home for such existential things as “please police don’t kill us” or “we don’t want to work till we’re dead”, sacrifized on the altar of profit in the name of capital pale in comparison to those peaceful, soldier burning reactionaries surrounding the 1989 events. Bashing thousands of heads when the actually suppressed minority in the US rises up against the permanent violence inflicted on it by liberals like you, is a fact of life. The governments committing this violence totally wouldn’t crack down on subversive movements murdering the representatives of that government. Never.
Belief in a natural social hierarchy: Han nationalism is a form of ethnic nationalism asserting ethnically Han people as the exclusive constituents of the Chinese nation. (See also: Genocides against non-Han, as mentioned above)
Saying something exists isn’t proof of that thing existing as a policy of a state. Me linking your a Wikipedia article to Nazi apologia and White Supremacy, isn’t a proof that you’re a white supremacists or Nazi apologist. Though your chauvinistic, reactionary comment is making that argument perfectly fine.
See also: Exemptions for the 1 child policy of non-Hans, the birthrates of those non-hans. The genocide that has no victims, isn’t traceable, not filmable, not provable, but totally exists and isn’t simply another cooked-up non-story for chauvinistic Western liberals in their endless quest to render the word genocide entirely meaningless and therefore to minimize the singular horror of the Holocaust.
Subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race: Chinese workers allege forced labor, abuses in Xi’s ‘Belt and Road’ program.
Again, linking an article to a singular alleged cases of labour abuses are not proof of ‘subordination of individual interests for the percieved good of the nation and race’. These to do not follow from each other. Me linking you an article of child labour abuses in the US wouldn’t be an argument for the US operating under a paradigm of ‘subordination of individual interests for the percieved good of the nation and race’.
That you’re even attempting this argument only, again, shows that you don’t have a clue about the character of either ‘rightwing’ nor ‘leftwing’. The right-wing does not subordinate the individual interest for the perceived good of the nation and race. It very much subordinates the national interest, the interest of the majority, that of the working-class under that of the individual interest of the power-wielding exploiters ie capitalists. So you’re not making the point China is right-wing, because you do not understand what right-wing even is.
So either China is right-wing or it subordinates individual material interests for the good of the majority.
If it does the later, congratulations, you again made the point that China is engaging in class struggle against the individual interests of the exploiter class, which is the defining characteristic of ‘left-wing’. If you don’t engage in class struggle against that class, you’re not a communist.
Not to mention you do not understand the relationship of the individual and the collective in left-wing thought. Which is fine, but disqualifies you from talking about left-wing thought.
Strong regimentation of society and the economy: While the Chinese economy maintains a large state sector, the state-owned enterprises operate like private-sector firms and retain all profits without remitting them to the government to benefit the entire population.
I’m not sure what your point even is. China isn’t a neoliberal capitalist economy…therefore it is right-wing?
Yes, socialist countries regiment society and the economy. What is your point?
Also imagine taxation is the only way of remitting social gain. “How does that cheap, reliable, widespread high-speed rail benefit society without taxation???” It remits profit by the very fact of existing.
Not sure either how this non-remitting point supports the claim that China has strong regimentation of society and the economy. It’s making the exact opposite point.
But go on. Tell me that’s not fascism.
You do not understand what fascism is. You don’t understand what communism is. You don’t even understand the useless, vague labels like “left-wing” or “right-wing”. So I’ll go on: That’s not fascism.
This is going to take me a lot longer to reply to, unfortunately! Just timing in my day, and the need to sit down at a computer to reply. Catch you in a bit! :)
* edit: actually, /u/KommandoGzd@lemmygrad.ml has a better response than I would put together, I’ll just second theirs.
“Nazis, people who liberated Auschwitz, what’s the difference?”
Everyone ignored the latter part of your first comment because this part is the meat of it. I don’t think you actually care about the technical differences between fascism and communism, and I bet neither does EnglishMobster. Quit pretending that’s what this is about. You actually do think one is worse than the other.
“People who built the Volkswagen, people who genocided millions of Ukrainians, what’s the difference?”
Just thought I’d turn your line around. It’s fun to reduce the atrocities of a movement to a good thing they did. Though the OP didn’t even mention communists at all, he mentioned tankies, as in the people who actively deny the atrocities of stalinism and maoism. It’s weird that you’d jump to defending communism.
You’re right that there’s a difference between fascists and tankies/ stalinists. And if this were a discussion in an academic setting, that might actually matter. But in an online discussion about the evils of both, it sort of doesn’t really matter. They both have a track record of authoritarianism and mass genocides, and I don’t get along well with people which defend either.
“People who built the Volkswagen, people who genocided millions of Ukrainians, what’s the difference?”.
This isn’t comparable to my Auschwitz comparison, because this picks two unrelated things. The USSR also didn’t genocide millions of Ukrainians.
Though the OP didn’t even mention communists at all, he mentioned tankies, as in the people who actively deny the atrocities of stalinism and maoism. It’s weird that you’d jump to defending communism.
I don’t see a difference between Marxist-leninism, “Stalinism” (not a real thing, though sometimes people use the term), and communism. I’m happy to go into the nuts and bolts, if you’d find that interesting. I’ll try to use Marxism-leninism going forward, if that’s easier.
But in an online discussion about the evils of both, it sort of doesn’t really matter. They both have a track record of authoritarianism and mass genocides, and I don’t get along well with people which defend either.
If these are the reasons you oppose both fascism and Marxism-leninism, do you oppose Liberalism the same amount?
This isn’t comparable to my Auschwitz comparison, because this picks two unrelated things. The USSR also didn’t genocide millions of Ukrainians.
They are as related as your two picks. The meat of the comparison was simply how you cherry pick a bad thing about the horrible dictatorship you dislike and something good about the horrible dictatorship you like.
I don’t see a difference between Marxist-leninism, “Stalinism” (not a real thing, though sometimes people use the term), and communism. I’m happy to go into the nuts and bolts, if you’d find that interesting. I’ll try to use Marxism-leninism going forward, if that’s easier.
There is a very distinct difference between Marxism, Marxist-leninism, Stalinism, etc. I couldn’t tell you what communism means in the modern world. Just going through a list of communist parties in europe, for example, they all defend such radically different things that even they don’t seem to agree on what communism means. I appreciate your offer to inform me, but unlike most communists, I’ve read Marx’s works. Cool stuff. Shame many modern day communist movements have completely thrown out that whole part about workers’ rights and class struggles and have gone full into adopting far right conspiracies in order to grab hold of the extremist votes as what used to be their main talking points has been normalized as is mostly still defended by movements closer to the center.
If these are the reasons you oppose both fascism and Marxism-leninism, do you oppose Liberalism the same amount?
I don’t oppose Marxism-leninism. Tankies are by definition not marxist. I don’t understand why you keep shifting the conversation to try and mix tankies with actual communists. It’s usually the far right who tries to argue that people who might be favourable to marxist rhetoric are the exact same as people who condone genocides commited by states which defined themselves as “communist”, so it’s extra weird to have to defend this notion from a supposedly marxist-leninist.
As for Liberalism, like with Communism, I don’t really know what it actually means. What americans call Liberalism is practically the opposite of what is described as Liberalism in European politics, which itself is fundamentally different from something like classical liberalism, so you’d have to be more specific. Having said that, none of these groups usually defend genocidal actions, so I don’t “oppose” them in the sense I oppose fascists and stalinists. I might disagree with everything they stand for, depending again on the kind of liberalism we’re talking about, but at least I know they won’t actually try to kill me.
but at least I know they won’t actually try to kill me.
Ask the hundreds of millions of corpses in Indonesia, Brazil, Guatemala, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Grenada, Iran, etc, etc. if they think liberalism ‘won’t actually try to kill them’ if they have an opinion that isn’t aligned with capitalist interests.
I don’t oppose Marxism-leninism. Tankies are by definition not marxist.
’Tankie’ is literally the word your sect uses to describe Marxist Leninists
Workers’ rights and class struggles and have gone full into adopting far right conspiracies in order to grab hold of the extremist votes
Such as? By the way worker’s rights and socialism cannot be attained simply by voting
as people who condone genocides commited by states which defined themselves as “communist”, so it’s extra weird to have to defend this notion
Ask the hundreds of millions of corpses in Indonesia, Brazil, Guatemala, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Grenada, Iran, etc, etc. if they think liberalism ‘won’t actually try to kill them’ if they have an opinion that isn’t aligned with capitalist interests.
Yeah, sorry, I’m gonna pass. Like I told the guy above, I’m sure whatever definition of Liberalism you use fits whatever point you’re trying to make, but unless you have a specific point to make, I’m not going through all of these countries’ histories in search of how “liberalism” has led to hundreds of millions of corpses. Especially because I see Brazil in that list and I’m familiar enough with its history to bet your definition of “liberalism” is actually fascism, so I’d rather not bite.
’Tankie’ is literally the word your sect uses to describe Marxist Leninists
I don’t use tankie to describe marxist leninists. I’ve made that very clear in my comment above. Like the person above, you seem to be trying to mix concepts in order to attack points I haven’t made. I also wonder what sect you think I’m a part of. I’d ask you to at least pretend you’re arguing in good faith and, if you truly want to argue, argue against the points I’ve made, not the strawman you’ve made up in your mind. Thought that would probably mean veering off the pre-approved script.
Such as? By the way worker’s rights and socialism cannot be attained simply by voting
The communist party in my country is very fond of aligning with the new far right party when it comes to women’s right - which aren’t an issue according to the communist leader, as only workers’ rights are a true issue - and minority rights in general. It was a bit surprising to some when they decided to walk that path, but I guess we should’ve known.
As for workers’ rights, a combination of voting, strikes and protests have worked fairly well for my country’s history. A lot of unions in the past 20 or so years have steered away from the communist party, given their alleged attempts at suppression, and have become independent. The communist party has been continually losing votes as it clings to fringe topics such as the defense of dictatorships and often attacks unions which try to act in a democratic manner and pick leaders among the workers, instead of accepting the outside leaders the Party had decreed.
But what would you propose as an alternative to voting and protesting? Terrorism?
Examples?
I don’t know if you’ve accidentally only cropped part of what you intended to. Do I really need to show you examples of the far right trying to sell the idea that everyone to the left aligns with dictatorships? You can just look up any interview of any far right leader in europe and you’ll probably find your example. Thought I’m confused why you need examples of that.
Almost the entirety of the political spectrum of most democratic countries sits as far away from Trump as it does from tankies. Let’s stop pretending that if I oppose people who pretend that no genocides happened under Stalin I’m suddenly pro-Trump. There’s an entire political spectrum between those two.
Stalin has been dead for 71 years. Continuing to screech about Stalin to defend defederating anything left of Trump says everything about where you stand.
What is your opinion on people “screeching” about the Holocaust, given it happened so long ago?
EDIT: No answer. I’m assuming the user is as in favour of erasing memories of the Holocaust as he is of erasing memories of the genocides commited by Stalin and his supporters.
Looks like they’re the opposite actually, tankies. Still good riddance.
From their news post about federation:
One of the few instances they’ll federate with is lemmygrad
“We do not, as a site, have an official line regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and a wide variety of viewpoints are represented in discussions. This includes many users with varying degrees of support for Russia, which some people may find confusing or objectionable.”
Highly upvoted comments reacting negatively to the text above because it’s not pro-Russia enough. (“Putin is not a fundamentally evil person”, “it is a decade of diplomatic failure, with Russia trying to do the right thing and getting blamed for it.”)
“Do not follow the Chapo Rules of Posting, instead try to engage utilizing informed rhetoric with sources to dismantle western propaganda. Posting the western atrocity propaganda and pig poop balls is hilarious but will pretty quickly get you banned and if enough of us do it defederated. Realize that you are a representative of the hexbear instance when you post on other instances.”
They’re fascist assholes so good riddance imo
They are the fascists?
“We must secure the existence of our right-wing echo chambers and a future for our Reddit children”
Removed by mod
This instance is federated with Lemmygrad which is considerably more hardline. Hexbear is softer and full of demsocs and anarchists, there’s no justification for Hexbear not being allowed while Lemmygrad is.
Agree, they should both be blocked
Seems like you’re not very confident in your ideology then.
No, I just don’t tolerate tankies. Just as I assume we both don’t tolerate fascists?
I think it’s a bit different to not tolerate people that ideologically want the extermination of others for their immutable characteristics, compared to people that are working towards achieving a different economic and political system.
Not only that, but in discussion the fascists do not participate in good-faith whereas those of us on the left certainly do. I tend to find less good-faith participation from neoliberals compared to other communists actually, the softer liberals that seem more like fence sitters tend to be alright to talk to though.
You seem to misunderstand.
I’m cool with communists. I’m not cool with tankies.
boo
Ok can you define tankie for me?
I’m trying to understand which communists don’t fall into whatever your definition of tankie is, and that’s pretty hard without understanding what you actually mean by that. If I were to assume that you mean something like “people that defend authoritarians” or something:
Trots: Defend and venerate lenin. Hate marxist-leninists. Support Trotsky killing off all the anarchists though. And support the USSR pre-Stalin. Trotsky’s own book basically says he would have done most of what Stalin did too?
Marxist-leninists: Defend and support Lenin, Stalin, Mao, among others.
Maoists: Defend and support Lenin, Stalin, Mao. Mostly oppose Deng reforms.
So uhh… Which communists would you not include in your definition of “tankies” ? These are like the three main largest groups of communists.
I’d like to mention that most IRL trots don’t “hate” MLs - it’s recognised that there are in general far more points of agreement than disagreement nowadays. This of course can greatly vary by specific Trotskyist and ML tendencies, but the major exceptions are very fringe.
Removed by mod
Fascist? I was convinced it was communist, but honestly I never checked.
Why do we have fascists, communists (lemmygrad and lemmy.ml, actually many of them aren’t even pro communism as they are pro Russia).
Why can’t we have normal communities here?
It’s definitely not fascist lmao
Because they were the first to be rejected from all the mainstream sites, whereas all the normal people are still on reddit.
Hexbear? They’re left-unity. That’s just a lie.
Tankies, fascists. Close enough to the same thing tbh.
Any platform which supports tankies is in itself tankie. If they want “unity,” they wouldn’t associate themselves with people who don’t believe in the core fundamentals of freedom. Otherwise they’re just like PCM where the worst elements will take over.
“Nazis, people who liberated Auschwitz, what’s the difference?”
On a more serious note, fascism is a particular political movement with particular features. Communism is also a particular political movement, with different features. They are different.
You’re welcome to think they’re equally bad (you’re wrong), but they’re factually not the same thing.
I’m a leftist myself, but tankies are a bridge too far. The moment a movement starts oppressing the proletariat is when they lose all legitimacy. Stalin, Mao, and everyone else the tankies idolize were oppressive to the common people they tried to protect. Modern-day China is oppressive to the point where they set up secret police in other countries to monitor citizens abroad.
How on earth is that protecting the workers? Now there’s just a new class of bourgeoise, the party leadership who enshrine themselves in perpetual power while they exploit the workers in the sweatshops making cheap goods. The party takes their labor, exports it to the West, and lines their own pockets.
That’s what tankies want? How on earth is that any different than fascism, in practice?
You’re not making a response to my argument - this is a copy paste of some sort.
I am arguing that communism and fascism are factually different.
You have not made an argument that they are factually similar, just trotted out the usual unsourced western claims against communism.
I love how I literally trotted out a source, and you still clamed it was “unsourced”. I also love “You have not made an argument that they are factually similar” after I just explained how they are in practice, factually similar. Here is a Wikipedia page about the genocide China is committing, btw - how is this different than Auschwitz?
But those claims are “western” and therefore automatically incorrect. Because we know China has a free press and open reporting! Their 1982 constitution protects freedom of speech, which is why they arrest people who talk about Tibet!
So here’s a non-western source: Al-Jazeera stating that China has internment camps where they are committing genocide.
You’re not going to listen to any of this, because you’ve completely missed the point. My point is modern communism has not gotten anywhere near the ideals espoused by Marx, and has outright rejected them (paying them lip service at best). It has been replaced by something pretty much identical to fascism, and tankies love it. Since evidently you need a reminder as to what fascism is:
Everything other than “far-right” can apply to the CCP in its modern form. (And even saying China isn’t far-right is debatable… gay marriage is illegal in China still. Hardly “socially left”.)
Authoritarian: Elections in the People’s Republic of China occur under a one-party authoritarian political system controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Direct elections, except in the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau, occur only at the local level people’s congresses and village committees, with all candidate nominations preapproved by the CCP.
Ultranationalist: Using Chinese nationalism, the CCP began to suppress separatism and secessionist attitudes in Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and among the Uyghurs, a Turkic minority in the far-west province of Xinjiang, an issue that persists. (Also: Taiwan.)
Dictatorial leader: China’s Xi allowed to remain ‘president for life’ as term limits removed
Centralized autocracy: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Militarism: Chinese coastguard and navy ships intruded into Malaysian waters in the disputed South China Sea 89 times between 2016 to 2019, and often remained in the area even after being turned away by the Malaysian navy. (See also: Taiwan.)
Forcible suppression of opposition: The Tiananmen Square protests, known in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China, during 1989. The protests started on 15 April and lasted until 4 June, at which point Chinese government troops carried out a crackdown on the demonstrators around the city and the Square in what is often referred to as the Tiananmen Square massacre. (Better scrub your history for that one before the CCP sees that link)
Belief in a natural social hierarchy: Han nationalism is a form of ethnic nationalism asserting ethnically Han people as the exclusive constituents of the Chinese nation. (See also: Genocides against non-Han, as mentioned above)
Subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race: Chinese workers allege forced labor, abuses in Xi’s ‘Belt and Road’ program.
Strong regimentation of society and the economy: While the Chinese economy maintains a large state sector, the state-owned enterprises operate like private-sector firms and retain all profits without remitting them to the government to benefit the entire population.
But go on. Tell me that’s not fascism.
Authoritarian is a meaningless buzzword, communism isn’t opposed to authority and the use of authority to suppress counter-revolutionaries and the still existing bourgeoisie in the transitional phase isn’t only materially necessary, it’s use is prerequisite for any revolutionary organisation. If you’re unwilling to suppress the exploiter-class of capitalists, you are not waging class war against that class, you are therefore not building socialism and you’re most definitely not working towards the abolition of said exploiter class and therefore class society itself. You are therefore not a communist.
Hence saying ‘authoritarian’ and ‘communist’ exist on opposite ends of the spectrum betrays simply your total lack of understanding of both terms. Insinuating the working class and its organization suppressing the exploiter class is equivalent to the most violent forms of the exploiter class suppressing the exploited, is legitimization of that violence. In its ultimate consequence it’s just literal horseshoe Nazi apologia.
Nationalism isn’t per se right-wing. If you had any understanding of people’s liberation struggles in history you’d understand this. Nationalism of the victims of colonialism and imperialism isn’t equivalent of the nationalism of the colonialists and imperialists. Nationalism as a tool to suppress the actual counter-revolutionary ethno-nationalist movements isn’t right-wing in any way and simply linking a Wikipedia article, as if that were an argument, is embarrassing.
Also: Taiwan is the product of the literal fascist, reactionary movement in China fleeing the successful revolution of the people it was opressing and only still exist due to the US imperialists protection of said reactionary tendency. Using that counterrevolutionary tendency’s existence as an argument to…show that China is - right-wing somehow is ludicrous.
There are no term limits in Germany. Was Merkel therefore a dictatorial leader?
Yes, communists don’t allow reactionaries and capitalists in their countries. How you thought not allowing right-wingers in China’s political system is a good argument for China’s supposed right-wing character, is beyond me. ‘right-wing’ isn’t defined by ‘have many party or no’, but by the class character of the tendency, movement, organization or state. China being a dictatorship of the proletariat, which your own point proves since it oppresses the bourgeoisie, is the single best argument for its communist character. You not understanding this simply means you do not understand class, class struggle or what states are and this honestly simply disqualifies you from talking about this in any serious capacity.
Militarism is when navy in contested water. Not that a wikipedia-citing liberal is expected to argue on a higher level than this…but come on.
And again, the militarism of communists to struggle against imperialism is not only not right-wing, it is in fact tantamount to anything revolutionary and communist. Militant struggle against capital and imperialism and the struggle of capital and imperialism to exploit are not the same, believe it or not. The armed struggle of the slave against his master isn’t the same as the threat of that master’s whip.
See also: Taiwan. China not allowing the imperialists to arm a secessionist movement within its own recognized borders isn’t right-wing. Imperialism arming reactionary, secessionist movements within socialist countries, however, is. So too, if you want to talk about reactionary militarism, is the encroachment, encirclement of China and the countless provocations in its waters and on its land by the imperialists.
You don’t even know the proper name of the Communist Party of China, but somehow are qualified to talk about the nature of this state and, again, as argument you link a wikipedia article? Linking an article isn’t an argument.
And again, suppression of capitalist and counter-revolutionary movements is inevitable in class struggle. You can’t be a revolutionary if you can’t defend your revolution. You can’t be a communist if your refuse to suppress and fight your exploiters. China engaging in this class struggle makes the exact opposite of what you’re trying to say.
Also le ebin funni CPC will arrest you for reading Tinyman link meme. +500 FICO score for your incredible wit and ingenuity.
Ignore btw the absurd violence the imperialist subject the world to in their neocolonial holdings. Those millions upon millions, not to mention the hundreds of thousands that get brutalized at home for such existential things as “please police don’t kill us” or “we don’t want to work till we’re dead”, sacrifized on the altar of profit in the name of capital pale in comparison to those peaceful, soldier burning reactionaries surrounding the 1989 events. Bashing thousands of heads when the actually suppressed minority in the US rises up against the permanent violence inflicted on it by liberals like you, is a fact of life. The governments committing this violence totally wouldn’t crack down on subversive movements murdering the representatives of that government. Never.
Saying something exists isn’t proof of that thing existing as a policy of a state. Me linking your a Wikipedia article to Nazi apologia and White Supremacy, isn’t a proof that you’re a white supremacists or Nazi apologist. Though your chauvinistic, reactionary comment is making that argument perfectly fine.
See also: Exemptions for the 1 child policy of non-Hans, the birthrates of those non-hans. The genocide that has no victims, isn’t traceable, not filmable, not provable, but totally exists and isn’t simply another cooked-up non-story for chauvinistic Western liberals in their endless quest to render the word genocide entirely meaningless and therefore to minimize the singular horror of the Holocaust.
Again, linking an article to a singular alleged cases of labour abuses are not proof of ‘subordination of individual interests for the percieved good of the nation and race’. These to do not follow from each other. Me linking you an article of child labour abuses in the US wouldn’t be an argument for the US operating under a paradigm of ‘subordination of individual interests for the percieved good of the nation and race’.
That you’re even attempting this argument only, again, shows that you don’t have a clue about the character of either ‘rightwing’ nor ‘leftwing’. The right-wing does not subordinate the individual interest for the perceived good of the nation and race. It very much subordinates the national interest, the interest of the majority, that of the working-class under that of the individual interest of the power-wielding exploiters ie capitalists. So you’re not making the point China is right-wing, because you do not understand what right-wing even is.
So either China is right-wing or it subordinates individual material interests for the good of the majority.
If it does the later, congratulations, you again made the point that China is engaging in class struggle against the individual interests of the exploiter class, which is the defining characteristic of ‘left-wing’. If you don’t engage in class struggle against that class, you’re not a communist.
Not to mention you do not understand the relationship of the individual and the collective in left-wing thought. Which is fine, but disqualifies you from talking about left-wing thought.
I’m not sure what your point even is. China isn’t a neoliberal capitalist economy…therefore it is right-wing?
Yes, socialist countries regiment society and the economy. What is your point?
Also imagine taxation is the only way of remitting social gain. “How does that cheap, reliable, widespread high-speed rail benefit society without taxation???” It remits profit by the very fact of existing.
Not sure either how this non-remitting point supports the claim that China has strong regimentation of society and the economy. It’s making the exact opposite point.
You do not understand what fascism is. You don’t understand what communism is. You don’t even understand the useless, vague labels like “left-wing” or “right-wing”. So I’ll go on: That’s not fascism.
This is going to take me a lot longer to reply to, unfortunately! Just timing in my day, and the need to sit down at a computer to reply. Catch you in a bit! :)
* edit: actually, /u/KommandoGzd@lemmygrad.ml has a better response than I would put together, I’ll just second theirs.
nice gish gallop. if you want to debate keep it simple instead of using known rhetorical horseshitt.
Tankies love motorized goalposts
Dawg I’m literally sticking to the argument in my first comment. What do you want from me?
Everyone ignored the latter part of your first comment because this part is the meat of it. I don’t think you actually care about the technical differences between fascism and communism, and I bet neither does EnglishMobster. Quit pretending that’s what this is about. You actually do think one is worse than the other.
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How does the western boot taste?
I think they’re doing an ironic thing, tbh
“People who built the Volkswagen, people who genocided millions of Ukrainians, what’s the difference?”
Just thought I’d turn your line around. It’s fun to reduce the atrocities of a movement to a good thing they did. Though the OP didn’t even mention communists at all, he mentioned tankies, as in the people who actively deny the atrocities of stalinism and maoism. It’s weird that you’d jump to defending communism.
You’re right that there’s a difference between fascists and tankies/ stalinists. And if this were a discussion in an academic setting, that might actually matter. But in an online discussion about the evils of both, it sort of doesn’t really matter. They both have a track record of authoritarianism and mass genocides, and I don’t get along well with people which defend either.
This isn’t comparable to my Auschwitz comparison, because this picks two unrelated things. The USSR also didn’t genocide millions of Ukrainians.
I don’t see a difference between Marxist-leninism, “Stalinism” (not a real thing, though sometimes people use the term), and communism. I’m happy to go into the nuts and bolts, if you’d find that interesting. I’ll try to use Marxism-leninism going forward, if that’s easier.
If these are the reasons you oppose both fascism and Marxism-leninism, do you oppose Liberalism the same amount?
They are as related as your two picks. The meat of the comparison was simply how you cherry pick a bad thing about the horrible dictatorship you dislike and something good about the horrible dictatorship you like.
There is a very distinct difference between Marxism, Marxist-leninism, Stalinism, etc. I couldn’t tell you what communism means in the modern world. Just going through a list of communist parties in europe, for example, they all defend such radically different things that even they don’t seem to agree on what communism means. I appreciate your offer to inform me, but unlike most communists, I’ve read Marx’s works. Cool stuff. Shame many modern day communist movements have completely thrown out that whole part about workers’ rights and class struggles and have gone full into adopting far right conspiracies in order to grab hold of the extremist votes as what used to be their main talking points has been normalized as is mostly still defended by movements closer to the center.
I don’t oppose Marxism-leninism. Tankies are by definition not marxist. I don’t understand why you keep shifting the conversation to try and mix tankies with actual communists. It’s usually the far right who tries to argue that people who might be favourable to marxist rhetoric are the exact same as people who condone genocides commited by states which defined themselves as “communist”, so it’s extra weird to have to defend this notion from a supposedly marxist-leninist.
As for Liberalism, like with Communism, I don’t really know what it actually means. What americans call Liberalism is practically the opposite of what is described as Liberalism in European politics, which itself is fundamentally different from something like classical liberalism, so you’d have to be more specific. Having said that, none of these groups usually defend genocidal actions, so I don’t “oppose” them in the sense I oppose fascists and stalinists. I might disagree with everything they stand for, depending again on the kind of liberalism we’re talking about, but at least I know they won’t actually try to kill me.
Ask the hundreds of millions of corpses in Indonesia, Brazil, Guatemala, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Grenada, Iran, etc, etc. if they think liberalism ‘won’t actually try to kill them’ if they have an opinion that isn’t aligned with capitalist interests.
’Tankie’ is literally the word your sect uses to describe Marxist Leninists
Such as? By the way worker’s rights and socialism cannot be attained simply by voting
Examples?
Yeah, sorry, I’m gonna pass. Like I told the guy above, I’m sure whatever definition of Liberalism you use fits whatever point you’re trying to make, but unless you have a specific point to make, I’m not going through all of these countries’ histories in search of how “liberalism” has led to hundreds of millions of corpses. Especially because I see Brazil in that list and I’m familiar enough with its history to bet your definition of “liberalism” is actually fascism, so I’d rather not bite.
I don’t use tankie to describe marxist leninists. I’ve made that very clear in my comment above. Like the person above, you seem to be trying to mix concepts in order to attack points I haven’t made. I also wonder what sect you think I’m a part of. I’d ask you to at least pretend you’re arguing in good faith and, if you truly want to argue, argue against the points I’ve made, not the strawman you’ve made up in your mind. Thought that would probably mean veering off the pre-approved script.
The communist party in my country is very fond of aligning with the new far right party when it comes to women’s right - which aren’t an issue according to the communist leader, as only workers’ rights are a true issue - and minority rights in general. It was a bit surprising to some when they decided to walk that path, but I guess we should’ve known.
As for workers’ rights, a combination of voting, strikes and protests have worked fairly well for my country’s history. A lot of unions in the past 20 or so years have steered away from the communist party, given their alleged attempts at suppression, and have become independent. The communist party has been continually losing votes as it clings to fringe topics such as the defense of dictatorships and often attacks unions which try to act in a democratic manner and pick leaders among the workers, instead of accepting the outside leaders the Party had decreed.
But what would you propose as an alternative to voting and protesting? Terrorism?
I don’t know if you’ve accidentally only cropped part of what you intended to. Do I really need to show you examples of the far right trying to sell the idea that everyone to the left aligns with dictatorships? You can just look up any interview of any far right leader in europe and you’ll probably find your example. Thought I’m confused why you need examples of that.
Louder for the people in the back!
Tankies 👏 are 👏 not 👏 true 👏 communists 👏.
God, I hate that this place is infested with tankies. I didn’t realize Lemmy.world still federated with Lemmygrad.
Sorry, but the Soviet Union was still a oligarchic terror state, regardless of its involvement in liberating concentration camps.
Fun watching all the “they’re bad because they censor” folk furiously jerking their dicks to defederate anything left of Trump.
Almost the entirety of the political spectrum of most democratic countries sits as far away from Trump as it does from tankies. Let’s stop pretending that if I oppose people who pretend that no genocides happened under Stalin I’m suddenly pro-Trump. There’s an entire political spectrum between those two.
Stalin has been dead for 71 years. Continuing to screech about Stalin to defend defederating anything left of Trump says everything about where you stand.
What is your opinion on people “screeching” about the Holocaust, given it happened so long ago?
EDIT: No answer. I’m assuming the user is as in favour of erasing memories of the Holocaust as he is of erasing memories of the genocides commited by Stalin and his supporters.
Looks like they’re the opposite actually, tankies. Still good riddance.
From their news post about federation:
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