I can't for the life of me understand why someone would advocate for an authoritarian government. Is it really just a really deep belief that "some animals are more equal than others" and that exploiting or oppressing those "lesser" is good?
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frankly, yes. you've summarized the position basically perfectly. there's a lot of people out there who view hierarchical society as necessary and good. auth comms take issue with the order of the hierarchy, but not with the structure of it
also that bootlickers yearn for someone to tell them what to do
and the answer to that is easy: they need to tell themselves. Or if they so badly want to, they should read Kropotkin.
I feel your frustration. I especially hate the needlessly confrontational ones. I recently started trying to be less confrontational my self, because I finally realized that it’s fruitless and only leaves me distressed, but somehow tankies still blow up at me.
Recently in a comment under a youtube video I dared to vaguely imply that china is flawed and I got people telling me that “china isn’t a dictatorship” and that I should read “neutral news sources” (as if such a thing exists). I didn’t even say anything! Like bloody hell… I barely mentioned it in passing. But I guess implying any flaw is triggering…
Yeah, i see and usually restrain myself from confrontations in public spaces, but that was a discord server of a streamer i watch for more than 5 years. Thankfully, they reached me out to me later, apologized for that mod's behaviour, and expressed support to me and my position from the whole mods team. So, at least i don't feel so disappointed anymore
I’m not generally a fan of memes that imply an equivalence between the auth-left and auth-right, because they tend to be used by “enlightened centrists” to push horseshoe theory and over-simplify an already over-simplified political compass.
…but the “but I wish it had been” got me pretty good. They really do be like that.
Also, it’s “so forth”, not “so fourth”.
I made this two months ago, on horeshoe theory:
Communism itself obviously isn't nazism, if someone says that your comment may apply. But tankies are as close as it gets.
The thing is that communism on it's own doesn't mean much or can mean many things. Kropotkin's anarcho communism? Hell, I'm in. But nowadays, the term communism is pretty much only used by tankies and I'm fine with letting them keep the term. I don't need it that much.
a few friends from post soviet states introduced me to that what we in the west refer to as left vs right or communist vs capitalist they refer to as anarchist vs fascist. the communist label got so attached to a fascist form of government that it probably can't ever be reclaimed, and we have to find another label that is more resistant to cooption
"freedom and order" vs "censorship and chaos"
first is whatever anarchocommunism is, second is fascism, capitalism, and all forms of totalitarianism (including Trump's MAGAs)
because if there's freedom, that's an order of liberty
and if there's chaos, there's only censorship
Anarchism isn't seen as positive by everyone but very difficult to corrupt by auth*ritarians
yup. and it's easier to talk people through anarchism isn't as bad as they've been led to believe than to reclaim communism from authoritarians. the problem you run into talking about anarchism is socdems and enlightened centrists calling you a simple minded brute
Same reaction from tankies btw
at least i know to study history AND theory, and know that those theories are just privileged academics studying what marginalized people have been doing to resist all along, and that if you deify a theorist, you are no longer practicing a social cause, you have created a religion…
Graeber once said that it's possible to study Marxism on a university level and do it all in an armchair level while anarchist academics (himself included) will engage in some level of action.
That said, there totally are selfaware armchair anarchists. "Anarchism explained to my father" is written by one (great book btw)
The very idea that 21st century Russia is "anti-imperialist", as they are actively engaged in a war to take over land that belongs to another country, is laughable.
And China? Have we forgotten what happened to Hong Kong less than a decade ago already? Are we not aware of the current circumstances in Xinjiang and Tibet? Of the threats towards Taiwan, including aggressive incursions in their airspace?
You don’t understand it’s only imperialism if it comes from the imperial region of the evil American empire.
Otherwise it's sparkling Read More Theory.
Can you define imperialism?
Yes it’s when one country loves another but the other country doesn’t want anything to do with it so they use diplomacy or sometimes place their military into the other country and commit war crimes to try to make the country love them back.
A group dominating another area than what the global community considers to be that group's, through infiltration, coups, annexation, exploitation, and colonialism.
So, what pretty much every society did that's not anarchocommunist.
Imperialism is when America. Duh.
Otherwise it's just a sparkling annexation.
I wonder if it's a symptom of the great age of misinformation, in such that, people can't trust anything they read, and therefore create or believe propaganda, that was previously discarded. Like how there's a whole heap of people believing the 50's propaganda when they had to tell all the women who were working "man" jobs, earning their own money and doing all the things that they were actually happier just slave labouring at home with no rights to vote or have a bank account etc, and they put out all this propaganda in the adds etc at the time to shove women back in the box, and they were all depressed af, and had to take drugs to get through the misery of their day, and all that propaganda was discarded, eventually, but this big wave of a certain type of person is cherry picking mystical meaning from that era. You know. Like that.
Women got the right to vote in 1920 in the US...
Left Russia several years ago because i didn't want to support the aggressive war in Ukraine.
How is it going after relocating?
It's good, thanks. I moved to Finland, very nice country. My wife, pets and some of my friends moved with me, and I found new friends in the company I work
If only they would fight against each other
Remember our rule about no tankie apologia before you comment!
I'm not a tankie nor tankie apologist. Could you explain what was about it (my comment)*?
I may be missing some vernacular or something, but last I checked, the 'both sides' argument is used by fascists as a centrist mask.
Same with unity being an important concept in fighting fascism.
So, what am I missing? I'm asking seriously here.
There are authoritarians on both the left and right. They share an uncomfortable amount of traits with one another.
No I know, but my comment was explicitly criticizing (the parent comment, in favor of)* the two arguments I highlighted above. It was deleted without explanation.
The "left-right" spectrum is too vague to be of any real use.
"leftist unity" is just "trickle down economics" for Marxists.
That's why a political compass looks like this
I dislike the political compass because it lends too much to right-wing libertarianism. Right-wing libertarianism moves the boot from the state to corporations.
right? 3 quarters of this are different kinds of authoritarian
political compass is honestly worse than a vague idea of left and right to me.
forcing a human beings complex and ever-changing moral and political thought into a literal box, i feel, has done irreparable damage to today's modern understanding of ideology. at least everyone understands the nuance between what "left" and "right" can be due to it being so muddy.
This person politics!
Political compasses are barely any less vague than a left-right spectrum, please stop recommending it.
Something like 8values would at least indicate what you believe
One problem is that it doesn't really show authoritarian tendency since left authoritarians will end in the left lib corner because there goal is a liberated society and they don't get that they don't get there by authoritative means. It's all just for now, trust me bro