If China is a socialist state worth supporting then I’m a donkey with a laser dick :P But I’m more anarchistically inclined so different perspective.
I see your point though. What I’m saying is not that communist = tankie, on the contrary. I’m saying that tankies claim to be communists but spend all day parroting their favorite Russian or Chinese state propaganda because they believe everything else is clearly controlled by Obamna™ himself. They rarely actually talk about communism, they just roam Lemmy all day calling everybody who disagrees with them a liberal :D
The conversation around China will take a minute, so I’ll skip ahead to your second paragraph and circle back to do your statement justice.
The people you describe as “tankies” do not exist in any reasonable number. You are extending a belief in some aspects of anti-western sources as full blind dogmatism. Secondly, in order to even consider oneself a Communist in a western-dominated website means exposure to constant western-narrative, the idea that eastern propaganda is much more effective is more of a smokescreen to avoid discussing hard topics than anything else.
As for the PRC, they absolutely aren’t Anarchist. They are, however, Marxist-Leninist, and Socialist. They have a Socialist Market Economy. Their Public Sector has supremacy over the direction of the Private Sector as key heavy industries the Private Sector relies on are entirely State Owned, and the Private Sector itself is trapped in a “birdcage model” whereby the CPC increases ownership and control as Markets naturally form monopolist syndicates.
This is entirely in line with Marxism. Marxists believe that markets naturally centralize and form monopolist syndicates ripe for central planning, and thus are more efficient vectors for growth at earlier stages in development, but that as they centralize this becomes less efficient and public ownership and central planning takes priority.
The people I’m describing as tankies are people I’ve interacted with myself. I’m sure they don’t exist in huge numbers, but they are more concentrated on .ml, they are loud, and they are impossible to converse with. I still like it here because most people here, like yourself, are smart and offering interesting perspectives I haven’t explored before.
I agree that the idea of only Eastern propaganda being dangerous and pervasive is wrong. Western propaganda is everywhere too and also dangerous.
One thing that is different is the lack of government-critical sources available from China, also Russia. Freedom of Speech in the West is wobbly, but in China and especially Russia it is even worse (from everything I’ve read).
This is a lovely segue into our China sidequest, and while I agree on the definition, I have doubts on how public the public sector really is. The way that national election results look and the way vocal dissidents or political opposition are treated does not give me the idea that the people truly have all the power here.
Capitalism concentrates power in the capitalist class. This class can then subvert democracy, resulting in oligarchy. In a similar way, central planning concentrates power in the central government, which actually makes it even easier to abuse that power. Chinese government is not transparent nor federal enough for me to call it democratic or owned by the people.
One thing that is different is the lack of government-critical sources available from China, also Russia. Freedom of Speech in the West is wobbly, but in China and especially Russia it is even worse (from everything I’ve read).
What have you read?
Your freedom of speech is tolerated in the West to the extent thst it doesn’t threaten ruling class interests. The ruling class already owns all of the papers and TV channels and think tanks, they drown you out. You can never hope to push socialism through their apparatus. That is how effective their cemsorship already is: you’re told you have freedom of speech and then deplatformed. If you get a little louder, you might get a platform on occasion, but will then will still be drowned out by “competing” views.
And if you fly too close to the sun, you will get direct government censorship. Ask Germany how “free speech” is going with regards yup Palestinian solidariry. Ask comrades in the US how free speech is going with Samidoun declared a terrorist orgsnization. Ask a former Black Panther for free their speech was while being soued on snd martyred by the feds and cops.
If you actually do anything that matters, if you truly challenge the ruling powers in the West, you will need to be realistic and expect oppression. The idea that you have free speech is just pure propaganda.
Re: China go on Weibo you will find plenty of criticism of the government. The idea that you can’t criticize the government in China is xenophoboc propaganda.
Re: Russia: okay, but what is your point? There are bad things that happen in Russia so… their role against US imperialism is bad? Because that tends to be the only thing supported by “tankies”. The Russian Federation is a capitalist project created by capitalist revanchist shock therapy on the USSR that killed 7-10 million people. The West created the RF, its “oligarchs” are hust centralized capitalists like in othet countries in Europe, except the West continued to exclude Russia from the imperisl core, attempting to force it into the periphery (extraction snd poverty). What you see today is a regional capitalist power that is respinding to that. One where the national bourgeoisie are dominant rather than the international bourgeoisie, due to circumstances imposef on them. As a consequence, they often align against Western imperislism.
This is a lovely segue into our China sidequest, and while I agree on the definition, I have doubts on how public the public sector really is. The way that national election results look and the way vocal dissidents or political opposition are treated does not give me the idea that the people truly have all the power here.
Which is to say, you don’t actually know anything about it. Public means state-owned, by the way. Do you believe they aren’t actually owned by the state?
Capitalism concentrates power in the capitalist class. This class can then subvert democracy, resulting in oligarchy.
This has the false premise that the historical course of capitalism is to enter spaces that were already “democratic” in the bourgeois democratic sense. This is not true. Instead, capitalism itself gained power through the replacement of feudalistic giverning powers (like monarchies) with structures they could control, compatible with their ideas of “progress”. In short, they created bourgeous democracy. They were already in control. The question of concentration of capital changes the words but not the fact of who is in control.
In a similar way, central planning concentrates power in the central government, which actually makes it even easier to abuse that power.
In countries run by socialists, central planning is an exercise of power that already exists. The power is maintained through the oppression of competing classes and, traditionally, party bureaucracy.
I don’t know what it could possibly mean to say it is “easier to abuse that power”, it is so vague and decontextualized thst it just sounds like something you’re makinh up on the spot. Socialists endeavour to speak in terms of concrete realities and draw conclusions from them. What is your standard of abuse? Of power? How are you comparing these things?
btw central planning is not unique to countries run by socialists. Highly concentrated capitalism also has central planning aspects, as do their governments in times of emergency. But it is, in that case, central planning for bourgeois interests.
Chinese government is not transparent
How so? Tell me how the Chinese system works for, say, someone working to get a hospital built in their town.
nor federal enough
This sounds like America-centrism. There is nothing inherently democratic about federalism and it is often antidemocratic. If you are in the US, do you applaud the electoral college?
for me to call it democratic or owned by the people.
Tell me which other peripheral countries hsve done so much for their people. Tell me who has alleviated so much poverty, built so much infrastructure, and by their own hand rather than imperialism and capitalist ventures. The proof is in the doing.
This might be a hard pill to swallow, but Putin is largely popular among Russians for assisting with throwing out the Western Capitalists that bought the various slices of the former USSR after “Shock Doctrine” killed 7 million people with the re-introduction of Capitalism, and the CPC has an over 90% approval rate. Political opposition is largely limited because both governments have more support among their citizenry than Western governments do.
I’m actually really happy that you mentioned Shock Doctrine because last time I was arguing with a tankie they called Naomi Klein a US state sanctioned liberal :D
I already replied on another comment about the support
Shock Doctrine is good theory regardless of whatever western brainworms reside in her. If people couldn’t separate theory we’d have to throw the whole thing out with Marx’s European brainworms.
Per the origins of the term, a tankie is a communist that supported the Soviets wuelling the Hungarian 1956 uprising. It was an insult concocted by British Trotskyists, who also consider themselves communists.
The modern use of the term is just a liberal sentiment leveled against anyone that doesn’t fall neatly in line with US Empire’s vilification campaigns. If you dare to say that Russia has material motivations that are a counter to those of the US rather than being a kingdom run by a madman that just loves killing, you are a tankie. If you don’t want Ukraine used as a proxy for the US to hurt Russia, regardless of how many Ukrainians die, you are a tankie. If you treat the PRC as country filled with normal people living normal lives rather than the dystopian nightmare it’s falsely depicted as, uou are a tankie. If you know anything at all about Dengism, you are a tankie.
Really, the liberal position on both countries is premised on orientalism and it is never a surprise when the criticisms inevitably turn into vague tropes. And when this laziness is called out, well, it’s time to deploy a tactical tankie reference. I definitely don’t care about being insulted, these situations are really just a way for the other person to give themselves an excuse to stop thinking or engaging.
I’m very critical of American imperialism but I fail to see how the US is using Ukraine to hurt Russia.
The fault always lies with the invader, Russia did this to itself. If I see someone getting stabbed and throw him a knife, implying I’m using him to hurt the other person attacking him is silly. Russia can leave anytime.
I do agree tankie is thrown around far too much, I’ve been called one myself just for talking shit of the military, even though I never mentioned an other country or a political idealogie.
The spread of the word as well as the constant villainization of China seems like prep for red scare 2.0, so we can have the population support bombing villages full of civilians (again).
Russia entered a conflict that was already in progress, a civil war where the Ukrainian coup government was attempting to ethnically cleanse the Russian speaking population in the east. This coup was orchestrated by the US (this was obvious, admitted to in recorded phone calls, and was rife with high US politicians (John McCaine for example) going there to celebrate. The US/NATO also funded the training and arming of openly neo-nazi militias like Azov Battalion, (and others) many of whom were the ones shelling the people in the East long before Russia intervened. All of this was done by the US to exert pressure on Russia. And this is just scratching the surface. So no, Russia did not “do this to itself” and your framing of it is naive and simplistic and just plain false.
I am genuinely glad to see you reognize the villainization of China, but please also apply those same critical thinking skills to what you have been told about Russia in the Ukraine conflict and do some digging into the history that doesn’t rely on western propaganda.
True anarchist stance is when your geopolitical opinions about the US’s rivals coincidentally align perfectly with that of the US State Department.
It’s always the other side that is propagandized.
tankies claim to be communists but spend all day parroting their favorite Russian or Chinese state propaganda
Tell us how these “tankies” are “parroting” propaganda and we’ll tell you exactly how your geopolitical opinions align with the US State Dept.
When did I say I agree with US propaganda?
For starters, right here where you showed your whole ass and said: “If China is a socialist state worth supporting then I’m a donkey with a laser dick”
You do seem to be quite a donkey but clearly it’s just overconfident false advertisement about the laser.
If China is so great then why does it feel the need to dictate over Hong Kong and Taiwan? Does China have gay marriage? Trans rights perhaps?
I’m not saying China is as bad as the West claims it is. I’m just saying it’s not something to get wild about. It’s a nation state (a far too big one at that), which are by definition tools of oppression.
Are we having a discussion of geopolitics or a schoolyard gossip fight?
then why does it feel the need to dictate over Hong Kong
Why do you have strong opinions about this topic when you clearly do not know any history about China?
China, more specifically the Qing Dynasty, was colonized (mostly by the British) through a series of imperialist ventures thst included the Opium Wars. The result was the designation of Hong Kong, already an existing Chinese city, as a British imperial trade hub where resources and wealth extracted from the rest of the country was traded, as well as later serving as a finsncial hub for the rest of the imperialized region. But, to put it simply, the British stole Hong Kong in 1841-1843.
When China threw off all of its imperial masters in its national liberation fight against the Japanese, it then had a civil war due to the KMT attacking the communists. Obviously, the communists won. As part of this, they reclaimed Hong Kong just a little over 100 years after it was stolen, but using the legal definition that had been imposed by the British, who had given themselves a 100-year lease that ended in 1997.
Hong Kong is a Chinese city that was colonized by the British and is being reintegrated, as yiu would expect from a sovereign country. You claimed elsewhere that you are against Western hegemony, but this is a crystal clear example of anticolonial action and you’re siding with the colonists that write breathless propaganda about how unfair it is that China is governing a Chinese city.
and Taiwan
Again, just basic history. When the communists were reconsolidating their country, they were also expelling KMT forces. At the end, the KMT looted wealth and cultural artifacts and fled to Taiwan, where they set up a military dictatorship and began oppressing the indigenous people there. The PRC was set to invade Taiwan and finish their civil war, but the US set up a blockade and the PRC opted to vow a later return rather than force the Americans out. The first question you should have is why the US was meddling in their civil war.
Both the PRC and the KMT have long held that the civil war has never ended, with the PRC claiming Taiwan and the KMT claiming all of msinlsnd China and also Mongolia. The PRC holds a consistent line of reunification being the end goal.
The US uses Taiwan to harass the PRC and wants to use it to escalate tensions. It may even try to turn it into another Ukraine, doing everything it can to push China over red lines militarily until it finally decides that Taiwan is an intolerable threat just a few miles off its coast and very close to Shenzhen. If that happened, would you yet again go after the target if US imperialism like your masters tell you to, calling it an unprovoked aggression? Would you have new names for people that correctly blame the US for using their proxies as puppets to harass other nations? The US is already trying to derisk from Taiwan by exportinh its chip production facilities but it isn’t going well because the US is so finsncislized that it can’t barely build productive capacity at even 10X the cost of elsewhere.
Does China have gay marriage?
This is another example of why someone would call you a liberal. Pinkwashing imperialist takes. What is your logic on what is permitted to be done to other countries if they don’t have a legal recognition of gay marriage? On what basis do other cultures need to mirror your own preferences in order for them to be free of your chauvinism? Any real county will have reactionary elements, some old, some new. Your country, and you, have reactionary elements.
There is a populsr struggle for gay marriage in China and it is going pretty well. It is mostly jist old people who are against it. You should exoect to see it legalized in the next decade or so. But you will have had nothing to do with thst, as your contribution here is to sneer at the entire country for not doing what this Westerner baby leftist demands.
Incidentally, if the CPC did force through legalized gay marriage and it elicited some negative response, like protests, you can be certain this would be characterized as an authoritarian overreach and how dare they disregard the will of the people. Some “socialists”, huh!?
Trans rights perhaps?
China has better trans rights than your country, most likely. It has less transphobia to begin with, had major out and truly popular trans celebrities before the US did, and provides gender-affirming care of all kinds in a way that is truly accessible for the vast majority of people. Compare this to the US where trans kids are often exiled by their families and given no support, leading to high rates of homelessness, hard drug use, and death.
China does not have the same culture wars as the US, it doesn’t have the same need for capital to create and maintain marginalization to distract from material decline. China is materially advancing and ending extreme poverty.
I’m not saying China is as bad as the West claims it is. I’m just saying it’s not something to get wild about.
But you don’t seem to know anything about China. Why have an opinion at all? Why not hold your tongue until you have done some reading or talked nicely to Chinese people?
It’s a nation state (a far too big one at that), which are by definition tools of oppression.
Sure, but what of it? Do you think we are in a position to have a societu free of oppression, including nation states? With you and whose army?
Socialists must build revolution in the real world, with what is materially in front of us. Tell us how you would, say, end China’s status as a nation state without it just getting immediately recolonized, probably by the country in which you live, work, and to which you contribute.
Hong Kong is a Chinese city that was colonized by the British and is being reintegrated, as yiu would expect from a sovereign country. You claimed elsewhere that you are against Western hegemony, but this is a crystal clear example of anticolonial action and you’re siding with the colonists that write breathless propaganda about how unfair it is that China is governing a Chinese city.
Okay so violently beating down protesters is okay because it’s in the name of anticolonialism? This line of reasoning goes exactly the same as US imperialism. It’s always some harmful ideology that is enslaving the poor people of some place and they must be freed by being forced to join the empire.
I don’t get where you’re trying to take this conversation. You don’t have to prove to me that some things about China are great. In this comment alone you admitted three times that China isn’t perfect. Which means, China should be criticized. Like any other nation state. And I am saying, there are shills who run around and won’t let anybody criticize China because for some reason they got emotionally attached to a nation state. Everybody who says they don’t want to deepthroat Mao’s shlong for breakfast gets called a liberal. Any and all words uttered by a human that has even looked at the US on a map is liberal slop, and everything coming from the Russian state department is gospel. And I call those people tankies. That’s all I’m saying.
First, before I respond point-by-point, I would like to point out thst you have ignored nearly all of my response. I offered you information, history, and context, in part because it is informative, but mostly because it provides you the opportunity to recognize (vocally or not) your ignorance of this topic and instead redirect your attention yo actually questioning your knowledge and opinions and doing some reading instead of lashing out or doubling down.
Instead, you are doubling down on seeking conflict and sharing, yet again, that your only knowledge of this topic is what you were recemtly told to believe by capitalist media propagandists. And that this is so superior to my knowledge that you don’t even need to acknowledge what I’ve said and can just continue on trying to be contrarian.
Do you think it would be fair to call your behavior insufferable, as you have called tankies? To be clear, I do expect an answer to this question.
Okay so violently beating down protesters is okay because it’s in the name of anticolonialism?
Oh, so you aren’t even really responding to what I said, which is about Westerners being outraged that China was governing China. I thought you might not understand what I meant by that, but I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Anyways this is a srraw man and I will ignore it.
This line of reasoning goes exactly the same as US imperialism. It’s always some harmful ideology that is enslaving the poor people of some place and they must be freed by being forced to join the empire.
You’re just talking to yourself about all of this. It has nothing to do with what I said.
Are you ready to have an actual conversation or are you so deep into liberalism that you can only imagine fighting and winning rather than questioning your own ignorance?
I don’t get where you’re trying to take this conversation. You don’t have to prove to me that some things about China are great. In this comment alone you admitted three times that China isn’t perfect. Which means, China should be criticized.
Let’s say you go to a bar and there are some Nazis at the next table. You hear them say, “and fuck those communists, they will get what is coming to them”. Are you going to go over there and say, “yeah, fuck those tankies! They’re insufferable authoritarians”? Because all that means is that you’re going out of your way to validate Nazis trying to kill communists and aligning yourself with them. When someone says, “what the fuck, punch those Nazis, don’t validate them” are you going up say, “ergo, communists should be criticized”.
Your entire social context is those Nazis in that bar. And your criticisms aren’t even informed, they’re the bullshit spread by the Nazi propagandists. And then you tell everyone you’re on the left.
If you ever spent time among communists, you would find they are very critical of China. But their criticisms are differemt from yours becsyse yours are warmed over cold war talking points and uncritical readings of the media. And they are intentional about their outward criticisms, becayse again, our entire social context is the Nazi bar.
Like any other nation state. And I am saying, there are shills who run around and won’t let anybody criticize China because for some reason they got emotionally attached to a nation state
Nonsense. Speak to and of the tankies right in front of you right now. What, exactly, are we doing?
Everybody who says they don’t want to deepthroat Mao’s shlong for breakfast gets called a liberal.
Hey look it’s that homophobia I mentioned liberals doing in another comment. You asked me what a liberal is, well there you go. A liberal us, for exple, someone that attacks China for not having legalized gay marriage but then uses homophobic insults.
Do self-crit.
Any and all words uttered by a human that has even looked at the US on a map is liberal slop, and everything coming from the Russian state department is gospel. And I call those people tankies. That’s all I’m saying.
You do tell a lot of vague stories but they have no relation to what people are actually doing.
It is not coincidental that you ignored the vast majority of what I said, as it was concrete history.
I thought I was having one. I’m just disagreeing with you on some things and you somehow seem to think that means I’m not engaging. I’m trying.
Let’s say you go to a bar and there are some Nazis at the next table. You hear them say, “and fuck those communists, they will get what is coming to them”. Are you going to go over there and say, “yeah, fuck those tankies! They’re insufferable authoritarians”? Because all that means is that you’re going out of your way to validate Nazis trying to kill communists and aligning yourself with them. When someone says, “what the fuck, punch those Nazis, don’t validate them” are you going up say, “ergo, communists should be criticized”.
Woah no and I’m sorry if I’ve given the impression I would do something like that. I consider marxist-leninist communists to be misguided comrades, and I hope you can think of me the same way.
Hey look it’s that homophobia
How is that homophobia? I think you’re construing something here.
It is not coincidental that you ignored the vast majority of what I said, as it was concrete history.
It is not coincidental that I skimmed this comment as well because it is really fucking long. sorry
If China is so great then why does it feel the need to dictate over Hong Kong and Taiwan?
It doesn’t. Taiwan and Hong Kong ARE China. If anything the high level of autonomy that China allows reactionary regional governments to have is what should be criticized.
Does China have gay marriage? Trans rights perhaps?
China allows for civil unions for LGBTQ. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1162943.shtml It made civil unions legal across the nation before USA made gay marriage legal in every state. Like all places in the world (some more than others) China has a long way to go on LGBTQ rights. But that’s just it, China is improving along those lines, while the US is rapidly regressing. China is improving with trans rights and has been punishing companies that violate them. So yes, we should absolutely support China in continuing to move in the correct direction.
It’s a nation state (a far too big one at that), which are by definition tools of oppression.
Lol, by whose definition? A state is only as good or bad as the ruling class that wields it. A bourgeois (capitalist) state will always be oppressive. As a socialist state (and China is a socialist state), the CPC uses its power to suppress the constant attempts of the bourgeois to oppress the working class.
China is improving along those lines, while the US is rapidly regressing
That’s fair, but it’s once again an argument based entirely on comparing China to the US. The US being bad doesn’t make China good. To get back to my original argument, I’m just saying that the word ‘tankie’ refers to China or Russia simps. There is no nation in this world worth simping for.
So the Taiwanese all desperately want to join the DPRC? Last I checked Taiwan was a sovereign nation. Capitalism has a foothold there but the British no longer rule there. Justifying imperialism with imperialism also doesn’t magically make it okay
I’m curious, where do you think so many westerners are exposed to Russian propaganda? Because there are apparently so many victims of it these days, can’t turn a corner without someone decrying all these damn Russian and Chinese shill everywhere. So where do we all come from? What exactly did we get exposed to? I know this is the part where you handwave the question away with a “Heh, they got exposed to devious foreign thought on the freaking internet” but I’m not letting you off that easy. Tell me what you think the actual specific vectors are for all this “Russian and Chinese propaganda” you see everywhere, and how it was apparently able to easily penetrate the absolute haze of American propaganda that all of us in “the west” have been force fed our entire lives.
Please account for this gaping hole in your social theory. Why so many tankies, how, and why only now?
Funny, I was just telling @Cowbee about how the tankies I see on here are insufferable & impossible to converse with.
But I’ll bite. First of all, I don’t appreciate the strawmen. I’m not saying that there is a lot of tankies, nor that they are here now suddenly. I’m not denying that US/Western propaganda doesn’t exist, nor that it’s dangerous and pervasive.
I’m just saying that I, myself, in my own experience, have seen people shilling for China or even Russia, acting like it’s a fucking utopia. Russia an oligarchy, just with a different structure than most Western countries. China is a government that rules over billions of people. That is, by definition, evil. No amount of America Bad makes China or Russia good.
In terms of propaganda sources, for example just take a look at Russia Today.
The more you concentrate power, the harder it is to keep bad actors from abusing said power.
What makes you think the power over those billion+ people is all “concentrated”? Could it be (gasp!) that the power is largely distributed among those people who overwhelmingly support that government? This is just capitalist-realism-brained misunderstanding of how communist parties work.
Most Americans approve of capitalism. Does that make it good too?
Could it be (gasp!) that the power is largely distributed among those people who overwhelmingly support that government?
Democracy doesn’t work when it’s top-down. In the West, the capitalist and ruling class is capable of exerting control on public opinion and therefore on elections. The same is true of the CCP, which can influence public opinion as well. The best way to combat this is by emancipating individuals so they are able to resist state propaganda. China has a dogshit score on the press freedom index, so good luck educating the people on the shortcomings of the government. The government is intransparent and oppressive by design.
Can you explain how Whole Process People’s Democracy is “top-down?” Further, can you explain why it’s a good thing for Capitalists to control the press, and not the public? The inverse of public press is private press, and that means ownership by Capitalists and liberals. Surely it’s better for the people to control the press, and not the bourgeoisie?
Further, can you explain how the government is “intransparent and oppressive by design?” Just because you don’t speak mandarin doesn’t mean the process is mystified and opaque for those who live in and contribute to said system.
You’re implying that I’m the one setting up a strawman by claiming that people are acting a certain way. This is from my personal experience. I’m not accusing you or everyone here of being a tankie but it seems like everybody here identifies as one. Maybe we have a different definition of the word. I was trying to clarify my definition.
You’d prefer to Balkanize China into a several million anarchist direct democracy communes? Or what? How would that work in 2024?
No, and I don’t think any smart anarchist is advocating for some crazy revolution involving a coup or whatever. I advocate for building strong local communities, that are heavily interconnected. “Communes” as such are kind of impossible since most people live in cities anyway. We need to build resilient networks that can slowly replace oppressive centralized power. Personally I also don’t subscribe to only 100% anarchism, my ideology is also influenced by socialism, syndicalism and marxism.
This debate went way off the rails, but maybe tell me about how you think things should go. For example what would be a way for the US to transition to communism.
If China is a socialist state worth supporting then I’m a donkey with a laser dick :P But I’m more anarchistically inclined so different perspective.
I see your point though. What I’m saying is not that communist = tankie, on the contrary. I’m saying that tankies claim to be communists but spend all day parroting their favorite Russian or Chinese state propaganda because they believe everything else is clearly controlled by Obamna™ himself. They rarely actually talk about communism, they just roam Lemmy all day calling everybody who disagrees with them a liberal :D
The conversation around China will take a minute, so I’ll skip ahead to your second paragraph and circle back to do your statement justice.
The people you describe as “tankies” do not exist in any reasonable number. You are extending a belief in some aspects of anti-western sources as full blind dogmatism. Secondly, in order to even consider oneself a Communist in a western-dominated website means exposure to constant western-narrative, the idea that eastern propaganda is much more effective is more of a smokescreen to avoid discussing hard topics than anything else.
As for the PRC, they absolutely aren’t Anarchist. They are, however, Marxist-Leninist, and Socialist. They have a Socialist Market Economy. Their Public Sector has supremacy over the direction of the Private Sector as key heavy industries the Private Sector relies on are entirely State Owned, and the Private Sector itself is trapped in a “birdcage model” whereby the CPC increases ownership and control as Markets naturally form monopolist syndicates.
This is entirely in line with Marxism. Marxists believe that markets naturally centralize and form monopolist syndicates ripe for central planning, and thus are more efficient vectors for growth at earlier stages in development, but that as they centralize this becomes less efficient and public ownership and central planning takes priority.
I recommend the article Socialism Developed China, Not Capitalism.
The people I’m describing as tankies are people I’ve interacted with myself. I’m sure they don’t exist in huge numbers, but they are more concentrated on .ml, they are loud, and they are impossible to converse with. I still like it here because most people here, like yourself, are smart and offering interesting perspectives I haven’t explored before.
I agree that the idea of only Eastern propaganda being dangerous and pervasive is wrong. Western propaganda is everywhere too and also dangerous.
One thing that is different is the lack of government-critical sources available from China, also Russia. Freedom of Speech in the West is wobbly, but in China and especially Russia it is even worse (from everything I’ve read).
This is a lovely segue into our China sidequest, and while I agree on the definition, I have doubts on how public the public sector really is. The way that national election results look and the way vocal dissidents or political opposition are treated does not give me the idea that the people truly have all the power here.
Capitalism concentrates power in the capitalist class. This class can then subvert democracy, resulting in oligarchy. In a similar way, central planning concentrates power in the central government, which actually makes it even easier to abuse that power. Chinese government is not transparent nor federal enough for me to call it democratic or owned by the people.
What have you read?
Your freedom of speech is tolerated in the West to the extent thst it doesn’t threaten ruling class interests. The ruling class already owns all of the papers and TV channels and think tanks, they drown you out. You can never hope to push socialism through their apparatus. That is how effective their cemsorship already is: you’re told you have freedom of speech and then deplatformed. If you get a little louder, you might get a platform on occasion, but will then will still be drowned out by “competing” views.
And if you fly too close to the sun, you will get direct government censorship. Ask Germany how “free speech” is going with regards yup Palestinian solidariry. Ask comrades in the US how free speech is going with Samidoun declared a terrorist orgsnization. Ask a former Black Panther for free their speech was while being soued on snd martyred by the feds and cops.
If you actually do anything that matters, if you truly challenge the ruling powers in the West, you will need to be realistic and expect oppression. The idea that you have free speech is just pure propaganda.
Re: China go on Weibo you will find plenty of criticism of the government. The idea that you can’t criticize the government in China is xenophoboc propaganda.
Re: Russia: okay, but what is your point? There are bad things that happen in Russia so… their role against US imperialism is bad? Because that tends to be the only thing supported by “tankies”. The Russian Federation is a capitalist project created by capitalist revanchist shock therapy on the USSR that killed 7-10 million people. The West created the RF, its “oligarchs” are hust centralized capitalists like in othet countries in Europe, except the West continued to exclude Russia from the imperisl core, attempting to force it into the periphery (extraction snd poverty). What you see today is a regional capitalist power that is respinding to that. One where the national bourgeoisie are dominant rather than the international bourgeoisie, due to circumstances imposef on them. As a consequence, they often align against Western imperislism.
Which is to say, you don’t actually know anything about it. Public means state-owned, by the way. Do you believe they aren’t actually owned by the state?
This has the false premise that the historical course of capitalism is to enter spaces that were already “democratic” in the bourgeois democratic sense. This is not true. Instead, capitalism itself gained power through the replacement of feudalistic giverning powers (like monarchies) with structures they could control, compatible with their ideas of “progress”. In short, they created bourgeous democracy. They were already in control. The question of concentration of capital changes the words but not the fact of who is in control.
In countries run by socialists, central planning is an exercise of power that already exists. The power is maintained through the oppression of competing classes and, traditionally, party bureaucracy.
I don’t know what it could possibly mean to say it is “easier to abuse that power”, it is so vague and decontextualized thst it just sounds like something you’re makinh up on the spot. Socialists endeavour to speak in terms of concrete realities and draw conclusions from them. What is your standard of abuse? Of power? How are you comparing these things?
btw central planning is not unique to countries run by socialists. Highly concentrated capitalism also has central planning aspects, as do their governments in times of emergency. But it is, in that case, central planning for bourgeois interests.
How so? Tell me how the Chinese system works for, say, someone working to get a hospital built in their town.
This sounds like America-centrism. There is nothing inherently democratic about federalism and it is often antidemocratic. If you are in the US, do you applaud the electoral college?
Tell me which other peripheral countries hsve done so much for their people. Tell me who has alleviated so much poverty, built so much infrastructure, and by their own hand rather than imperialism and capitalist ventures. The proof is in the doing.
Do you speak Chinese or Russian?
No, and that’s a good point actually. Although I think the state of political opposition both in Russia and China speaks volumes.
This might be a hard pill to swallow, but Putin is largely popular among Russians for assisting with throwing out the Western Capitalists that bought the various slices of the former USSR after “Shock Doctrine” killed 7 million people with the re-introduction of Capitalism, and the CPC has an over 90% approval rate. Political opposition is largely limited because both governments have more support among their citizenry than Western governments do.
I’m actually really happy that you mentioned Shock Doctrine because last time I was arguing with a tankie they called Naomi Klein a US state sanctioned liberal :D
I already replied on another comment about the support
Shock Doctrine is good theory regardless of whatever western brainworms reside in her. If people couldn’t separate theory we’d have to throw the whole thing out with Marx’s European brainworms.
Per the origins of the term, a tankie is a communist that supported the Soviets wuelling the Hungarian 1956 uprising. It was an insult concocted by British Trotskyists, who also consider themselves communists.
The modern use of the term is just a liberal sentiment leveled against anyone that doesn’t fall neatly in line with US Empire’s vilification campaigns. If you dare to say that Russia has material motivations that are a counter to those of the US rather than being a kingdom run by a madman that just loves killing, you are a tankie. If you don’t want Ukraine used as a proxy for the US to hurt Russia, regardless of how many Ukrainians die, you are a tankie. If you treat the PRC as country filled with normal people living normal lives rather than the dystopian nightmare it’s falsely depicted as, uou are a tankie. If you know anything at all about Dengism, you are a tankie.
Really, the liberal position on both countries is premised on orientalism and it is never a surprise when the criticisms inevitably turn into vague tropes. And when this laziness is called out, well, it’s time to deploy a tactical tankie reference. I definitely don’t care about being insulted, these situations are really just a way for the other person to give themselves an excuse to stop thinking or engaging.
I’m very critical of American imperialism but I fail to see how the US is using Ukraine to hurt Russia.
The fault always lies with the invader, Russia did this to itself. If I see someone getting stabbed and throw him a knife, implying I’m using him to hurt the other person attacking him is silly. Russia can leave anytime.
I do agree tankie is thrown around far too much, I’ve been called one myself just for talking shit of the military, even though I never mentioned an other country or a political idealogie.
The spread of the word as well as the constant villainization of China seems like prep for red scare 2.0, so we can have the population support bombing villages full of civilians (again).
Russia entered a conflict that was already in progress, a civil war where the Ukrainian coup government was attempting to ethnically cleanse the Russian speaking population in the east. This coup was orchestrated by the US (this was obvious, admitted to in recorded phone calls, and was rife with high US politicians (John McCaine for example) going there to celebrate. The US/NATO also funded the training and arming of openly neo-nazi militias like Azov Battalion, (and others) many of whom were the ones shelling the people in the East long before Russia intervened. All of this was done by the US to exert pressure on Russia. And this is just scratching the surface. So no, Russia did not “do this to itself” and your framing of it is naive and simplistic and just plain false.
I am genuinely glad to see you reognize the villainization of China, but please also apply those same critical thinking skills to what you have been told about Russia in the Ukraine conflict and do some digging into the history that doesn’t rely on western propaganda.
Do you have any links?
https://lemmy.ml/post/22553506/15008047
True anarchist stance is when your geopolitical opinions about the US’s rivals coincidentally align perfectly with that of the US State Department. It’s always the other side that is propagandized.
Stop with the strawmen. When did I say I agree with US propaganda? When did I say that I consider myself on the same side as the US?
Tell us how these “tankies” are “parroting” propaganda and we’ll tell you exactly how your geopolitical opinions align with the US State Dept.
For starters, right here where you showed your whole ass and said: “If China is a socialist state worth supporting then I’m a donkey with a laser dick”
You do seem to be quite a donkey but clearly it’s just overconfident false advertisement about the laser.
If China is so great then why does it feel the need to dictate over Hong Kong and Taiwan? Does China have gay marriage? Trans rights perhaps?
I’m not saying China is as bad as the West claims it is. I’m just saying it’s not something to get wild about. It’s a nation state (a far too big one at that), which are by definition tools of oppression.
Are we having a discussion of geopolitics or a schoolyard gossip fight?
Why do you have strong opinions about this topic when you clearly do not know any history about China?
China, more specifically the Qing Dynasty, was colonized (mostly by the British) through a series of imperialist ventures thst included the Opium Wars. The result was the designation of Hong Kong, already an existing Chinese city, as a British imperial trade hub where resources and wealth extracted from the rest of the country was traded, as well as later serving as a finsncial hub for the rest of the imperialized region. But, to put it simply, the British stole Hong Kong in 1841-1843.
When China threw off all of its imperial masters in its national liberation fight against the Japanese, it then had a civil war due to the KMT attacking the communists. Obviously, the communists won. As part of this, they reclaimed Hong Kong just a little over 100 years after it was stolen, but using the legal definition that had been imposed by the British, who had given themselves a 100-year lease that ended in 1997.
Hong Kong is a Chinese city that was colonized by the British and is being reintegrated, as yiu would expect from a sovereign country. You claimed elsewhere that you are against Western hegemony, but this is a crystal clear example of anticolonial action and you’re siding with the colonists that write breathless propaganda about how unfair it is that China is governing a Chinese city.
Again, just basic history. When the communists were reconsolidating their country, they were also expelling KMT forces. At the end, the KMT looted wealth and cultural artifacts and fled to Taiwan, where they set up a military dictatorship and began oppressing the indigenous people there. The PRC was set to invade Taiwan and finish their civil war, but the US set up a blockade and the PRC opted to vow a later return rather than force the Americans out. The first question you should have is why the US was meddling in their civil war.
Both the PRC and the KMT have long held that the civil war has never ended, with the PRC claiming Taiwan and the KMT claiming all of msinlsnd China and also Mongolia. The PRC holds a consistent line of reunification being the end goal.
The US uses Taiwan to harass the PRC and wants to use it to escalate tensions. It may even try to turn it into another Ukraine, doing everything it can to push China over red lines militarily until it finally decides that Taiwan is an intolerable threat just a few miles off its coast and very close to Shenzhen. If that happened, would you yet again go after the target if US imperialism like your masters tell you to, calling it an unprovoked aggression? Would you have new names for people that correctly blame the US for using their proxies as puppets to harass other nations? The US is already trying to derisk from Taiwan by exportinh its chip production facilities but it isn’t going well because the US is so finsncislized that it can’t barely build productive capacity at even 10X the cost of elsewhere.
This is another example of why someone would call you a liberal. Pinkwashing imperialist takes. What is your logic on what is permitted to be done to other countries if they don’t have a legal recognition of gay marriage? On what basis do other cultures need to mirror your own preferences in order for them to be free of your chauvinism? Any real county will have reactionary elements, some old, some new. Your country, and you, have reactionary elements.
There is a populsr struggle for gay marriage in China and it is going pretty well. It is mostly jist old people who are against it. You should exoect to see it legalized in the next decade or so. But you will have had nothing to do with thst, as your contribution here is to sneer at the entire country for not doing what this Westerner baby leftist demands.
Incidentally, if the CPC did force through legalized gay marriage and it elicited some negative response, like protests, you can be certain this would be characterized as an authoritarian overreach and how dare they disregard the will of the people. Some “socialists”, huh!?
China has better trans rights than your country, most likely. It has less transphobia to begin with, had major out and truly popular trans celebrities before the US did, and provides gender-affirming care of all kinds in a way that is truly accessible for the vast majority of people. Compare this to the US where trans kids are often exiled by their families and given no support, leading to high rates of homelessness, hard drug use, and death.
China does not have the same culture wars as the US, it doesn’t have the same need for capital to create and maintain marginalization to distract from material decline. China is materially advancing and ending extreme poverty.
But you don’t seem to know anything about China. Why have an opinion at all? Why not hold your tongue until you have done some reading or talked nicely to Chinese people?
Sure, but what of it? Do you think we are in a position to have a societu free of oppression, including nation states? With you and whose army?
Socialists must build revolution in the real world, with what is materially in front of us. Tell us how you would, say, end China’s status as a nation state without it just getting immediately recolonized, probably by the country in which you live, work, and to which you contribute.
Okay so violently beating down protesters is okay because it’s in the name of anticolonialism? This line of reasoning goes exactly the same as US imperialism. It’s always some harmful ideology that is enslaving the poor people of some place and they must be freed by being forced to join the empire.
I don’t get where you’re trying to take this conversation. You don’t have to prove to me that some things about China are great. In this comment alone you admitted three times that China isn’t perfect. Which means, China should be criticized. Like any other nation state. And I am saying, there are shills who run around and won’t let anybody criticize China because for some reason they got emotionally attached to a nation state. Everybody who says they don’t want to deepthroat Mao’s shlong for breakfast gets called a liberal. Any and all words uttered by a human that has even looked at the US on a map is liberal slop, and everything coming from the Russian state department is gospel. And I call those people tankies. That’s all I’m saying.
First, before I respond point-by-point, I would like to point out thst you have ignored nearly all of my response. I offered you information, history, and context, in part because it is informative, but mostly because it provides you the opportunity to recognize (vocally or not) your ignorance of this topic and instead redirect your attention yo actually questioning your knowledge and opinions and doing some reading instead of lashing out or doubling down.
Instead, you are doubling down on seeking conflict and sharing, yet again, that your only knowledge of this topic is what you were recemtly told to believe by capitalist media propagandists. And that this is so superior to my knowledge that you don’t even need to acknowledge what I’ve said and can just continue on trying to be contrarian.
Do you think it would be fair to call your behavior insufferable, as you have called tankies? To be clear, I do expect an answer to this question.
Oh, so you aren’t even really responding to what I said, which is about Westerners being outraged that China was governing China. I thought you might not understand what I meant by that, but I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Anyways this is a srraw man and I will ignore it.
You’re just talking to yourself about all of this. It has nothing to do with what I said.
Are you ready to have an actual conversation or are you so deep into liberalism that you can only imagine fighting and winning rather than questioning your own ignorance?
Let’s say you go to a bar and there are some Nazis at the next table. You hear them say, “and fuck those communists, they will get what is coming to them”. Are you going to go over there and say, “yeah, fuck those tankies! They’re insufferable authoritarians”? Because all that means is that you’re going out of your way to validate Nazis trying to kill communists and aligning yourself with them. When someone says, “what the fuck, punch those Nazis, don’t validate them” are you going up say, “ergo, communists should be criticized”.
Your entire social context is those Nazis in that bar. And your criticisms aren’t even informed, they’re the bullshit spread by the Nazi propagandists. And then you tell everyone you’re on the left.
If you ever spent time among communists, you would find they are very critical of China. But their criticisms are differemt from yours becsyse yours are warmed over cold war talking points and uncritical readings of the media. And they are intentional about their outward criticisms, becayse again, our entire social context is the Nazi bar.
Nonsense. Speak to and of the tankies right in front of you right now. What, exactly, are we doing?
Hey look it’s that homophobia I mentioned liberals doing in another comment. You asked me what a liberal is, well there you go. A liberal us, for exple, someone that attacks China for not having legalized gay marriage but then uses homophobic insults.
Do self-crit.
You do tell a lot of vague stories but they have no relation to what people are actually doing.
It is not coincidental that you ignored the vast majority of what I said, as it was concrete history.
I thought I was having one. I’m just disagreeing with you on some things and you somehow seem to think that means I’m not engaging. I’m trying.
Woah no and I’m sorry if I’ve given the impression I would do something like that. I consider marxist-leninist communists to be misguided comrades, and I hope you can think of me the same way.
How is that homophobia? I think you’re construing something here.
It is not coincidental that I skimmed this comment as well because it is really fucking long. sorry
It doesn’t. Taiwan and Hong Kong ARE China. If anything the high level of autonomy that China allows reactionary regional governments to have is what should be criticized.
China allows for civil unions for LGBTQ. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1162943.shtml It made civil unions legal across the nation before USA made gay marriage legal in every state. Like all places in the world (some more than others) China has a long way to go on LGBTQ rights. But that’s just it, China is improving along those lines, while the US is rapidly regressing. China is improving with trans rights and has been punishing companies that violate them. So yes, we should absolutely support China in continuing to move in the correct direction.
Lol, by whose definition? A state is only as good or bad as the ruling class that wields it. A bourgeois (capitalist) state will always be oppressive. As a socialist state (and China is a socialist state), the CPC uses its power to suppress the constant attempts of the bourgeois to oppress the working class.
Imperialism much?
That’s fair, but it’s once again an argument based entirely on comparing China to the US. The US being bad doesn’t make China good. To get back to my original argument, I’m just saying that the word ‘tankie’ refers to China or Russia simps. There is no nation in this world worth simping for.
It is imperialism to let proxy governments for the UK and US maintain a colonial foothold in China actually.
So the Taiwanese all desperately want to join the DPRC? Last I checked Taiwan was a sovereign nation. Capitalism has a foothold there but the British no longer rule there. Justifying imperialism with imperialism also doesn’t magically make it okay
I’m curious, where do you think so many westerners are exposed to Russian propaganda? Because there are apparently so many victims of it these days, can’t turn a corner without someone decrying all these damn Russian and Chinese shill everywhere. So where do we all come from? What exactly did we get exposed to? I know this is the part where you handwave the question away with a “Heh, they got exposed to devious foreign thought on the freaking internet
” but I’m not letting you off that easy. Tell me what you think the actual specific vectors are for all this “Russian and Chinese propaganda” you see everywhere, and how it was apparently able to easily penetrate the absolute haze of American propaganda that all of us in “the west” have been force fed our entire lives.
Please account for this gaping hole in your social theory. Why so many tankies, how, and why only now?
Funny, I was just telling @Cowbee about how the tankies I see on here are insufferable & impossible to converse with.
But I’ll bite. First of all, I don’t appreciate the strawmen. I’m not saying that there is a lot of tankies, nor that they are here now suddenly. I’m not denying that US/Western propaganda doesn’t exist, nor that it’s dangerous and pervasive.
I’m just saying that I, myself, in my own experience, have seen people shilling for China or even Russia, acting like it’s a fucking utopia. Russia an oligarchy, just with a different structure than most Western countries. China is a government that rules over billions of people. That is, by definition, evil. No amount of America Bad makes China or Russia good.
In terms of propaganda sources, for example just take a look at Russia Today.
Funny how 95% of the Chinese population approves of and rates favorably this terrible “ruling over” they are being subjected to.
New theory just dropped, everyone: The more people a government represents, the more evil that government is.
lmao. I unironically believe this though. The more you concentrate power, the harder it is to keep bad actors from abusing said power.
Most Americans approve of capitalism. Does that make it good too?
What makes you think the power over those billion+ people is all “concentrated”? Could it be (gasp!) that the power is largely distributed among those people who overwhelmingly support that government? This is just capitalist-realism-brained misunderstanding of how communist parties work.
No, but that’s certainly not what makes it bad.
Democracy doesn’t work when it’s top-down. In the West, the capitalist and ruling class is capable of exerting control on public opinion and therefore on elections. The same is true of the CCP, which can influence public opinion as well. The best way to combat this is by emancipating individuals so they are able to resist state propaganda. China has a dogshit score on the press freedom index, so good luck educating the people on the shortcomings of the government. The government is intransparent and oppressive by design.
Can you explain how Whole Process People’s Democracy is “top-down?” Further, can you explain why it’s a good thing for Capitalists to control the press, and not the public? The inverse of public press is private press, and that means ownership by Capitalists and liberals. Surely it’s better for the people to control the press, and not the bourgeoisie?
Further, can you explain how the government is “intransparent and oppressive by design?” Just because you don’t speak mandarin doesn’t mean the process is mystified and opaque for those who live in and contribute to said system.
Can you explain to me how it’s not?
No, because it’s not. Nice strawman. Is this public you speak of the government?
Wait what? You’d prefer to Balkanize China into a several million anarchist direct democracy communes? Or what? How would that work in 2024?
You’re implying that I’m the one setting up a strawman by claiming that people are acting a certain way. This is from my personal experience. I’m not accusing you or everyone here of being a tankie but it seems like everybody here identifies as one. Maybe we have a different definition of the word. I was trying to clarify my definition.
No, and I don’t think any smart anarchist is advocating for some crazy revolution involving a coup or whatever. I advocate for building strong local communities, that are heavily interconnected. “Communes” as such are kind of impossible since most people live in cities anyway. We need to build resilient networks that can slowly replace oppressive centralized power. Personally I also don’t subscribe to only 100% anarchism, my ideology is also influenced by socialism, syndicalism and marxism.
hmm, maybe a truly massive party with many cadres around the country? perhaps? maybe?
Are you 100% sure there’s nothing like this in China?
so how to do this neat leftcom kind of stuff, without some kind of centralization, when also you simultaneously need to
I mean in actual practice in a real historical scenario?
This debate went way off the rails, but maybe tell me about how you think things should go. For example what would be a way for the US to transition to communism.
Nah, I give up at this point and Xi only paid me for this long, my shift is over.
Read Parenti and others.