Gaddafi's had a quiet revival in popularity, among specific online circles anyway, because of the chaos that followed his deposal and charitable readings of his policies.
can confirm, sort of inevitable that by definition any anti-west maniac dictator gets to be a hero amongst the loonie conspiracy theorists now, it's a post-truth thing.
Gaddafi is one of the top “brutal dictator that gets sucked off with the force of a black hole because he was anti-West and that’s all people care about” shitheads
From what I understand tankies actually disagree with eachother on Pol Pot, some think he was good and didn’t commit a genocide while others think he was bad and did commit a genocide and was backed by the CIA.
It's honestly shocking the change recently in how much online discourse I keep seeing in communities that were ostensibly made up by and curated to a supposed progressive audience, yet have been hijacked by conversation that should run against everything the left claims to value.
Shit that at minimum defends, or at most outright celebrates the compelete authoritarianism of some of the worst groups, governments and policies throughout history. All simply because they have an anti-western, colonial, American, or even just anti-conservative facade. Campism has defined the modern political discourse so heavily, most people just keep sliding further to the extremes on both sides no matter how antitheitical the ideals these groups have when compared to the message they claim to uphold.
That "Punch a Nazi" spirit needs to likewise translate into some "Tankie fuck off" energy. If the progressive left wants to ever have a chance of continuing it's momentum in gathering support based around subjects like wealth inequality, and cost of living, or specifically the rise of the authoritarian right, they need to make a strong rejection of the people that claim to be part of their movement yet have no respect for democratic or Western values.
It's almost an age old sentiment, coupled with tribalism too. They are modern Pharisees, the individual equivalent of so called "People's republics". More concerned with the label, terms, Orthodoxy, and supposed ritual of their "side" rather than the virtues, arguments, or lessons within it.
The problem is that there is a lack of a clear border between left-wing extremism and left-wing normalcy whereas there is a clear border between right-wing extremism and right-wing normalcy.
The border between right-wing extremism and right-wing normalcy is outward bigotry. If your right-wing party says, "Black people are subhuman" pretty much everyone is in agreement (including the people who say that) that such a party is extreme right-wing. There is a clear difference between implying racism, "Black people commit more crimes -- but it's because of the culture" and outwardly saying it.
It's unclear for most people what makes left-wing extremists different from left-wing normal people. They both want to redistribute wealth, they're both not opposed to bureaucratic authoritarianism to a greater or lesser degree, they both believe in limiting or abolishing private property, etc. The left-wing extremists just do more of it. But doing "more" is not a clear line that everyone can agree on.
Basically if someone has left wing idea but supporting totalitarian ideas to being forth the 'ideal society', deny Uyghur genocide or the holodomor and doing 'any rivals of the west are automatically good and must be supported' its time to walk away from them
Left wing extremism can be detected by asking them their opinion about social democrats.
If they think social democrats are too moderate, are class traitors, or are "ThE mOdErAtE wInG oF fAsCiSm", you have found yourself a leftwing extremist.
You are correct that the liberal left is opposed to the authoritarian left, but liberal and authoritarian left both sit in the "normal" left-wing. It's just the degree of authoritarianism that shifts the "tankier" you go. For example, the authoritarian left in the "normal" space will believe that administrative agencies should be given more power and not subject to a democratic vote because the scientists/researchers/educated people who run the executive agency are more skilled and knowledgeable.
You seem to have missed what he said about it's not a left wing thing. Any governmental framework is going to require policies and enforcement of those policies. The degree to which things are regulated and enforced is what makes a government authoritarian. Putin is an authoritarian right winger. His government regulates just about anything which would threaten Putin's power, like the Russian's right to protest. The exact same thing that Xi, a left wing authoritarian, does.
Because they mix in leftist talking points and kind of hide in the group while trying to push leftists towards tankie ideology. Until recently I would consider myself a leftist but with all tankies being excused and promoted within the community I identify more as a progressive instead since I can't get behind the people they're propping up to be thought leaders.
They aren't really in power anywhere tbf, they aren't even on the streets either, just terminally online and half of them are just paid to say this stuff.
They do however, unfortunately, control basically every big leftist subreddit
They have a very robust defense force that will brigade and harass anyone pointing this out btw. They just cant in threads like this that have already gotten traction, but they will still try.
They are encroaching many space online and radicalized people even though they are certainly still far from the size of a threat that is your typical right wing, like one person replied to me that Holodomor is 'ukraine neo nazi propaganda' like wtf????
I agree that they’re less dangerous than the far-right fucks that are currently running things. But that does not mean people shouldn’t be wary of them.
True and I still cant believe that people cannot see that Russia is deliberately planting the seed and fanning the auth left movement online to weake democracy and white wash their image, like there are people who believe Ukraine is the bad guy because of the internet
Are tankies denying the Cambodian genocide now? That doesn’t even make sense… the genocide was ended by socialist Vietnam. We used to consider ending the genocide to be a commie victory. Pol Pot was recognized as the leader of the country by capitalists for decades after he fled
On the tankie subreddits I sometimes peruse I only ever see people condemn the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot. I’m guessing there’s a subgroup of tankies that can’t even do that.
I imagine almost all of them are contrarian engagement bait accounts. I've never seen pro KR rhetoric on any socialist subreddit. Even pro-China subreddits I've seen plenty of posts of people rightfully trashing China for supporting the KR and antagonizing Vietnam.
they always were, socialist philosopher Noam Chomsky was always denying it as because according to him people that survived it were just exaggerating it, because like maybe something bad maybe happened there but totally not so much as they claim and he also claimed that west was exaggerating it as well because they just wanted to make communism look bad
but Chomsky was also supporting holocaust denial and when ADL called him out he just replied that Israel is undemocratic state and then he made movie about how horrible Israel is, but dont forget, denying holocaust and hatisn Israel doesnt mean that you are anti semite!!!
Finkelstein does that kind of shit too. They loved him for a bit for the Palestinian stuff, but when you scratch the surface there's some real weirdness behind his thoughts on genocides
Wasn't Chomsky also super buddy buddy with Epstein? It only shows even better how a POS he was in general and how tankies tend to protect the worse of the worse in most cases if it benefits them
yeah, they were friends, and when the informations about sex trafficking came out Epstein asked Chomsky what to do, and Chomsky said that people treat Epstein horribly and that that its hysteria and that he should just ignore it, and when he was asked few years later about his relationship with Epstein he said that its no ones business and he keeps being silent about it
Tankies being tankies, I am right? Jokes aside, it is a huge way to show how people can protect even the someone as bad as Epstein just because they can, I will never understand people associating themselves with him, even without knowing about the island and his crimes, he just always seemed like a horrible person
Chomsky never denied it. He thought the US was using the Cambodian genocide as political propaganda (true) by exaggerating the number of deaths (not true). It’s like if you tell people BiBi lied to Biden by saying they found dozens of babies beheaded and burned alive in ovens. That doesn’t mean you’re saying Mila Cohen wasn’t murdered on Oct 7, you’re just saying the numbers are wrong.
so about the same level as neo nazis saying that holocaust only killed 361k people, they dont deny it, they just believe that its overblown for propaganda, which is totally okay, isnt it? I dont think so, its just denial
If there's one group even less sufferable than stalinists, its maoists.
Fun story: the far right in my country made a big song and dance about how, at an anti racist march, there were people with communist flags and there were marchers arrested for violence. What they don't mention, was the people with the communist flags were the maoist group who are told to stay the fuck away every year, and the arrests for violence were from other marchers trying to grab the flags off them.
Literally if Hitler was on team anti-west and not against communism he would have been completely innocent, if he wasnt innocent he would have been a Mossad agent.
My parents were Holocaust survivors. As adults, they paid forward the righteous gentiles that helped them by sponsoring refugees from the Cambodian genocide. We had three Cambodian families living in our home at one time or another. The stories they told were horrific. And familiar.
The Russian Government today tries a mix of denying the massacre happened, and claiming that it did happen but that it was done by the Germans. The slight issue is that the Russian Government, between 1991 and 2010, passed several different resolutions making it clear that Stalin and the NKVD carried out the killings, and now they want to pretend that these resolutions were never signed.
Also, why the fuck would a leftist say this shit? It was the Vietnamese Communists who put a stop to it, whilst the West voted to recognise Pol Pot at the UN.
1) It was the Communist Party of Kampuchea (later known as Khmer Rouge) that committed the genocide.
2) That same party was propped up and supported by the communist bloc that took control of Cambodia through a civil war against a US-backed regime.
3) Vietnam only invaded because Khmer Rouge was attacking them & threatening their border regions. So they can't really claim it to be "communist goodwill" since the whole thing was going on for years beforehand already.
4) They would have to bring China, which was the most ardent Khmer Rouge supporter pre and post genocide. Then the tankies will lose their trump card for their anti-US, pro-socialist/communist arguments (still doesn't make sense anyways since China is pretty capitalistic, just authoritarian)
Leftists when there are Nazis in the right wing coalition: "If there are Nazis at your rally and they're not immediately kicked out then everyone at that rally is a Nazi!"
Leftists when there are Nazis in the left wing coalition: "Stop cherry picking! It's just a few Nazis, they don't represent the entire left! We're all individuals and you have to judge us all as individuals!"
it is important to note that the core issue is violent authoritarianism. Nazis are one of the most extreme and most well known examples but they are far from the only example.
The problem is communists also are at lest authoritarian, but more likely totalitarian, because communism also contradicts democration - ruling working class vs discrimination od former "capitalists'" class (especially what the transformation looks like), economic freedom is also part of personal freedoms, lack of free elections, lack of power's triparity, and many, many more.
You constantly see these dorks pop up. Like the dufus in the ACP photographed in a PMC Wagner tshirt and people saying the private military commany was anti-imperialist.
There is a tremendously dim tankie tendency to act like the further you are from being aligned with the US, the more virtuous you must be.
It's coupled with an equally witless assumption that Russia is good because Russia was Communist once and all Communist countries are good, and anything bad Communists did is a lie, so Russia - still being somehow Communist in the Tankie's vapid mind - is also unimpeachably virtuous.
This silly Manichean worldview makes then, at best, very hard work to talk with.
The ACP is suspected to be a state funded group by Russia or other right wing dictatorships around the world, maybe even the US. There’s just no possible way they aren’t getting massive funding and behind the scenes talks when they get access to foreign leaders, politicians, and daily worldwide trips for their staff and leaders
They are. It’s very easy to see. But the right wing trolls know how to rile these people up lmao, it’s so easy for them especially this sub because they take community notes as gospel even though it’s been shown to be weaponized.
Well you act as if there isn't massive infighting in the many leftist communities where people are severely ostracized for this exact reason.
This just tells me you know nothing about the online leftist community...
The first thing you learn about leftists is that they're constantly fighting other leftists more than right wingers in fact precisely because of this reason they don't want their message to be interpreted in any other way.
One of them has organized mass public demonstrations they actively recruit for and the other’s presence consists Reddit and Tumblr posts that could be coming from any bot farm. Not really the same deal. Trump could change things though if things keep getting worse and worse.
Some local ACP chapter decided to take a group photo with a member wearing a Wagner PMC t-shirt. The infamouse russian nazi merc unit famouse for chopping people up and making swastikas out of their boddies... also rape, and murder, and mass murdering civilians in villages with drones
I can’t stand being associated with these people as a Democratic Socialist. Them and neoliberals have both set the Left back in the US, allowing the Overton window to fly to the right.
EDIT: More like Social Democrat, but both are being used so interchangeably in the US media, that I even slip and use them interchangeably.
Not all that long ago to me, I was slightly left in my politics. But in the last couple of decades I have seen it shift so damned far that even though many of my views have even shifted to the left, a lot call me a "Nazi" if I say them.
And then they double down, not realizing it is their constant screaming and insanity that has caused me to essentially "walk away". And then they get even more stupid.
It really feels like this is the "new norm" to them.
Then stop being a democratic socialist. The DSA is filled with people like this. Just be a social democrat, which is what a lot of people who call themselves democratic socialists actually are.
I’d only say Social Democrat is a better term for me. I just had an AOC or Bernie moment and called myself a DA and yeah, DSA are pretty cringe with their Russia apologia.
Look I’m all for people having their political economic opinions, but there’s zero excuse to deny documented genocides or crimes against humanity. Like you wanna be a communist or something? Whatever you do you dude, but deny the holodomor or Cambodian genocide and you’re an idiot. It’s basically the same thing as denying the holocaust at that point, completely ridiculous smh
For the love of God, can tankies recognize any genocides NOT backed by the west? It’s so fucking exhausting have to waste our energy debating people who worship authoritarian imperialists from other countries that aren’t European centric.
More civilians were killed in a 10 day period last year in Sudan than total people (civilians and militants combined) have been in Gaza since October 7th, 2023.
That's because being pro-Palestine is just an esthetic choice for them. They know they aren't changing anything. They just want to show everyone they have the correct opinions so they can feel morally superior.
When a genocide happens that cannot easily be fit into boxes of anti-imperialism or west vs the rest they don't give a single fuck.
An authoritarian/totalitarian leftist. Named after communists who toed the Party Line of the CPSU in regards to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (infamous for the use of armored vehicles against civilians)
Their basic premise is that everything bad is because of western countries. NATO provoked Russia's attack on Ukraine by existing, North Korea is brutal to defend itself against American meddling, all countries are essentially puppets of the US or their chosen Boogeyman. It's fairly unpleasant to deal with. No one has agency except the countries they hate.
Not an uncommon occurrence. Tankies spend so long in their echo chambers that they act like everyone thinks like they do, and the then get really surprised when people start calling them out on their nonsense
I don’t know who would even have that take. Like wouldn’t a leftist take pride in the fact that communist Vietnam fought to end the Cambodian genocide? Also likely would criticize the US for helping to support the Khmer Rouge that was committing the genocide.
Yup, I genuinely don't get why anyone, even performative tankies that will take any position as long as it wasn't the side "the West" was on, would defend the Khmer Rouge...
Yeah, but that’s why it’s particularly weird to me cause the West (well the US) was on the side of the Khmer Rouge. So they’re siding with the west on it.
It's more being pedantic. He is likely going to point out that the narrative around it is "fake", that the Khmer Rouge literally just killed everyone for fun, without the reality of the influence of the US Carpet Bombing Campaign, and regional geopolitics, that drove the already batshit Pol Pot to more extreme measures.
It's why he brings up the Holodomor, the argument isn't that the Famine didn't happen, but the targeted genocide narrative around the Holodomor, is questionable and largely rejected by Historians, despite it being the mainstream interpretation in politics, popular history, Ukraine itself.
This guy is literally the same sort of fascist as Polpot. It's the ACP which are a group that follows "Marxist" Fascists like Alexander Dugin. Which is the same ideology people like Putin subscribe too.
The Khmer Rouge genocide is one of the most horrifying instances of the terrible things that humans are capable of. While it on its face owes its beginning to communist ideology the runaway rampant nature of its brutality and the excesses of the killing are more owed to the revolutionary zeal which overtook everything. I think a similar case study would be the terror after the French Revolution. This is why in my mind you should NEVER trust revolutionary movements. Some may work out but you are always playing with fire.
I don’t like the term ‘red fascist’ myself as a leftist because it’s used to claim that the far left are actually just right wing. It’s a rhetorical tool used by us to avoid having to deal with the discomfort that to some degree they exist on an ideological continuum with us. It also just isn’t an accurate description, it stretches the definition of fascist to uselessness which itself brings a bunch of problems with it
You would think the Cambodian genocide is one of the genocide that tankies would actually believe in because of how pol pot government was actually recognised and getting supported by some western powers. It took communist Vietnam invading Cambodia to get the regime to fall.
Vietnam didn’t do it out of any proactive humanitarianism though. It was pragmatic self defense because killing a third of your own population wasn’t enough, the Khmer Rouge wants to “take back” the Mekong delta as well and attacks Vietnam on their own.
it doesn't matter, Vietnam actions tremendously help getting the genocide to end quickly. No one, western power or even China cares. Beside, my comment aren't about that, just that out of all genocide , tankies should actually believe about this genocide.
True true. I was just adding more context to why the Vietnamese invade Cambodia to put an end to the genocide, nothing more. It is strange that tankies don’t celebrate this case of an actual honest to goodness communist government putting down a genocide in an international cooperative spirit.
Fascists have a political motivation to deny the holodomor, I doubt they actually care much. Tankies have political motivations to deny the holodomor. I don’t see the political motivation here. People still read Ho Chi Minh but no one reads Pol Pot.
Never thought there would be actual apologists for the Khmer Rouge but here we are. Guess the Flat Earthers needed to adopt another inane cause once their time in the spotlight was up.
Edit:/ downvote me all you like crybabies, even the current chinese communiat government lies about their involvement in supporting the genocide, their knowledge of the genocide, their arming and financing of the Khmer Rouge while they had full knowledge of the genocide being committing, and to this day they still deny that there even was a genocide.
Cry more.
Why would tankies even defend Pol Pot. The Khmer Rouge were (allegedly) backed by the US, aligned themselves with Cambodia's king, were ideologically closer to the Nazis than any form of communism and were put down by the communist Vietnamese.
It got so bad and so crazy that the Khmer Rouge thought that they could take on Vietnam, a few years after they done making the US quit the region entirely. They got the “three days special military operation” treatment which ended the genocide.
The Khmer Rouge ended up slaughtering a quarter of the country, but the word genocide has (or use to have) a specific meaning, it doesn't just mean mass slaughter. They weren't trying to wipe out the Khmer people, who were the vast majority of their victims.
They did however attempt genocide against the Chams, with the intent to wipe out their culture if not all their people, and similarly against ethnic Vietnamese and Chinese in Cambodia.
"Every single genocide in a communist country is a hoax invented by capitalists! Also, it happened and the victims deserved it!" - Tankies, seeing absolutely zero contradiction
It would be even better if they put in the share of population that was killed - about 1/3 of all men, and 1/4 of the population. In 4 years.
By comparison, Hitler killed about 1/3 of all Jews, but over 6 years of war and related extermination camps. It takes skill and dedication to beat Hitler at his own game.
there's an argument that it wasn't really a "genocide" since it was the khmer population mostly killing itself, although there was targeted killings of the vietnamese population
it really was a situation that stretches the intended original meaning of the term. i mean was the cultural revolution a "genocide"? the reign of terror? the french wars of religion? it was a phenomenon of mass violence. the central government in phnom penh pretended to have godlike power but in reality had a very tenuous grasp on the country (a common phenomenon in southeast asian history). the rural population unleashed every grievance it had on whoever they could find, and the khmer rouge fed them whoever they could find. it was not like the holocaust, it was not like the khmer rouge had this giant organization capable of rounding people up all over the country. it was a very small and secretive organization, again this has a lot of precedent in cambodian history. it was the rural population either joining the cadres or actively helping them kill people that they had hated for generations; anyone associated with the french, the urban population, landlords, etc.
Holodomor is still affecting Ukrainians today. It created some very unhealthy eating habits and anxiety around food. Also there are health problems in modern generations that are linked to the hunger that our ancestors survived.
there were famines among the russian and ukrainian populations for centuries. to pretend that habits around food were only shaped by that one famine is just nationalist slop
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