I’m not one to post often. I’m not really one to rant to strangers online often, even. But, after migrating from r*ddit to lemmy, I’ve had this on my mind and this seemed like the place to vent.
I see discourse about tankies constantly on Lemmy. This struck me as odd. Why are these so called tankies such a threat? Why do I see people calling themselves left-wing and attacking tankies more voraciously than neoliberals and, sometimes, even fascists?
I think I know the answer, just as well as most people who will read this. These are the Zizeks of the world: people who do indeed think in a left-wing oriented way, but fail to recognise that they’re also Western to the core and the biases that come with that.
I sincerely care about this much less than the actual reason I’m making this post. That is: why don’t these people notice that their talking points, left-oriented as they may seem, always end up supporting US allies or attacking US enemies? I mean, do these people not see that Ukraine winning the war is a boon to the US, regardless of who is “right” in that conflict? Many other such cases, but I think I’ve made my point, or, rather, my confusion, clear.
That’s it. That’s the post.
Ahh I see where you’re coming from.
This is nationalism. It is unaddressed deeply rooted nationalism that these people have not yet exorcised from themselves.
When you remove the nationalism from them successfully and create internationalists, this behaviour stops and they become proper leftists. We do not have very sophisticated movements for deprogramming nationalism and creating internationalist mindsets at the current time, it just sorta happens. If we could build solid methods of achieving this outcome we could very rapidly turn all of this type of person.
Hmmm. This is something I would call Western chauvinism, but I guess you gave it a more generalised definition.
You see the same behaviour occur among some outside the west as well. In those case it is when the individuals have bourgeoise-nationalist tendencies rather than proletarian-nationalist tendencies.
Within the empire internationalism needs to be promoted, outside the empire proletarian-nationalism needs to be promoted. The result within the empire is it brings people to an anti-imperialist position and the result outside the empire is it brings people to an anti-imperialist position. The bourgeoise-nationalist tendency outside the empire causes pro-imperialism in the form of things like the Gusanos.
It’s the same thing in slightly different conditions. Inside the empire there is no proletarian-nationalism though, only bourgeoise-nationalism with internationalism being the true proletarian opposition to it.
Ah, yes, of course. I specified western because I had in mind certain people I’ve seen using lemmy, as I mentioned in the OP, which, as far as I’ve gathered, is populated mostly by westerners.
Yep yep I understand why you did. I just wanted to clarify why the root of this is nationalism.
I think “western chauvinism” doesn’t truly get to the root of it. It’s unclear what to do to fix it. Whereas with nationalism there is a very clear solution. Although to a certain degree “western chauvinism” does play on american liberals quite well because they don’t want to be viewed as racists.
Even outside the West nationalism should be limited, because it is very easy to overdo and then it destroys proletarian solidarity from within.
Depends on the class-character of the nationalism. There is a distinct difference between proletarian-nationalism and bourgeoise-nationalism. Irish, Palestinian, south american and african comrades all need proletarian-nationalism and display class solidarity with each other’s struggles. It is bourgeoise-nationalism that does not.
There are definitely two different types of nationalism in the historically exploited countries of the periphery.
You can’t really have proletarian nationalism without bourgeois nationalism. Look at Poland, for example, its pre-1917 proletarian nationalists either went full communist or full bourgeois nationalist, because proletarian nationalism is an unstable middle ground that can exist only in very specific conditions.
That’s always going to happen, when the revolution dawns there is always going to be a faction siding with the bourgeoise and a faction siding with the proles and a civil war that breaks out as a result of that. What happened with how Poland has become today is because it integrated into the EU and stopped being hyper exploited part of the periphery.
No, I’m talking about interwar Poland. Piłsudski presented himself as a left-wing nationalist and after Poland regained independence he did more damage to the left than the right could even dream.
Nationalism is dangerous, because it can easily divert significant part of working class for the defense of capitalism.