The comments are what you expect. All agree that we’re psychopaths who support genocide and just want authority as a goal in itself. All agree we do no leftist praxis, I guess just based on vibes. One user wrote:
let’s be honest, they should be removed from society
which is cool. One-on-one, online or in person, I’m pretty patient with people like this, but when I see a whole thread like this with hundreds of upvotes and no pushback it makes me feel tired.
lemmy.ml link in case any of you have alts and want to wade in: https://lemmy.ml/post/6930975
The democracy thread she commented in right before posting this: https://lemmy.ml/comment/5160468
I read through most of that thread and christ it is tiring, I agree. Historically illiterate bastards equating China to Nazi Germany left and right with only a couple voices of reason.
Their idea of MLs is completely incoherent. What, do I want to be a dictator? I am actively averse to personally having authority, that shit is too much of a hassle, I get a headache just imagining it for the sake of counterargument.
So what do I actually want? Since these people seem to think being ML is just pure “authoritarianism” with no true beliefs of any kind.
I want people to be fed, clothed, housed, educated, and so on [in short: their needs provided for] and I want the entity doing that to defend itself from the capitalists seeking to undermine that process. It’s a very simple desire and something that, for all the valid criticism you can make of the CPC, something it does, as does the DPRK.
You really described it the best, it’s just tiring.
Edit: I wonder how many overt neoliberals are there chanting hand-in-hand with those so-called “anarchists”
They think you’re either lying about wanting liberation for marginalized people, or that you’d entrust the task of liberation to a bunch of liars who would instead simply recreate capitalism but worse. They also believe you secretly harbor a suite of bigotries like transphobia or Islamophobia and you’d gladly endorse genocide against such groups so long as you had some vague aesthetic of socialist revolution. You’re right that it’s incoherent. None of what they’re saying makes sense.
That’s really the entire accusation. You’re both brainwashed and insidious, you’re dishonest, and you praise countries that are designated as “capitalism but worse somehow.”
There’s also a really serious element of nationalism that can’t be ignored in the word “tankie.” It means a westerner who is regarded as a traitor. You’re praising foreign countries who are enemies of the west and that violates every other western political framework. Principled anarchists and communists get called tankies because we’re the only westerners who wholly reject western hegemony.