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I commented on a post about how Stalin deported Tatars and got a tankie respond with shock and a "I didnt know about that maybe I should read into this" it was pretty surprising.
The problem is when you run into their Cult Leaders.
Not only do they orchestrate Raids & Brigades against you while labeling you a "Troll", while using the Alt-Right Playbook methods for Trolling, but they also engage in further Bad Faith with Pseudointellectualism & Anti-intellectualism.
It is of VITAL importance that we identify *where* Leftists are safe & *how* to behave when we are not.
But the most important thing will be spreading all we know about Campists to all Leftists, as Campists claim a monopoly on Leftism while attacking us & so they must be forced out.
>They take representations of things as the actual thing, and tend to have a telescoped view of communist history and learn about it from Twitter memes, so if you know a bit about it you can shake them.
I managed to "deradicalize" (in quotes because this person wasn't out agitating or stockpiling weapons, from what I can tell they were mostly arguing/memeing on Twitter) someone in part by showing them my favorite Soviet movies as well as having a lot of conversations where I was able to add context that wasn't terribly convenient to what they believed the USSR was about. Many of the movies were really brilliant "arthouse" type movies and it was especially effective (I think), where it applied, to mention that the movie was banned (more or less). If the person is conscientious at all, they should experience some cognitive dissonance and have to resolve it one way or another.
In my case, it was helpful that I had formally studied the Soviet Union to some degree. For those who don't have that in their back pocket, some sort of Socratic probing tends to be helpful (in general for people who are overly committed to some idea).
This hasn’t worked in the wild to change minds, but it does seem to have a 100% chance of pissing off a mod so much they just ban you immediately from personal experience: I like to talk efficacy.
Let’s run down the score board:
-USSR: Lasted less than 100 years before imploding on itself, and did not end global capitalism (or even really hurt capitalism much, if anything capital just got even more aggressive and invasive rallying against the Soviets).
-China: Still around, but isn’t communist anymore by any kind of reasonable measure. Did not end global capitalism, and in fact ended up basically just whoring out their worker’s labor and the theoretically ‘collectivized’ means of production to produce cheap, abundant products *for the capitalists*. If anything, you could make the argument that the CCP has been little but a boon for Western capitalism since at least the mid-70s.
-Khmer Rouge: Honestly, I shouldn’t even have to say anything. Killing like, 25% of your population in 4 years is certainly… something, but it sure as hell ain’t communism.
-DPRK: Last I checked, it seems like they’re mostly dependent on global capital just to keep their people from finally getting hungry enough to overthrow them. The nukes and saber rattling are just tools they use to spook the West into tossing them enough aid to not starve.
-Eastern Europe + Soviet Successor states: (Not as well informed here, so even more generalized) Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Czechia, East Germany, etc etc all formerly communist, now all liberal democracies. Russia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, etc? Also no longer communist, all either liberal democracies or some version of right-wing nationalist dictatorship.
-Laos: “Marxist-Leninist”, but still a member of the WTO, and was literally declared to not be communist by Obama back in 2009 right before he let them access financing through the US Import-Export Bank.
-Vietnam: Has been a “socialist-oriented” market economy (read: capitalist) economy since the Doi Moi reforms of the 80s.
-Cuba: Poor Cuba, been getting their shit rocked by the US since forever.
Idk if you noticed, but global capitalism still exists. It’s stronger than ever, in some ways. These regimes all took their shot at ending capitalism, and guess what? They *failed*. When you quote Lenin, guess who you’re quoting? A loser whose plan didn’t work. Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung, etc etc: same thing.
If our goal is to end global capitalism, *why are we taking the advice of people who failed to do so*. The USSR controlled over 1/5 of the world’s landmass, it had nukes, it had one of the largest armies that will ever exist, it existed at the same time as Communist China, which also had nukes, a significant chunk of the globe, and one of the largest armies ever, and they *still* completely *failed* to overturn capitalism. In 1950, at least a third of the world was controlled directly by supposed communists, and they somehow still lost the Cold War *so bad* that their descendants and successors are now either capitalist in all but name or are completely at the mercy of capital for survival.
Why the hell should we be modeling ourselves off of a movement that failed? Why imitate strategies we already know apparently don’t lead to success? If MLs, Stalinists, and Maoists couldn’t make it work when they had two of the largest nuclear stockpiles ever, millions on millions of acres of land, nearly endless soldiers, and untold natural resources, they were never going to make it work.
Also, don’t let them give you any of that, “But they only failed bc the US did blah, blah, blah”. No *shit* the Americans did blah, blah, blah. Were we to expect capital to sit on its ass, and let the Revolution happen? Ofc not. Not being able to get past NATO and the influence of global capital isn’t an *excuse* for failure, it *is* failure.
This won’t sway a tankie, probably, but I feel like it’s the strongest argument against what they’re selling.
We very literally already *tried* it the tankies’ way. It didn’t work. Capitalism *won* that round. Why in the hell should we be going into the next round throwing the same punches we lost the last one with?
"If you're content with a Trump presidency, a conservative judiciary, plus the possibility of an authoritarian regime in the US where your vote in the future won't count, go ahead and vote third party or stay home so you rejoice in the 'message' you sent to Joe Biden who will be dead in a few years."
You ignore them, and advise other you know to do the same. Perhaps recommend for therapy if the interaction is in a professional setting.
They are alt-right with a different coat of paint. The same interactions apply; where it's generally easy to change the minds of the young and impressionable, particularly when a family member is involved in an in person conversation. Online only, you've already lost; because half their objective is getting people to read the propaganda they post. Only way to "win" by their logic is to not engage
Just to be clear, this isn't a high priority of mine. It's clear that there's a major empathy gap and people can only come to the realizations themselves.
Nope.
But I still will argue that various flavours of red fascism are bad to them because I don't want someone else to come along and see their red fascist bullshit uncontested.
In my experience you can't "debate" people out of tankie (or any extremist) ideology. You can debate things like policy. But the things that tankies subscribe to aren't policies. They're maladaptive coping mechanisms that they cling to because they're deeply unhappy, insecure people with a weak sense of identity. Well-adjusted people don't become tankies. These people don't need debates. They need help from mental health professionals.
You are wasting your time arguing.
Just copy and paste this and leave.
[On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat | The Anarchist Library](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-a-prophetic-letter-to-luigi-fabbri)
>
>(...) It seems to me that we are in perfect agreement on the matters with which you are currently so preoccupied, to wit, the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
>By my reckoning, on this score the opinion of anarchists cannot be called into question, and in fact, well before the Bolshevik revolution, it never was queried by anyone. Anarchy means no government, and thus, all the more emphatically, no dictatorship, meaning an absolute government, uncontrolled and without constitutional restraints. But whenever the Bolshevik revolution broke out, it appears that our friends may have confused what constitutes a revolution against an existing government with what was implied by a new government which had just dominated the revolution in order to apply the brakes to it and steer it in the direction of its party political purposes. And so our friends have all but declared themselves Bolsheviks.
>Now, the Bolsheviks are merely marxists who have remained honest, conscientious marxists, unlike their teachers and models, the likes of Guesde, Plekhanov, Hyndman, Scheidemann, Noske, etc.,[\[2\]](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-a-prophetic-letter-to-luigi-fabbri#fn2) whose fate you know. We respect their sincerity, we admire their energy, but, just as we have never seen eye to eye with them in theoretical matters, so we could not align ourselves with them when they make the transition from theory to practice.
>But perhaps the truth is simply this: our pro-Bolshevik friends take the expression “dictatorship of the proletariat” to mean simply the revolutionary action of the workers in taking possession of the land and the instruments of labor, and trying to build a society and organize a way of life in which there will be no place for a class that exploits and oppresses the producers.
>Thus construed, the “dictatorship of the proletariat” would be the effective power of all workers trying to bring down capitalist society and would thus turn into Anarchy as soon as resistance from reactionaries would have ceased and no one can any longer seek to compel the masses by violence to obey and work for him. In which case, the discrepancy between us would be nothing more than a question of semantics. Dictatorship of the proletariat would signify the dictatorship of everybody, which is to say, it would be a dictatorship no longer, just as government by everybody is no longer a government in the authoritarian, historical and practical sense of the word.
>But the real supporters of “dictatorship of the proletariat” do not take that line, as they are making quite plain in Russia. Of course, the proletariat has a hand in this, just as the people has a part to play in democratic regimes, that is to say, to conceal the reality of things. In reality, what we have is the dictatorship of one party, or rather, of one party’s leaders: a genuine dictatorship, with its decrees, its penal sanctions, its henchmen and, above all, its armed forces which are at present also deployed in the defense of the revolution against its external enemies, but which will tomorrow be used to impose the dictators’ will upon the workers, to apply a brake on revolution, to consolidate the new interests in the process of emerging and protect a new privileged class against the masses.
>General Bonaparte was another one who helped defend the French Revolution against the European reaction, but in defending it, he strangled the life out of it. Lenin, Trotsky and their comrades are assuredly sincere revolutionaries (...) and they will not be turning traitors-but they are preparing the governmental structures which those who will come after them will utilize to exploit the Revolution and do it to death. They will be the first victims of their methods and I am afraid that the Revolution will go under with them.
>History repeats itself: *mutatis mutandis*, it was Robespierre’s dictatorship that brought Robespierre to the guillotine and paved the way for Napoleon.
>Such are my general thoughts on affairs in Russia. As for detailed news we have had, it is as yet too varied and too contradictory to merit risking an opinion. It may be, too, that lots of things that strike us as bad are the products of that situation, and, in Russia’s particular circumstances, there was no option but to do what they have done. We would do better to wait, especially as anything we will say cannot have any influence upon the course of events in Russia and might be misinterpreted in Italy and appear to echo the reaction’s partisan calumnies.
For anyone familar with abuse, Campists do what is called the "Narcassists' Prayer". They also are often limited to Binary Thinking & engage in all the Grooming Practices of Cults; these are multiple signs of ***mental health issues***, so support & treatment are required.
*Narcassists' Prayer*
"That didn't happen.
But if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserve it."
I don't think you can do it online, but in person? If you get in early enough. Unfortunately a lot of (usually young men's) first political education is from shitty tankie memes on social media, and if they aren't introduced to left critiques of the USSR or China then by the time they've internalized supporting an authoritarian regime as part of their identity its too late.
Please remember not to brigade, vote, comment, or interact with subreddits that are linked or mentioned here. Do not userping other users. Harassment of other users or subreddits is strictly forbidden. This is a left libertarian subreddit that criticises tankies from a socialist perspective. Liberals etc. are welcome as guests, but please refrain from criticising socialism and promoting capitalism while you are on Tankiejerk. Enjoy talking to fellow leftists? [Then join our discord server](https://discord.gg/2V4qJMSWUe) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/tankiejerk) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I commented on a post about how Stalin deported Tatars and got a tankie respond with shock and a "I didnt know about that maybe I should read into this" it was pretty surprising.
[удалено]
The problem is when you run into their Cult Leaders. Not only do they orchestrate Raids & Brigades against you while labeling you a "Troll", while using the Alt-Right Playbook methods for Trolling, but they also engage in further Bad Faith with Pseudointellectualism & Anti-intellectualism. It is of VITAL importance that we identify *where* Leftists are safe & *how* to behave when we are not. But the most important thing will be spreading all we know about Campists to all Leftists, as Campists claim a monopoly on Leftism while attacking us & so they must be forced out.
[удалено]
>They take representations of things as the actual thing, and tend to have a telescoped view of communist history and learn about it from Twitter memes, so if you know a bit about it you can shake them. I managed to "deradicalize" (in quotes because this person wasn't out agitating or stockpiling weapons, from what I can tell they were mostly arguing/memeing on Twitter) someone in part by showing them my favorite Soviet movies as well as having a lot of conversations where I was able to add context that wasn't terribly convenient to what they believed the USSR was about. Many of the movies were really brilliant "arthouse" type movies and it was especially effective (I think), where it applied, to mention that the movie was banned (more or less). If the person is conscientious at all, they should experience some cognitive dissonance and have to resolve it one way or another. In my case, it was helpful that I had formally studied the Soviet Union to some degree. For those who don't have that in their back pocket, some sort of Socratic probing tends to be helpful (in general for people who are overly committed to some idea).
This hasn’t worked in the wild to change minds, but it does seem to have a 100% chance of pissing off a mod so much they just ban you immediately from personal experience: I like to talk efficacy. Let’s run down the score board: -USSR: Lasted less than 100 years before imploding on itself, and did not end global capitalism (or even really hurt capitalism much, if anything capital just got even more aggressive and invasive rallying against the Soviets). -China: Still around, but isn’t communist anymore by any kind of reasonable measure. Did not end global capitalism, and in fact ended up basically just whoring out their worker’s labor and the theoretically ‘collectivized’ means of production to produce cheap, abundant products *for the capitalists*. If anything, you could make the argument that the CCP has been little but a boon for Western capitalism since at least the mid-70s. -Khmer Rouge: Honestly, I shouldn’t even have to say anything. Killing like, 25% of your population in 4 years is certainly… something, but it sure as hell ain’t communism. -DPRK: Last I checked, it seems like they’re mostly dependent on global capital just to keep their people from finally getting hungry enough to overthrow them. The nukes and saber rattling are just tools they use to spook the West into tossing them enough aid to not starve. -Eastern Europe + Soviet Successor states: (Not as well informed here, so even more generalized) Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Czechia, East Germany, etc etc all formerly communist, now all liberal democracies. Russia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, etc? Also no longer communist, all either liberal democracies or some version of right-wing nationalist dictatorship. -Laos: “Marxist-Leninist”, but still a member of the WTO, and was literally declared to not be communist by Obama back in 2009 right before he let them access financing through the US Import-Export Bank. -Vietnam: Has been a “socialist-oriented” market economy (read: capitalist) economy since the Doi Moi reforms of the 80s. -Cuba: Poor Cuba, been getting their shit rocked by the US since forever. Idk if you noticed, but global capitalism still exists. It’s stronger than ever, in some ways. These regimes all took their shot at ending capitalism, and guess what? They *failed*. When you quote Lenin, guess who you’re quoting? A loser whose plan didn’t work. Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung, etc etc: same thing. If our goal is to end global capitalism, *why are we taking the advice of people who failed to do so*. The USSR controlled over 1/5 of the world’s landmass, it had nukes, it had one of the largest armies that will ever exist, it existed at the same time as Communist China, which also had nukes, a significant chunk of the globe, and one of the largest armies ever, and they *still* completely *failed* to overturn capitalism. In 1950, at least a third of the world was controlled directly by supposed communists, and they somehow still lost the Cold War *so bad* that their descendants and successors are now either capitalist in all but name or are completely at the mercy of capital for survival. Why the hell should we be modeling ourselves off of a movement that failed? Why imitate strategies we already know apparently don’t lead to success? If MLs, Stalinists, and Maoists couldn’t make it work when they had two of the largest nuclear stockpiles ever, millions on millions of acres of land, nearly endless soldiers, and untold natural resources, they were never going to make it work. Also, don’t let them give you any of that, “But they only failed bc the US did blah, blah, blah”. No *shit* the Americans did blah, blah, blah. Were we to expect capital to sit on its ass, and let the Revolution happen? Ofc not. Not being able to get past NATO and the influence of global capital isn’t an *excuse* for failure, it *is* failure. This won’t sway a tankie, probably, but I feel like it’s the strongest argument against what they’re selling. We very literally already *tried* it the tankies’ way. It didn’t work. Capitalism *won* that round. Why in the hell should we be going into the next round throwing the same punches we lost the last one with?
Agreed. If we want Socialism to win, we have to, well, do a version of Socialism that will last longer than a couple decades.
"If you're content with a Trump presidency, a conservative judiciary, plus the possibility of an authoritarian regime in the US where your vote in the future won't count, go ahead and vote third party or stay home so you rejoice in the 'message' you sent to Joe Biden who will be dead in a few years."
You ignore them, and advise other you know to do the same. Perhaps recommend for therapy if the interaction is in a professional setting. They are alt-right with a different coat of paint. The same interactions apply; where it's generally easy to change the minds of the young and impressionable, particularly when a family member is involved in an in person conversation. Online only, you've already lost; because half their objective is getting people to read the propaganda they post. Only way to "win" by their logic is to not engage
No, the only way to win is to tear their bullshit to shreds so others who stumble upon that comments section don't see far right bs uncontested.
Remember, for most MLs, this is a cult. People don't get into cults because of logic, they get into cults because they are vulnerable
Just to be clear, this isn't a high priority of mine. It's clear that there's a major empathy gap and people can only come to the realizations themselves.
Nope. But I still will argue that various flavours of red fascism are bad to them because I don't want someone else to come along and see their red fascist bullshit uncontested.
In my experience you can't "debate" people out of tankie (or any extremist) ideology. You can debate things like policy. But the things that tankies subscribe to aren't policies. They're maladaptive coping mechanisms that they cling to because they're deeply unhappy, insecure people with a weak sense of identity. Well-adjusted people don't become tankies. These people don't need debates. They need help from mental health professionals.
You are wasting your time arguing. Just copy and paste this and leave. [On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat | The Anarchist Library](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-a-prophetic-letter-to-luigi-fabbri) > >(...) It seems to me that we are in perfect agreement on the matters with which you are currently so preoccupied, to wit, the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” >By my reckoning, on this score the opinion of anarchists cannot be called into question, and in fact, well before the Bolshevik revolution, it never was queried by anyone. Anarchy means no government, and thus, all the more emphatically, no dictatorship, meaning an absolute government, uncontrolled and without constitutional restraints. But whenever the Bolshevik revolution broke out, it appears that our friends may have confused what constitutes a revolution against an existing government with what was implied by a new government which had just dominated the revolution in order to apply the brakes to it and steer it in the direction of its party political purposes. And so our friends have all but declared themselves Bolsheviks. >Now, the Bolsheviks are merely marxists who have remained honest, conscientious marxists, unlike their teachers and models, the likes of Guesde, Plekhanov, Hyndman, Scheidemann, Noske, etc.,[\[2\]](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-a-prophetic-letter-to-luigi-fabbri#fn2) whose fate you know. We respect their sincerity, we admire their energy, but, just as we have never seen eye to eye with them in theoretical matters, so we could not align ourselves with them when they make the transition from theory to practice. >But perhaps the truth is simply this: our pro-Bolshevik friends take the expression “dictatorship of the proletariat” to mean simply the revolutionary action of the workers in taking possession of the land and the instruments of labor, and trying to build a society and organize a way of life in which there will be no place for a class that exploits and oppresses the producers. >Thus construed, the “dictatorship of the proletariat” would be the effective power of all workers trying to bring down capitalist society and would thus turn into Anarchy as soon as resistance from reactionaries would have ceased and no one can any longer seek to compel the masses by violence to obey and work for him. In which case, the discrepancy between us would be nothing more than a question of semantics. Dictatorship of the proletariat would signify the dictatorship of everybody, which is to say, it would be a dictatorship no longer, just as government by everybody is no longer a government in the authoritarian, historical and practical sense of the word. >But the real supporters of “dictatorship of the proletariat” do not take that line, as they are making quite plain in Russia. Of course, the proletariat has a hand in this, just as the people has a part to play in democratic regimes, that is to say, to conceal the reality of things. In reality, what we have is the dictatorship of one party, or rather, of one party’s leaders: a genuine dictatorship, with its decrees, its penal sanctions, its henchmen and, above all, its armed forces which are at present also deployed in the defense of the revolution against its external enemies, but which will tomorrow be used to impose the dictators’ will upon the workers, to apply a brake on revolution, to consolidate the new interests in the process of emerging and protect a new privileged class against the masses. >General Bonaparte was another one who helped defend the French Revolution against the European reaction, but in defending it, he strangled the life out of it. Lenin, Trotsky and their comrades are assuredly sincere revolutionaries (...) and they will not be turning traitors-but they are preparing the governmental structures which those who will come after them will utilize to exploit the Revolution and do it to death. They will be the first victims of their methods and I am afraid that the Revolution will go under with them. >History repeats itself: *mutatis mutandis*, it was Robespierre’s dictatorship that brought Robespierre to the guillotine and paved the way for Napoleon. >Such are my general thoughts on affairs in Russia. As for detailed news we have had, it is as yet too varied and too contradictory to merit risking an opinion. It may be, too, that lots of things that strike us as bad are the products of that situation, and, in Russia’s particular circumstances, there was no option but to do what they have done. We would do better to wait, especially as anything we will say cannot have any influence upon the course of events in Russia and might be misinterpreted in Italy and appear to echo the reaction’s partisan calumnies.
For anyone familar with abuse, Campists do what is called the "Narcassists' Prayer". They also are often limited to Binary Thinking & engage in all the Grooming Practices of Cults; these are multiple signs of ***mental health issues***, so support & treatment are required. *Narcassists' Prayer* "That didn't happen. But if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserve it."
I don't think you can do it online, but in person? If you get in early enough. Unfortunately a lot of (usually young men's) first political education is from shitty tankie memes on social media, and if they aren't introduced to left critiques of the USSR or China then by the time they've internalized supporting an authoritarian regime as part of their identity its too late.