[characters surround a flowchart]
Do you agree with me ideologically?\
- No: Then you are not a leftist\
- Yes: Proceed
Did you ever disagree with me online?\ - Yes: Then you are not a leftist\
- No: Proceed
Have you ever read theory?\ - No: Then you are not a leftist\
- Yes: Proceed
Did you reach the same conclusions as me?
No: Then you are not a leftist
Yes: Proceed
Do you believe in left unity?
Yes: ??? -> just kidding -> loop back to the same question
No: Proceed
Are you to my left or to my right ideologically?
Right: Then you are not a leftist
Left: I hate you because you are a tankie -> Bruh -> Then you are not a leftist
We agree: I hate you because you are a liberal -> Wait what -> Then you are not a leftist
https://thebad.website/comic/true_leftism_flowchart
I get the tankie label a lot, moreso on Reddit, but sometimes on Lemmy too.
You’ll get the label for such burning hot (?) takes as “the cold war wasn’t about good vs evil” or “I don’t support NATO” or “Cuba did pretty good given its circumstances actually”, some people let the CIA live rent free in their head and really do believe anything to their left is automatically authoritarian.
I hate authoritarianism though :( I even wrote an entire manifesto on how the USSR went wrong when Lenin purposefully ignored Marx’s remarks on radical recallability of vanguard party members back when I was a lil wee revolutionary teenage lad, before the neoliberal 2000s crushed the revolutionary spirit of the millenial youth.
reddit has always been a cesspool, the reddit sentiment is that you only believe in communism if you are a teenager trying to be edgy, and if you are not that you are obviously a troll
Yeah, I scroll smugideologyman on reddit sometimes and see that.
On some irish subreddits I see people calling our president a tankie for things like saying that sanctions on syria aren’t helping the situation there, or condemning kneecap for not speaking against the cuban government when they visited the island.
Case in point,
I love kneecap btw.
Don’t care for their music, but they’re beyond based humans and I sincerely wish them the best.
History will remember them fondly.
What do you mean with NATO? Other than the US being currently involved, I am pretty neutral about its existance.
Also, isn’t cuba quite authoritarian?
The entire point of NATO was to extend the power of the usa and prevent communism spreading/open a front against the USSR if war broke out.
It is a racist imperial project architected by the worst people in the world.
After WWII the Americans put Nazi leaders into positions of power within NATO.
I generally feel that someone is a tankie when they become emotional about some topic that is not worth the emotion as if you thinking something slightly differently is a personal attack.