Yeah I’ll admit to using dev mode a lot in the beginning to stop the constant mental breaks

Two points:

1. If you believe in evil, your view isn’t as nuanced as you think it is

2. The assumption that “tankies” (communists with an understanding of history, geopolitics and systems theory) are simply swapping one set of unthinking blanket loyalites for another out of some kind of contrarianism or intellectual laziness is itself an intellectually lazy assumption based in a lack of understanding. If I wanted to do that, I wouldn’t have had to read so many damn books. The actual truth is that the “tankie” worldview is by far the most nuanced out of all the mainstream political tendencies. It is built on dialectical and historical materialism rather than a static liberal idealism composed of floating signifiers. Rigorous analysis, critique and self-critique are built into it’s foundations. To put it simply, the liberal and western leftist understanding of the world is a static, abstract diorama drenched in the residue of christianity while the tankie understanding is a scientific machine in constant motion. When western leftists who haven’t yet examined their internalized propaganda and chauvinism say things like “just because the west is evil doesn’t mean the east isn’t” and think they’re addressing something the “tankie” actually believes, they are projecting their own lack of nuance onto the tankie.

I started this comment feeling a lot more snarky, but have ended it feeling a lot more up to the task of explaining in good faith. I’ve been exactly where you are, I’ve been you. You have not yet been me.

smh I know, they don’t even allow you to advocate for palestinian genocide

It’s been very funny to see the rhetorical slide in the last decade.

• Sure I’m a progressive but I’m not a socialist

-Sure I’m a socialist but I’m not some communist

-Sure I’m a communist but I’m not some kind of tankie

The overton window will continue to shift as conditions deteriorate, reform continues to fail, and us “tankies” continue to be proven correct about everything. Enjoy the ride

Because it’s the symbol of communists around the world?

This is wrong and cope

russia on both life expectancy (which was already on par with a rapid global and regional improvement trend)

An insanely, blatantly wrong thing to say about a feudal serf-state

The USSR was objectively a good thing and you’re free to return to 90% illiteracy and a 40-something life expectancy if you feel otherwise

That is absolutely the opposite of the truth, as one look at a graph of any quality of life metric from these countries will tell you

“Surely THIS round of neoliberal shock therapy will propel us to greatness” I say as I remove the last of my tendons with a flensing knife. The shareholders weep with joy. I am so enviously streamlined.

My eyes roll out of my skull every time I see some “humanity is doomed, it’s our nature to kill ourselves, if only we weren’t so selfish and shortsighted” spiel, which always ignores the actual structural causes of the problems in favor of some weepy original sin diagnosis.

The rate of growth after 1917 and 1945 is absolutely not on par with the rest of the world, or you would have linked an example to prove it. And if it was on par with the rest of the world, that would still show that communism was indeed not bad.

You have been trained so hard into a negative pavlovian response to all russian stimuli that you’re commenting this under a celebration of nazis being killed. Take a step back and reevaluate some things

It is literally us vs them, with the stakes being the future of all life on earth.

The Communists took away all my family’s hard-earned slaves

As the news so helpfully pointed out at the start of 2022, it’s because Ukranians look white

If I’m trying to create anything worth anything you’re goddamn right I’m gonna test my ingredients for purity

I think we tell liberals and conservatives apart in the way that you’d tell two species in the same genus apart

Or honestly, two breeds of the same species these days