I want to draw attention to the elephant in the room.
Leading up to the election, and perhaps even more prominently now, we’ve been seeing droves of people on the internet displaying a series of traits in common.
- Claiming to be leftists
- Dedicating most of their posting to dismantling any power possessed by the left
- Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
- Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
- Attacking anyone who promotes defending leftist political power by claiming they are centrists and that the attacker is “to the left of them”
- Using US foreign policy as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the US political system
- Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism
When you look at an aerial view of these behaviors in conjunction with one another, what they’re accomplishing is pretty plain to see, in my opinion. It’s a way of utilizing the moral scrupulousness of the left to cut our teeth out politically. We get so caught up in giving these arguments the benefit of the doubt and of making sure people who claim to be leftists have a platform that we’re missing ideological parasites in our midst.
This is not a good-faith discourse. This is not friendly disagreement. This is, largely, not even internal disagreement. It is infiltration, and it’s extremely effective.
Before attacking this argument as lacking proof, just do a little thought experiment with me. If there is a vector that allows authoritarians to dismantle all progress made by the left, to demotivate us and to detract from our ability to form coalitions and build solidarity, do you really think they wouldn’t take advantage of it?
By refusing to ever question those who do nothing with their time in our spaces but try to drive a wedge between us, to take away our power and make us feel helpless and hopeless, we’re giving them exactly that vector. I am telling you, they are using it.
We need to stop letting them. We need to see it for what it is, get the word out, and remember, as the political left, how to use the tools that we have to change society. It starts with us between one another. It starts with what we do in the spaces that we inhabit. They know this, and it’s why they’re targeting us here.
Stop being an easy target. Stop feeding the cuckoo.
You assume quite a lot and then start jabbering on about dictatorships. You’re no better than fascists
Edit: why do you keep assuming I am against revolutions. Tankies are extremely disingenuous
So, as I assumed, no answer to the Mossadegh problem.
Nowhere in that comment did I assume that you’re against revolutions. You’re in favor of them, as you said. A bit too in favor of them, tbh. You seem to think revolutions are trivial matters, that if the gains of a revolution are lost, you can simply do it again. If you’re not prepared to commit to whatever’s necessary to win and secure those gains, you’re probably better off not doing it at all.
Nothing I’ve said is remotely disingenuous. You’ve just decided you hate me because of memes and meme ideologies. If you’re attempting to demonstrate the importance of theory through this silly display of ignorance and infighting, you’re doing a good job of it.
People become “tankies” because they take these questions seriously and study them. You can’t understand it because you don’t, and haven’t. Your ideology (whatever it is) wasn’t chosen because of a rigorous study of history and theory, but because it looks nice. It’s fun to denounce people as authoritarians, makes you feel good, whatever. But you don’t actually have reason or evidence to back up your position, you’re not interested in engaging with such historical or theoretical questions at all. None of you are, really. It’s all just memes and yet you have this bizarre, misplaced confidence, that because your catchphrases sound nice it means your ideology works.
Perhaps they should study all the anarchists your ideology has murdered, or all the revolutions it has ruined. Most of the regimes you support are the result of military coups of actual revolutions. Why support that? Why support the genocides or the oppression of workers? You don’t support socialism, even if you call it that. How great that your ideology is successful. Still doesn’t make it socialism.
Really? Which ones, specifically? I’m not aware of any like that.
I don’t.
If you want to write off the whole history of socialist theory as well as every revolution that called itself socialist as having nothing to do with socialism, then I might suggest that you’re the one who should find another name for whatever it is you believe. Marx and Engles were socialists. Lenin was a socialist. Ho Chi Minh was a socialist. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were socialists. They identified as such, acknowledged each other as such (when possible chronologically), and are widely seen as such. But I guess you personally are the ultimate authority on who is and isn’t a socialist, and I just need to DM you whenever I have any questions about that.
Who exactly is a socialist in your mind, anyway? Any actual human being you can name, aside from yourself?