Dunking on Tankies from a leftist, anti-capitalist perspective.
Rules:
We allow posts about tankie behavior even off fedi, shitposts, and rational, leftist discussion.
Curious about non-tankie leftism? If you've got a little patience for 19th century academic style, let a little Marx and Kropotkin be your primer!
Marx's Communist Manifesto, short and accessible! Highly recommended if you haven't read it
Dems are shit. Dems are really fucking shit. But helping the further right party into power helps no one, and certainly doesn't trigger some deeply-rooted intrinsic socialism in the masses.
Critical support for liberal ghouls one day every two years, in a FPTP system wherein a liberal party and a fascist party both poll around ~48% in the month before election day.
We have every other fucking day of the years to work for alternatives to the liberal ghouls.
Accelerationists in shambles.
(I wish. Their heads are quite thick.)
But in seriousness, love your stuff PugJesus. I follow you specifically so I can keep up with your posts.
I'm flattered! I mostly just post what I like and what I feel like venting about at any moment
I've said it once and I'll say it again: leftists aren't a big enough voting bloc to swing a presidential election. I'm an anti-electoralist anarchist and I still voted for the cop. Most leftists still vote despite their belief that our electoral system is a sham. If you're going to point the finger at anyone, point it at white liberals. They didn't show up.
Pick a fucking lane my guys. This is the same bullshit the Republicans pull. Leftists are either incredibly popular and powerful or incredibly weak and ineffective depending on which flavor of cope you're going for this week. We aren't responsible for your party being a hot mess
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: leftists aren’t a big enough voting bloc to swing a presidential election.
When elections are won and lost on a literal single percentage point, that's not even fucking close to true.
I’m an anti-electoralist anarchist and I still voted for the cop.
Unironically, thank you.
Most leftists still vote despite their belief that our electoral system is a sham.
I would say that's probably true, yes.
Unfortunately, the number of leftists who don't vote or throw away their vote to play purity politics is still very significant. And, even more pertinently, they are very prominent here on Lemmy, where we are posting.
Leftists are either incredibly popular and powerful or incredibly weak and ineffective depending on which flavor of cope you’re going for this week.
The Dems are a big tent party that can only win against fascists as a coalition, not playing purity politics.
When even the smallest member of the coalition discourages participation, that's all it fucking takes to lose.
We aren’t responsible for your party being a hot mess
No, you very much aren't. But considering those who sat home and those who amplified "Both sides are the same!" calls for apathy and non-participation, those who've done so should sit down for a very long goddamn time and question whether they're responsible for the fascist party, the one that is even more of a mess, winning the last (and potentially last) election.
Like, if you want me to rate what groups are responsible for the loss of the 2024 election, "Leftists playing purity politics" is like, 7th or 8th down the list. But 'apathetic moderates', 'Zionists', 'gerontocrats', 'bipartisan cooperation twits', 'egg price ghouls' etc etc etc are not exactly a big part of the community here on Lemmy. If any one of those previous groups had not screwed the pooch, we wouldn't be in the current fascist mess regardless of what leftists had done. But likewise, if leftists alone hadn't cultivated an intensive left-purity culture that leads to weird situations like the DS fucking A un-endorsing AOC for being insufficiently leftist, we also probably wouldn't be in the current fascist mess. It's like needing the consent of a dozen fucking groups to blow our brains out, where just one refusing would've saved us; and instead every goddamn one of them deciding they really like the idea of seeing our brains splattered on the wall.
While I definitely have posts and comments castigating those other groups, "Left purists" are often the ones I return to precisely because it concerns me that this online social circle, where I post pushes back so hard on the concept that letting the fascists win is, in fact, a bad thing, and that inaction is not absolution from that.
"Neutrality is on the side of the oppressor", and all that jazz.
Everyone (or almost everyone - some of those same left purists agitate that apathetic moderates are actually Wholesome And Valid) agrees when I say "Fuck these other groups", which makes banging that particular drum less important. Like saying "Water is wet".
Whereas saying "Leftism is not a reason to let fascists win" gets the same response from a very nonzero contingent on here as "The Holodomor isn't a myth made up by Ukrainian Nazis to defame the Glorious Soviet Union and The Great Genius Stalin" - ie a negative reaction that should be emphasized to the community is not fucking normal and everyday if we are all going to pretend to try to be decent human beings here.
I mean screw tankies, and anyone who willingly subjects themselves to Soviet authority deserves to be slapped and/or shot, but didn't the SPD back Hindenburg in 1932? That shitshow clearly went both ways.
The SPD backed Hindenburg because the alternative was... literally Hitler, and the KPD was not interested in a compromise candidate. The SPD's choices were reduced to "Back Thalmann, whose chances at gaining the position even with SPD help were slim, who didn't mind if Hitler won, and himself was the catspaw of a regime that was, at that very moment, shipping millions to concentration camps and starving political enemies en masse"; try to back a solo candidate of their own, which would result in nothing but Hitler assuredly winning; or backing the conservative ghoul Hindenburg in an attempt to buy time.
The KPD had abandoned the united front approach with the SPD since '28. While not the cause of all of the rise of the far-right in German politics, it seems difficult to argue that the abandonment of the relatively successful united front strategy didn't feed electoral opportunities to the far-right, resulting in the situation wherein Hindenburg, the conservative candidate, was the only candidate other than Hitler in striking distance of electoral victory in '32.
The SPD had no shortage of mistakes or ghoulish decisions in the Weimar era. But "We decided to vote against Hitler" was not one of them, even if the subsequent total inability of the left opposition to form any sort of coherent resistance in the Reichstag led to 'pro-cooption' conservatives in Hindenburg's regime gaining the upper hand and giving Hitler a belated victory anyway.
