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This is the most insidious yet obvious expression of US propaganda for a hot second
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this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2025
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Careful with that strawman, breathe on it and it'll fall over
"Tankies are biased towards China and against the US" isn't a strawman, it's part of the core definition of what makes someone a tankie. This is pretty valid criticism of a group with really inconsistently applied values (though it is, perhaps understandably, a little bit smug)
The word "tankie" itself is a thought terminating cliche that allows people to presuppose a complete understanding of another person's worldview, without engaging in the nuance of their actual position.
It should come as no surprise that the term alone clears the bar for "strawmanning" in some people's minds.
This is a ridiculous position to hold. Can you name me a single appellation that isn't used to summarize those thus described? That's kind of the point of using labels, to categorize things together by their common attribute(s). If we spent all of our time engaging with every single person to the point that we fully understood their perspective and worldview, not only would we never get anything done, we'd be utterly at the mercy of anyone who engages in bad faith.
I see this less as a dichotomy and more as a spectrum, with some labels being far more useful to civil discourse than others.
Not all discourse is intended to be (or even should be) civil, though. A hypothetical citizen of Strawmanslund who venerates Mao Zedong as a hero and visionary, who holds the position that his successes more than make up for his failures, is not a person I want to be laboring under the misapprehension that I could ever respect them.
That's certainly your prerogative. Personally, I like to engage with as broad a selection of opinions as possible in an effort to avoid being propagandized. I try to not allow my respect, or lack thereof, for a conversational partner to allow me to retreat to a bubble of like-minded opinions. Only by engaging with a diverse range of opinions can I hope to arrive at a nuanced view of the world. Of course, you do need to be adept at recognizing when you're engaged in bad-faith discussion.
One can listen critically to an argument without having to immediately make up one's mind.
I understand you think this is the clearly the correct view to hold, and I do (sincerely) understand why you'd hold this opinion. On the surface, treating everyone with uniform fairness until you've heard out their argument is clearly the magnanimous way to do things. But this is the fundamental issue of the Paradox of Tolerance - shutting down a conversation with a partner who espouses views like the above Hypothetical Stramandian isn't "retreating to a bubble of like-minded opinions", it's refusing to treat with someone who's opinions are so fundamentally offensive to a peaceful ethos, so personally disgusting, that they absolutely should face social consequences for the opinions they hold.
"Always be polite" as a policy doesn't work in the face of so very many political views or odious personal opinions because the lack of negative reaction can easily be recontextualized as positive reinforcement.
I'm not presenting it as the only correct view to hold. I'm explaining my thoughts, and engaging with you in an effort to expand my understanding while allowing my beliefs to be challenged; I apologize if I came across as attempting to bludgeon you with my righteousness. That was not my intent.
What you've said here is all perfectly fair, and is a great example of the ways in which the paradox of tolerance (something I like to discuss, as is clear to anyone who checks my post history) is so subjective and squirmy.
To use your example and further the discussion at hand, why might someone venerate Mao Zedong despite his many failures, and why does doing so make a person unworthy of respect?
(Apologies, that was poorly worded on my part - I just meant that this is the view you hold, and people don't (okay, rarely) hold opinions that they don't think are the correct opinions to hold.)
It's sadly all too easy to present someone being excluded because of said odious opinions as the exclude-er only being comfortable in a friendly echo chamber. And unfortunately I don't know that I have a solution to that! But to further further the discussion: I so intensely do not understand how a person who can look past the tens of millions of deaths that Mao is directly responsible for, that I don't actually know why there are any people that can forgive him. I suppose claiming they just believe the propaganda would be the easy answer, or maybe it's that they were on the winning side so the innate human tendency towards tribalism is to blame. Anyone who can look past the atrocities he was responsible for isn't someone I want to understand better.
I think I understand where you're coming from, and we're beginning to circle back around to what caused me to engage here in the first place. Someone that breaks with western orthodoxy surrounding Mao's leadership, and discusses any good things that may have come from his reign, is at risk of being labeled a "tankie", which then serves as the justification for dismissal. They have pushed back against a "nonfalsifiable orthodoxy" (to borrow a phrase from Parenti) in an effort to engage with the nuance of history and perhaps expose another's internalized propagandization.
A historian would necessarily want to look at the complete spectrum of Mao's deeds and legacy, without the need to create a dualistic value judgement in the process. Wholly good? Wholly evil? We tread toward the realm of the propagandist in this desire to oversimplify. No lessons are learned in refusing to engage with opposing opinions, we simply affirm of our own self-righteousness and entrench ourselves deeper into nonfalsifiable orthodoxies.
There are people who celebrate ~~Adolph~~ Adolf Hitler. This is absurdity to anyone who values human life. Only through the exchange of ideas, however, will I have any hope of understanding why an individual might believe such a thing; Only through that understanding can I engage with them using the dialectical method. Often it turns out that these people are edge-lords arguing in bad-faith for a laugh, just kids trolling out of boredom. If, however, the person seems willing to engage genuinely, and if I've the time and inclination for such engagement, then perhaps we both might come away with a better understanding of the world and people around us. I do want to understand neo-nazis, because only in that understanding can I formulate persuasive arguments against their specific positions, perhaps in time leading to an attenuation of such beliefs in society.
Perhaps these Mao apologists you've met believe that, as Julie Burchill put it:
As for what I believe... I'm still in the process of pinning that down.
You shouldn't use words you do not understand. You cannot present a strawman argument outside the context of a debate or argument.
Not everything is you disagree with is logically flawed. Sometimes things are untrue and logically consistent. Sometimes you're just wrong. Sometimes the other guy is.
Actually, you can present the fallacy to anyone providing an undistributed middle syllogism, since they've "made an argument". In the post, an undistributed middle is identifiable - "your most hated almost dictatorship". This is almost certainly not the same even among tankies, so the user is putting forth an argument with poor logic from the get-go. You're not actually educated about logic except by youtube videos from people using greek or roman figures as avatars, are you?
Right on, buddy! Logic nerds forever! Screw those "pathos" and "ethos" thingies, what possible use could they be? We, the high and mighty logicians, know that Logos is the only one that matters! Appeal to logos or appeal to death, amirite??
(Just to be clear here, this is a pretty nerdy website. If you're going to pose an argument like this, you should make sure it's sound before throwing down the "bruh do u even see how educated I am" gauntlet...)
This guy didn't even consider the other dude's post and jumped to made up pseudo-logic. This particular type of idiot is one of the worst on the internet. Their whole account is political concern trolling from a fencepost. You're literally constantly trashing people in your comments too - usually without any examples or explanations. Truly the mark of someone who has no idea what they're talking about, you have been attacking people for political takes across the spectrum without actually representing any ideas yourself.
If the word syllogism is too scary for you, just say so. It's not a tough concept, you could self-educate in a week or two, but you've gone to being flippant about it with no substance. It's clear you don't have a real opinion you've thought through on the topic, so I have no idea what the point of this comment was.
Sigh. Yeah, my recent comments have been fairly zero-tolerance (I wonder what has prompted that) for some of the fashier positions you find on here. It's something I'm working on, but if you check the context for most of those it's usually some pretty heinous shit that I'm replying to. (tho like, several of my most recent comments are an exchange with a user just a few comments up that I was a dick to initially, and whom I do intend to apologize to as soon as I can find the right words to express it. What they said was quite profound, and even if I do think it's misguided it does give me some hope that people can still hold to those ideals in the face of gestures broadly at everything)
Listen, I checked through your post history yesterday and took another dive just now, and a bunch stood out. Partly there's the fact that you've got just as many aggro comments calling out centrists and other bullshit political positions as I've got (so maybe don't throw too many stones here because we're both living in the same big glass house and it's really cold outside right now). Mainly though, there's a whole lot more in there to like.
For example:
You play tombstone, a game I love. Your line, "You can’t change where or how you’re born, but you can change what instance you’re on with almost no impact to yourself." made me genuinely laugh out loud when I read it two months ago, and I've gone on to paraphrase it at people since then. You're comfortable with neo-pronouns, something that is extremely important to me (even if I do have one hell of a time remembering them). You're passionate about the topics you're aware of, and do not shy away from negative backlash for presenting correct but unpopular opinions, especially when you feel you're morally correct. With complete sincerity, I'm quite sure we'd get along very well under just about any other circumstance, and it's a shame you're not more active because you add a great deal to the community already.
And with all that said, and with my complete understanding of why you feel this way, you should really let go of the drive to hold casual comments to high logical standards. This is not the Forum Magnum, I am not wearing a toga (and I'm willing to bet you aren't either, but I fully accept I could be wrong and no judgement if you are), and appeals to pathos or ethos rarely hold to the standards of reasoned debate. It will add very little to a venting comment to point these things out, and if the context in which you present a point like that isn't the same for all participants, you'll just be getting frustrated as other people point out they don't really care, or that you're assuming the context to be something other than it is (like happened here).
(Also, it's really just not a good look to attack someone with an appeal to accomplishment, especially as more and more educators pivot to presenting material via youtube. Most of my students agree that they wouldn't be able pass my program if it weren't for Indian CS instructors on youtube, for example. Interestingly, an informal internal survey we did found that CS students had the least difficulty parsing thick accents of any student grouping. I can't prove the two things are related, but man is it a juicy correlation...)
~~I only just now realize I've misread Outer Wilds as Outer Worlds. Both amazing games, but very different in scope and tone.~~