this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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The US political spectrum is leaning so far to the right. A US left is a France center or moderate right. So what Americans consider communism is merely what French consider moderate leftist.
Yeah, it's basically "If you keep calling all of the stuff I like 'communism', then I guess that makes me a communist."
Or if you’re not a Nazi you’re a communist, then I’m a communist I guess.
To be fair, depending on the european country the spectrum is quite broad.
For example Norway has both literal marxists and full on "gay people should be put in camps" christian conservative nutjobs in parliment.
Hell even Obama was right wing to many countries.
...this was before we all dove headfirst into facism as a trauma response
Sure, but the meme refers to the communities on the internet that unironically go full tankie, praising Stalin and Mao.
Worst of all, tankies tend to inflitrate sane leftist spaces and slowly transform them. I've witnessed it many times, and that just makes me think that Marxists-Leninists are just the most dominant form of leftism on the internet, which is horrible.
This doesn't mention Stalin or Mao.
It doesn't, but in this thread's we see a simultaneous claim of "We aren't tankies, of course Stalin and Mao are not good examples of communists" and "Eastern european people were better off under the USSR". Of course, I don't think the same people are making both claims, but just the fact that some people can claim the latter and not get collectively shunned is indicative of a huge problem in leftist spaces, it's disgusting frankly. Tankies are significant force, at least partially representing leftism to everyone else.
I think a lot of people give Mao a bad wrap.
For what it's worth, Stalin is a monster, and the state of China right now is repugnant.
Mao didn't intentionally lead tens of millions of people to starve in the same way Stalin did. Mao was trying to revolutionise agriculture (The Great Leap Forward) but didn't understand the ecological and logistic principles required.
I'm convinced his intentions were good, he just wasn't educated enough to implement something like this.