this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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While there are undoubtedly people that use the term like that, I think there is a general understanding that it refers to people that can excuse or support authoritarian or oppressive actions
But the terminology 'authoritarian and oppressive' doesn't really make sense in leftist circles where all states are understood to be just that by definition. I mean, that's why people are socialists. Tankie is lib terminology referencing anything that undermines liberal democracy. It only makes sense when coming from anarchists.
You've never had the pleasure of interacting with someone that can produce endless excuses for the USSR or PRC?
Found the lib
Hey, I am one of them. The usa is always 100x worse, arguing does not change this reality.
Nobody was arguing that, two things can both do bad.
Only that it is almost never the case. And never when people start giving your talking point.
What is my talking point?
"Two things can be bad" - never the case it situations when people start saying it. It ignores scale and often takes hearsay as fact.
I specifically said "do bad"
Where does China do bad then? On the scale of the US? The supposed Uyghur "genocide" which lacks any strong evidence, even after years? Supposed debt traps, that even westen capitalist outlets like Bloomberg denied the existence of? Military wise? The PRC waged its last war almost 50 years ago (aside the ongoing civil war ofc), that's twice as long as the US had years not in a war in its entire history.
You take the position that China does no bad?
Read again: "Bad" as categorization alone is worthless. Because it is far to inprecise. If one car driver is 10 km/h over the speed limit on a country road and another drives over and kills a child, then both are "bad". But to treat both incidents as equal would be plain demented. Yet you do just that regarding China and the USA...
Scale is the difference.
Also what "bad" stuff are you even talking about? Because if you are talking about invented events, then they are also not "bad" of course, because they did not happen in the first place!
There is a world war going on and I have picked the side that fights against the usa.
thats fine honey
The point there is not that the USA is bad but that it is order of magnitudes worse, which means that opposing its enemies must be considered through the lens of "Does this help the US?"
To say nothing of the incredible amount of State Department propaganda that many western so-called leftists readily accept at the same time as "disavowing" the US as "also bad". If you believe the same things about the US's enemies that the US is actively campaigning to make you believe, that is a red flag.
Words that can only be spoken by someone who's never tried to get together with others to change things for the better. You don't get to take an entire society and immediately make it equitable and free it of centuries of hangups. You do the revolution with the people in your country, warts and all, and struggle to make them better at the same time. You do not have the luxury of only organizing people that already 100% agree with you, nor will you be "in charge". And, let's be honest: any of us in charge would bring our own hangups, because all of us look back on ourselves 5-10 years ago and say, "wow that person believed some problematic things".
For example, the October Revolution and Russuan Civil War were fought by, believe it or not, Russians born (mostly) in the 1800s in a semi-feudal country without universal education and a large peasantry. The communists were incredibly progressive in comparison to the rest of thr country. But because they retained some of the harmful biases of their culture at the time, you write off the whole project and carry around little lists in your head about how actually they were also just "bad".
It's good to endlessly excuse the USSR and PRC, as most criticisms of them are bullsit that is only believable by people with poor knowledge of history and zero capacity to critically engage with the media. Unfortunately, this is basically everyone under capitalism.
It really isn't
I suggest you read the entire argument before responding to it.
"endlessly excusing" is mutually exclusive with "critically engage"
Yes, but that doesn't make them more authoritarian or oppressive because no matter what every state is using what it deems the most effective path to enforcing its will and if that means violence it will always resort to violence. It makes them bad communists.
It's not a matter of oppression or no oppression but a matter of oppressing the right people. If the USSR and PRC were perfect they would be a contradiction to their own purpose, no?
Usually it means someone that actually reads history and will specifically debunk common anticommunist myths about it, i.e. historical revisionism.
The term "authoritarian" is also used selectively by anticommunists and this pervades capitalist societies, who continue to teach cold war nonsense. It is implicitly reserved for actions of the state, for example, but this is a false distinction made solely because after any kind of a left takeover, the state is the most powerful tool the people have. Universal government healthcare is authoritarian by this selective definition. On the other hand, the assertion of massive control over people's lives is not described as authoritarian when it comes from the private sector. Workers spend 8-16 hours per day working in petty dictatorships, working around the personalities and whims of business owners and managers, just to ensure some kind of steady income lest they lose basic human security. They are forced to migrate by poverty forced by capitalism, this system creates marginalised groups and then (sometimes slowly) treats them genocidally. Much of it was built on colonialism and neocolonialism, with the richness of the West built on uneven exchange with everyone else, a system set up at gunpoint. None of this is described as authoritarian.
Please read more widely.
I would agree those are authoritarian
After being prompted, sure
I would gladly recognize the American empire's atrocities, I just didn't think it was necessary since most left-leaning spaces are up to date on them, and it would largely be preaching to the choir.
My point is about the unconscious selective use of language, in this case to vilify communists. It's not a coincidence that the term pops up so often in the imperial core to crap on (usually BIPOC-led) successful revolutions and their theory, usually anti-imperialist struggles. Double standards and uneven emphasis are the primary tools of propaganda and they'll have you doing their work for them for free.
That's true, the Red Scare has had a lasting impact on American culture, and that impact can still be seen in vocabulary today.
There is certainly a racial aspect to it, some of the most dehumanizing things I've ever read were about China and Communism specifically, but I don't think that precludes legitimate criticisms of authoritarianism.