I’m sorry if this breaks a rule for this sub or isn’t in the right place.

I really don’t know, most of the time I just lurk. I had an alt on Hexbear because they get defederated all the time, and I really enjoy their content, but it got banned because I called out Nazi propaganda about Ukraine(It’s why I was banned. I’m not trying to talk politics I would like to focus on Lemmy), and I’m just very confused. The rules they referenced for the ban seem to barely apply to what I said, and in general, the server seemed like a cool place to be. I definitely felt like I was in a community where I belonged.

I’m just boggled and could really use some hand-holding on this one. In general, the rules of the Lemmyverse confuse me. I want to see everything, but the places I like most are usually defederated from the larger communities.

If this isn’t right please please, just point me to where I can ask.

Thanks!

  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
    83·
    14 hours ago
    1. Nothing is “neutral,” reporting facts still lends evidence to some narratives over others, and the manner in which facts are presented still has immense impact on how they are recieved. Either way:
    In-depth answer

    It’s essentially a pejorative for “communist.” I recommend the Prolewiki article on “Tankies,” as well as Nia Frome’s essay “Tankies.”

    “Tankie” was a pejorative for Marxists that support socialism in real life then as well as now. It originated in the Communist Party of Great Britain. The term was coined because of the British tendency towards silly-sounding insults, and because the Soviet Union sent in the Red Army to stop the western-backed fascist insurrection. This caused a split in the party (as it always does in western orgs).

    The Hungarian revolt in 1956 was infested with anti-semitic pograms. MI6 funded, supplied, and trained the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries. These counter-revolutionaries were allied with fascists who were lynching Jewish people and Communists. The Truth About Hungary by Herbert Aptheker heavily relies on citing western sources like the New York Times. Aptheker backs up his claims heavily.

    "The special correspondent of the Yugoslav paper, Politika, (Nov. 13, 1956) describing the events of those days, said that the homes of Communists were marked with a white cross and those of Jews with a black cross, to serve as signs for the extermination squads. “There is no longer any room for doubt,” said the Yugoslav reporter, “it is an example of classic Hungarian fascism and of White Terror. The information,” continued this writer, “coming from the provinces tells how in certain places Communists were having their eyes put out, their ears cut off, and that they were being killed in the most terrible ways.”

    “But the forces of reaction were rapidly consolidating their power and pushing forward on the top levels, while in the streets the blood of scores of massacred Communists, Jews, and progressives was flowing.”

    “Some of the reports reaching Warsaw from Budapest today caused considerable concern. These reports told of massacres of Communists and Jews by what were described as 'Fascist elements’ …” (N.Y. Times, Nov. 1. 1956)

    “The evidence is conclusive that the entry of Soviet troops into Budapest stopped the execution of scores, perhaps thousands of Jews, for by the end of October and early November, anti-Semtic pogroms - hallmark of unbridled fascistic terror - were making their appearance, after an absence of some ten years, within Hungary.”

    "A correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Maariv (Tel Aviv) reported:

    During the uprising a number of former Nazis were released from prison and other former Nazis came to Hungary from Salzburg . . . I met them at the border . . . I saw anti-Semitic posters in Budapest . . . On the walls, street lights, streetcars, you saw inscriptions reading: “Down with Jew Gero!” “Down with Jew Rakosi!” or just simply “down with the Jews!”

    Leading rabbinical circles in New York received a cable early in November from corresponding circles in Vienna that “Jewish blood is being shed by the rebels in Hungary.” Very much later-in February, 1957-the World Jewish Congress reported that “anti-Semitic excesses occurred in more than twenty villages and smaller provincial towns during the October-November revolt.” This occurred, according to this very conservative body, because “fascist and anti-Semitic groups had apparently seized the opportunity, presented by the absence of a central authority, to come to the surface.” Many among the Jewish refugees from Hungary, the report continued, had fled from this anti-Semitic pogrom-like atmosphere (N.Y. Times, Feb. 15, 1957). This confirmed the earlier report made by the British Rabbi, R. Pozner, who, after touring refugee camps, declared that “the majority of Jews who left Hungary did so for fear of the Hungarians and not the Russians.” The Paris Jewish newspaper, Naye Presse, asserted that Jewish refugees in France claimed quite generally that Soviet soldiers had saved their lives."

    Further, the CIA also backed Hungarian resistance forces:

    Prague in 1968 was a similar fascist uprising in both cases there were some elements of progressive protest, but these were greatly overshadowed by the fascist movements. Dubcek wanted to sell out to the IMF, and restore capitalism. The idea that any of this was about “democracy” or “freedom” is silly, it was always about Cold War tactics to destabilize socialism.

    TL;DR imagine if the January 6th rioters were armed and trained by foreign governments, started lynching officials and Jewish people, and the US sent in the army to put down the insurrection. The MAGA chuds would claim that it was about “freedom” and “democracy,” but we all know that they just wanted Trump in office.

    Nowadays, it’s used by any random anti-communist to refer to anyone that supports socialist states or doesn’t buy into the imperialist narrative about global south countries. It was the ones they call “tankies” that knew the stories of WMD and Saddam’s forces leaving babies outside of incubators were both bullshit to manufacture consent for war, but now that its decades later the anti-communists all suddenly have collective amnesia about their willing participation in spreading the lies of empire to murder hundreds of thousands of people.

    1. “Tankie” is a pejorative for communists, not an ideology. Critique is not valid by its mere existence, it must be factually based. If I say China is bad because they employ widespread child slavery, this isn’t critique based on fact, but based on fiction. If I say gay rights in China, though gradually improving, still have a very long way to go, this is based on fact.

    2. There’s a lot to break down, here, so I’ll go line by line.

    Why do Tankies tell me that the reason China has so many billionaires is because they’re controlled by the party?

    If anyone told you that the reason the PRC has billionaires is because they are controlled by the party, they are confusing things. The PRC has billionaires because secondary industries, and highly competitive non-essential industries (like tech) are generally privatized. The reasoning for this is because the CPC made a decision to allow in foreign capital in special economic zones to boost development and help catch up to developed capitalist countries, as this is how they can best integrate with the global economy and protect themselves.

    Billionaires are prevented from having political power through the already established worker-state, and by holding the commanding heights of industry, the principal aspects of the economy as public. The rubber factory has power over the rubber ball factory. As markets do their thing and centralize, this makes these industries easier to fold into the public sector, and this is how the PRC advances to higher levels of socialism.

    Isn’t that fascist mode of production?

    Nope, fascism is when the capitalist state intervenes to prevent the working classes from siezing control of the economy, usually in crisis.

    Also, having lots of public ownership while permitting private ownership is just social democracy, and no one of us claims Norway is any way socialist because of that.

    Not quite. It isn’t about raw amounts, it’s about which aspect is principal, ie rising and dominant, public or private, and which class controls the state. Norway has private ownership as principal and a bourgeois state, and is reliant on the western imperialist system.

    In fact, the Tianmen Square incident, that for a lot of you is fake news, was driven by Maoists who were protesting the turn from Maoism to a market economy.

    Partially true. The part that is “fake news” is the idea that the PLA committed a massacre on Tian’anmen Square itself, what’s true is that conflict between the PLA and rioters across Beijing resulted in hundreds of deaths (the CPC reports 240+ on June 4th, 1989). Further, by the time of June 4th, the Gang of Four supporters that protested Reform and Opening Up were largely gone, leaving the western-backed student movement that wanted to liberalize the economy. The Gang of Four supporters and the students actually disagreed with each other.

    1. Iran is not a working class state. At the same time, it is a sovereign state. MLs in Iran need to overthrow it while building up mass, popular support, as a coup would collapse into western supported monarchy.

    2. Administrators are not their own class, but a subset of a broader class. Marxism-Leninism has established socialism successfully.

    And don’t claim MLs and derived are the only Marxists. There are non-authoritarian forms of Marxism, like Luxemburgism, Autonomism and Dutch Left-Communism/Council Communism. The ML-derivate dominion on Marxism has hurt Marxism more than it helped it.

    MLs aren’t the only Marxists, just the vast majority. The idea that MLism has hurt Marxism more than helped it is nonsense, western-chauvanism. No non-ML ideology has ever successfully established socialism, only Marxism-Leninism has. None of the ideologies you listed has made any real impact, and mostly serves as a way for westerners to finger-wag global south communists for not “doing it the right way” (nevermind that this “right way” is both non-existant and not necessarily better than existing socialism even if these western Marxist ideologiws were to establish socialism).

    You have an entirely unearned smug attitude throughout this comment, it’s really nonsense.