Your political ideology can use whatever leftist symbolism it wants to, but if the system you enact is an authoritarian, top down hierarchy that supresses the will of the masses in favor of a privileged elite, then you aren’t on the Left.
Even Marx and Engels at their most statist wouldn’t be in the same zipcode as Lenin et. al.
To be on the left means being for democracy from the bottom up and being agaisnt the concentration of money and power in the hands of a few.
They are revolution fetishists. That’s why orthodox MLs repeatedly fail at actual statecraft - because they study revolution, and often get angry when that fan service gets interrupted by conversation about policy.
As far as I can tell, your intended meaning is absolutely correct, but you have some of the terminology wrong: fascism is an explicitly right wing form of oppressive authoritarianism. The extreme left can be authoritarian and oppressive, but never fascist.
Stalinism and the ideology of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge are notorious examples of tankies: left wing fanatics who engage in oppressive authoritarianism and violent persecution of anyone different from their narrow definition of the ideal citizen, often using arbitrary metrics just like fascists do.
Is the end result the same for an LGBTQ+ person, a pacifist or anyone else demonised by all forms of oppressive authoritarianism? Yes.
But that does not make the ideologies identical and the distinction is important because the differences mean that different tools are more effective in combating one than the other.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarian_personality
I see where some confusion lies. There is a discrepancy between the psychological and political definitions. I’m largely interested in why people think x and is they make it make sense, discard/set it aside until it does. I didn’t account for that and it’s on me.
Lmao. Not the ones I very frequently come across.
Look at how much they care about worker enfranchisement in the totalitarian regimes they idolise.
They’re just red fascists.
Fascist =/= authoritarian.
People use the words interchangeably but they mean specific things. North Korea for example is authoritarian but not facist.
Tankies tend to point to the USSR, China, and DPRK - I’d argue all of them fit Umberto Eco’s widely used definition of fascism pretty well.
In this context, it’s a distinction without a difference. What difference does this even make?
I can’t address that because idk what they think about it.
They use left wing populism to hide their authoritarianism (right wing). The literal Nazis did the exact same thing. We even see it in their names.
If you are simping for Putin/Russia or China, you don’t care nor know what communism is.
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Tankies are 💯 right wing.
No they aren’t. Some shady fucking people here playing opposite day or something.
Your political ideology can use whatever leftist symbolism it wants to, but if the system you enact is an authoritarian, top down hierarchy that supresses the will of the masses in favor of a privileged elite, then you aren’t on the Left.
Even Marx and Engels at their most statist wouldn’t be in the same zipcode as Lenin et. al.
To be on the left means being for democracy from the bottom up and being agaisnt the concentration of money and power in the hands of a few.
In the real world, authoritarians exist across the political spectrum.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34383522/
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Not actually true if we mean left as in ownership by the people and the right means ownership by capital.
Authoritarian or totalitarian are not the same as right.
There is an argument that tankies aren’t exactly ownership by the people.
Like you don’t look at the USSR and think "oh yeah the people really had ownership over their means of production*.
Ownership by the people implies the people have a say.
They are revolution fetishists. That’s why orthodox MLs repeatedly fail at actual statecraft - because they study revolution, and often get angry when that fan service gets interrupted by conversation about policy.
It’s not “right wing”
It’s just totalitarian fascism.
We need to let go of this stupid idea that only right wing politics ends up in totalitarian fascism.
ANY FORM OF IDEOLOGY OR BELIEF CAN LEAD TO FASCISM.
“Love thy neighbour as thyself” can lead to totalitarian fascism.
No matter how benign the belief, someone can turn it into fascism.
As far as I can tell, your intended meaning is absolutely correct, but you have some of the terminology wrong: fascism is an explicitly right wing form of oppressive authoritarianism. The extreme left can be authoritarian and oppressive, but never fascist.
Stalinism and the ideology of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge are notorious examples of tankies: left wing fanatics who engage in oppressive authoritarianism and violent persecution of anyone different from their narrow definition of the ideal citizen, often using arbitrary metrics just like fascists do.
Is the end result the same for an LGBTQ+ person, a pacifist or anyone else demonised by all forms of oppressive authoritarianism? Yes.
But that does not make the ideologies identical and the distinction is important because the differences mean that different tools are more effective in combating one than the other.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarian_personality
I see where some confusion lies. There is a discrepancy between the psychological and political definitions. I’m largely interested in why people think x and is they make it make sense, discard/set it aside until it does. I didn’t account for that and it’s on me.