In a press conference this week on New York City’s $12 billion budget gap, Mayor Zohran Mamdani zeroed in on the previous administration’s artificial intelligence chatbot as one of “a number of different things we’re going to pursue for savings.”
In a press conference this week on New York City’s $12 billion budget gap, Mayor Zohran Mamdani zeroed in on the previous administration’s artificial intelligence chatbot as one of “a number of different things we’re going to pursue for savings.”
I never said everyone who disagrees with me is a tankie. I said anyone who accuses Mamdani of being a fascist is a tankie. That’s a delusion no one but a tankie would hold.
Nah dear, the horseshoe nonsense is something you seem to be partial to. “Tankies”, not so much.
Cause I totally invented the term “red fash” and that’s not something that a fairly large portion of people already recognize and find to be a helpful concept?
Because authoritarianism, ideological purism, and militarism are sooo different when the people perpetuating them call themselves leftists. Not the same thing at all as the people doing the same things in the name of the nation-state, ethnoreligion, and capital. (/s for anyone who missed it).
Lenin killed a bunch of communists after they beat him in an election. But he called himself a communist, so tankies gobble his dick. Tankies love sabotaging electoral processes so they can claim it doesn’t work.
Oh, don’t worry, nobody’s accusing you of actually putting enough thought into things to invent that.
The bait and swtich of “all power to the Soviets” to “ummm actually the Party is the people” was actually Trotsky’s particular bullshit, but since the Bolsheviks took it, they own it.
And you consider everyone who doesn’t swallow your particular brand of ineffective purity a tankie, it seems.
I don’t agree with plenty of things from the Bolsheviks - the critiques of Luxembourg I think were particularly apt and prescient. But, with that said, I also don’t let my very basic disagreement with that justify alliance with something far worse, the capitalist and fascist forces that the left as a whole opposes. And nonsense like “red fash” does exactly that. And usually seems to follow the Parenti phrased criticism of only allowing respect for revolutions that fail. You’re validating horseshoe theory, the most nonsense liberal rewriting of history.
You want, you can go kill all the Bolsheviks you really want to after the revolution. Until then, it’s the same counterproductive and idiotic posturing that the Stalinist for Fashion idiots demonstrate, except with a black flag instead of a red one.
Um, no, I’ve put plenty of thought into it and that’s why I said it in the first place. I wouldn’t be arguing something that I’ve never put thought into, because I’m not an idiot. But thanks for assuming that I am solely because you disagree with what I’m saying.
Bolsheviks, tankies, what’s the fucking difference? (Yes, I know historically they refer to specific groups, but in practice today, anyone who identifies with bolshevik ideology is a tankie). I don’t fucking care about the nuances of trotskyism vs leninism, they were both assholes.
No, I don’t have a brand of ideological purity. That’s another thing tankies share with the far-right: you’re so zealously committed to your ideology that not only is there no room in your worldview for anyone to hold different opinions, but you also project your fanaticism onto everyone else, so in your eyes anyone who firmly rejects your ideology on rational grounds or otherwise has a more nuanced view, you accuse of the ideological purism that’s actually your own.
And no, calling out tankies for being authoritarian (by calling them red fash) is not the same thing as allying with capitalists and fascists. Yet another thing tankies have in common with the far-right: they think anyone who isn’t on their side is on the opposite side. Tankies are fucking assholes, fascists are fucking assholes. Both things can be true at once, and I’m not being inconsistent by calling them both out in the same paragraph.
Capitalism is destroying the planet and it’s been oppressing and exploiting the majority of humanity since it was invented as a concept, and its precursors have been doing so since before even then. But guess what? I can be a socialist without being a tankie. And that’s another thing tankies share with the far-right: they think all socialists have to be radicalized, fanatic, authoritarian communists.
Which brings us back to the beginning of this conversation: I was criticizing tankies for accusing Mamdani of being a fascist, which is a ridiculous assertion on all levels. He’s a democratic socialist. Two things fascists hate: democracy and socialism. He stands for both, in a time when such leadership is rare. Definitely not a fascist.
But if in your worldview a fascist is anyone who’s not a bolshevik, then we have very different definitions of fascism, and yours is not the correct one. And by the way, if that’s what you believe, then you’re not as different from the fascists as you think you are (need I repeat that refers to methodology rather than ideology, or in terms any erudite communist should understand, praxis rather than theoria. I’m not so fucking stupid that I think communists and fascists believe in the same ideals. But they believe in the same means which they believe their opposing ends justify).
So no, while I’d be onboard with dismantling fascism, if your proposed course of action is a bolshevik revolution then I firmly disagree.
Yeah, because you disagree with two things doesn’t make them equal. You want to bitch about tankies, go right ahead. You want to claim they’re equal to fascists, you’re doing the same stupidity liberals do with their horseshoe nonsense, and for the same reason - it lets you take the status quo as a best of all worlds, since anyone who opposes it is obviously an evil authoritarian asshole.
I’m not a tankie, yet you keep referring to me as such. So.
It is. You’re also pretending some schizo posting is an article in Pravda, which somehow still exists and is the party line. You make a strawman of what tankies believe, then claim anyone who disagrees with you is such, and pretend that’s not equally ridiculous.
The terms you use certainly imply that. So you should probably stop doing that if you don’t want to be considered stupid in that regard.