As with last time I'll hopefully be doing a follow up video going over some of the stuff that was cut and some responses to it if they arise, as it was a very long time spent doing this.
I having now finished the video want to say I agree with many of the points made. I think was criticism, or something I'd say would help, is an emphasis on critical analysis or write-offs. Tankie really is a write-off phrase that only ends any discussion. There are times where someone is just a troll LARPing but we can determine that remotely or up front, that itself would require analysis. I don't think saying a country/region/bloc is "good or bad" is realistic and I think that's part of the point here too but I feel like if it was the part of the point it wasn't clearly written out. I think having things open ended encourages further analysis but in my experience it usually just encourages people to complete the narrative they have rather than create a new one. Is DPRK Good or Bad? Is Ukraine good or bad? It's this kind of fantasy talk is what I think gets people stuck in dogma. Dogma provides a line for people to say good or bad, so if we want to ditch dogma we have to ditch simplification and fantasy terms like good and bad on such broad strokes. Even Nazi Germany did horrific things but to just label them as bad and move on removes any analysis on how they made those bad choices. Their own dogma gave them a line. Side spew, I don't think we should be objective entirely when analyzing things as no historical event great or small was done by objective people. I feel like a liberal writing this, but open minded should be the mindset but with a very critical lens. To be clear **Fascists are NOT given a platform** but whether historical or concurrent analysis a dialectical material analysis should be done. In example of the DPRK, I support the ideas of Juche and think given the circumstance the DPRK has survived well while maintaining security and priority of people's well being. However it saddens me that GenSec Kim Jong Un fully support Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Taking it a step further they have had Russia as an ally against US aggression and RU has historically helped them in spite of US threats. Could opposing Russia put their entire state in danger by being cut off from its few powerful allies? Can I who lives within the US Empire and all its benefit critique such small things through an accurate lens of a country constantly threatened by my own country? I really don't know. But this allows me to grow, by analyzing things like this.
I've been communist a little less than a year and I'm overwhelmed. At first, I was so happy to finally learn about how powerful propaganda actually is, how many of the horribly things that I thought I knew about communism were just lies. But the deeper I went and the more opinions of different marxists I read, the more confused I got. I have no idea anymore what opinions I should believe, what facts I should trust, how to distinguish which stories to believe and which to dismiss as propaganda. Whatever thing I might have read about and been sure of to be true, there is a debunk of it that seems just as convincing. I'm exhausted...
Yep, that'll happen. The best way from my experience is to join a org that actually affects people's lives, housing/food etc, even if its not the most ideal or most revolutionary, stay away from the usual 'Communist' or 'Socialist' parties because quite frankly they're all pretty redundant at this point. Then keep all of your more juicy views to yourself or anonymously until you've really cemented down what you believe, and then, keep it to yourself for a few more years, because you'll always think you have it set and then find out later how wrong you were and won't want to concede. I've been Socialist for over 7 years now and there's still plenty of stuff left to learn.
Idk if my original comment got deleted or didn’t upload, but what i wrote was that eventually you’ll come to see what sources to trust, also looking at evidence is pretty important because both sides can omit things sometimes. Even if both sides commit errors i tend to evaluate it in historical and geopolitical perspective and if i am talking about it in a anti-communist fashion or in an objective one. Do your own research too, it will end up feeling like you’re in university sometimes but it’s what you have to go through if you judge it to be worth it. For example: i was and still am pretty confused about China’s Maoist period, people these days push a narrative that the communists hid in the mountains and the KMT was the biggest factor for Japanese defeat, uppon searching a bit i found out that the communists where indeed in some mountainous regions as well as plains, and that the KMT had a bigger army, but after reading both american and Chinese sources stating that the communists where inside enemy lines and the KMT didn’t even have people there to recieve defeat of the japanese army, so all weapons went to the communists to whom a lot of KMT people and generals had defected to due to corruption and authoritarianism, i was sure what was true. Now i am going to go through some books on the Mao era for common people, even if they dislike the modern China unlike i do. BadEmpanada has a good study guide you’ll want to check out, he presents really good research you’d not find elsewhere, with good material proof and sources. And even then i disagree with him on somethings, like China “lying about their extreme poverty rate”, just to show you gotta make your own research.
@@warlordofbritannia Thats largely where I start with it, but the word was coined for events that happened after Stalin, so..? I'm sympathetic to much of what the USSR and PRC achieved, but when people gloss over everything they did wrong (and some things were horrible) we need a term for them.
The one thing I'd say about that "tankies" meme with all the famous figures is that it's not calling them all MLs, it's saying they'd be called "tankies" by modern Liberals who've begun appropriating that term against anyone who is opposed to the U.S. State Department, NATO, imperialism, etc. Malcolm X was not an ML obviously, but anyone holding the consistent outgrowths of his views today would be labeled a "tankie". You see this often with others as well -- I've seen Aaron Mate labeled as a "tankie" and he's a journalist and I'm pretty sure not even a Communist, so yeah.
@@BadMouseProductions I can't believe this is the material you have to deal with.. Ok I'll explain it. Those people actually DID something IRL, whereas "you" are just a couch potato that watches YT videos and argues with people on the internets.
direction caught me off guard. I still think it's valuable to point out when someone is committed to the dogma over the improvement of lives and a lot of your criticisms here support that. I'm curious if you had someone help with the visuals or if you did them yourself. Strikingly good. Your narrative was also very engaging but that makes sense given your tenure.
You know my man? I started this video with a lot of skepticism, being a "tankie" myself (whatever that term means), I expected a bland and awful critique made by a Vaush fan. I was wrong. This is a very good video and an amazing critique. You've impressed me comrade. Solidarity from Chile!
@@BadMouseProductions it's called a new viewer. As am I. I thought it was going to be the same. I don't think your take is perfect but there's decent nuance.
@@jakobl7469 Mostly positive, except Mao. He did a ton of mistakes, and some like the Cultural Revolution really ended a massive amount of lives. Apart from that, both were products of their times. We can observe their experiences, learn some stuff and leave some other stuff behind. For example: nowadays we wouldn't calculate the economy by hand, we'd use computers and digital technology to do so, which is something similar to what our comrade Salvador Allende tried to do with Cybersyn/Synco project; be more careful with how workers are distributed in farms and the newly made industry, and a large etcetera. If you think that I'm a stalinist or something, I'm not, but I understand why so many people would call themselves stalinists. I try to break from the Stalin-Trotsky dichotomy (which is a dichotomy since almost no one remembers Bujharin) because we don't live in their times any more, nor in similar material conditions. That's what I think my friend. Cheers!
The "conversations we'd all rather be having" are the conversations I'm having with the people i'm close to, even as a pretty dedicated anarchist. I thought the whole point of this thing (whatever the Left is) was being critical, but because of the nature of Twitter and other online spaces fomenting conflict by design, the dominant discourse ends up being trash. I really think we need to move back off of social media and into our material contexts, at least for the most part. There's not a lot of real gains to be made for material autonomy in bickering on social media. When you leave social media, these dead revolutionaries and old revolutions become instructive for your own class struggles instead of ideological symbols to bash other people with. Not saying I'm on their level, but in 2020, I found Mao's On Contradiction really thought provoking and helpful while I was trying to organize street medic support for the protests. And that experience has helped me conceptualize what I can do going forward to upset the dominant power structures that I'm dealing with directly. anyway, really good video, much appreciated
yea this is very true, most of the meaningful advocacy we think is out of reach or that we saw in previous generations that was actually effective is actually in our full capacity to do. We just have to disconnect a little bit from arguing with eachother/fascists and more time talking to people in real life. It’s the only way to actually build community and organization
It may be a poor historical decision, looking back at it, to let the average people and the supremacists co-mingle in online social spaces, without our counterpoints. It does fucking suck, being on there, yes. But we know what happens when, say, forums are allowed to go full fash-bad IRL outcomes. My advice: their are Leftists who are capable of handling the stress, who have goof arguments, and know when to switch from good faith to shaming bad behaviour wittily-let them do so; don’t discourage the sewer worker, and don’t overplay a sewer worker’s public missteps.
@@andreja9425 very true. Fascists don’t usually waste their time on Twitter arguing. They’re outside, they’re agitating, persuading, brainwashing. They’re doing the work. While most online leftists are not doing any of that and passively giving fascists the win.
The thing about Malcom X not necessarily being communist is that People who are not communist get called Tankies all the time. At this point, the word basically just means any left-leaning person who doesn't uncritically and unabashedly support NATO.
@@telcharthegreatsmithofthef7585 I've no idea how that makes him a "tankie". This is why I'm saying it's a buzzword. Why not just replace everything with negative connotations with the words "tankie" and "woke"? Because that's how ridiculous those buzzwords have become. "He's a war criminal, he's a tankie", "he's a nazi, he's woke", "that person is filthy rich, he's a tankie", "Biden is a woke/tankie, he's starving millions of Afghans to death".
@@telcharthegreatsmithofthef7585 No idea. Chomsky is an anarcho-syndicalist. Did he explicitly say "there is no genocide" and went on to add "it is a socialist government" and then "they are resisting the US empire" or "they are fighting US imperialism" or anything of the sort in his statements? Like I said, the whole "tankie" thing sounds like a caricature that isn't there and is only found in a handful of people. Calling an anarcho-syndicalist (who's denounced the USSR as much as the next American leftist) a "tankie" is beyond preposterous. Then he gets called a "tankie" because of his current stance on the Russia/Ukraine situation..."tankie" sounds like a smear word for anyone who doesn't agree with American imperialism at this point. Then again it's been used to describe anything from people who don't like the democratic party through people who don't like vaush to people who didn't agree with the US invasion of Syria. I said it many times in the comments section: "tankie" is a buzzword and it's been rendered meaningless because it is used outside its definition in the first place.
@@telcharthegreatsmithofthef7585 I don't know. What is the definition for "tankie"? How does that relate to what Chomsky said regarding Yugoslavia? Was Yugoslavia a left authoritarian government or a fascist government of sorts? Also, the genocide committed by the Serbians does not negate the fact that what NATO did was wrong and did nothing to improve the situation, it also served to validate (at least for a while) the imperialist tool that is NATO. Chomsky denying the genocide was foolish but denying that nato serves imperialism (and in nato's invasion of the Balkans back in 1999) and being apologetic for it is being an enabler, thus yes, anyone trying to justify nato's actions is a Western Imperialist. Also, there is nothing wrong with being anti-american, I don't see how you could call yourself a leftist and not be against what the US stands for. For any kind of fault Chomsky may have he is right in that regard. Having said that, NO THAT DOESN'T MEAN I CONDONE ANY TYPE OF GENOCIDE, WAR CRIME/CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY. Reacting to "tankies" with imperialist apologia isn't any better.
@@telcharthegreatsmithofthef7585 Of course it's used by smear merchants to smear people they don't agree with. It's used by all sorts of liberals alike to smear people and conflate them with "fascists". It's bein used by people to smear supporters of Russia and Syria (eventhough neither are socialist states) making the smear word moot in the first place. Of course it's a buzzword yet you and many don't like to admit it.
I appreciate the nuance in this video. Often video essays can confuse nuance with with fence sitting, but this video puts a ton of effort in NOT doing that. It is clear, well argued, and designed to spark personal reflection from the viewer. Good work.
Nkrumah supported scientific socialism and said his 3 biggest influences were Marx, Lenin, and Marcus Garvey. His ideology was essentially adapting MLism to Africa.
he for sure wasnt an ML. Walter Rodney properly summed this up, "In a sense, Nkrumah followed up on this; and although at one, time he called himself a Marxist, he always was careful to qualify this by saying that he was also a Protestant. He believed in Protestantism, at the same time. So he was trying to straddle two worlds simultaneously - the world which says in the beginning was matter and the world which says in the beginning there was the word. And inevitably he fell between these two. It's impossible to straddle these two. But there he was, and we must grant his honesty and we must grant the honesty of many, people who have attempted to do this impossible task and follow them to find out why they failed."
Marcus Garvey was an anti-communist nationalist. Si it makes sense that Nkrumah calling him a big influence actually discredits his communist credentials.
I would recommend Hakim’s video on what is a tankie, he talks about every meaning it has been given (as you can imagine, a crap ton, so many it’s basically lost meaning)
Aren't those just two authoritarian sides of the same authoritarian coin? And since authoritarianism is anti-left, you are actually identifying a unified Right
@@d_trich Authoritarianism isn't "anti-left", it is simply to the right of "ultra-left" or anarchism. There is, sadly, a need for us to stand together as one and force capitalism out of power. That's..inherently authoritarian! There's no way around it! The only non-authoritarian way would be to convince capitalism to step down under its own volition.
@@DeoMachinaYou're blurring the lines between the red fascism of tankies and the justified hierarchies that must temporarily exist and then be immediately eradicated, unlike what the tankies who want their own elite cabal to take up permanent rule.
@@DeoMachina replacing the rule of rich people with the rule of authoritarian "leftists" who murder civilians to "crush dissent" is not an upgrade and as long as there are people who unironically think that is a good thing, we will never have actually have good socialist policies because people live in permanent fear of the word
“Some say that it is impossible to acquire the great qualities of revolutionary geniuses like Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin and that it is impossible to raise our own qualities to the same level as theirs. But as long as Party members work hard and earnestly, never allow themselves to be isolated for one single moment from the day to day struggle of the people, and make serious efforts to study Marxist literature, learn from the experiences of other comrades and the masses of the people, and constantly strive to steel and cultivate themselves, they will be perfectly able to raise their qualities to the same level as that of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.” -Nelson Mandela, from his book: “How to be a Good Communist” (1962)
Thank you for this beautiful take. Your points are great and will certainly have a major impact on my personal future discussions. There's really something that sets you apart from the majority of creators on the left - nuance. And your video is a reminder that this nuance is important. So thank you. Also, fantastic editing!
"Tankie", like any slur, exists just to ostracize the other and shut down the conversation. In my experience, this one is often used by people who don't have enough knowledge of historical events and context in which they happened and is used against people who try to counter mainstream narrative of most successful attempts at socialism. Often those "libertarian socialists" will criticize people like Stalin for his authoritarianism but will sing praises for people like Maurice Bishop even though most of the decisions Stalin supported had to be approved by politburo or central committee and Bishop basically ruled by decree.
@@2emo2function What? A slur = a derogatory or insulting term applied to particular group of people. There's nothing particularly wrong with their word choice.
@@lucaiovis Slur has some heavy connotations though. In the usage I see most, slur specifically refers to a derogatory term aimed at a marginalised group. Tankie is a perjorative for sure, but it doesn't target an oppressed group. This may seem like semantics, but I think the distinction is important.
The term, 'tankie' was originally coined by Marxists to describe those on the left who opposed the 1956 Hungarian Rebellion. The term is still used to refer to those on the left who turn on the working class and betray their revolutionary principles. This video delves into the matter. I'd give it a watch.
I've always taken the "tankies" picture to mean that under the various definitions, as laid out in the first part, all these people could be considered tankies, more making fun of the overuse of the word.
The way you pace your videos, both visually and orally (and they compliment eachother fantastically) is something I've seen from hardly any other creator lefty or otherwise. Especially ironic that a video criticising dogma manages to keep itself concise and understandable, it's hard to believe it's 30 whole minutes. Great work once again. :]
I think Dogma arises so quickly among these online leftists because of how social media sites like Twitter and Facebook work. Online Social media is not designed as a digital town square like some people will argue; instead, it is an echo chamber that makes money from engagement. And Dogma, no matter what the ideology, generates the most significant amount of attention, sad to say.
That arguement falls short because of how present it is historically. Social media has definitely aided and abetted it but is by no means the cause. Dogmatism is just pseudo-parasocial relationships with ideologies or idols of ideologies, a thing that will exist for ever
Really thoughtful video and I like the fact that you've sort of become the grumpy old person of the online left. Keep up the good work and I'm glad to see you putting out more stuff!!
Your video on debunking anti communist arguments helped me become a solid marxist rather than a questioning leftist, and your video on the cuban missile crisis rly helped give a new perspective so thanks for your videos. But as mentioned by others im wondering if youre ever planning on returning to youtube?
@@Rolando_Cueva I hope he does, but then again his last anti communist arguments debunked video has gained a lot of attention and the reception from ppl all over the right is very negative so I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s still recovering from the fallout.
@@mikhaelgribkov4117 don't be daft. If you were arguing with an anti-abortion person and they said "being for abortion is against life!", it would be totally reasonable for you to critique the assumptions buried within the word "life". That doesn't mean you support human extinction, any more than I am defending US imperialism right now, nor am I saying you shouldn't use your common sense when making decisions about when to cross a busy street. We're having a conversation about young people who approach international questions with the "common sense" that anything that is the opposite of what US imperialist propaganda says is the truth. E.g. US imperialist propaganda says Assad is a genocidal butcher, therefore he must in fact be the polar opposite of a genocidal butcher, because the US propaganda always tells lies. (Ignoring the fact that manipulation and disengeuous presentation of half-truths is a well-known propaganda tactic) This sort of "common sense" is fundamentally at odds with any historical materialist attempt to analyze the situation in Syria.
A very trivial example that illustrates the stupidity of this logic is how Stalinist Internet sects who were previously addicted to chatting with each other on Signal have now decided Signal is "CIA", and therefore no longer a useful cybersecurity tool, because they learned was developed by freelance agents of western imperialism to avoid surveillance by the PRC. Ironically this flies against the face of actual common sense, as the people who developed Signal still had need for a useful end-to-end encryption software, and the technical cybersecurity principles of end-to-end encryption have little to do with political ideology.
Many that I come across tend to use both with the same brush. Obvz Gaddafi had more support for revolutionary struggles than did the other two, so his effect on the world stage was different, but people always ignore his other side. His discrimination amongst Non Arab Africans and probable participation in Sankara's death are rarely spoken about and do give a very different perspective compared to the regular anti-imperialist outlook.
@@BadMouseProductions Gaddafi was one of Mandela’s and the ANC’s greatest allies. That would put him on par with Castro who is also demonized by the West.
Gaddafi also supported Idi Amin, Blaise Compaoré, (ironically given that so many Twitter "tankies" idol-mine both Sankara and Gadaffi) and Charles Taylor and is largely responsible for the emergence of the janjaweed. The Soviet-Cuban bloc also supported Mengistu (who extradicially mass murdered thousands of Ethiopian and Eritrean communists) because African geopolitics in the late 70s and 80s were complicated and not an MCU or Star Wars movie. For example, the Angolan Civil War, the famous event in which Cuba and the USSR sided against apartheid South Africa, the People's Republic of China sided with South Africa and the US. Also "the west" largely celebrates Mandela and contemporary South African revolutionary leftists largely hate him. Mandela's position was that socialist revolution in South Africa would be going too far and would destabilize the country and that the ANC needed to work with F. W. de Klerk to create a new liberal democratic republic, and Mandela even prosecuted black South African leftists as part of the "restorative justice" process of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. The Mandela family also got very rich in the process; Mandela's grandson is the director of the Aurora gold mining company which owes South African mineworkers $1.8m in unpaid wages. tldr western leftists should have to score at least 60% on one of those geography app quizzes where you label African countries before theyre allowed to talk about this stuff.
Apartheid South Africa at that point was a pariah state for obvious reasons, basically supported only by the USA, Japan, and Israel. (Only a slight oversimplication on my part) Imagine applying the "[x] supported Mandela" argument to WW2. Churchill, de Gaulle, Chiang Kai-Shek and Roosevelt also opposed Hitler, should we celebrate them too?
@@user-ig4dl4iv1j I celebrate Roosevelt despite him being a Keynesian because he helped expedite the end of the British Empire and sought peaceful relations with Stalin as early as 1934.
You're half correct, Nelson Mandela was part of the ANC and followed the ANC freedom charter which had a socialist influence. Freedom Charter was the statement of core principles of the South African Congress Alliance, which consisted of the African National Congress (ANC). Now even tho ANC's freedom charter has a strong socialist influence most members wouldn't consider themselves as socialist or communist. That being said ANC have worked with SACP since they were both anti-apartheid and working together would be the best for blacks in South Africa.
15:00 I've not seen anyone in any group say Malcolm X was a communist. I'm pretty sure the meme you are critiquing is, in your perception (or your starting point) wrong. Your initial vector is assuming that those people shown are being portrayed as Tankies. When I saw it, I gathered that those people would be called Tankies today because of the arbitrary uses of the word. For example the BPP had a lot of nice things to say about the DPRK and visited there, as did some of the others shown. Sure criticisms existed by some of those people too, from their perspective at their time. The USSR was an experiment which is why it is often called The Soviet Experiment as they were the first to actually try things. Hindsight is always 20-20 and despite being aware of that, many leftists seem to be harsh rather than critical, as if it should have been obvious what the result would be. I think people forget the delay in information traveling and such was much slower and arguably more obfuscated even 20 years ago. As someone who appreciates the USSR and especially prior to 1953, I think we can look at what worked and didn't. I found it interesting how the equalization of wages happened too fast and it caused major development and industrial issues. That's a whole event that should be looked at and critically evaluated with the proper historical context, especially with wage discussions today this could be a very educational and practical look exercise. However, people are too busy blaming 1 man for what a million party members and regions of more than 120 million did and just write off the failure as their fault and if 'they' did the deed it wouldn't have failed. I can promise you no great leader ever made a bad decision and thought there was a better option at the time.
I think what I've always assumed that Malik al Shabbaz/Malcolm X was at best a fellow traveler if anything and could have come back to a more Pan African communist tendency
Yeah , Malcom X's positive position and takes on China and Maoist movements for example would be 100% called a "tankie" thing in the online western left today, even if he personaly wasnt a marxist lenninist
@@missmizzebral8924 fair enough. I appreciate the impact he had in his work and weather he was a communist or not doesn't mean anything to me if our goals are aligned. I think he was killed before ever establishing a label for himself or maybe he avoided it and just wanted black liberation. Again I support the endeavor regardless.
@@eve36368 I have no doubt some used it as such and if so they were likely tokenizing them. What struck me was the tankie being in quotes. Depending on your sphere of people that can imply many things, like as a scare word or a reduction of it. The meme is interpretative so it's admittedly wrong of me to say his take is wrong when it isn't explicit what it's meaning is. As such every take, mine and his, are right and wrong depending on the observer.
I don't understand your problem with the "tankies" meme. Yes, we're not them. But the message of this meme is that today's western leftists who throw around the term "tankie" would oppose these people at the time for being too "authoritarian" or whatever. That is true. The main contrast between the "tankie" left and the "tankie-yelling" left, is that the first group looks at these past attempts and takes them seriously and wants to learn from them, while being critical of them to varying degrees (but seldom a degree that would put western imperialism in a less negative light), while the latter truly wants to dismiss all of the past because of its mistakes. They range from people who truly think that the western empire is more "free" and a better place to live while ignoring how colonialism (of the past and in the modern day) contributes to that living standard, to people who simply want to dismiss every previous socialist state because they were imperfect. The meme is to throw these people all together and show these "tankie-yelling" leftists: "So you oppose ALL of these? Everyone who did anything worthwhile in practice." While individually they would, the strength of the meme is that they are all shown together. You cannot in your right mind say "yes" to that question without appearing like you just want to keep leftism this public debate on the internet where we can dunk on Ben Babibo and his crew while never making a true change in the real world, and also... appearing a bit white supremacist, right? So yeah, I think it's a good meme, and your criticism of it just sounds a bit like "but before you point fingers at capitalists, did you recycle your garbage today? Hmm?" The inclusion of Malcolm X is also less strange than you make it out to be because he would definitely be one of the people marked "tankie" or "authoritarian" by these people, regardless of whether he's a socialist. "But tankie refers exclusively to socialists", well yeah, as you said yourself: it's become obsolete.
I am not sure if dogma is central. Even when I question more liberal minded people, without informing my opinion and telling where I am coming from, sometimes I am called a tankie.
The point of the meme isn't to claim those people as part of some ideology, but to lampoon the meaninglessness of the word. Despite having no ideological through-line connecting all of the people, they took stances which would undoubtedly be described as "tankie" by many of those who use the term to discredit the left. The point is the ridiculousness of the way tankie is used to discredit people, not to lay claim to historical heroes. To be more clear: if someone, now, lauds any aspect of the Soviet Union, say they praise the city planning, they will inevitably be called a tankie. This kind of facile logic, if taken seriously, would label any of those people in the image tankies along the same lines. Hence the meme. There's a reason the word is in scare quotes in the image. Maybe your points are valid in as much as anyone doing these things would be wrong, but at least the image chosen to exemplify this does a poor job.
@@BadMouseProductions In fairness, you suggest it one-sidedly, at least in that part. While it is true that self-proclaimed "Tankies" are not who they idolize, it's also important to understand that, in regards to some of the values that these figures hold, they would've been thoroughly bastardized using the same terminology because of their views on Socialism & AES. The point being that division between what is seen as "Tankie" is so incredibly arbitrary that great leftist leaders would have been attributed the same title in passing, despite all the significance of their work. At the same time, it's necessary to realize that just because these historical figures may have been labeled similarly does not mean that their views were fundamentally similar or that their significance is because they would possibly be reviled as "Tankies" today. TL;DR It's not really commentary on who Tankies are but how the term has become so nebulous that revolutionary attitudes, anti-Imperialism, and anti-Americanism can be attributed to all of these figures who have been foundational in forging leftist politics.
@@BadMouseProductions and that LITERALLY isn't the point at all. You didn't even address anything and just resorted to saying "I'm right cause you're too online" lmfao. No one ever suggested that some random guy on twitter is the same as a historical personality. This meme isn't about that and it's baffling to me how someone could have such a hard time understanding it even if explained repeatedly.
Funny how this whole discussion revolves around first-world anglophones on the internet. From the perspective of a thrid-world country marxist-leninist movement, we would all be called tankies by you all. That is why I hate "web communism". People don't seem to understand that you need to organize yourself in a political party and do actual political work (tweeting about communism is NOT political work in itself) in the real world for you to even label yourself a leninist. For these people, marxism-leninism is a joke, an aesthetic that they "use" over the internet. I don't consider anyone that is not a member of a political party a communist. To be a communist (and a leninist most of all) is to UNDERSTAND that you are only a communist as long there is a communisty party in which you are organized and do actual political work to organize the working class. Without a communist party, there are no communists. In Brazil, every communist would be called a "tankie" by these first-world unorganized tweeting hordes because we don't shit over the history of the soviet union and ALL other socialist movements, even if we have disagreements and criticisms. So be it. I'm a "tankie".
I understood that meme more as in like “you would’ve called these people tankies too.” And considering how nebulous the term is I don’t doubt that liberals of today would call a modern Malcom X a tankie, even despite him not explicitly being a communist. However I can understand your interpretation. Regardless, you are correct about them being incomparable.
I have no idea how lacking in self awareness and how much of a sense of overblown self importance you have to have to think people call you a tankie frivolously. Most libs have no idea what tankie is and are utterly uninterested in that world and in almost every case, the accusation is valid. Don’t wanna be called a tankie? Don’t be an apologist for really, really bad governments, it’s so easy. Amazingly easy in fact.
As a liberal, I would not call Malcom X a tankie. I define tankies by their singleminded anti-americainism and their love for *the aesthetics* of the Soviet Union.
You don’t seem to understand the “TANKIES” meme with the faces of people like Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela. It is responding to people who claim that it’s “bad” to support actually existing Marxist-Leninist govts &/or anti-imperialist govts. and label such people “tankies”. All of the people on the meme supported actually existing Marxist-Leninist &/or anti-imperialist govts. E.g. the first country Nelson Mandela visited after being released from prison in the 1990s was Cuba, where he thanked the govt and people for their help in defeating apartheid.
@@BadMouseProductions they're not commenting because they somehow didn't notice that you clarified the difference between these people. They're talking about you claiming some group of people who can be classified as "tankies" are themselves claiming a bunch of revolutionary and progressive figures willy-nilly as fellow "tankies" or something equivalent. It's kinda weird both you and the folks in the comments get so worked up and dismissive about it. Anyway, a few unrelated remarks: Did the CPN not endorse the intervention in Hungary, unlike what you showed at the beginning of the video? I was told by folks in the NCPN and CJB that the CPN was heavily harassed after this, with people attacking the 'headquarters' of the party. Not very important for the main point of the video, I guess. Also, what happened with the DDR video? I don't remember it, but a friend made a remark about it, I thought I should ask.
I believe that this is so far the best and most matured video of yours yet. I enjoyed it and got a lot of new ideas information and thoughts in my head from it.
Pleasantly surprised by this video; I must admit that I've never thought of most of those people in the "tankie" picture as tankies, but otherwise, I find this video to be a refreshing critique of our modern tendencies to forget the nuance of the past. Bravo.
"Always a message of friendship for the people of the US. For their hardworking spirit, their intellectuals and workers, for their scientific and technical advances. We really wish them the best of luck. As far as their government, there is no love lost between the Cuban and US governments." - Fidel Castro
Even that can feel bad intentioned from my experience, at least since the war started. For example the people who genuinely want Ukraine to lose in the name of anti-american imperialism. Or NATO rolling back and not protecting eastern countries. I'm probably biased considering I live close to the border with Ukraine, but it always triggers me when people talk like that as if we don't exist/we don't matter and we should be at the mercy of Russia because nato = bad.
I always viewed "Tankie" as a thought terminating cliche, when thrown out by Liberals and Conservatives, and a ML catch-all, including the Dengists for some reason. Soviet nostalgia, especially from those on the Western Left, I believe is more an act of mourning; a feeling that they were born into a place that is/was on the wrong side of history and feels they are complicit with a betrayal of the exploited peoples around the globe as well as at home. Or, at least that's how I see the situation.
@@DiodeMilliampere Liberals with FDR and Churchill, or even at times JFK or LBJ, and sometimes the Clinton 90s, Conservatives, sometimes with Nixon, but definitely with Regan and even now Trump. I don't view the Soviet Union as mythic, but it sure as shit was a progressive force compared to the Russian Federation of today, or really at any point. I mean, all of the former Eastern Block countries are in worse shape today than they were under the Soviet Union; life expectancy and general well-being has dropped across the board; this includes in the first world, who only bothered having a social democracy just as a stopgap to compete with the Soviet Union and it's ambitious and universal social programs; these are measurable differences, I know my grandmother is livid better because of those programs, as compared to my parents and myself, who lack more and more of them. Nostalgia can indeed be empty and blinding, but it can also be based on concrete understanding of the decline society is going through due to the austerity brought on by corporate profit seeking at the expense of the Working Class.
@@noheroespublishing1907 please, libs don't care about those people or venerate them even a fraction as much as certain parts of the online left drape themselves in the aesthetics and mythos of the USSR. They turn it into a facet of their personality. The amount of "patriotism" these people have for the the USSR is also way far beyond anything libs feel about the history of liberalism. If you ask the average lib about those people they will probably say "they're OK i guess" or "who?" Libs simply aren't that invested and as a result don't really mythologize or turn those people into heroes.
@@noheroespublishing1907 in the USSR, the "soviet nostalgia" movement is nakedly reactionary and harkening back to a time when russia had greater strength, and importance. It's their version of "MAGA" and just because a hammer and sickle is stamped on that doesn't change it. The western version of soviet nostalgia is keyed into the mythic strength and importance the USSR had, too, but they have a greater commitment to the appearance of actually being leftist. At the end of the day, its still a nationalistic impulse based on the fantasy of power and hegemony. I think a lot of people "on the left" came over from the right and they just can't give up the patriotic/nationalistic impulses, obssession with strength, fixation on symbols, dogma and myth. They were raised believing in the global struggle of good versus evil and instead of just unlearning it they choose the side opposed to the propaganda they heard as a child.
@@DiodeMilliampere All groups with no power have pride in their position, sure, it often is a form of overcompensation for their current political weaknesses and inability to affect change; black pride or LGBT pride makes sense on the United States because of the suffering they went through and how much they still suffer. Yes, politics isn't an essentially feature of a person's life, nobody needs to be a socialist, but like adopting one's self into a self-made family of cobbled together relationships, while no based on blood, is just as much of a family. The Soviet Union was when Left politics was muscular and virile, not perfect or unworthy of reflection/criticism, but something the Left has now lacked for over thirty years now. The USSR now isn't a country, it's a symbol of aspiration, people don't want to recreate it piece by piece, they just want a place that Left politics can act from a place of strength and feel vicarious strength from it's existence.
Thank you for continuing to be exceptionally reasonable (a remarkably difficult line to walk). I feel the most correct path for Marxism to "take" in the 21st century has to be much more holisitic than what has existed before: We should feel free to move beyond and draw from all sources. It is difficult to explain this in a very precise way -- I like how Alain Badiou explains his approach to Communism in the 21st century. Many of the different paths Marxism has taken are still useful, even together, whether it's the classics (of Lenin or Luxemburg or the like), the many routes of Western Marxism or thinkers like Mao. It is so infinitely frustrating that so many of us still seem hung up on the questions created by Stalin and his like, and it is only more frustrating that some of us seem unwilling to really try and come with us to a real answer. It seems that socialists can be stuck on that point from either direction; too many either fail to challenge the parts that went so wrong or, instead, flail away without answering the questions that have been raised. Questions like those are what we need to answer if we are wholehearted in the attempt to create Communism of the 21st century.
exactly what i wanted to comment; before saying something similar i scrolled down and found yours, thanks a lot for that. while the left really needs to take pains to understand + learn from previous socialist experiments in a manner markedly _different_ to bourgeois history (i.e. its dull useless and total reduction/rejection of these authoritarian states), wallowing in both their terrible mistakes and aesthetics is a dreadful way to both limit your own understanding of the world and alienate pretty much any sane individual.
Id add-on that socialism thanks to historical reputation is going to be difficult to implement in western countries, I believe we should instead of going for straight out socialism we should build an institutional framework for a future socialist state, it's clear foundations are needed, and societies like America, Greece or South American states need to build up a trust- they are currently due to a range of reasons low trust society, and looking at history trying to implement socialism into low trust society is a recipe for embarrassing disappointment.
I have toyed with the idea of calling myself a "tankie". I may be wrong, but in my opinion a "tankie" is someone who is against the demonization of Stalin and Mao. Don't get me wrong. I am not one of those who think that Stalin and Mao were saints. Clearly they were not. They did have opponents killed. But the west greatly exaggerates the numbers that died. Most people get the, "Communism killed 100 million people" trope from the book "The Black Book of Communism" which was written by an anti-communist fanatic. Those numbers he came up with were later found to be greatly exaggerated. I don't have time to get into it but just one example is the claim that Stalin killed 25 to 30 million people. But the Soviet archives show that around 800,000 people were killed during his rule. Mind you, that's a lot of people but nowhere near the 25 to 30 million that anti-communists claim. So yeah, bad things happened. But they were living in rather precarious times back then. So I defend Stalin and Mao against the exaggerated claims which makes me a "tankie" I guess. I do not expect communist revolutions to be bloodless or without fault. (I am a ML by the way.) But we should learn from mistakes from the past and not throw the baby out with the bathwater. That is my 2 cents worth.
> But the Soviet archives show that around 800,000 people were killed during his rule This is a ridiculous argument, because it basically amounts to "according to Stalin, Stalin didn't really kill that many people". There sure are a lot of exaggerations regarding the death toll of Stalin's regime, and the Black Book of Communism is bullshit, but that Stalin was a genocidal tyrant is an incredibly well-documented fact.
The opinions of Vaush fans are meaningless, when they arent calling actual leftists "tankies" they are defending their nonce hero and all the vile shit he has said/done.
The working class are objectively worse off in Russia than in most of Eastern Europe. NATO protects Eastern Europe from Russian invasion and occupation. NATO is inherently good for the working class
With all due respect, only someone with a very particular view of the world is ever going to make a direct connection between NATO and 'working class movements'. From this perspective I don't think you should be remotely surprised someone called you a tankie, even if I can see why you might think it's ironic. Anyway, can you explain to me why you think NATO is "inherently" bad for working class movements? This seems like a dogmatic, and potentialy antiquated view that prioritises a hypothetical political goal (working class control) over the real world suffering of millions. For example, why is NATO in particular (as opposed to all military alliances) inherently bad for the working class? Given that Russia is controlled by an authoritarian oligarchy, why would it winning the war in Ukraine (or getting concessions from NATO, etc.) be more advantageous to the working class people of the world? If NATO is inherently bad because it is imperialistic, but Russia is also imperialistic, then from a working class perspective why is one side better than the other? I must admit I'm skeptical but would really be interested to hear the arguments for myself.
@@pragueuprising560 NATO is a defensive alliance obviously and if I criticize for anything besides that, I’m sure it will be denounced. But before I do, let me just say, Russia and NATO imperialism are quantifiable different. NATO countries in terms of economics have all the dominant strategies and do not play fairly, using their defensive military alliances to practice offensive civil actions . Tell me, what do you like about NATO? Are you keen on Mutual assured Destruction? Did you like Vietnam, Libya, The Break up of yugoslavia , or how South America and Africa are treated ? Do you like how they treat socialist states like enemies and don’t allow them to be part of their activities and actively put military bases around these countries? Did you like their response to the war on terror? Or their chief member the USA’s actions during the war on terror? What working class does NATO favor exactly? What is it that you like so much about NATO? I guess I’m not a nato expert and need someone to tell me why it’s cool and good actually .
@@pragueuprising560 if i were to make a basic criticism, nato is run by the untied states and it’s ideological puppets to benefit the rich and make the poor poorer. A dynamic that happens in a lot of capitalist run organizations around the earth
I can honestly say, I never heard the word "tankie" before. But Im glad this video is not only about that word. And Im also glad that I got to enjoy a really well thought out discussion video for the left again.
None of you people have done any meaningful examination of the USSR and the rest of 20th century socialist history and it shows. The whole premise of this video is faulty because it basically assumes that something about the “tankie” designation must be correct when time after time it has been utilized to uphold the most vile hegemonic powers of today. Most people crying in the comments about Trotsky have read very little of his actual work prior to his exile or what the ussr of the 20s was like. Saying that the USSR would have been just peachy if Trotsky was just in charge are so insanely unscientific it’s a wonder they just don’t come out as liberal. It’s like the MLMs who claim the ussr became revisionist the minute Khrushchev took over. Moreover the outrage over “democracy” makes very little sense either. Why should a communist tolerate non communist sources of power? We are not here to have a party, we are here to destroy all aspects of capitalism. Edit: Leftist also means nothing anymore. Identify yourself as a communist or anarchist or shut up
Also your sheer ignorance about Malcolm X is very telling (Breadtube outing themselves as white chauvinists yet again!). Obviously no one actually claims Malcolm X was a communist, he was more of a revolutionary nationalist. However if you looked at his writings, his associations with revolutionaries like Nkrumah (I believe?) as a result of historical forces and his own convictions, it was clear that his political thought was continuing to evolve. And Kwame Ture was a communist! Perhaps he may have not been sophisticated (though judging by this video you aren’t either) but he absolutely was. Suggesting otherwise betrays a fundamental ignorance. Also Nelson Mandela did at least have something of a background working with communist parties and since the meme is less about people who were explicitly communist but moreso generally supportive of existing socialist regimes at the time (I am using this nominally) your quibble with certain people being included makes very little sense
I gotta say, props to you for doing this, and you kind of do exactly what you Say good documentaries should do, as you present some novelty. The novelty here is a discussion over what a Tankie is, But really you’re making a broader point about new ones, dogmatism, arrogance and critical thinking. Bravo.
Holy hell this was spellbinding. It’s been so difficult as someone who’s been trying to get more into leftist organization as well as someone with a passion for history I’ve had to fight both the temptation to just saying this flippantly and confronting these people for their unproductive behaviors. I really appreciate all you had to say here (especially the segment about the Soviet-Afghan War and Dubois’ bad opinions on Japan). I wish you and your praxis well.
The mujahedeen were just freedom fighters is the dumbest take one can ever think of. Literally all the factions were Islamist for Sharia rule. As for Japan. Here's a different opinion. Modern Japan when it came to being in the Meiji restoration 1868 was a resource poor backward agrarian state, in a sea of European colonial world empires with industry. They had 2 choices, either model their regime on the colonial empires of the time, or wait and be eventually colonized. The correct choice as difficult as it was was to play the game of empires. They've had a chance to reverse course since the 1920s and go red, and build some Asian red Union. That was their biggest mistake, is that they rolled the dice allying the fascists (third way) anti-systematic movements in 1940, thinking that was the way to go. With that said, Japan at the time, was considered the hope of Asia and the only challenge to the white man's hegemony. If you look at their rhetoric, it was all about Hakku Ichio, Asian co-prosperity sphere and ironically anti European colonialism. This was markedly different from fascist rhetoric. The west didn't oppose Japan, initially when they started establishing colonies, up until the 1930s when they became a threat. What Dubois was seeing, wasn't an evil empire, but a challenge to the white man. And it was reasonable to do so at the time.
@@hansfrankfurter2903 on the topic of the Mujahedeen and freedom- freedom is the most loosely described word, freedom of speech contradicts freedom of oppression etc, the freedom that the Mujahedeen were fighting for was the preservation of their way of life, which yes did include Islamic laws which other people see as contradictory, it is however the truth. On the other hand the soviets weren't exactly giving them freedom, especially with all the massacres they commited.
@@frenchguitarguy1091 Well that's not what Badmouse meant by "freedom". He seems to imply a kind of western "liberal" freedom. Even if that wasn't what he meant, it sure came off as if he was repeating the establishment line that "bin Laden is fighting for freedom". As to the "massacres", I'd need some convincing non-propaganda sources on that. Who was doing what? against who exactly? ....etc And it better not be just "some ppl died in war", because no war is ever clean.
As for the Argument about supporting Russia against US = Supporting Japan in WW2 is just weak and it falls apart. WW2 was a gang war between two opposing far right blocks for global domination. Communist nations (if ANY at the time) were in their infancy and there was NO advantage to communists in these countries to support a new, more determined and MORE anti-communist block (the axis) over the declining colonial empires of the Allies. Which is why Communists in most countries in Europe and Asia sided AGAINST Germany and Japan. MAIN POINT: WW2 was NOT a war for communists to gain much globally, their opportunity was within their own countries to benefit from weakening colonial empires. The Axis in fact, were anti-communist to their very core. The ONLY thing that mattered to communists was the survival of their own revolutions in USSR, China, Korea, Vietnam, India etc, and the losses of Axis were GOOD for communists Today the situation in Russia is QUITE different, it is an attempt by the declining US empire to hold onto its power by rallying the world against Russia and China. Not just that, there have been increased moves against socialist projects in South America as well. The encirclement and defeat of Russia and China will be the FINAL BLOW to communists all over the world. You can make all your fancy visuals but there is NO WAY IN HELL for ANY modern socialist nation to develop a 21st century industrial base independently after this. Hell, China manufactures literally everything and even IT is BARELY keeping up with US trade and technology sanctions. Ukraine wasn't a Russian Expansionist project, but rather a response to an American expansion. There was a coup in Ukraine in 2014 (You all have heard about it I know, stop rolling your eyes and spare me the rehearsed propaganda responses, thats not where I'm going with this)... Then there was an attempted coup in Belarus with the same kind of Euromaidan style protests just a few months ago. And then there was an attempted coup in Kazakhstan earlier this year. This with the US push for NATO, QUAD, AUCKUS etc against China makes this a COMBINED last ditch effort by the US regime to take out ANY remaining near peer competitors. So in conclusion, I'd argue that the Russian response in Ukraine is more like the Soviet response in Poland. It is to keep an expanding imperialist block at a distance If you disagree, I DARE you to suggest how communist nations will survive after US overthrow of Russia and encirclement/overthrow of China...
This is what gets me the most. The endless chauvinism and infantilizing from western "leftists" who think the global south is supporting objectionable leaders because we don't know they're not perfect, just to rebel against the US. Even have the gall to paint it as exceptionalism, like everything is about them secretly. Easy to get on that high horse when you're not the one who's gonna see their country get choked tighter by imperialism if the US manages to implement their agenda.
I wonder how you see a US "overthrow of China" playing out? I can't see that as going all too well for the US, a dying empire that has spread themselves way too thin and lost military conflict after military conflict
There are articles of people predicting the war in Ukraine dating to 2020. There are plenty economic reasons for both Russia's invasion and the west's interest in the region but I see so few talking about it. People are more interested in talking about Stalin or other controversial figures than trying to actually do materialism about the now. I think it's just a response at our impotence in the modern era where neoliberal propaganda has never been this easily spread. Where things are connected globally to the point where it's hard to focus locally, imo this is something we MLs need to learn from anarchists. They are dumb as doors on analysis but they get shit done locally. A lot of us are just to focused on book clubs and less on praxis maybe.
Yeah, thats what I dont get: why the super harsh pushback at criticism of NATO even from some leftists I otherwise respect. It doesnt mean Im any less appalled by Putin's action. I just happen to think the West's action made his actions easier to justify domestically. I dont see why we're not allowed to point out the obvious US role in at least stoking the war.
@@waltonsmith7210 euromaiden is also extremely important to understand the current conflict, we cannot take the Ukraine invasion out of its historical context. I wish we could have more conversations on stuff like that so a correct and deep analysis can be made and popularized to the mainstream.
@@waltonsmith7210 Because to point out NATOs actions in “stoking the war” as you say, implicitly gives credence to Russia’s completely unjustified actions. It is akin to pointing out the Treaty of Versailles and it’s effect on Germany after Hitlers invasion of Poland. In fact I think a better argument could be made for the harsh conditions of the Treaty of Versailles causing Germany to invade their neighbors than eastern bloc nations joining NATO since the fall of the USSR being a contributing factor to the invasion of Ukraine. But obviously to waste breath on either of these supposed causes of conflict implicitly gives merit to the fascist worldview. We should not repeat their propaganda for them. It does nothing to enlighten the causes of the war and only damages the left politically because it only makes us look psychotic to liberals to repeat such things after one country brutally invades it’s neighbor. The true cause of the war in Ukraine is Russia is a fascist state run by a mad man. None of that is the fault of NATO
@@BobtheBlob7284 putin is not a mad man, his actions are very much logical given the geopolitical situation that Russia is in, and the narrative of irredentism his political movement is based on. Who cares what fucking liberals think? They supported ppl who have much more blood in their hands than Putin
@@nikolamilicevic1040 Invading a country has severe repercussion, it is not worth doing so just because of an unfavorable regime change. What really set the war was Zelensky and the current government pushing to join NATO which was the limit that Russia could tolerate. Trying to find a diplomatic solution first and foremost is commendable, especially since Russians are seen as warmongering orcs in the west, invading then would have resulted in too many diplomatic hardships. Also, Russia had the time to prepare it's economy in case of an embargo, which as we can see has worked wonderfully.
As someone who gets called a tankie a lot, i appreciate the nuance of this discussion, at least the parts that weren't completely wrong like the clearest counterargument to your narrative around DuBois' "On Stalin" is the text of the thing.
The Malcolm X quote is also very disingenuous. If you read the context, it is clear that he was just trying to agitate. He said right after that he wanted to join the Japanese during WWII, something NO COMMUNIST then or now would agree with. It's safe to say that Malcolm X didn't believe that either, but that probably means the communist part was just him trying to sound as unamerican as possible.
@BadMouse On Malcolm X, I think you are right to point out that to claim he was a ML, let alone a “Tankie” is quite disingenuous and lacks any basis. I will however note that in the last few years of his life Malcolm X did express sympathy with socialism, particularly after his travels abroad, and was associated with two different socialist groups in the US. One of the groups was the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), a Maoist inspired group he actually became a member of in 1964 (and was the only secular group he ever joined). He also had a very close relationship with the Socialist Workers Party, which was at that time the main Trotskyist organization in the US, and although he never joined the SWP he had a very close working relationship with them, speaking at many of their events, and even had their publishing arm, Pathfinder Books, publish and distribute many of his writings. But they should tell you something about his relationship to Socialism, as he allied himself with both Maoists and Trotskyists, both of whom shared his views on black liberation and anti-colonialism, or at least the views he held towards the end of his life. He only began associating with RAM and the SWP in the final years of his life, after his Hajj and his break with the Nation of Islam, at a time when his views were undergoing a radical transformation (the whole early vs late Malcom). He noted that he learned a lot about Socialism from many African revolutionary leaders, like Nkrumah, Ben Bella and Nasser, And he said in a speech that he was not surprised that the countries of the Third World were turning to Socialism, but he also said (in that same speech) he didn’t know what kind of economic system he wanted. Later he was asked if he would support Socialism if it was beneficial to Black people, to which he replied, if it would benefit Black people, “then I am all for it”. But of course Malcolm X was assassinated not long after he began associating with socialist groups and opening up to socialist ideas. It’s not hard to imagine that has he not been gunned down, he might have become a socialist later on, After all he was openly associating with socialists, the new left was on the rise, and many other civil rights leaders k including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., A. Philip Randolph, Angela Davis and Bayard Rustin, were socialists of various persuasions, but we can only speculate on that. As for the Malcolm X. who did exist and was murdered in 1965, I think it’s fair to say that he definitely wasn’t a socialist, even if he had some increasing sympathies with socialist ideas, and he most certainly was not a Marxist and definitely not a Marxist Leninist. So you are absolutely right to call out that meme for being so disingenuous and frankly lying about the legacy of Malcolm X. I’ll also point out a few of the other figures on there would definitely not see themselves in the same way they are presented in the meme. Angela Davis, while she was a member of the Communist Party USA for much of our life, and at one time she did defend the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia 1968, she has since recanted those views And today is part of an organization called the committees of correspondence for democracy and Socialism, which was the faction of the communist party USA that supported glasnost and perestroika, and broke away from the communist party after the fall of the USSR. Che Guevara what is increasingly critical of the Soviet Union by the time of his death, was growing increasingly uncomfortable with the closeness between Fidels government and Moscow, believing that the Soviet Union was beginning to exercise a quasi imperialist influence in Cuba, and Oppose the Soviet Union’s hostility towards China and Yugoslavia. Paul Robeson is Very similar to WEB Du Bois and his inclusion on this list, as Robeson was never remember the colors party, although he was associated with many leading members and broadly sympathetic too their activities, In particular anti-lynching activism. But you could also say he and DuBois were in fact “Tankies” in the most literal sense, as he did support the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. However to understand the reason why robes in particular was so sympathetic to the Soviet Union, you need only listen to his own testimony before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, Where he explicitly made the point that the reason he prays the Soviet Union is because over there he was treated like a human being, something he would never of been treated as in the American South.
It was mainly done through my chats with experts in the area who have contacts with current groups like the Communist Party, but no specific sources sorry. Them repressing the smaller groups however is just basic knowledge.
@@BadMouseProductions If those groups were smaller how would they have qualified as being a more popular force than the PDPA? I ask this in relative ignorance of the details of the civil war and pre-war politics
@@McHobotheBobo eh potato potahto, the PDPA were the group which had the larger power but it was largely a coup and not a popular revolution, which is evident in that these groups were repressed almost more so than the conservatives. Have a listen to the RLR Podcast on Afghanistan and the afghan guest talks about how there was more than just the PDPA and that they weren't particularly genuine communists.
@@BadMouseProductions interesting. A similar-ish situation occurred in Cuba, with the Cuban CP being much more conservative than other leftwing elements at the time and even initially opposed Fidel's revolution.
@@tokarev3094 Intriguing Can you recommend some great sources on that, by any chance? I'm always up for learning more about "other communist groups" in Marxist-Leninist states, esp. more leftcom ones. Though, China, weirdly enough, post-1949, seems to be almost "devoid" of libsocs. More or less There may be a few here an there, but... they were never anywhere near as prevalent as, say, in the USSR, or perhaps even Vietnam, from what I recall (esp. outside, say, the Shanghai Commune during GPCR). They seem surprisingly "absent" from most of China, which maybe is... a 'cultural thing'? I think DPRK had a similar "wholly-ML trajectory" (w/, maybe, a few Trotskyite exceptions, esp. prior to full-on revolution) Even the Chinese New Left is a "coalition", so to speak, of socdems, center-left libs and/or Maoists, at best. Weirdly enough, very-few libsocs, let alone ancoms. Like, are there *Really* barely-any 'anti-authoritarian' socialists and communists within China, esp. at the height of Mao's power?? Then again, to be fair, maybe you could say that a lot of the folks who 'called-out' Mao and the CCP during Hundred Flowers were somewhat "leftcom"?
"You can't just oppose things because the side you don't like does it!" -dudes opposing stuff just because it was the USSR that did it. The Eastern Bloc was supposed to sit idly by as a fascist color revolution was conducting pogroms in one of the places that suffered the most under the Nazi occupation.
There were various groups, once again the Marxoid fails at analysis and understanding that nationalism is far more important than some abstract ideological movement.
A great explanation of the current discourse around this term. Honestly, I think the Russia-Ukraine war really showed just how directionless the left is at the moment. So many people fell into campist logic and are now just either rooting for Russia or NATO. The opposition to all imperialism still exists to some degree, but it's really become clear that many leftists don't know what to make of inter-imperialist warfare.
No war but class war. Seeing so many people supporting NATO expansion and then others supporting Putin is ridiculous. And the recent "patriotic socialist" shit blows my mind too.
@@toastlover12 NATO expansion protects us from this ruzzian imperialistic ambitions which as cruel as of an actual n@zis. The day when leftist tankies desired my nation to die in the name of eastern imperialism to stick up to the West is when I woke up to how left is pretty same as right after all. Ukrainian Nationalism is the only way, your "No war but class war." is just bs excuse of inaction, of you being wortless in global politics.
The WEB DuBois take on imperial Japan is way more complex than you made it seem, I suggest you read the work of Gerald Horne 'Race War! White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire'. You have to put it into context with the dominance of White supremacist ideology used to retroactively justify Western colonialism and imperialism. WEB DuBois lived in an apartheid settler state which lynched innocent black people daily, the West exploited entire nations by direct slave labor, It is also one of the reasons why many communists in the colonies were offended when the USSR sided with the UK and other Western empires against Nazi Germany who had few colonies in comparison with the West. It is important that our perspective on history is more nuanced and not eurocentric when attempting to understand the past.
@@fun_ghoul If the Japanese weren't as supremacist for their own racial group as the English are they probably would have held onto much of the territories they annex from Britain because then they would be liberators. Being Imperialists they really couldn't help themselves but just be another colonial empire out to do atrocities.
@@fun_ghoul Sorry no. I meant saying the British were that bad that you would make a deal with a devil to get them out. Plus the difference between liberation and becoming the new colonial ruler.
Gerald Horne has also defended the Russian invasion of Ukraine under the guise of "anti-NATO," so unsurprising you would recommend we read his work in order to defend Dubois' apologia for Japanese colonialism.
@@thevilmoron Your kind generally rattles on about "nuance" when it comes to defending Western historical figures, no? I find cases like this, or the Indian judge who dissented in the Tokyo Trials on somewhat similar grounds, to be far more "nuanced" than extoling the virtues of Thomas Jefferson or whoever
As an anarchist who organizes with every stripe of socialist/progressive/ whoever is pointed towards a better world etc.. In the real world there's only been one instance where ideology got in the way of the task at hand, in my personal experience, and it was liberals trying to hijack what we where doing and steer it towards some vague electoralism. (We where unified under the umbrella of the IWW, helping organize a boot factory) at least around here if an event has been spearheaded by anarchists, one big unionists, radlibs, whatever, we're given respect to organize and operate in the fashion we find most useful, and vice versa. anything else is indulging in ego stroking that we dont have time for. I like to think that I am above all a member of a community, but firstly an antifascist, secondly a socialist, and thirdly an anarcho-syndicalist.
So much historical context conveniently left out of the description of the reactionary and anti-semitic Hungarian Uprising. Hungarian Jewry was absolutely destroyed by the Nazi Collaborationist Arrow Cross Party, so much sio that the only feasible means of survival for Jewish Hungarians was to join the Communist Party. The Soviets Liberated Hungary only about a decade before the Uprising. After WW2 Communists were actually elected by the People to run the country, and immediately began rebuilding it along Egalitarian lines. They Redistributed the vast palaces of the Landed Gentry(who were very pro Arrow Cross mind you) turning them into parks and schools for all the people. This isnt even to get into the data around how much Material Conditions were raised by the Hungarian Communist Party. Also the minority of Hungarians didnt rebel against Soviet influence, whatever that means. They rebelled against so called "Jewish Bolshevism", because as I said before, alot of Jewish People became communists during the war because that was THE only place they could turn to due to how pervasive Anti Semitism was in the country(Thank the Hungarian Church for that one, they also colluded w the nazis btw). They were carrying out Pogroms against their own people and trying to reinstate Anti Semitism and Capitalism, no doubt with the help of the West. People really need to expound more about the Historical Conditions of Hungary before and after the war, because glossing over it makes the Uprising sound like some sort of anomaly where the restoration of Capitalism was a step in the right direction, instead of a reaction and push to return to Bourgeois domination of Society.
As someone whose grandather was called into action from his Budapest barracks in 1956, and as a native, not expat Hungarian, I am supremely disappointed that you spit on his munkásőr - worker guard - grave by following the revisionist history that was born in 1989. Hordes of thugs - some imported - fell on the city from all over the country and marked the doors of jews with white crosses and that of the communists with black ones before merrily stringing them up and hanging them from lamp-posts. This is the kind of "uprising", as in counterrevolution you are elevating to legitimacy, that good hungarians and our soviet friends put an end to. It was largely funded by rich expats - who were magnates before the revoluion - and shady church figures, like that absolute monster Mindszenty, and aggrevated by Radio Free Europe. It was in fact the first - luckily unsuccessful - attempt at color revolution. I would recommend informing yourself about a subject before engaging in commentary - take for example Herbert Aptheker's book, The Truth about Hungary written in 1957, rich with contemporary sources - but I am getting the increasing impression that you are not a principled marxist leninist interested in either reading or the truth. I enjoyed your journey years ago, and it is with sorrow that I say goodbye, having no idea where your road will land you. I hope, carefully, that it won't be becoming just another Western Baizuo Leftist. If you believe this claim you might as well believe the silly US version of the events on Tienanmen, and believe that tank man died. PS : Szabó - meaning tailor - is a very common family name in Hungary like Smith in England, so your music is attributed to about two million people.
Thank you for this very important comment. Especially because you are a Hungarian communist. Your grandfather was a true hero of the working class and the communist movement.
@@howenator shut up, chauvinist posturing as always. "Regardless of the facts" is idealist nonsense. This was literally stopping another fascist, genocidal coup in its cradle, was a single holocaust in Hungary not enough to convince you that Nazis should be kept from power by force if need be?
@@howenator Context matters. There was an extra-constitutional coup under way and mob violence. You could draw parallels between Budapest 1956, and the USA January 6, 2020.
@@fun_ghoul well, I'm Ukrainian, and I agree with conflaiting ruzzian and it's allies with asian dictatorship. You leftist sure love your eastern imperialism. Sad that I needed a war to see how rotten and hypocritical you are.
As a proud Tankie I love and appreciate this video. Putting historical figures in their proper context is incredibly important for all the good and bad that it entails.
Why are people so clingy about Gadaffi? Yes we get it he had great presence in revolutionary currents, that doesn't require the literal fandom he amasses from some.
The thing that made me realise how vacuous the word "tankie" had become was when it was being applied to people like Amy Goodman, ironically because don't want to send tanks into Eastern Europe.
That is, because she believes the aggressive force of tanks currently threatening a sovereign nation should not be resisted by that nation, particularly noy with the aid of others. Obviously this is not a perspective she held with regard to Timor or Iraq etc, which is why she is a tankie (alas)
Amy Goodman acts like there was no tanks in Eastern Europe (Ukraine precisely) already. If you don't want tanks to fight those tanks so there would be no tanks at all and you're good with that there are tanks there grinding people to a bloody mess, than you're a... maybe not spiritually, but practically, a tankie. Sorry, Amy Goodman is a despicable human being.
Being a tankie is a form of hypocrisy, yes. You apologise for the amoral actions of some because you perceive them as allies, even though you would not do so if you perceived them as enemies.
I added this to watch later. I don't like the word tankie that much just because it lacks a fixed definition among people who use it. It's a snarl word. And also easily gets taken up by the right to apply to anyone who's left of center or who doesn't take the state department's line. I'll have more to say once I watch the video
On a very unrelated note, I saw the name "Gabor Szabo" in the description and my heart was immediately filled with love. From that alone I knew I was in good hands when pressing the play button.
During the so-called "Hungarian Revolution" the women and children of Beloyiannis village, a village inhabited by partisans of the Democratic Army of Greece and named in honor of Greek Communist leader and War Hero Nikos Beloyiannis who was executed by the reactionary Monarchofascist post-civil-war Greek state, had to hide in the church basement in order not to be shot by roving gangs of Hungarian Fascists. Just see who supports and speaks fondly about the "heroes" of the Hungarian "Revolution", people like Bush Jr., and that should tell you what kind of "revolution" that was.
This is excellent. As an anarchist, I’d love to tell you that this is only a problem you guys have, but there’s something brewing on our side that doesn’t have a name yet. The idea that anarchists are all CIA stooges is laughable, but there is a disturbing ambivalence that a lot of us have towards global issues. It’s as if we can’t let ourselves agree with the “tankies” about the problem of imperialism, but we also can’t agree with the libs by believing US propaganda, so we just… don’t have a stance, as a whole.
in real world organizing this online kind of theoretical bickering really doesnt happen. No principled and practicing communist thinks every anarchist is a liberal but should have well reasoned arguments to disagree over.
Well no offence, anarchists in the west, follow the Chomskyite fence sitting gate keeping line. You're right, not all western anarchists are CIA puppets, BUT it sure is very useful for the CIA to promote anarchism precisely because its a political dead end and extolls the purity obsession. Besides alot of "anarchists" are really just edgy libs who think the label is "radical".
@@hansfrankfurter2903 nah see this is the sort of criticism that I don’t find reasonable. Fence sitting would be to say that for example, China and the US are both sorta bad and sorta good. The anarchist perspective is that both are bad for basically the same reasons. We apply a consistent logic to both cases. I haven’t seen any evidence that the CIA promotes anarchism. This is a conspiracy theory. I kind of agree with the radlib thing though, that’s something we need to work harder on.
@@AnarchoPurp I guess who is the “we” here? I’ve met tons of anarchists who fit that description, and the most prominent one in the world Chomsky is famous for his purity fetichism and “all sides are bad, im so pure” dead end gate keeping. I can point to alot of other prominent figures, like the the late Graeber who had strange ideas against organization or struggle and advocating some kind of spontaneous change in consciousness. And so on… Micheal Albert the inventor of Parecon , gave up on the words “socialism” and “working class” ..etc because he’s so embarrassed by its association with the USSR that it will be dismissed. One of the biggest anarchist channels online, like anarchopac, is a pacifist who advocates leaving politics and just promoting “an anarchist lifestyle “ . Zerzan is a primitivist so cmon now So to the evidence, the evidence is that it’s useful to them, because it promotes purity obsession and implicit imperialism. Look at “anarchists” beau of the fifth column or Vaush , they’re basically towing the line now. Besides anarchism by its very nature lacks cohesive leadership and therefore doesn’t threaten to current PTB. If i was the gov, id promote anarchism, because its going no where.
@@hansfrankfurter2903 I mean I think you’re mischaracterizing most of these people so I’m tempted to go through them one by one, but more importantly, you know that’s not evidence right? Saying it would hypothetically be useful to the government (which you haven’t even fully established) isn’t evidence that the government is actively using it.
Whenever someone calls me a tankie, I tell them that I'm not since I don't support the crushing of uprisings in the socialist countries of eastern europe with military force. That I in fact agree with many of the things the people during these uprisings wanted to achieve - they would have been beneficial to socialism, as it was often intended by their leaders who often were socialists themselves (see Prague Spring f.e.). My hope in using this reasoning is to nudge the other person into researching the topic further on their own.
@@pissfather6798 Der Deutschlandlied-singende Pöbel ist ja bekannt dafür, dass es ihm nur um "mehr Demokratie" geht. Du hältst bestimmt nationalistische Demagogie in Form von AfD, Pegida und co für ein modernes Phänomen. ;) Aber da wo es gegen dein wahnhaftes Feindbild namens aUtOrItÄrEr SoZiALiSmUs geht, da wird jedes verblödete Begehren des meckernden (und mordenden) Michels plötzlich total based. :----D
Tbh people who use the word tankie have 90% of the time haven’t read any theory. I’m sure if they did they call Lenin a tankie. The only appropriate response is to call them a dronie.
Wait, I'm confused. You say at the end that this kind of stuff tends to pop up more in some ideologies than others. I'm scratching my head trying to think of an ideological camp where this pops up less than the average?
i think it's important in the follow-up to get more at what you mention in the conclusion, how this kind of thinking can manifest in other political groups, especially online. while it's definitely a real thing that's important to discuss, i still think dedicating the majority of the runtime to calling out MLs specifically unwittingly feeds into the exact cycles of discourse you're trying to avoid, these imagined bouts of point-scoring between what amounts to online cliques dominated more by aesthetics than anything else. i def don't agree that it's more prevalent with any specific group of people, while it may be more stark and obvious with twitter randos defending stalin you can find the core thinking anywhere really beyond that, enjoyed the vid a lot, s/o :)
so what's bad about gaddafi in particular? based on the things I know about him he nationalized a lot of libya's industry and gave back to the people significantly.
He was partly responsible for Thomas Sankara's death, he helped with the creation of Islamist groups, and he repressed the culture of non-arab Libyans under the name of Pan-Arabism. That last one especially is interesting because it kind of de-colonizes a lot of western perspectives on the region, many minorities in the MENA consider Arabs to be 'the white people of the Middle East'. He may have been good for the average Libyan and if you were a revolutionary group he probably gave you funding if you said Fuck the West, but he's not some savior dude.
@@BadMouseProductions "He was partly responsible for Thomas Sankara's death, he helped with the creation of Islamist groups, and he repressed the culture of non-arab Libyans under the name of Pan-Arabism." Do you have primary sources for this? The last one is especially suspect, since the blacks in the South of Libya supported Ghaddafi in 2011, and were punished heavily for it by the Islamist rebels. Didn't Ghaddafi also become very Pan-Africanist towards the last few decades of his rule? Specifically on the funding Islamic groups, if true. There's 2 things I want to say, the first is that given the culture of the region, you have to play ball with Islam to a certain extent. All the secular regimes of the region knew and understood this. Secondly, it depends on what groups he funded and for what reason. Many Palestinian groups are Islamic for example, but funding them to fight Israeli colonialism is justifiable imo, esp insofar as, secularism isn't entrenched there. As I understood Ghaddafi's Libya it was a kind of Islamic socialism, he never claimed to be an atheist or a staunch secularist. This makes sense, considering the deeply tribal conservative nature of Libya, which is very different from neighboring Egypt for example. If you want to see that as "excuses", knock yourself out, but reality is a harsh mistress. "That last one especially is interesting because it kind of de-colonizes a lot of western perspectives on the region, many minorities in the MENA consider Arabs to be 'the white people of the Middle East'." Well I'm from the region. There is some tiny grain of truth to this, but Arab is not a race or an ethnicity (unless you go to the Arabian peninsula) . Its a culture/language. So the conflict between Berbers and Arabs in North Africa, isn't white ppl vs black ppl, its two cultures within the same exact people. Arabs in NA are ethnically 90% Berber. The other supposed conflicts, like the Assyrians are based mostly on religious dividers , but the same dynamic is there. Meaning Assyrians aren't much different than the Arab Iraqis living around them, same goes for other minorities like Jews, Mandaens..etc . Same dynamic between Copts and Muslims in Egypt, exactly same ppl, different religions. So these are mostly religious/cultural disputes rather than racial disputes. Kurds are an identifiable national/ethnic group that does have real grievances though. But there's plenty of nuance missing. They're not just beefing with Arabs but with Turks and Iranians. Most of Kurdistan is actually in Turkey. Finally, Turks, and Iranians do just as much "cultural imperialism" as the Arabs do , trying to Turkify minorities in Turkey or Iranize minorities in Iran. Or playing games of Pan-Iranism or Pan-Turanism. And even the western favorites the Kurds are not guiltless here, there's been many reports about forced Kurdification in Iraqi Kurdistan and North Syria, against not just Arabs but even other minorities like Assyrians/Turkomen. This happened even under the "anarchist" YPG-PYD. "were a revolutionary group he probably gave you funding if you said Fuck the West" Can you blame him? Look at what the west had done in Africa, and specifically North Africa. Heck look at Libya after your beloved west came to save it from the evil colonel! Slave markets galore and an utterly destroyed country...Enjoy!
I'm a South Asian American raised in the Middle East and you are the first person I've heard say Arabs are 'the white people of the Middle East'. It's so true tbh when you see the repeated patterns of supremacist structures. I will add that, no matter how supreme an Arab supremacist structure may seem in the MENA region, pretty much all of them answer to a white capitalist superpower (GCC governments such as UAE and KSA that are lapdogs of the US/Britain are perfect examples). The UAE Dirham is even pegged to the US Dollar lol. @@BadMouseProductions
thanks for using Gabor Szabo's music in your video, he is where I got my last name from edit: great video, more nuanced than expected! I agree, MLs aren't inherently tankies and using the word needs a stronger basis for the claim! Similarly to the vague use of fascism except that's usually because of fascists moving the goal post
"If I had understood the situation a bit better I would've joined the Anarchists" - Orwell. Therefore Orwell is an Anarchist right? As much as saying Chomsky is an Anarchist.
@@BadMouseProductions i enjoyed the video dont get me wrong it was very well made it just didnt quite make sense.. the meme implied that the people within it were defending Marxist Leninist Leaders or Marxist Leninist ideals things that would be considered "tankie" behavior today... Mandela also defended the USSR Etc. so Yea within that context being pushed by the western press to denounce the USSR he didn't. Same with Malcolm X the point of the meme isint that these were ideological pure MLs or something it was that they defended Socialist leaders and states and legitimized them.
@@BadMouseProductions many anarchists I've talked to DO see Orwell as an Anarcho communist / anarchist. Chomsky is a leftist not an anarchist this point isint very coherent
if you're a tankie, sorry to tell you, but you arent a leftist, you are a fascist, beacuse you defend commies *no-matter what*, exactly what fascists do
Wow, who's the larpers here, LOL, what's next, the helicopter? Because genocide is funny as long as it's on leftists, nevermind, people like yall usually support all kinds of genocide either way.
After familiarising myself with Badmouse's fairly decent analysis I have decided there's a really weird blindspot: What's with the cynicism towards political organisations? They're pointless all of a sudden? What, all of them, everywhere? How does anybody arrive at this conclusion? It's certainly not by evaluating each one, as nobody has the time or resources to accomplish that. So does that mean they're all just naturally doomed to fail and we can judge them all in one sweep? Clearly that isn't the case either, as the historical record proves they can achieve good things. Or is that the problem? Current organisations can't achieve as much as the old ones? Because that would be odd, to expect 21st century organisations to win victories in a world where their politics have been completely obliterated from the public sphere. Even more odd is the implication that people shouldn't even try - most parties start off as completely impotent and irrelevant, yet they can still change the course of history further down the line. This is part of a trend I see a lot of online - non-activists looking down their nose on people who have the same ideas, same beliefs...but who also do work outside of twitter. If you've given up on political organisation, you're one promotion away from becoming a liberal again. You have essentially given up on socialism, because it absolutely will not be handed out to you as a prize for "being correct on-line". Doesn't matter if you're right or wrong at this point, in 20 years you might well be saying 'I told you so'..but you won't be happy.
Thanks this helps. I see people like luna ol getting called tankies in internal wikipedia dialogs and I know for a fact she doesn't agree. Are there self-described 'tankies'? Or is it one of those labels you only ever hear from detractors?
Tankie is an anti communist perjorative. It's usualled tossed around by white westerners who don't have a principled understanding of proleterian history. MLs and MLMs call themselves tankies as a term of endearment.
I'm struggling to understand what you are saying here? AES are far better than the USA, obviously you need to be critical and call out their mistakes but the wider conversation on social media is so saturated with pro-west anti-AES talking points that I can't fault people who just focus on the positives of AES. The fact that people even bring up the crimes of some AES as a direct comparison to the overwhelming crimes of the imperial core seems blatantly dishonest and chauvinistic.
It is if you're saying that to liberals, but if you're a Socialist you should be aspiring to something higher than what was effectively a social democracy. You can highlight hypocrisy whilst stating that the other side is not worth defending either.
@@fun_ghoul a person that supports Stalin and his governing methods and so think that his method is the best to achieve communism or just prefer his socialist system ? I don't understand what you're trying to point out ?
Right now tankie has been coopted by basically a large group of twitch/reddit pedophiles who like to call people tankies when they say America shouldn't bomb the shit out of Afghanistan or help kill children in Yemen. Basically vaush the big progenitor of the terms usage as a vague insult is clearly a pedohile. There's a shit load of evidence and he even admitted to viewing child porn. He's a "leftist" liberal straight up who says shit like south African communists are Nazis because they wanted to remove colonial power. If you ever watch a leftist on twitch watch out for there stance on vaush. Some like Hasan who don't really interact with him are okay. But the people who legit go on his stream all the time and don't even bat an eye on his clear pedophilic tendencies are sus as hell and most likely grifters. If there willing to overlook pedohilia how sincere are they. Idk vaush is probably in my opinion one of the true villains if the internet he's gets away with this shit purely because people want to watch him and call themselves leftists while not hearing about child rape done by prison guards in the American military. If someone is willing to look pasts someones pedohilia without confronting it at all there a pedohile in my book.
@@xale3658B the CIA has released docs showing Stalin wasn't the dictatorship he's come to be known as, there was collective leadership. It was just advantageous for the US strategically to let the public believe that.
@@bigbillhaywood1415 it was but there's a twist , corruption, that's how stalin could just rule the soviet union with an iron fist even tho the leadership was collective
@@bigbillhaywood1415 not that i'am anti-soviet, i actually respect Stalin for a lot of things but I hate him for a lot of things too, he is a controversial communist leader and there's a lot to uncover from him and I'm trying to gather only the information that at least make sense
As with last time I'll hopefully be doing a follow up video going over some of the stuff that was cut and some responses to it if they arise, as it was a very long time spent doing this.
@@Andrearuch97 Russia is a far-right wannabe imperialist state and Gaddaffi & Assad were despots
I very much look forward to a follow up
I having now finished the video want to say I agree with many of the points made. I think was criticism, or something I'd say would help, is an emphasis on critical analysis or write-offs. Tankie really is a write-off phrase that only ends any discussion. There are times where someone is just a troll LARPing but we can determine that remotely or up front, that itself would require analysis. I don't think saying a country/region/bloc is "good or bad" is realistic and I think that's part of the point here too but I feel like if it was the part of the point it wasn't clearly written out. I think having things open ended encourages further analysis but in my experience it usually just encourages people to complete the narrative they have rather than create a new one.
Is DPRK Good or Bad? Is Ukraine good or bad? It's this kind of fantasy talk is what I think gets people stuck in dogma. Dogma provides a line for people to say good or bad, so if we want to ditch dogma we have to ditch simplification and fantasy terms like good and bad on such broad strokes. Even Nazi Germany did horrific things but to just label them as bad and move on removes any analysis on how they made those bad choices. Their own dogma gave them a line.
Side spew, I don't think we should be objective entirely when analyzing things as no historical event great or small was done by objective people. I feel like a liberal writing this, but open minded should be the mindset but with a very critical lens. To be clear **Fascists are NOT given a platform** but whether historical or concurrent analysis a dialectical material analysis should be done.
In example of the DPRK, I support the ideas of Juche and think given the circumstance the DPRK has survived well while maintaining security and priority of people's well being. However it saddens me that GenSec Kim Jong Un fully support Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Taking it a step further they have had Russia as an ally against US aggression and RU has historically helped them in spite of US threats. Could opposing Russia put their entire state in danger by being cut off from its few powerful allies? Can I who lives within the US Empire and all its benefit critique such small things through an accurate lens of a country constantly threatened by my own country? I really don't know. But this allows me to grow, by analyzing things like this.
Damn dude you went from making a video on what contradiction is to "internet name calling", sad
@@Andrearuch97 Ewww... dude said "based". Total Incel jargon.
I've been communist a little less than a year and I'm overwhelmed. At first, I was so happy to finally learn about how powerful propaganda actually is, how many of the horribly things that I thought I knew about communism were just lies. But the deeper I went and the more opinions of different marxists I read, the more confused I got. I have no idea anymore what opinions I should believe, what facts I should trust, how to distinguish which stories to believe and which to dismiss as propaganda. Whatever thing I might have read about and been sure of to be true, there is a debunk of it that seems just as convincing. I'm exhausted...
Yep, that'll happen. The best way from my experience is to join a org that actually affects people's lives, housing/food etc, even if its not the most ideal or most revolutionary, stay away from the usual 'Communist' or 'Socialist' parties because quite frankly they're all pretty redundant at this point.
Then keep all of your more juicy views to yourself or anonymously until you've really cemented down what you believe, and then, keep it to yourself for a few more years, because you'll always think you have it set and then find out later how wrong you were and won't want to concede. I've been Socialist for over 7 years now and there's still plenty of stuff left to learn.
Idk if my original comment got deleted or didn’t upload, but what i wrote was that eventually you’ll come to see what sources to trust, also looking at evidence is pretty important because both sides can omit things sometimes. Even if both sides commit errors i tend to evaluate it in historical and geopolitical perspective and if i am talking about it in a anti-communist fashion or in an objective one.
Do your own research too, it will end up feeling like you’re in university sometimes but it’s what you have to go through if you judge it to be worth it. For example: i was and still am pretty confused about China’s Maoist period, people these days push a narrative that the communists hid in the mountains and the KMT was the biggest factor for Japanese defeat, uppon searching a bit i found out that the communists where indeed in some mountainous regions as well as plains, and that the KMT had a bigger army, but after reading both american and Chinese sources stating that the communists where inside enemy lines and the KMT didn’t even have people there to recieve defeat of the japanese army, so all weapons went to the communists to whom a lot of KMT people and generals had defected to due to corruption and authoritarianism, i was sure what was true. Now i am going to go through some books on the Mao era for common people, even if they dislike the modern China unlike i do.
BadEmpanada has a good study guide you’ll want to check out, he presents really good research you’d not find elsewhere, with good material proof and sources.
And even then i disagree with him on somethings, like China “lying about their extreme poverty rate”, just to show you gotta make your own research.
@@jorgeamaro2686 Thanks comrade, I appreciate the advice
@@jorgeamaro2686 wait were can i find badempanadas study guide
@@adeebibrahim6349 it’s called “how to research history” on his yt channel
so nice of you to make a 30 minute video about the T-34, and about nothing political whatsoever!
Me and boys boutta head to Kursk to spin the block on the opps
i know right, finally a nonpolitical analysis of a weapon of war
Gods perfect suv
I have always considered "tankie" to mean "people who think the USSR and PRC never did anything wrong." I'm sticking with it.
@James Tennant Aww.. isn't that clever?
@@ernststravoblofeld i think so
"Stalin-apologists" is my own derivation
@@warlordofbritannia Thats largely where I start with it, but the word was coined for events that happened after Stalin, so..? I'm sympathetic to much of what the USSR and PRC achieved, but when people gloss over everything they did wrong (and some things were horrible) we need a term for them.
@@ernststravoblofeld the holodomor was the systemic persecution of Jewish Ukrainians living under Stepan Bandera, a collaborator with Nazi Germany
Judge: What made you rob a bank?
Me: I watched a video by Badmouse and I wanted to be based.
@Morahman7vnNo2 ok Boomer
Not guilty for reason of the Chad Amendment!
Replace "Badmouse" with Lenin and you've got the rationale for a great many Bolsheviks lol
It's not theft its re-appropriation
This felt like a level up. The graphics and structure are truly top shelf. Kudos!
The one thing I'd say about that "tankies" meme with all the famous figures is that it's not calling them all MLs, it's saying they'd be called "tankies" by modern Liberals who've begun appropriating that term against anyone who is opposed to the U.S. State Department, NATO, imperialism, etc. Malcolm X was not an ML obviously, but anyone holding the consistent outgrowths of his views today would be labeled a "tankie". You see this often with others as well -- I've seen Aaron Mate labeled as a "tankie" and he's a journalist and I'm pretty sure not even a Communist, so yeah.
I don't really understand why people are talking about this, didn't it already explain what makes them different from a historic angle?
@@BadMouseProductions No, not really
@@PlayerJV7 I dedicate half a section to what separate's them from the average fella online.
@@BadMouseProductions yeah you basically said they’re allowed to act like tankies because they’re famous but we can’t because we’re nobodies
@@BadMouseProductions I can't believe this is the material you have to deal with..
Ok I'll explain it. Those people actually DID something IRL, whereas "you" are just a couch potato that watches YT videos and argues with people on the internets.
direction caught me off guard. I still think it's valuable to point out when someone is committed to the dogma over the improvement of lives and a lot of your criticisms here support that. I'm curious if you had someone help with the visuals or if you did them yourself. Strikingly good. Your narrative was also very engaging but that makes sense given your tenure.
It's all mouse thanks
You know my man? I started this video with a lot of skepticism, being a "tankie" myself (whatever that term means), I expected a bland and awful critique made by a Vaush fan. I was wrong. This is a very good video and an amazing critique. You've impressed me comrade. Solidarity from Chile!
Vaush fan? Since when was I ever a Vaush fan??? :O
@@BadMouseProductions it's called a new viewer. As am I. I thought it was going to be the same. I don't think your take is perfect but there's decent nuance.
Question what are your thoughts on stalin and mao?
@@BadMouseProductions My friend, this is the first video I watch from your channel. It was not my intention to insult you in any way. Take care!!
@@jakobl7469 Mostly positive, except Mao. He did a ton of mistakes, and some like the Cultural Revolution really ended a massive amount of lives. Apart from that, both were products of their times. We can observe their experiences, learn some stuff and leave some other stuff behind. For example: nowadays we wouldn't calculate the economy by hand, we'd use computers and digital technology to do so, which is something similar to what our comrade Salvador Allende tried to do with Cybersyn/Synco project; be more careful with how workers are distributed in farms and the newly made industry, and a large etcetera. If you think that I'm a stalinist or something, I'm not, but I understand why so many people would call themselves stalinists. I try to break from the Stalin-Trotsky dichotomy (which is a dichotomy since almost no one remembers Bujharin) because we don't live in their times any more, nor in similar material conditions. That's what I think my friend. Cheers!
The "conversations we'd all rather be having" are the conversations I'm having with the people i'm close to, even as a pretty dedicated anarchist. I thought the whole point of this thing (whatever the Left is) was being critical, but because of the nature of Twitter and other online spaces fomenting conflict by design, the dominant discourse ends up being trash. I really think we need to move back off of social media and into our material contexts, at least for the most part. There's not a lot of real gains to be made for material autonomy in bickering on social media. When you leave social media, these dead revolutionaries and old revolutions become instructive for your own class struggles instead of ideological symbols to bash other people with. Not saying I'm on their level, but in 2020, I found Mao's On Contradiction really thought provoking and helpful while I was trying to organize street medic support for the protests. And that experience has helped me conceptualize what I can do going forward to upset the dominant power structures that I'm dealing with directly.
anyway, really good video, much appreciated
Well said
yea this is very true, most of the meaningful advocacy we think is out of reach or that we saw in previous generations that was actually effective is actually in our full capacity to do. We just have to disconnect a little bit from arguing with eachother/fascists and more time talking to people in real life. It’s the only way to actually build community and organization
It may be a poor historical decision, looking back at it, to let the average people and the supremacists co-mingle in online social spaces, without our counterpoints. It does fucking suck, being on there, yes. But we know what happens when, say, forums are allowed to go full fash-bad IRL outcomes.
My advice: their are Leftists who are capable of handling the stress, who have goof arguments, and know when to switch from good faith to shaming bad behaviour wittily-let them do so; don’t discourage the sewer worker, and don’t overplay a sewer worker’s public missteps.
Anarchism is a joke pseudo religion
@@andreja9425 very true. Fascists don’t usually waste their time on Twitter arguing. They’re outside, they’re agitating, persuading, brainwashing. They’re doing the work. While most online leftists are not doing any of that and passively giving fascists the win.
The thing about Malcom X not necessarily being communist is that People who are not communist get called Tankies all the time. At this point, the word basically just means any left-leaning person who doesn't uncritically and unabashedly support NATO.
Exactly. Even Chomsky has somehow been associated with "tankies" somehow.
@@telcharthegreatsmithofthef7585 I've no idea how that makes him a "tankie". This is why I'm saying it's a buzzword. Why not just replace everything with negative connotations with the words "tankie" and "woke"? Because that's how ridiculous those buzzwords have become. "He's a war criminal, he's a tankie", "he's a nazi, he's woke", "that person is filthy rich, he's a tankie", "Biden is a woke/tankie, he's starving millions of Afghans to death".
@@telcharthegreatsmithofthef7585 No idea. Chomsky is an anarcho-syndicalist. Did he explicitly say "there is no genocide" and went on to add "it is a socialist government" and then "they are resisting the US empire" or "they are fighting US imperialism" or anything of the sort in his statements? Like I said, the whole "tankie" thing sounds like a caricature that isn't there and is only found in a handful of people. Calling an anarcho-syndicalist (who's denounced the USSR as much as the next American leftist) a "tankie" is beyond preposterous. Then he gets called a "tankie" because of his current stance on the Russia/Ukraine situation..."tankie" sounds like a smear word for anyone who doesn't agree with American imperialism at this point. Then again it's been used to describe anything from people who don't like the democratic party through people who don't like vaush to people who didn't agree with the US invasion of Syria. I said it many times in the comments section: "tankie" is a buzzword and it's been rendered meaningless because it is used outside its definition in the first place.
@@telcharthegreatsmithofthef7585 I don't know. What is the definition for "tankie"? How does that relate to what Chomsky said regarding Yugoslavia? Was Yugoslavia a left authoritarian government or a fascist government of sorts?
Also, the genocide committed by the Serbians does not negate the fact that what NATO did was wrong and did nothing to improve the situation, it also served to validate (at least for a while) the imperialist tool that is NATO. Chomsky denying the genocide was foolish but denying that nato serves imperialism (and in nato's invasion of the Balkans back in 1999) and being apologetic for it is being an enabler, thus yes, anyone trying to justify nato's actions is a Western Imperialist.
Also, there is nothing wrong with being anti-american, I don't see how you could call yourself a leftist and not be against what the US stands for. For any kind of fault Chomsky may have he is right in that regard.
Having said that, NO THAT DOESN'T MEAN I CONDONE ANY TYPE OF GENOCIDE, WAR CRIME/CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY. Reacting to "tankies" with imperialist apologia isn't any better.
@@telcharthegreatsmithofthef7585 Of course it's used by smear merchants to smear people they don't agree with. It's used by all sorts of liberals alike to smear people and conflate them with "fascists". It's bein used by people to smear supporters of Russia and Syria (eventhough neither are socialist states) making the smear word moot in the first place. Of course it's a buzzword yet you and many don't like to admit it.
I appreciate the nuance in this video.
Often video essays can confuse nuance with with fence sitting, but this video puts a ton of effort in NOT doing that. It is clear, well argued, and designed to spark personal reflection from the viewer.
Good work.
yeah, nuanced as an heavily armored vehicle
Nkrumah supported scientific socialism and said his 3 biggest influences were Marx, Lenin, and Marcus Garvey. His ideology was essentially adapting MLism to Africa.
Marx and Lenin influenced a lot of people.
he for sure wasnt an ML. Walter Rodney properly summed this up,
"In a sense, Nkrumah followed up on this; and although at one, time he called himself a Marxist, he always was careful to qualify this by saying that he was also a Protestant. He believed in Protestantism, at the same time. So he was trying to straddle two worlds simultaneously - the world which says in the beginning was matter and the world which says in the beginning there was the word.
And inevitably he fell between these two. It's impossible to straddle these two. But there he was, and we must grant his honesty and we must grant the honesty of many, people who have attempted to do this impossible task and follow them to find out why they failed."
Marcus Garvey was an anti-communist nationalist. Si it makes sense that Nkrumah calling him a big influence actually discredits his communist credentials.
"Tankie is leftists who use rightwing talking points."
"Tankie is when you lie about landback or deny anti-white racism."
Uh... *What the fu-*
I have seen self proclaimed “leftists do this”. It’s head scratching and infuriating
Its stupid drama and unnecessary jabs at annother leftist creator
I would recommend Hakim’s video on what is a tankie, he talks about every meaning it has been given (as you can imagine, a crap ton, so many it’s basically lost meaning)
@@carneyjiang9159 also denies many attrocities and doesnt believe ribbentrop-molotov happened
tankie is just soviet apologist, soviets were not communist
When I hear Tankie I hear: "I am a Liberal, and your left wing views make me uncomfortable."
Tankies call me a Trot, Trots call me a Tanky. I feel I can unify the left through mutual annoyance of me.
Aren't those just two authoritarian sides of the same authoritarian coin? And since authoritarianism is anti-left, you are actually identifying a unified Right
@@d_trich Authoritarianism isn't "anti-left", it is simply to the right of "ultra-left" or anarchism.
There is, sadly, a need for us to stand together as one and force capitalism out of power. That's..inherently authoritarian! There's no way around it! The only non-authoritarian way would be to convince capitalism to step down under its own volition.
@@DeoMachinaYou're blurring the lines between the red fascism of tankies and the justified hierarchies that must temporarily exist and then be immediately eradicated, unlike what the tankies who want their own elite cabal to take up permanent rule.
@@DeoMachina replacing the rule of rich people with the rule of authoritarian "leftists" who murder civilians to "crush dissent" is not an upgrade and as long as there are people who unironically think that is a good thing, we will never have actually have good socialist policies because people live in permanent fear of the word
“Some say that it is impossible to acquire the great qualities of revolutionary geniuses like Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin and that it is impossible to raise our own qualities to the same level as theirs. But as long as Party members work hard and earnestly, never allow themselves to be isolated for one single moment from the day to day struggle of the people, and make serious efforts to study Marxist literature, learn from the experiences of other comrades and the masses of the people, and constantly strive to steel and cultivate themselves, they will be perfectly able to raise their qualities to the same level as that of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.”
-Nelson Mandela, from his book: “How to be a Good Communist” (1962)
Yeah, was weird he didn't mention that. He probably assumed it was just his interactions with communist groups that made people think that.
Sounds weird coming from a neoliberal, who cosied up to the South African bourgeoisie once he achieved power. LOL.
Never once in life should anyone consider Stalin or Lenin a "genius"
A paranoid schizo and a mumbling fool
Thank you for this beautiful take. Your points are great and will certainly have a major impact on my personal future discussions.
There's really something that sets you apart from the majority of creators on the left - nuance. And your video is a reminder that this nuance is important. So thank you. Also, fantastic editing!
"Tankie", like any slur, exists just to ostracize the other and shut down the conversation. In my experience, this one is often used by people who don't have enough knowledge of historical events and context in which they happened and is used against people who try to counter mainstream narrative of most successful attempts at socialism. Often those "libertarian socialists" will criticize people like Stalin for his authoritarianism but will sing praises for people like Maurice Bishop even though most of the decisions Stalin supported had to be approved by politburo or central committee and Bishop basically ruled by decree.
"Like any slur?" Bruh
@@2emo2function What? A slur = a derogatory or insulting term applied to particular group of people. There's nothing particularly wrong with their word choice.
@@lucaiovis Slur has some heavy connotations though. In the usage I see most, slur specifically refers to a derogatory term aimed at a marginalised group. Tankie is a perjorative for sure, but it doesn't target an oppressed group. This may seem like semantics, but I think the distinction is important.
@@sleepinbelle9627 well, the fact that a lot of slurs are directed at marginalized groups isn't what makes it a slur.
The term, 'tankie' was originally coined by Marxists to describe those on the left who opposed the 1956 Hungarian Rebellion. The term is still used to refer to those on the left who turn on the working class and betray their revolutionary principles. This video delves into the matter. I'd give it a watch.
That literal silencing at 23:29...very nice
Excellent video as always.
I've always taken the "tankies" picture to mean that under the various definitions, as laid out in the first part, all these people could be considered tankies, more making fun of the overuse of the word.
And many conservatives complain that the word Nazi is overused. It's comforting to see unity
The way you pace your videos, both visually and orally (and they compliment eachother fantastically) is something I've seen from hardly any other creator lefty or otherwise. Especially ironic that a video criticising dogma manages to keep itself concise and understandable, it's hard to believe it's 30 whole minutes. Great work once again. :]
I think Dogma arises so quickly among these online leftists because of how social media sites like Twitter and Facebook work. Online Social media is not designed as a digital town square like some people will argue; instead, it is an echo chamber that makes money from engagement. And Dogma, no matter what the ideology, generates the most significant amount of attention, sad to say.
That arguement falls short because of how present it is historically. Social media has definitely aided and abetted it but is by no means the cause. Dogmatism is just pseudo-parasocial relationships with ideologies or idols of ideologies, a thing that will exist for ever
Really thoughtful video and I like the fact that you've sort of become the grumpy old person of the online left. Keep up the good work and I'm glad to see you putting out more stuff!!
Will you make videos again?
Hello there, how’s it been?
Your video on debunking anti communist arguments helped me become a solid marxist rather than a questioning leftist, and your video on the cuban missile crisis rly helped give a new perspective so thanks for your videos. But as mentioned by others im wondering if youre ever planning on returning to youtube?
@@Rolando_Cueva I hope he does, but then again his last anti communist arguments debunked video has gained a lot of attention and the reception from ppl all over the right is very negative so I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s still recovering from the fallout.
I swear they had a video on the DDR I watched in the past. Did it get taken down?
being anti american is just common sense
See Gramsci on how common sense is actually a manifestation of bourgeois ideology
@@user-ig4dl4iv1j life is also concept used by capitalists so we must end it. /S
@@mikhaelgribkov4117 don't be daft. If you were arguing with an anti-abortion person and they said "being for abortion is against life!", it would be totally reasonable for you to critique the assumptions buried within the word "life". That doesn't mean you support human extinction, any more than I am defending US imperialism right now, nor am I saying you shouldn't use your common sense when making decisions about when to cross a busy street. We're having a conversation about young people who approach international questions with the "common sense" that anything that is the opposite of what US imperialist propaganda says is the truth. E.g. US imperialist propaganda says Assad is a genocidal butcher, therefore he must in fact be the polar opposite of a genocidal butcher, because the US propaganda always tells lies. (Ignoring the fact that manipulation and disengeuous presentation of half-truths is a well-known propaganda tactic) This sort of "common sense" is fundamentally at odds with any historical materialist attempt to analyze the situation in Syria.
A very trivial example that illustrates the stupidity of this logic is how Stalinist Internet sects who were previously addicted to chatting with each other on Signal have now decided Signal is "CIA", and therefore no longer a useful cybersecurity tool, because they learned was developed by freelance agents of western imperialism to avoid surveillance by the PRC. Ironically this flies against the face of actual common sense, as the people who developed Signal still had need for a useful end-to-end encryption software, and the technical cybersecurity principles of end-to-end encryption have little to do with political ideology.
Interesting video. Nonetheless, putting Gadafi as being more or less the same with Sadam Husein is HIGHLY misleading to say the least
Many that I come across tend to use both with the same brush. Obvz Gaddafi had more support for revolutionary struggles than did the other two, so his effect on the world stage was different, but people always ignore his other side. His discrimination amongst Non Arab Africans and probable participation in Sankara's death are rarely spoken about and do give a very different perspective compared to the regular anti-imperialist outlook.
@@BadMouseProductions Gaddafi was one of Mandela’s and the ANC’s greatest allies. That would put him on par with Castro who is also demonized by the West.
Gaddafi also supported Idi Amin, Blaise Compaoré, (ironically given that so many Twitter "tankies" idol-mine both Sankara and Gadaffi) and Charles Taylor and is largely responsible for the emergence of the janjaweed. The Soviet-Cuban bloc also supported Mengistu (who extradicially mass murdered thousands of Ethiopian and Eritrean communists) because African geopolitics in the late 70s and 80s were complicated and not an MCU or Star Wars movie. For example, the Angolan Civil War, the famous event in which Cuba and the USSR sided against apartheid South Africa, the People's Republic of China sided with South Africa and the US.
Also "the west" largely celebrates Mandela and contemporary South African revolutionary leftists largely hate him. Mandela's position was that socialist revolution in South Africa would be going too far and would destabilize the country and that the ANC needed to work with F. W. de Klerk to create a new liberal democratic republic, and Mandela even prosecuted black South African leftists as part of the "restorative justice" process of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. The Mandela family also got very rich in the process; Mandela's grandson is the director of the Aurora gold mining company which owes South African mineworkers $1.8m in unpaid wages.
tldr western leftists should have to score at least 60% on one of those geography app quizzes where you label African countries before theyre allowed to talk about this stuff.
Apartheid South Africa at that point was a pariah state for obvious reasons, basically supported only by the USA, Japan, and Israel. (Only a slight oversimplication on my part) Imagine applying the "[x] supported Mandela" argument to WW2. Churchill, de Gaulle, Chiang Kai-Shek and Roosevelt also opposed Hitler, should we celebrate them too?
@@user-ig4dl4iv1j I celebrate Roosevelt despite him being a Keynesian because he helped expedite the end of the British Empire and sought peaceful relations with Stalin as early as 1934.
A "tankie" is just someone who dares defend the "people/countries/parties who did stuff". They're often vilified precisely *because* they succeeded.
Exactly
Well, ruzzian sure wants to get some success because of USSR's failure.
@@mikhaelgribkov4117 why?
@@elliotyourarobot he used ruzzian with Zs in it, id say it be appopiate to ignore his comment
@@mod4rchive ok
your claim that Nelson Mandela wasn´t a communist is a bit bold, as he was member of the central commitee of the communist party of South Africa.
Wasn’t it the African National Congress’?
You're half correct, Nelson Mandela was part of the ANC and followed the ANC freedom charter which had a socialist influence. Freedom Charter was the statement of core principles of the South African Congress Alliance, which consisted of the African National Congress (ANC). Now even tho ANC's freedom charter has a strong socialist influence most members wouldn't consider themselves as socialist or communist. That being said ANC have worked with SACP since they were both anti-apartheid and working together would be the best for blacks in South Africa.
Nelson Mandela stood by the Soviet Union and Castro and he never waivered, these lazy smears against "tankies" is just pathetic.
15:00 I've not seen anyone in any group say Malcolm X was a communist. I'm pretty sure the meme you are critiquing is, in your perception (or your starting point) wrong. Your initial vector is assuming that those people shown are being portrayed as Tankies. When I saw it, I gathered that those people would be called Tankies today because of the arbitrary uses of the word. For example the BPP had a lot of nice things to say about the DPRK and visited there, as did some of the others shown.
Sure criticisms existed by some of those people too, from their perspective at their time. The USSR was an experiment which is why it is often called The Soviet Experiment as they were the first to actually try things. Hindsight is always 20-20 and despite being aware of that, many leftists seem to be harsh rather than critical, as if it should have been obvious what the result would be. I think people forget the delay in information traveling and such was much slower and arguably more obfuscated even 20 years ago.
As someone who appreciates the USSR and especially prior to 1953, I think we can look at what worked and didn't. I found it interesting how the equalization of wages happened too fast and it caused major development and industrial issues. That's a whole event that should be looked at and critically evaluated with the proper historical context, especially with wage discussions today this could be a very educational and practical look exercise. However, people are too busy blaming 1 man for what a million party members and regions of more than 120 million did and just write off the failure as their fault and if 'they' did the deed it wouldn't have failed.
I can promise you no great leader ever made a bad decision and thought there was a better option at the time.
I think what I've always assumed that Malik al Shabbaz/Malcolm X was at best a fellow traveler if anything and could have come back to a more Pan African communist tendency
Yeah , Malcom X's positive position and takes on China and Maoist movements for example would be 100% called a "tankie" thing in the online western left today, even if he personaly wasnt a marxist lenninist
The gist I got from that meme when I saw it used online was that it was arguing that there are ML's of color.
@@missmizzebral8924 fair enough. I appreciate the impact he had in his work and weather he was a communist or not doesn't mean anything to me if our goals are aligned. I think he was killed before ever establishing a label for himself or maybe he avoided it and just wanted black liberation. Again I support the endeavor regardless.
@@eve36368 I have no doubt some used it as such and if so they were likely tokenizing them. What struck me was the tankie being in quotes. Depending on your sphere of people that can imply many things, like as a scare word or a reduction of it.
The meme is interpretative so it's admittedly wrong of me to say his take is wrong when it isn't explicit what it's meaning is. As such every take, mine and his, are right and wrong depending on the observer.
I don't understand your problem with the "tankies" meme. Yes, we're not them. But the message of this meme is that today's western leftists who throw around the term "tankie" would oppose these people at the time for being too "authoritarian" or whatever. That is true. The main contrast between the "tankie" left and the "tankie-yelling" left, is that the first group looks at these past attempts and takes them seriously and wants to learn from them, while being critical of them to varying degrees (but seldom a degree that would put western imperialism in a less negative light), while the latter truly wants to dismiss all of the past because of its mistakes. They range from people who truly think that the western empire is more "free" and a better place to live while ignoring how colonialism (of the past and in the modern day) contributes to that living standard, to people who simply want to dismiss every previous socialist state because they were imperfect.
The meme is to throw these people all together and show these "tankie-yelling" leftists: "So you oppose ALL of these? Everyone who did anything worthwhile in practice." While individually they would, the strength of the meme is that they are all shown together. You cannot in your right mind say "yes" to that question without appearing like you just want to keep leftism this public debate on the internet where we can dunk on Ben Babibo and his crew while never making a true change in the real world, and also... appearing a bit white supremacist, right?
So yeah, I think it's a good meme, and your criticism of it just sounds a bit like "but before you point fingers at capitalists, did you recycle your garbage today? Hmm?"
The inclusion of Malcolm X is also less strange than you make it out to be because he would definitely be one of the people marked "tankie" or "authoritarian" by these people, regardless of whether he's a socialist. "But tankie refers exclusively to socialists", well yeah, as you said yourself: it's become obsolete.
I am not sure if dogma is central. Even when I question more liberal minded people, without informing my opinion and telling where I am coming from, sometimes I am called a tankie.
It odd how you can do so much to try to not be seen as one and still be labeled with it.
@Jean Sanchez It never has any meaning.
Yep you've earned yourself a subscriber, such a silky smooth voice and such lovely delivered points. Love brother, love
The point of the meme isn't to claim those people as part of some ideology, but to lampoon the meaninglessness of the word. Despite having no ideological through-line connecting all of the people, they took stances which would undoubtedly be described as "tankie" by many of those who use the term to discredit the left. The point is the ridiculousness of the way tankie is used to discredit people, not to lay claim to historical heroes.
To be more clear: if someone, now, lauds any aspect of the Soviet Union, say they praise the city planning, they will inevitably be called a tankie. This kind of facile logic, if taken seriously, would label any of those people in the image tankies along the same lines. Hence the meme. There's a reason the word is in scare quotes in the image.
Maybe your points are valid in as much as anyone doing these things would be wrong, but at least the image chosen to exemplify this does a poor job.
I literally explain the reasons for why there is a distinction between them and 'JucheJoe97'
@@BadMouseProductions In fairness, you suggest it one-sidedly, at least in that part. While it is true that self-proclaimed "Tankies" are not who they idolize, it's also important to understand that, in regards to some of the values that these figures hold, they would've been thoroughly bastardized using the same terminology because of their views on Socialism & AES. The point being that division between what is seen as "Tankie" is so incredibly arbitrary that great leftist leaders would have been attributed the same title in passing, despite all the significance of their work. At the same time, it's necessary to realize that just because these historical figures may have been labeled similarly does not mean that their views were fundamentally similar or that their significance is because they would possibly be reviled as "Tankies" today.
TL;DR It's not really commentary on who Tankies are but how the term has become so nebulous that revolutionary attitudes, anti-Imperialism, and anti-Americanism can be attributed to all of these figures who have been foundational in forging leftist politics.
@@BadMouseProductions and that LITERALLY isn't the point at all. You didn't even address anything and just resorted to saying "I'm right cause you're too online" lmfao. No one ever suggested that some random guy on twitter is the same as a historical personality. This meme isn't about that and it's baffling to me how someone could have such a hard time understanding it even if explained repeatedly.
@@Lukas-xb7cx He's just playing dumb.
@@exu7325 I don't think he's playing dumb.
Funny how this whole discussion revolves around first-world anglophones on the internet. From the perspective of a thrid-world country marxist-leninist movement, we would all be called tankies by you all. That is why I hate "web communism". People don't seem to understand that you need to organize yourself in a political party and do actual political work (tweeting about communism is NOT political work in itself) in the real world for you to even label yourself a leninist.
For these people, marxism-leninism is a joke, an aesthetic that they "use" over the internet. I don't consider anyone that is not a member of a political party a communist. To be a communist (and a leninist most of all) is to UNDERSTAND that you are only a communist as long there is a communisty party in which you are organized and do actual political work to organize the working class. Without a communist party, there are no communists.
In Brazil, every communist would be called a "tankie" by these first-world unorganized tweeting hordes because we don't shit over the history of the soviet union and ALL other socialist movements, even if we have disagreements and criticisms. So be it. I'm a "tankie".
Cringe
very well said comrade
@@Pepsiman1848 I see 🤔
I understood that meme more as in like “you would’ve called these people tankies too.” And considering how nebulous the term is I don’t doubt that liberals of today would call a modern Malcom X a tankie, even despite him not explicitly being a communist. However I can understand your interpretation. Regardless, you are correct about them being incomparable.
I have no idea how lacking in self awareness and how much of a sense of overblown self importance you have to have to think people call you a tankie frivolously. Most libs have no idea what tankie is and are utterly uninterested in that world and in almost every case, the accusation is valid. Don’t wanna be called a tankie? Don’t be an apologist for really, really bad governments, it’s so easy. Amazingly easy in fact.
As a liberal, I would not call Malcom X a tankie. I define tankies by their singleminded anti-americainism and their love for *the aesthetics* of the Soviet Union.
@@loganvanderwier8866 as a liberal you probably shouldn’t be calling anyone a tankie.
@@loganvanderwier8866 Liberals like you are dronies who drone strike us in the global south and grow fat off the exploitation of the third world.
@@loganvanderwier8866 lol. Seems like you haven't heard of patriotic socialists yet then
You don’t seem to understand the “TANKIES” meme with the faces of people like Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela. It is responding to people who claim that it’s “bad” to support actually existing Marxist-Leninist govts &/or anti-imperialist govts. and label such people “tankies”.
All of the people on the meme supported actually existing Marxist-Leninist &/or anti-imperialist govts. E.g. the first country Nelson Mandela visited after being released from prison in the 1990s was Cuba, where he thanked the govt and people for their help in defeating apartheid.
Yes, I think I made a video where I spoke about the differences that separate those people, I think it was called... Tankies.
@@BadMouseProductions they're not commenting because they somehow didn't notice that you clarified the difference between these people. They're talking about you claiming some group of people who can be classified as "tankies" are themselves claiming a bunch of revolutionary and progressive figures willy-nilly as fellow "tankies" or something equivalent.
It's kinda weird both you and the folks in the comments get so worked up and dismissive about it.
Anyway, a few unrelated remarks:
Did the CPN not endorse the intervention in Hungary, unlike what you showed at the beginning of the video? I was told by folks in the NCPN and CJB that the CPN was heavily harassed after this, with people attacking the 'headquarters' of the party. Not very important for the main point of the video, I guess.
Also, what happened with the DDR video? I don't remember it, but a friend made a remark about it, I thought I should ask.
I believe that this is so far the best and most matured video of yours yet. I enjoyed it and got a lot of new ideas information and thoughts in my head from it.
Tankie means “anyone remotely to the left of me whom i disagree with” at this point.
“Remotely to the left” meaning “be a cheerleading simp for the USSR, China and North Korea”
Pleasantly surprised by this video; I must admit that I've never thought of most of those people in the "tankie" picture as tankies, but otherwise, I find this video to be a refreshing critique of our modern tendencies to forget the nuance of the past. Bravo.
As an American I get annoyed when someone is called "antiAmerican" when they're really anti American government.
Make no mistake, I am 100% anti-American people.
The US has sat on illegal soil for years destroying Hawaiian fields
i hate the fed.
"Always a message of friendship for the people of the US. For their hardworking spirit, their intellectuals and workers, for their scientific and technical advances. We really wish them the best of luck.
As far as their government, there is no love lost between the Cuban and US governments." - Fidel Castro
Even that can feel bad intentioned from my experience, at least since the war started. For example the people who genuinely want Ukraine to lose in the name of anti-american imperialism. Or NATO rolling back and not protecting eastern countries. I'm probably biased considering I live close to the border with Ukraine, but it always triggers me when people talk like that as if we don't exist/we don't matter and we should be at the mercy of Russia because nato = bad.
I always viewed "Tankie" as a thought terminating cliche, when thrown out by Liberals and Conservatives, and a ML catch-all, including the Dengists for some reason.
Soviet nostalgia, especially from those on the Western Left, I believe is more an act of mourning; a feeling that they were born into a place that is/was on the wrong side of history and feels they are complicit with a betrayal of the exploited peoples around the globe as well as at home. Or, at least that's how I see the situation.
And what other group venerates nostalgia of a mythic past?
@@DiodeMilliampere Liberals with FDR and Churchill, or even at times JFK or LBJ, and sometimes the Clinton 90s, Conservatives, sometimes with Nixon, but definitely with Regan and even now Trump. I don't view the Soviet Union as mythic, but it sure as shit was a progressive force compared to the Russian Federation of today, or really at any point. I mean, all of the former Eastern Block countries are in worse shape today than they were under the Soviet Union; life expectancy and general well-being has dropped across the board; this includes in the first world, who only bothered having a social democracy just as a stopgap to compete with the Soviet Union and it's ambitious and universal social programs; these are measurable differences, I know my grandmother is livid better because of those programs, as compared to my parents and myself, who lack more and more of them. Nostalgia can indeed be empty and blinding, but it can also be based on concrete understanding of the decline society is going through due to the austerity brought on by corporate profit seeking at the expense of the Working Class.
@@noheroespublishing1907 please, libs don't care about those people or venerate them even a fraction as much as certain parts of the online left drape themselves in the aesthetics and mythos of the USSR. They turn it into a facet of their personality. The amount of "patriotism" these people have for the the USSR is also way far beyond anything libs feel about the history of liberalism. If you ask the average lib about those people they will probably say "they're OK i guess" or "who?" Libs simply aren't that invested and as a result don't really mythologize or turn those people into heroes.
@@noheroespublishing1907 in the USSR, the "soviet nostalgia" movement is nakedly reactionary and harkening back to a time when russia had greater strength, and importance. It's their version of "MAGA" and just because a hammer and sickle is stamped on that doesn't change it. The western version of soviet nostalgia is keyed into the mythic strength and importance the USSR had, too, but they have a greater commitment to the appearance of actually being leftist. At the end of the day, its still a nationalistic impulse based on the fantasy of power and hegemony. I think a lot of people "on the left" came over from the right and they just can't give up the patriotic/nationalistic impulses, obssession with strength, fixation on symbols, dogma and myth. They were raised believing in the global struggle of good versus evil and instead of just unlearning it they choose the side opposed to the propaganda they heard as a child.
@@DiodeMilliampere All groups with no power have pride in their position, sure, it often is a form of overcompensation for their current political weaknesses and inability to affect change; black pride or LGBT pride makes sense on the United States because of the suffering they went through and how much they still suffer. Yes, politics isn't an essentially feature of a person's life, nobody needs to be a socialist, but like adopting one's self into a self-made family of cobbled together relationships, while no based on blood, is just as much of a family. The Soviet Union was when Left politics was muscular and virile, not perfect or unworthy of reflection/criticism, but something the Left has now lacked for over thirty years now. The USSR now isn't a country, it's a symbol of aspiration, people don't want to recreate it piece by piece, they just want a place that Left politics can act from a place of strength and feel vicarious strength from it's existence.
great video, glad to have you back making insightful content again. this got to the root of something i was thinking of for a while now
Thank you for continuing to be exceptionally reasonable (a remarkably difficult line to walk). I feel the most correct path for Marxism to "take" in the 21st century has to be much more holisitic than what has existed before: We should feel free to move beyond and draw from all sources. It is difficult to explain this in a very precise way -- I like how Alain Badiou explains his approach to Communism in the 21st century. Many of the different paths Marxism has taken are still useful, even together, whether it's the classics (of Lenin or Luxemburg or the like), the many routes of Western Marxism or thinkers like Mao.
It is so infinitely frustrating that so many of us still seem hung up on the questions created by Stalin and his like, and it is only more frustrating that some of us seem unwilling to really try and come with us to a real answer. It seems that socialists can be stuck on that point from either direction; too many either fail to challenge the parts that went so wrong or, instead, flail away without answering the questions that have been raised. Questions like those are what we need to answer if we are wholehearted in the attempt to create Communism of the 21st century.
exactly what i wanted to comment; before saying something similar i scrolled down and found yours, thanks a lot for that. while the left really needs to take pains to understand + learn from previous socialist experiments in a manner markedly _different_ to bourgeois history (i.e. its dull useless and total reduction/rejection of these authoritarian states), wallowing in both their terrible mistakes and aesthetics is a dreadful way to both limit your own understanding of the world and alienate pretty much any sane individual.
Id add-on that socialism thanks to historical reputation is going to be difficult to implement in western countries, I believe we should instead of going for straight out socialism we should build an institutional framework for a future socialist state, it's clear foundations are needed, and societies like America, Greece or South American states need to build up a trust- they are currently due to a range of reasons low trust society, and looking at history trying to implement socialism into low trust society is a recipe for embarrassing disappointment.
I have toyed with the idea of calling myself a "tankie". I may be wrong, but in my opinion a "tankie" is someone who is against the demonization of Stalin and Mao. Don't get me wrong. I am not one of those who think that Stalin and Mao were saints. Clearly they were not. They did have opponents killed. But the west greatly exaggerates the numbers that died. Most people get the, "Communism killed 100 million people" trope from the book "The Black Book of Communism" which was written by an anti-communist fanatic. Those numbers he came up with were later found to be greatly exaggerated. I don't have time to get into it but just one example is the claim that Stalin killed 25 to 30 million people. But the Soviet archives show that around 800,000 people were killed during his rule. Mind you, that's a lot of people but nowhere near the 25 to 30 million that anti-communists claim. So yeah, bad things happened. But they were living in rather precarious times back then. So I defend Stalin and Mao against the exaggerated claims which makes me a "tankie" I guess. I do not expect communist revolutions to be bloodless or without fault. (I am a ML by the way.) But we should learn from mistakes from the past and not throw the baby out with the bathwater. That is my 2 cents worth.
> But the Soviet archives show that around 800,000 people were killed during his rule
This is a ridiculous argument, because it basically amounts to "according to Stalin, Stalin didn't really kill that many people".
There sure are a lot of exaggerations regarding the death toll of Stalin's regime, and the Black Book of Communism is bullshit, but that Stalin was a genocidal tyrant is an incredibly well-documented fact.
I got called a tankie by a vaush fan becuase I said NATO is inherently bad for working class movements . It s a joke term.
The opinions of Vaush fans are meaningless, when they arent calling actual leftists "tankies" they are defending their nonce hero and all the vile shit he has said/done.
The working class are objectively worse off in Russia than in most of Eastern Europe. NATO protects Eastern Europe from Russian invasion and occupation.
NATO is inherently good for the working class
With all due respect, only someone with a very particular view of the world is ever going to make a direct connection between NATO and 'working class movements'.
From this perspective I don't think you should be remotely surprised someone called you a tankie, even if I can see why you might think it's ironic.
Anyway, can you explain to me why you think NATO is "inherently" bad for working class movements?
This seems like a dogmatic, and potentialy antiquated view that prioritises a hypothetical political goal (working class control) over the real world suffering of millions.
For example, why is NATO in particular (as opposed to all military alliances) inherently bad for the working class?
Given that Russia is controlled by an authoritarian oligarchy, why would it winning the war in Ukraine (or getting concessions from NATO, etc.) be more advantageous to the working class people of the world?
If NATO is inherently bad because it is imperialistic, but Russia is also imperialistic, then from a working class perspective why is one side better than the other?
I must admit I'm skeptical but would really be interested to hear the arguments for myself.
@@pragueuprising560 NATO is a defensive alliance obviously and if I criticize for anything besides that, I’m sure it will be denounced.
But before I do, let me just say, Russia and NATO imperialism are quantifiable different. NATO countries in terms of economics have all the dominant strategies and do not play fairly, using their defensive military alliances to practice offensive civil actions .
Tell me, what do you like about NATO? Are you keen on Mutual assured Destruction? Did you like Vietnam, Libya, The Break up of yugoslavia , or how South America and Africa are treated ?
Do you like how they treat socialist states like enemies and don’t allow them to be part of their activities and actively put military bases around these countries?
Did you like their response to the war on terror? Or their chief member the USA’s actions during the war on terror?
What working class does NATO favor exactly? What is it that you like so much about NATO? I guess I’m not a nato expert and need someone to tell me why it’s cool and good actually .
@@pragueuprising560 if i were to make a basic criticism, nato is run by the untied states and it’s ideological puppets to benefit the rich and make the poor poorer. A dynamic that happens in a lot of capitalist run organizations around the earth
Karl Marx was a Tankie, too.
I can honestly say, I never heard the word "tankie" before.
But Im glad this video is not only about that word.
And Im also glad that I got to enjoy a really well thought out discussion video for the left again.
None of you people have done any meaningful examination of the USSR and the rest of 20th century socialist history and it shows.
The whole premise of this video is faulty because it basically assumes that something about the “tankie” designation must be correct when time after time it has been utilized to uphold the most vile hegemonic powers of today.
Most people crying in the comments about Trotsky have read very little of his actual work prior to his exile or what the ussr of the 20s was like. Saying that the USSR would have been just peachy if Trotsky was just in charge are so insanely unscientific it’s a wonder they just don’t come out as liberal. It’s like the MLMs who claim the ussr became revisionist the minute Khrushchev took over.
Moreover the outrage over “democracy” makes very little sense either. Why should a communist tolerate non communist sources of power? We are not here to have a party, we are here to destroy all aspects of capitalism.
Edit: Leftist also means nothing anymore. Identify yourself as a communist or anarchist or shut up
Also your sheer ignorance about Malcolm X is very telling (Breadtube outing themselves as white chauvinists yet again!). Obviously no one actually claims Malcolm X was a communist, he was more of a revolutionary nationalist. However if you looked at his writings, his associations with revolutionaries like Nkrumah (I believe?) as a result of historical forces and his own convictions, it was clear that his political thought was continuing to evolve.
And Kwame Ture was a communist! Perhaps he may have not been sophisticated (though judging by this video you aren’t either) but he absolutely was. Suggesting otherwise betrays a fundamental ignorance.
Also Nelson Mandela did at least have something of a background working with communist parties and since the meme is less about people who were explicitly communist but moreso generally supportive of existing socialist regimes at the time (I am using this nominally) your quibble with certain people being included makes very little sense
Lmao, cope
Venezuella iphone 100 billion
I gotta say, props to you for doing this, and you kind of do exactly what you Say good documentaries should do, as you present some novelty. The novelty here is a discussion over what a Tankie is, But really you’re making a broader point about new ones, dogmatism, arrogance and critical thinking. Bravo.
Holy hell this was spellbinding. It’s been so difficult as someone who’s been trying to get more into leftist organization as well as someone with a passion for history I’ve had to fight both the temptation to just saying this flippantly and confronting these people for their unproductive behaviors. I really appreciate all you had to say here (especially the segment about the Soviet-Afghan War and Dubois’ bad opinions on Japan). I wish you and your praxis well.
The mujahedeen were just freedom fighters is the dumbest take one can ever think of. Literally all the factions were Islamist for Sharia rule.
As for Japan. Here's a different opinion. Modern Japan when it came to being in the Meiji restoration 1868 was a resource poor backward agrarian state, in a sea of European colonial world empires with industry. They had 2 choices, either model their regime on the colonial empires of the time, or wait and be eventually colonized. The correct choice as difficult as it was was to play the game of empires.
They've had a chance to reverse course since the 1920s and go red, and build some Asian red Union. That was their biggest mistake, is that they rolled the dice allying the fascists (third way) anti-systematic movements in 1940, thinking that was the way to go.
With that said, Japan at the time, was considered the hope of Asia and the only challenge to the white man's hegemony. If you look at their rhetoric, it was all about Hakku Ichio, Asian co-prosperity sphere and ironically anti European colonialism. This was markedly different from fascist rhetoric.
The west didn't oppose Japan, initially when they started establishing colonies, up until the 1930s when they became a threat. What Dubois was seeing, wasn't an evil empire, but a challenge to the white man. And it was reasonable to do so at the time.
@@hansfrankfurter2903 on the topic of the Mujahedeen and freedom- freedom is the most loosely described word, freedom of speech contradicts freedom of oppression etc, the freedom that the Mujahedeen were fighting for was the preservation of their way of life, which yes did include Islamic laws which other people see as contradictory, it is however the truth. On the other hand the soviets weren't exactly giving them freedom, especially with all the massacres they commited.
@@frenchguitarguy1091 Well that's not what Badmouse meant by "freedom". He seems to imply a kind of western "liberal" freedom.
Even if that wasn't what he meant, it sure came off as if he was repeating the establishment line that "bin Laden is fighting for freedom".
As to the "massacres", I'd need some convincing non-propaganda sources on that. Who was doing what? against who exactly? ....etc And it better not be just "some ppl died in war", because no war is ever clean.
A 30 minute hit of copium and call me in the morning.
As for the Argument about supporting Russia against US = Supporting Japan in WW2 is just weak and it falls apart.
WW2 was a gang war between two opposing far right blocks for global domination. Communist nations (if ANY at the time) were in their infancy and there was NO advantage to communists in these countries to support a new, more determined and MORE anti-communist block (the axis) over the declining colonial empires of the Allies. Which is why Communists in most countries in Europe and Asia sided AGAINST Germany and Japan.
MAIN POINT: WW2 was NOT a war for communists to gain much globally, their opportunity was within their own countries to benefit from weakening colonial empires. The Axis in fact, were anti-communist to their very core. The ONLY thing that mattered to communists was the survival of their own revolutions in USSR, China, Korea, Vietnam, India etc, and the losses of Axis were GOOD for communists
Today the situation in Russia is QUITE different, it is an attempt by the declining US empire to hold onto its power by rallying the world against Russia and China. Not just that, there have been increased moves against socialist projects in South America as well. The encirclement and defeat of Russia and China will be the FINAL BLOW to communists all over the world. You can make all your fancy visuals but there is NO WAY IN HELL for ANY modern socialist nation to develop a 21st century industrial base independently after this. Hell, China manufactures literally everything and even IT is BARELY keeping up with US trade and technology sanctions.
Ukraine wasn't a Russian Expansionist project, but rather a response to an American expansion. There was a coup in Ukraine in 2014 (You all have heard about it I know, stop rolling your eyes and spare me the rehearsed propaganda responses, thats not where I'm going with this)... Then there was an attempted coup in Belarus with the same kind of Euromaidan style protests just a few months ago. And then there was an attempted coup in Kazakhstan earlier this year. This with the US push for NATO, QUAD, AUCKUS etc against China makes this a COMBINED last ditch effort by the US regime to take out ANY remaining near peer competitors.
So in conclusion, I'd argue that the Russian response in Ukraine is more like the Soviet response in Poland. It is to keep an expanding imperialist block at a distance
If you disagree, I DARE you to suggest how communist nations will survive after US overthrow of Russia and encirclement/overthrow of China...
This is what gets me the most. The endless chauvinism and infantilizing from western "leftists" who think the global south is supporting objectionable leaders because we don't know they're not perfect, just to rebel against the US. Even have the gall to paint it as exceptionalism, like everything is about them secretly.
Easy to get on that high horse when you're not the one who's gonna see their country get choked tighter by imperialism if the US manages to implement their agenda.
Is Russia a communist nation
I wonder how you see a US "overthrow of China" playing out? I can't see that as going all too well for the US, a dying empire that has spread themselves way too thin and lost military conflict after military conflict
Holy shit.
It seems like I'll never stop to love this channel.
There are articles of people predicting the war in Ukraine dating to 2020. There are plenty economic reasons for both Russia's invasion and the west's interest in the region but I see so few talking about it. People are more interested in talking about Stalin or other controversial figures than trying to actually do materialism about the now. I think it's just a response at our impotence in the modern era where neoliberal propaganda has never been this easily spread. Where things are connected globally to the point where it's hard to focus locally, imo this is something we MLs need to learn from anarchists. They are dumb as doors on analysis but they get shit done locally. A lot of us are just to focused on book clubs and less on praxis maybe.
Yeah, thats what I dont get: why the super harsh pushback at criticism of NATO even from some leftists I otherwise respect. It doesnt mean Im any less appalled by Putin's action. I just happen to think the West's action made his actions easier to justify domestically. I dont see why we're not allowed to point out the obvious US role in at least stoking the war.
@@waltonsmith7210 euromaiden is also extremely important to understand the current conflict, we cannot take the Ukraine invasion out of its historical context. I wish we could have more conversations on stuff like that so a correct and deep analysis can be made and popularized to the mainstream.
@@waltonsmith7210 Because to point out NATOs actions in “stoking the war” as you say, implicitly gives credence to Russia’s completely unjustified actions. It is akin to pointing out the Treaty of Versailles and it’s effect on Germany after Hitlers invasion of Poland.
In fact I think a better argument could be made for the harsh conditions of the Treaty of Versailles causing Germany to invade their neighbors than eastern bloc nations joining NATO since the fall of the USSR being a contributing factor to the invasion of Ukraine.
But obviously to waste breath on either of these supposed causes of conflict implicitly gives merit to the fascist worldview. We should not repeat their propaganda for them.
It does nothing to enlighten the causes of the war and only damages the left politically because it only makes us look psychotic to liberals to repeat such things after one country brutally invades it’s neighbor. The true cause of the war in Ukraine is Russia is a fascist state run by a mad man. None of that is the fault of NATO
@@BobtheBlob7284 putin is not a mad man, his actions are very much logical given the geopolitical situation that Russia is in, and the narrative of irredentism his political movement is based on.
Who cares what fucking liberals think? They supported ppl who have much more blood in their hands than Putin
@@nikolamilicevic1040 Invading a country has severe repercussion, it is not worth doing so just because of an unfavorable regime change. What really set the war was Zelensky and the current government pushing to join NATO which was the limit that Russia could tolerate. Trying to find a diplomatic solution first and foremost is commendable, especially since Russians are seen as warmongering orcs in the west, invading then would have resulted in too many diplomatic hardships. Also, Russia had the time to prepare it's economy in case of an embargo, which as we can see has worked wonderfully.
As someone who gets called a tankie a lot, i appreciate the nuance of this discussion, at least the parts that weren't completely wrong like the clearest counterargument to your narrative around DuBois' "On Stalin" is the text of the thing.
YWNBAW
Reactionary traitor! Ted K should've gotten a bullet for his works and he's not even anprim, he's Neo-Luddite
Tankie
Transgender communist??? Wtf
@@Taschip like half the communists i know are genderqueer and almost all the trans people i know are communist
The Malcolm X quote is also very disingenuous. If you read the context, it is clear that he was just trying to agitate. He said right after that he wanted to join the Japanese during WWII, something NO COMMUNIST then or now would agree with. It's safe to say that Malcolm X didn't believe that either, but that probably means the communist part was just him trying to sound as unamerican as possible.
@@fun_ghoul what are on about, my point is that he didn't mean either of those things, he was just trying to agitate
@@fun_ghoul k bro😂
Yeah it definitely reads more like someone trying to be edgy and trigger racist white Americans at the time.
@BadMouse On Malcolm X, I think you are right to point out that to claim he was a ML, let alone a “Tankie” is quite disingenuous and lacks any basis. I will however note that in the last few years of his life Malcolm X did express sympathy with socialism, particularly after his travels abroad, and was associated with two different socialist groups in the US. One of the groups was the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), a Maoist inspired group he actually became a member of in 1964 (and was the only secular group he ever joined). He also had a very close relationship with the Socialist Workers Party, which was at that time the main Trotskyist organization in the US, and although he never joined the SWP he had a very close working relationship with them, speaking at many of their events, and even had their publishing arm, Pathfinder Books, publish and distribute many of his writings. But they should tell you something about his relationship to Socialism, as he allied himself with both Maoists and Trotskyists, both of whom shared his views on black liberation and anti-colonialism, or at least the views he held towards the end of his life.
He only began associating with RAM and the SWP in the final years of his life, after his Hajj and his break with the Nation of Islam, at a time when his views were undergoing a radical transformation (the whole early vs late Malcom). He noted that he learned a lot about Socialism from many African revolutionary leaders, like Nkrumah, Ben Bella and Nasser, And he said in a speech that he was not surprised that the countries of the Third World were turning to Socialism, but he also said (in that same speech) he didn’t know what kind of economic system he wanted. Later he was asked if he would support Socialism if it was beneficial to Black people, to which he replied, if it would benefit Black people, “then I am all for it”. But of course Malcolm X was assassinated not long after he began associating with socialist groups and opening up to socialist ideas. It’s not hard to imagine that has he not been gunned down, he might have become a socialist later on, After all he was openly associating with socialists, the new left was on the rise, and many other civil rights leaders k including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., A. Philip Randolph, Angela Davis and Bayard Rustin, were socialists of various persuasions, but we can only speculate on that. As for the Malcolm X. who did exist and was murdered in 1965, I think it’s fair to say that he definitely wasn’t a socialist, even if he had some increasing sympathies with socialist ideas, and he most certainly was not a Marxist and definitely not a Marxist Leninist. So you are absolutely right to call out that meme for being so disingenuous and frankly lying about the legacy of Malcolm X.
I’ll also point out a few of the other figures on there would definitely not see themselves in the same way they are presented in the meme. Angela Davis, while she was a member of the Communist Party USA for much of our life, and at one time she did defend the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia 1968, she has since recanted those views And today is part of an organization called the committees of correspondence for democracy and Socialism, which was the faction of the communist party USA that supported glasnost and perestroika, and broke away from the communist party after the fall of the USSR.
Che Guevara what is increasingly critical of the Soviet Union by the time of his death, was growing increasingly uncomfortable with the closeness between Fidels government and Moscow, believing that the Soviet Union was beginning to exercise a quasi imperialist influence in Cuba, and Oppose the Soviet Union’s hostility towards China and Yugoslavia.
Paul Robeson is Very similar to WEB Du Bois and his inclusion on this list, as Robeson was never remember the colors party, although he was associated with many leading members and broadly sympathetic too their activities, In particular anti-lynching activism. But you could also say he and DuBois were in fact “Tankies” in the most literal sense, as he did support the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. However to understand the reason why robes in particular was so sympathetic to the Soviet Union, you need only listen to his own testimony before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, Where he explicitly made the point that the reason he prays the Soviet Union is because over there he was treated like a human being, something he would never of been treated as in the American South.
Can you recommend any works that you found useful on the history of Afghanistan and Soviet involvement?
Keep up the great work!
It was mainly done through my chats with experts in the area who have contacts with current groups like the Communist Party, but no specific sources sorry. Them repressing the smaller groups however is just basic knowledge.
@@BadMouseProductions If those groups were smaller how would they have qualified as being a more popular force than the PDPA? I ask this in relative ignorance of the details of the civil war and pre-war politics
@@McHobotheBobo eh potato potahto, the PDPA were the group which had the larger power but it was largely a coup and not a popular revolution, which is evident in that these groups were repressed almost more so than the conservatives. Have a listen to the RLR Podcast on Afghanistan and the afghan guest talks about how there was more than just the PDPA and that they weren't particularly genuine communists.
@@BadMouseProductions interesting. A similar-ish situation occurred in Cuba, with the Cuban CP being much more conservative than other leftwing elements at the time and even initially opposed Fidel's revolution.
@@tokarev3094 Intriguing
Can you recommend some great sources on that, by any chance? I'm always up for learning more about "other communist groups" in Marxist-Leninist states, esp. more leftcom ones.
Though, China, weirdly enough, post-1949, seems to be almost "devoid" of libsocs. More or less
There may be a few here an there, but... they were never anywhere near as prevalent as, say, in the USSR, or perhaps even Vietnam, from what I recall (esp. outside, say, the Shanghai Commune during GPCR). They seem surprisingly "absent" from most of China, which maybe is... a 'cultural thing'? I think DPRK had a similar "wholly-ML trajectory" (w/, maybe, a few Trotskyite exceptions, esp. prior to full-on revolution)
Even the Chinese New Left is a "coalition", so to speak, of socdems, center-left libs and/or Maoists, at best. Weirdly enough, very-few libsocs, let alone ancoms.
Like, are there *Really* barely-any 'anti-authoritarian' socialists and communists within China, esp. at the height of Mao's power??
Then again, to be fair, maybe you could say that a lot of the folks who 'called-out' Mao and the CCP during Hundred Flowers were somewhat "leftcom"?
Those literally were fascist uprisings in Hungary, something Khrushchev actually did right
"You can't just oppose things because the side you don't like does it!"
-dudes opposing stuff just because it was the USSR that did it.
The Eastern Bloc was supposed to sit idly by as a fascist color revolution was conducting pogroms in one of the places that suffered the most under the Nazi occupation.
There were various groups, once again the Marxoid fails at analysis and understanding that nationalism is far more important than some abstract ideological movement.
The fact that anarchists/libs/etc use that example to denounce "tankies" is absolutely hysterical and sad.
A great explanation of the current discourse around this term. Honestly, I think the Russia-Ukraine war really showed just how directionless the left is at the moment. So many people fell into campist logic and are now just either rooting for Russia or NATO. The opposition to all imperialism still exists to some degree, but it's really become clear that many leftists don't know what to make of inter-imperialist warfare.
No war but class war. Seeing so many people supporting NATO expansion and then others supporting Putin is ridiculous. And the recent "patriotic socialist" shit blows my mind too.
@@toastlover12 NATO expansion protects us from this ruzzian imperialistic ambitions which as cruel as of an actual n@zis. The day when leftist tankies desired my nation to die in the name of eastern imperialism to stick up to the West is when I woke up to how left is pretty same as right after all. Ukrainian Nationalism is the only way, your "No war but class war." is just bs excuse of inaction, of you being wortless in global politics.
The WEB DuBois take on imperial Japan is way more complex than you made it seem, I suggest you read the work of Gerald Horne 'Race War! White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire'. You have to put it into context with the dominance of White supremacist ideology used to retroactively justify Western colonialism and imperialism.
WEB DuBois lived in an apartheid settler state which lynched innocent black people daily, the West exploited entire nations by direct slave labor, It is also one of the reasons why many communists in the colonies were offended when the USSR sided with the UK and other Western empires against Nazi Germany who had few colonies in comparison with the West.
It is important that our perspective on history is more nuanced and not eurocentric when attempting to understand the past.
@@fun_ghoul If the Japanese weren't as supremacist for their own racial group as the English are they probably would have held onto much of the territories they annex from Britain because then they would be liberators.
Being Imperialists they really couldn't help themselves but just be another colonial empire out to do atrocities.
@@fun_ghoul Sorry no. I meant saying the British were that bad that you would make a deal with a devil to get them out.
Plus the difference between liberation and becoming the new colonial ruler.
Gerald Horne has also defended the Russian invasion of Ukraine under the guise of "anti-NATO," so unsurprising you would recommend we read his work in order to defend Dubois' apologia for Japanese colonialism.
@@thevilmoron Such a great argument, you're really showing how intelligent you are
@@thevilmoron Your kind generally rattles on about "nuance" when it comes to defending Western historical figures, no? I find cases like this, or the Indian judge who dissented in the Tokyo Trials on somewhat similar grounds, to be far more "nuanced" than extoling the virtues of Thomas Jefferson or whoever
As an anarchist who organizes with every stripe of socialist/progressive/ whoever is pointed towards a better world etc.. In the real world there's only been one instance where ideology got in the way of the task at hand, in my personal experience, and it was liberals trying to hijack what we where doing and steer it towards some vague electoralism. (We where unified under the umbrella of the IWW, helping organize a boot factory)
at least around here if an event has been spearheaded by anarchists, one big unionists, radlibs, whatever, we're given respect to organize and operate in the fashion we find most useful, and vice versa. anything else is indulging in ego stroking that we dont have time for.
I like to think that I am above all a member of a community, but firstly an antifascist, secondly a socialist, and thirdly an anarcho-syndicalist.
So much historical context conveniently left out of the description of the reactionary and anti-semitic Hungarian Uprising. Hungarian Jewry was absolutely destroyed by the Nazi Collaborationist Arrow Cross Party, so much sio that the only feasible means of survival for Jewish Hungarians was to join the Communist Party. The Soviets Liberated Hungary only about a decade before the Uprising. After WW2 Communists were actually elected by the People to run the country, and immediately began rebuilding it along Egalitarian lines. They Redistributed the vast palaces of the Landed Gentry(who were very pro Arrow Cross mind you) turning them into parks and schools for all the people. This isnt even to get into the data around how much Material Conditions were raised by the Hungarian Communist Party. Also the minority of Hungarians didnt rebel against Soviet influence, whatever that means. They rebelled against so called "Jewish Bolshevism", because as I said before, alot of Jewish People became communists during the war because that was THE only place they could turn to due to how pervasive Anti Semitism was in the country(Thank the Hungarian Church for that one, they also colluded w the nazis btw). They were carrying out Pogroms against their own people and trying to reinstate Anti Semitism and Capitalism, no doubt with the help of the West. People really need to expound more about the Historical Conditions of Hungary before and after the war, because glossing over it makes the Uprising sound like some sort of anomaly where the restoration of Capitalism was a step in the right direction, instead of a reaction and push to return to Bourgeois domination of Society.
As someone whose grandather was called into action from his Budapest barracks in 1956, and as a native, not expat Hungarian, I am supremely disappointed that you spit on his munkásőr - worker guard - grave by following the revisionist history that was born in 1989. Hordes of thugs - some imported - fell on the city from all over the country and marked the doors of jews with white crosses and that of the communists with black ones before merrily stringing them up and hanging them from lamp-posts. This is the kind of "uprising", as in counterrevolution you are elevating to legitimacy, that good hungarians and our soviet friends put an end to. It was largely funded by rich expats - who were magnates before the revoluion - and shady church figures, like that absolute monster Mindszenty, and aggrevated by Radio Free Europe. It was in fact the first - luckily unsuccessful - attempt at color revolution. I would recommend informing yourself about a subject before engaging in commentary - take for example Herbert Aptheker's book, The Truth about Hungary written in 1957, rich with contemporary sources - but I am getting the increasing impression that you are not a principled marxist leninist interested in either reading or the truth. I enjoyed your journey years ago, and it is with sorrow that I say goodbye, having no idea where your road will land you. I hope, carefully, that it won't be becoming just another Western Baizuo Leftist. If you believe this claim you might as well believe the silly US version of the events on Tienanmen, and believe that tank man died. PS : Szabó - meaning tailor - is a very common family name in Hungary like Smith in England, so your music is attributed to about two million people.
I agree. Budapest in 1956 was not the same as Prague in 1968, despite how hard some try to make it. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you for this very important comment. Especially because you are a Hungarian communist. Your grandfather was a true hero of the working class and the communist movement.
Regardless if that’s true Khrushchev’s reasoning for sending in the tanks was vile to say the least
@@howenator shut up, chauvinist posturing as always. "Regardless of the facts" is idealist nonsense. This was literally stopping another fascist, genocidal coup in its cradle, was a single holocaust in Hungary not enough to convince you that Nazis should be kept from power by force if need be?
@@howenator Context matters. There was an extra-constitutional coup under way and mob violence. You could draw parallels between Budapest 1956, and the USA January 6, 2020.
I’m confused on why you chose to put Venezuela and Belarus as examples for “some states definitely get more of a pass than others”
@@fun_ghoul well, I'm Ukrainian, and I agree with conflaiting ruzzian and it's allies with asian dictatorship. You leftist sure love your eastern imperialism. Sad that I needed a war to see how rotten and hypocritical you are.
As a proud Tankie I love and appreciate this video. Putting historical figures in their proper context is incredibly important for all the good and bad that it entails.
You adopted the word for being a fascist and you're proud of that? At least you announce yourself before you attempt to destroy the left.
damn you didn't have to do gadaffi like that tho
Why are people so clingy about Gadaffi? Yes we get it he had great presence in revolutionary currents, that doesn't require the literal fandom he amasses from some.
@@BadMouseProductions he had sunglasses and a golden gun. also his book is cool
@@BadMouseProductions to be fair the man was dripped out
The thing that made me realise how vacuous the word "tankie" had become was when it was being applied to people like Amy Goodman, ironically because don't want to send tanks into Eastern Europe.
I’ve also seen Amy Goodman get called a CIA funded liberal
That is, because she believes the aggressive force of tanks currently threatening a sovereign nation should not be resisted by that nation, particularly noy with the aid of others. Obviously this is not a perspective she held with regard to Timor or Iraq etc, which is why she is a tankie (alas)
So do you think the word "fascist" is vacuous as well, just because some people misuse it? Because by that logic every word would be vacuous...
Amy Goodman acts like there was no tanks in Eastern Europe (Ukraine precisely) already. If you don't want tanks to fight those tanks so there would be no tanks at all and you're good with that there are tanks there grinding people to a bloody mess, than you're a... maybe not spiritually, but practically, a tankie. Sorry, Amy Goodman is a despicable human being.
Being a tankie is a form of hypocrisy, yes. You apologise for the amoral actions of some because you perceive them as allies, even though you would not do so if you perceived them as enemies.
I added this to watch later.
I don't like the word tankie that much just because it lacks a fixed definition among people who use it. It's a snarl word. And also easily gets taken up by the right to apply to anyone who's left of center or who doesn't take the state department's line. I'll have more to say once I watch the video
Yeah I agree with the video. There are dipshits who are on the left but calling them tankie this, tankie that is not particularly helpful.
Did u watch it?
This is a spotless video, man. A couple years on, it's still absolutely brilliant. You should be proud of this. It's an absolute banger.
the nuance guy who opposes all the regimes NATO opposes because NATO is the organisation espousing the most nuance
On a very unrelated note, I saw the name "Gabor Szabo" in the description and my heart was immediately filled with love. From that alone I knew I was in good hands when pressing the play button.
During the so-called "Hungarian Revolution" the women and children of Beloyiannis village, a village inhabited by partisans of the Democratic Army of Greece and named in honor of Greek Communist leader and War Hero Nikos Beloyiannis who was executed by the reactionary Monarchofascist post-civil-war Greek state, had to hide in the church basement in order not to be shot by roving gangs of Hungarian Fascists. Just see who supports and speaks fondly about the "heroes" of the Hungarian "Revolution", people like Bush Jr., and that should tell you what kind of "revolution" that was.
This is excellent. As an anarchist, I’d love to tell you that this is only a problem you guys have, but there’s something brewing on our side that doesn’t have a name yet. The idea that anarchists are all CIA stooges is laughable, but there is a disturbing ambivalence that a lot of us have towards global issues. It’s as if we can’t let ourselves agree with the “tankies” about the problem of imperialism, but we also can’t agree with the libs by believing US propaganda, so we just… don’t have a stance, as a whole.
in real world organizing this online kind of theoretical bickering really doesnt happen. No principled and practicing communist thinks every anarchist is a liberal but should have well reasoned arguments to disagree over.
Well no offence, anarchists in the west, follow the Chomskyite fence sitting gate keeping line.
You're right, not all western anarchists are CIA puppets, BUT it sure is very useful for the CIA to promote anarchism precisely because its a political dead end and extolls the purity obsession.
Besides alot of "anarchists" are really just edgy libs who think the label is "radical".
@@hansfrankfurter2903 nah see this is the sort of criticism that I don’t find reasonable. Fence sitting would be to say that for example, China and the US are both sorta bad and sorta good. The anarchist perspective is that both are bad for basically the same reasons. We apply a consistent logic to both cases.
I haven’t seen any evidence that the CIA promotes anarchism. This is a conspiracy theory.
I kind of agree with the radlib thing though, that’s something we need to work harder on.
@@AnarchoPurp I guess who is the “we” here? I’ve met tons of anarchists who fit that description, and the most prominent one in the world Chomsky is famous for his purity fetichism and “all sides are bad, im so pure” dead end gate keeping. I can point to alot of other prominent figures, like the the late Graeber who had strange ideas against organization or struggle and advocating some kind of spontaneous change in consciousness. And so on…
Micheal Albert the inventor of Parecon , gave up on the words “socialism” and “working class” ..etc because he’s so embarrassed by its association with the USSR that it will be dismissed.
One of the biggest anarchist channels online, like anarchopac, is a pacifist who advocates leaving politics and just promoting “an anarchist lifestyle “ .
Zerzan is a primitivist so cmon now
So to the evidence, the evidence is that it’s useful to them, because it promotes purity obsession and implicit imperialism. Look at “anarchists” beau of the fifth column or Vaush , they’re basically towing the line now. Besides anarchism by its very nature lacks cohesive leadership and therefore doesn’t threaten to current PTB. If i was the gov, id promote anarchism, because its going no where.
@@hansfrankfurter2903 I mean I think you’re mischaracterizing most of these people so I’m tempted to go through them one by one, but more importantly, you know that’s not evidence right? Saying it would hypothetically be useful to the government (which you haven’t even fully established) isn’t evidence that the government is actively using it.
You deserve more views
Do you though?
@@Marttiini9812 oops
Whenever someone calls me a tankie, I tell them that I'm not since I don't support the crushing of uprisings in the socialist countries of eastern europe with military force. That I in fact agree with many of the things the people during these uprisings wanted to achieve - they would have been beneficial to socialism, as it was often intended by their leaders who often were socialists themselves (see Prague Spring f.e.).
My hope in using this reasoning is to nudge the other person into researching the topic further on their own.
War der "17. Juli 1953" auch nur ein Volks- bzw. sogar sozialistischer Aufstand in der DDR und da wäre nicht Abriss der DDR herausgekommen?
so...youre not a tankie. people who uncritically worship the USSR and authoritarian repression are.
@@LiterarischeAktion was verleitet dich zu denken das system demokratischer zu machen und den arbeitern zuzuhören hätte zum "Abriss der DDR" geführt?
@@pissfather6798 lol
@@pissfather6798 Der Deutschlandlied-singende Pöbel ist ja bekannt dafür, dass es ihm nur um "mehr Demokratie" geht. Du hältst bestimmt nationalistische Demagogie in Form von AfD, Pegida und co für ein modernes Phänomen. ;) Aber da wo es gegen dein wahnhaftes Feindbild namens aUtOrItÄrEr SoZiALiSmUs geht, da wird jedes verblödete Begehren des meckernden (und mordenden) Michels plötzlich total based. :----D
It really means nothing. Especially when used by non-communists.
I am glad you decided to come back to youtube
Tankie = Not a Trot.
Except when actual Trots get called tankies. At least liberals do it.
Tbh people who use the word tankie have 90% of the time haven’t read any theory. I’m sure if they did they call Lenin a tankie. The only appropriate response is to call them a dronie.
Sounds like tankie talk to me 🤨
@@chilldude30 cmon man, listen to yourself, is this how you express disagreement? You're only discrediting yourself.
@@dexorne9753 I think he is trolling
Wait, I'm confused. You say at the end that this kind of stuff tends to pop up more in some ideologies than others. I'm scratching my head trying to think of an ideological camp where this pops up less than the average?
Am I a tankie if I robbed a sperm bank?
Dad is that you?
Damn your videos are so good. Can't imagine how long this probably took to make. I'm subscribing.
i think it's important in the follow-up to get more at what you mention in the conclusion, how this kind of thinking can manifest in other political groups, especially online. while it's definitely a real thing that's important to discuss, i still think dedicating the majority of the runtime to calling out MLs specifically unwittingly feeds into the exact cycles of discourse you're trying to avoid, these imagined bouts of point-scoring between what amounts to online cliques dominated more by aesthetics than anything else. i def don't agree that it's more prevalent with any specific group of people, while it may be more stark and obvious with twitter randos defending stalin you can find the core thinking anywhere really
beyond that, enjoyed the vid a lot, s/o :)
so what's bad about gaddafi in particular? based on the things I know about him he nationalized a lot of libya's industry and gave back to the people significantly.
He was partly responsible for Thomas Sankara's death, he helped with the creation of Islamist groups, and he repressed the culture of non-arab Libyans under the name of Pan-Arabism. That last one especially is interesting because it kind of de-colonizes a lot of western perspectives on the region, many minorities in the MENA consider Arabs to be 'the white people of the Middle East'.
He may have been good for the average Libyan and if you were a revolutionary group he probably gave you funding if you said Fuck the West, but he's not some savior dude.
He was a winner not a loser that's why these people don't like him.
@@BadMouseProductions "He was partly responsible for Thomas Sankara's death, he helped with the creation of Islamist groups, and he repressed the culture of non-arab Libyans under the name of Pan-Arabism."
Do you have primary sources for this? The last one is especially suspect, since the blacks in the South of Libya supported Ghaddafi in 2011, and were punished heavily for it by the Islamist rebels. Didn't Ghaddafi also become very Pan-Africanist towards the last few decades of his rule?
Specifically on the funding Islamic groups, if true. There's 2 things I want to say, the first is that given the culture of the region, you have to play ball with Islam to a certain extent. All the secular regimes of the region knew and understood this. Secondly, it depends on what groups he funded and for what reason. Many Palestinian groups are Islamic for example, but funding them to fight Israeli colonialism is justifiable imo, esp insofar as, secularism isn't entrenched there. As I understood Ghaddafi's Libya it was a kind of Islamic socialism, he never claimed to be an atheist or a staunch secularist. This makes sense, considering the deeply tribal conservative nature of Libya, which is very different from neighboring Egypt for example.
If you want to see that as "excuses", knock yourself out, but reality is a harsh mistress.
"That last one especially is interesting because it kind of de-colonizes a lot of western perspectives on the region, many minorities in the MENA consider Arabs to be 'the white people of the Middle East'."
Well I'm from the region. There is some tiny grain of truth to this, but Arab is not a race or an ethnicity (unless you go to the Arabian peninsula) . Its a culture/language. So the conflict between Berbers and Arabs in North Africa, isn't white ppl vs black ppl, its two cultures within the same exact people. Arabs in NA are ethnically 90% Berber. The other supposed conflicts, like the Assyrians are based mostly on religious dividers , but the same dynamic is there. Meaning Assyrians aren't much different than the Arab Iraqis living around them, same goes for other minorities like Jews, Mandaens..etc . Same dynamic between Copts and Muslims in Egypt, exactly same ppl, different religions. So these are mostly religious/cultural disputes rather than racial disputes.
Kurds are an identifiable national/ethnic group that does have real grievances though. But there's plenty of nuance missing. They're not just beefing with Arabs but with Turks and Iranians. Most of Kurdistan is actually in Turkey.
Finally, Turks, and Iranians do just as much "cultural imperialism" as the Arabs do , trying to Turkify minorities in Turkey or Iranize minorities in Iran. Or playing games of Pan-Iranism or Pan-Turanism. And even the western favorites the Kurds are not guiltless here, there's been many reports about forced Kurdification in Iraqi Kurdistan and North Syria, against not just Arabs but even other minorities like Assyrians/Turkomen. This happened even under the "anarchist" YPG-PYD.
"were a revolutionary group he probably gave you funding if you said Fuck the West"
Can you blame him? Look at what the west had done in Africa, and specifically North Africa. Heck look at Libya after your beloved west came to save it from the evil colonel! Slave markets galore and an utterly destroyed country...Enjoy!
I'm a South Asian American raised in the Middle East and you are the first person I've heard say Arabs are 'the white people of the Middle East'. It's so true tbh when you see the repeated patterns of supremacist structures. I will add that, no matter how supreme an Arab supremacist structure may seem in the MENA region, pretty much all of them answer to a white capitalist superpower (GCC governments such as UAE and KSA that are lapdogs of the US/Britain are perfect examples). The UAE Dirham is even pegged to the US Dollar lol. @@BadMouseProductions
I'm so happy you are making videos again, great analysis
Mightily underrated
Great video! Glad to see you're still in it, hope to see more!
thanks for using Gabor Szabo's music in your video, he is where I got my last name from
edit: great video, more nuanced than expected! I agree, MLs aren't inherently tankies and using the word needs a stronger basis for the claim! Similarly to the vague use of fascism except that's usually because of fascists moving the goal post
It's incredible to me that Churchill is viewed positively by anybody. British moment
so proud of my country for being the reason the word tankie was created
The communists needed a new label to cope with the contradictions inherent in their ideology.
@@herptek capitalists need to cope with the fact your "Free market" crashing every couple years Leads to death,unemployment,Suicide,
@@herptekThat's not a contradiction inherent in their ideology, it's just a sad part of human nature.
I mean Malcolm X defended the people of china and Mao openly so...
"If I had understood the situation a bit better I would've joined the Anarchists" - Orwell.
Therefore Orwell is an Anarchist right?
As much as saying Chomsky is an Anarchist.
@@BadMouseProductions i enjoyed the video dont get me wrong it was very well made it just didnt quite make sense.. the meme implied that the people within it were defending Marxist Leninist Leaders or Marxist Leninist ideals things that would be considered "tankie" behavior today... Mandela also defended the USSR Etc. so Yea within that context being pushed by the western press to denounce the USSR he didn't. Same with Malcolm X the point of the meme isint that these were ideological pure MLs or something it was that they defended Socialist leaders and states and legitimized them.
@@BadMouseProductions many anarchists I've talked to DO see Orwell as an Anarcho communist / anarchist. Chomsky is a leftist not an anarchist this point isint very coherent
I’m tankie and PROUD. Red Pride.
if you're a tankie, sorry to tell you, but you arent a leftist, you are a fascist, beacuse you defend commies *no-matter what*, exactly what fascists do
Sorry chum, you took a wrong turn just now, the wall is to your left. Get moving.
@@scruffopone3989 I'm a takie till i di-*BANG*
Wow, who's the larpers here, LOL, what's next, the helicopter? Because genocide is funny as long as it's on leftists, nevermind, people like yall usually support all kinds of genocide either way.
@@chilldude30 you guys don't see the irony in what you just typed...?
"Put on the thigh-highs of rage!"
The battle-cry of your average tankie.
After familiarising myself with Badmouse's fairly decent analysis I have decided there's a really weird blindspot:
What's with the cynicism towards political organisations? They're pointless all of a sudden? What, all of them, everywhere? How does anybody arrive at this conclusion? It's certainly not by evaluating each one, as nobody has the time or resources to accomplish that. So does that mean they're all just naturally doomed to fail and we can judge them all in one sweep?
Clearly that isn't the case either, as the historical record proves they can achieve good things. Or is that the problem? Current organisations can't achieve as much as the old ones?
Because that would be odd, to expect 21st century organisations to win victories in a world where their politics have been completely obliterated from the public sphere.
Even more odd is the implication that people shouldn't even try - most parties start off as completely impotent and irrelevant, yet they can still change the course of history further down the line.
This is part of a trend I see a lot of online - non-activists looking down their nose on people who have the same ideas, same beliefs...but who also do work outside of twitter.
If you've given up on political organisation, you're one promotion away from becoming a liberal again. You have essentially given up on socialism, because it absolutely will not be handed out to you as a prize for "being correct on-line". Doesn't matter if you're right or wrong at this point, in 20 years you might well be saying 'I told you so'..but you won't be happy.
how generous of you only one promotion away? I'd say he's been there for a while.
Thanks this helps.
I see people like luna ol getting called tankies in internal wikipedia dialogs and I know for a fact she doesn't agree.
Are there self-described 'tankies'?
Or is it one of those labels you only ever hear from detractors?
Tankie is an anti communist perjorative. It's usualled tossed around by white westerners who don't have a principled understanding of proleterian history. MLs and MLMs call themselves tankies as a term of endearment.
Only detractors. Some people have adopted it as a kind of F U.
@@Shermos or LaRouche-stanning weirdoes like Maupin
I'm struggling to understand what you are saying here? AES are far better than the USA, obviously you need to be critical and call out their mistakes but the wider conversation on social media is so saturated with pro-west anti-AES talking points that I can't fault people who just focus on the positives of AES. The fact that people even bring up the crimes of some AES as a direct comparison to the overwhelming crimes of the imperial core seems blatantly dishonest and chauvinistic.
It is if you're saying that to liberals, but if you're a Socialist you should be aspiring to something higher than what was effectively a social democracy.
You can highlight hypocrisy whilst stating that the other side is not worth defending either.
I often joke that a tankie is a person who supports bush senior sending tanks to crush the LA riots
your editing style is amazing!
i always thought tankie was just a derogative term for stalinist, but i'm surprised that its actually used that vaguely.
@@fun_ghoul a person that supports Stalin and his governing methods and so think that his method is the best to achieve communism or just prefer his socialist system ? I don't understand what you're trying to point out ?
Right now tankie has been coopted by basically a large group of twitch/reddit pedophiles who like to call people tankies when they say America shouldn't bomb the shit out of Afghanistan or help kill children in Yemen.
Basically vaush the big progenitor of the terms usage as a vague insult is clearly a pedohile.
There's a shit load of evidence and he even admitted to viewing child porn.
He's a "leftist" liberal straight up who says shit like south African communists are Nazis because they wanted to remove colonial power.
If you ever watch a leftist on twitch watch out for there stance on vaush.
Some like Hasan who don't really interact with him are okay.
But the people who legit go on his stream all the time and don't even bat an eye on his clear pedophilic tendencies are sus as hell and most likely grifters.
If there willing to overlook pedohilia how sincere are they.
Idk vaush is probably in my opinion one of the true villains if the internet he's gets away with this shit purely because people want to watch him and call themselves leftists while not hearing about child rape done by prison guards in the American military.
If someone is willing to look pasts someones pedohilia without confronting it at all there a pedohile in my book.
@@xale3658B the CIA has released docs showing Stalin wasn't the dictatorship he's come to be known as, there was collective leadership. It was just advantageous for the US strategically to let the public believe that.
@@bigbillhaywood1415 it was but there's a twist , corruption, that's how stalin could just rule the soviet union with an iron fist even tho the leadership was collective
@@bigbillhaywood1415 not that i'am anti-soviet, i actually respect Stalin for a lot of things but I hate him for a lot of things too, he is a controversial communist leader and there's a lot to uncover from him and I'm trying to gather only the information that at least make sense