This is my experience as well. It's also laughable that they call themselves communists and love China and Russia. Those people aren't communists, they are authoritarians.
That's why I too am not a believer in horseshoe theory and actually agree that communism hasn't been practiced properly before. A peaceful emancipation of the common person is still unpracticed. If this is all tankies said, I'd be fine with it. But they say communism has never been practiced before along side arguments that the Soviet Union and China are communist. They are parroting real modern communists without understanding them and mixing in their revisionist history to create a paradox they don't seem too concerned about.
I think it's more about rebelling against their Reagan loving, USSR hating dads than sound political theory.
Communism if done properly is Stateless insofar as it means there is no Class, and therefore no aparatus like the Police that uphold the dominance of one class over another.
Communism was always, in Marxist tradition, meant to have a democratically accountable world republic.
You may or may not be referring to Anarcho-Communism, which rejects both the transitional state of Socialism and prefers more decentralized networks of Mutual Aid.
It's fine to be an Anarcho-Communist, but I think it's silly to claim that Marxism isn't also "Communism done properly." Communism done better can be argued, but both should be seen as proper.
The previous comments were specifically talking about communist "regimes," and I clarified what I thought they meant to say. You shifted the framing to be pedantic, unless you genuinely count hippy communes as communist regimes.
Well if that's what you meant, then no shit a "regime" is authoritarian -- that's basically true by definition. But that just means your comment was tautological and vacuous, so what was your point?
A truly communist "regime" is not something that should ever exist as communism is a stateless philosophy thus inherently not authoritarian by its very nature.
It's the bit in between capitalism and communism that historically has been coopted by bad actors to create authoritarian regimes, these regimes tend to still call themselves communist because "lol fuck your revolution I'm in charge now" doesn't have the same PR value.
Communism is authoritarian because it puts the needs of a social construct (a "commune" or "society") over the needs, rights and freedoms of an individual. It doesn't matter how you want to paint it, it's always authoritarian.