no rules

Should I work with Marxist-Leninists?

If you're organising at work or around housing issues, the people you work with are not going to all have the same politics at you, and your opinions on the July 1918 uprising of Left Socialist Revolutionaries after their expulsion from the Bolshevik government are not relevant to that situation. Yes, really, no-one gives a shit. You're relating to each other as workers in that situation, not as representatives of a political niche, at least we hope not.

[...]

If there are real political and organisational disagreements, it's better to be open about them than gloss over them, and retain some independence.

tankie colloquially refers to communists who deluded themselves into thinking authoritarianism can breed anything other than opression and that to give power to the people, you first got to take it away from the people.

its not impossible to work with tankies on low stake joined causes but with their usually hierarchical and authoritarian organising structures (that they even try to spread) they still make for shitty partners.

their idelology is misguided and harmful. i hope they all eventually learn and become anarchists. power to the people
- tankie colloquially refers to communists who deluded themselves into thinking authoritarianism can breed anything other than opression and that to give power to the people, you first got to take it away from the people.
  
  That is probably the most on point description.
Tankies are fascists. You can argue all you want for pro-lgbt and anti-racist action. Community actions. This is individuals.

What rises through the ranks is fascists. And they want those fascists. Because fascists promise an utopia at the end.

And this is who fascists elect.
A former roommate of mine had a hysterical emotional breakdown, and spent the following 2 months convincing everyone we both knew that I was mentally unstable to the point of needing to be institutionalized...

... because I laughed in his face when he described Hu Jintao being very publically arrested at a mass televised CCP conference... as 'being put into witness protection due to a threat on his life'.

...

You see, the problem with Tankies is that they're astoundingly insecure, extremely manipulative, and fully believe in any means justifying their ends.

Tankie roommates: Not even once.
- While I do genuinely feel sorry that this roommate of yours behaved in such awful and shitty way, my point was about the larger communities as a whole. Especially now that there are openly fascist people in power in the US and in a lot of other countries, I believe it's even more important to be united. Or at least, as I quoted before, know where the differences lie.
  
  That doesn't mean being supportive of wrong behaviors and/or people of course. Being critical of wrongdoing is an essential skill. But in my opinion one can't be as critical when generalizing about such large groups

Ugh this type of bullshit infighting within leftist spaces is about as serious as debating your tabletop RPG actions, and sends regular people packing. None of this shit matters. Real people don't care about it and they have no idea what a tankie is. Feds love this bullshit. We're losing, we lost, the world is becoming a fascist hellscape but apparently somebody has time to make memes about fighting each other. It's amazing how that always seems to happen, especially now when you'd think most people could feel unified?

disagree i think it’s

a) fun

b) helpful to be aware of the stakes at play. authoritarianism has hurt many people and it does no justice to be quiet about that.

c) something that doesn’t even happen that often anyway so like idc
apparently somebody has time to make memes

A) to be fair, memes are the principal monetization strategy of the internet

B) there is a factory somewhere that is mass producing injection-molded fake dog shit out of plastic and this post is the thing that gets your hackles up about an ineffectual expenditure of time, thought and human capital?
- Thanks a lot, now I'm just thinking about the fake dog shit factory.
Tankies and their instances promoted Trump and apologized for Putin and Xi.

They are the enemy of the left.
Calling tankies leftist is a stretch
- Calling them something else is a stretch, all but their geopolitical beliefs are leftist
To fix everything people gotta stop being tribalist idiots. Lol!! Maybe try to get murdoch and Koch the memo
yknow what feds love? hierarchical organisations, where they just gotta assassinate or compromise the leader to make it fall appart or coopt the entire organisation.

but real talk discussions like this are valuable for voicing real criticism against harmful "leftist" ideologies and through that developing our own views more wholistically. and this is important. you cant only criticise fascists, neo-liberals, and fudalists, or you might miss out on the underlying criticisms and will reproduce their flaws because of that. and while tankies might be able to do similar work as anarchists in the here and now, they are still flawed and this will only get worse, the more power they get. this discussion is important to any real person, who because of it wont fall for the lie of authoritarianism or might even escape it.

and this world is turning fascist but tankies are cheering on half of them. you know what sends regular people packing? support for china, the soviet union, and north korea. authoritarianism takes the credibility away from libratory struggles.

also its just good to vent frustrations sonetimes...

No gods no masters.

kein Gott, kein Staat, kein Patriarchat
No managers.
no masters

dont forget except putin, and xi and Stalin, lenin and mao zedong and assad, read theory shitlib

yes i lick boots, how can you tell? (god i want to be assrammed so badly by assad, something something lesser evil 🤤)
- Surely this boot is worth licking!

Most communists/socialists arent tankies (even if .ml tries really hard to convince everyone otherwise) but identify with hammer and sickle too :(

But fk tankies, I'm with you on that

i agree. i hope anti-authoritarians dont feel targeted. i personally would not call myself a communist or use hammer and sickle, because they are too charged but they can definitely represent things i can stand behind.
- Just tag anyone getting upset in the comments. I've already seen 2 people I've previously tagged as tankies.
- I kinda do, that's why I wrote, but no hard feelings :)

I don’t agree with the vision of an authoritarian state, even as a step towards something else, but my tankie friends, for example those in PSL, are doing a ton of good on the ground by organizing and funding busses to prison for the families of prisoners, helping support tenant unions, providing support for immigrants in the form of legal representation, continuously organizing against police injustices (especially in cases involving disabled, black, or queer people), and other issues that might arise in their locale. I respect the people continuously putting themselves and their resources on the line for others. I would be much quicker to lend disrespect to those that only talk and do nothing.

Are they doing this to support the organization of a politburo and a direct line of authority from a single charismatic leader at the top? Do they make apoligistic statements for human injustices and advocate for the expansion of borders through war?

Otherwise they're just communists doing rad communist shit and you should labor to help them organize and shoulder their burdens.

I think there is a general misconception of communists especially here in the US and it's been a problem in leftist circles for a while.
Those people dont sound like tankies.

Tankies are authoritarian, and unions are the opposite of that.
- PSL is marxist-leninist in ideology and doing all the activities I described. Perhaps way in the future I will have to fight with them, but for now we align on many issues and work side by side. Don’t allow propaganda to paint too broad of strokes.
- What lmao? The people who you call tankies are aggressively pro union. Find me a "tankie" site that thinks otherwise.
  
  And you would call the PSL tankies. Here's a Wikipedia excerpt from their page:
  
  International affairs
  
  PSL calls for a 90% cut to the military budget of the United States, the closure of all overseas military bases, and a halt of US aid to Israel.
  
  PSL supports the Worker's Party of North Korea. PSL describes North Korea as a "communist government" and North Korea as "one of the few top-to-bottom, actually-existing, alternatives to the global capitalist system". PSL has defended North Korea's human rights record against criticism by the United Nations, which it calls "thinly veiled justification for U.S. aggression toward North Korea", and argues that "conditions in North Korea are vastly better than those in other developing countries". PSL supports North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
  
  PSL supports the Communist Party of China, criticizing only Chinese economic reforms into a "market socialist economy". PSL argues that "militant political defense of the Chinese government" is necessary to stave off "counterrevolution, imperialist intervention and dismemberment". PSL defends China's human rights record, and strongly denies that the People's Liberation Army massacred peaceful student protestors in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. PSL denies that China has suppressed democracy in Hong Kong. PSL has praised the 1950–1951 annexation of Tibet and defended the status of Human Rights in Tibet under the administration of China, claiming that "progress made [since the annexation] has revolutionized life for Tibetans."
  
  PSL supported the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea. PSL did not support the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but blamed the invasion on NATO and the United States. In its statement on "Russia's military intervention", PSL highlighted the "plight of ethnic Russians [...] in the Donbas", Russia's "legitimate security concerns", and NATO's "provocative behavior".
  
  PSL opposes US intervention in the Syrian Civil War, and has generally been supportive of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Russian military efforts in Syria. PSL denies that the Syrian government used chemical weapons.
- Oh no, someone fell for tankie memes rather than talking to a tankie and learning what their deal is.
Your friends are assholes, and not leftist. Your friends want me dead for being an anarchist. Your friends love Russia stealing land and children from Ukraine. Your friends deny any genocide not committed by a western country. Fuck all tankies, especially your friends :3

"provides support for immigrants" as long as they're not Uyghur, those guys are all terrorists and need to be reprogrammed am I right?

"organize against police injustices" as long as it's not The People's Police, they serve the people and can do no wrong

Your tankie "friends" are shit people and shit friends, you shouldn't associate with them. Again, they want you and everyone else who doesn't lick their boots dead
- Already replied to you in the other comment. I think you have some issues to work out with your own comrades if you are politically involved at all irl, which I suspect you aren’t just based on these two responses.

I love my anarchist comrades and I love my communist comrades. I hate seeing memes like this. May we all be lucky enough to argue in the midst of a real revolution. Until then, focus on the fucking fascists.

Unity above all else. Absolutely. However Tankie rhetoric in good faith or from an agent provocateur is something that needs to be addressed directly. Any power structure without egalitarian praxis is antithetical to the movement. Communism and Anarchism are very similar to the point where there are anarcho communists.

I want to make sure that there is space for us to figure out self governance immediately after the revolution. I don't want to rely on a nascent "interim" government to hand it down to me.

https://viewpointmag.com/2018/06/11/intercommunalism-the-late-theorizations-of-huey-p-newton-chief-theoretician-of-the-black-panther-party/#f+9945+1+6
- Anarcho communism just makes sense. If communism is a moneyless, classless, stateless society, is it not by default anarchist as well?
  
  And I’m not referring to any of the so called “communist” countries because they’re all variations of socialist and not communist. They all have a state.
- I'm someone with a leg in both tendencies, as it were. I purposely avoid getting too into the theory weeds, in favor of interacting with actual people. I see the word "tankie" used veeerrryyy liberally lately, and it feels like it doesn't signify very much. Respectfully, thinking about "immediately after the revolution" is getting way ahead of yourself, at least in relation to who you work with today.
- we dont need power to the people after some magical revolution somewhere in the future. we need to prefigure non-hierarchical structures in the here and now, and while even building the capacity for violent insurrection.
  
  i dont trust a revolutionairy army, that is build on authoritairian principles, to give power away to a newly forming anarchist society, once in power. if all that people know is hierarchy, thats the structures they will tend to recreate.
  
  looking at real revolutionairy movements, it appears to me that they either turn anarchist during the prolonged struggle or forever stay authoritairian despite their best efforts.
- The thing is historically leftists ally with anarchists until they get power and then they execute the anarchists. They want unity as long as it's convenient for their agenda, but that's true of any philosophy that encourages power structures of any kind.

if they'll help hold a barricade idgaf

And how did that turn out in Spain?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Days

But I agree to an extent, tankies are not our biggest problem rn. Utilitarian alliances are fine. But never forget that they are not fighting for freedom
Historically they'll make you hold it and shoot you in the back, possibly before it's even over.
ive been in action with tankies and they were a pain in the butt, making decisions that affect all of us hierarchically and not sharing info, just expecting us to do whatevever their leaders decide

better than nothing maybe but i wish they were cooler

Authoritarians of all kinds fuck off!

Yep just keep punching left 😮‍💨

"First they came for the **socialists**, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

—Martin Niemöller

Source

isn't it ironic how the quote you cited is exactly what happens every single time MLs take power? you're only antifascists until it's time to criticize red fascism
Tankies. Not leftists. Tankies specifically.
- Isn't tankie just a pejorative for socialist?

I'm deep left libertarian, borderline anarchist, but if I have to make a choice between auths- tankies or Nazis- I'll take tankies every time.

What if I told you that's a false dichotomy and not a choice you will ever have to make?
- Then you will have told me that.
  
  But real talk, it's looking more and more like some kind of auth future may be inevitable. I hope not.
Socially left, economically right. Generally.
- I think my economic stance can be broadly summarized as: "I believe that free markets generally work well where they actually exist."
  
  That is, things like Healthcare aren't actually free markets, and treating them as free markets despite the inherently coercive nature of needing them in order to not die is still coercion. It doesn't taste better just because someone is making a profit.

The meme is well designed, love the chaos star especially and love to see more balaclava girlies. And I can sympathize as I've certainly encountered very bizarre takes by terminally online internet leftists in favor of weird shit like being in favor of the Ukraine invasion or thinking the DPRK is some secret paradise.

However, by and large I've gotten to the point where anytime I hear the term 'tankie' thrown around it feels thought terminating. I've been called a tankie for being opposed to the US invading North Korea, or for supporting indigenous land return. But here's a bigger problem I've encountered: I volunteer every week at a local free store run by anarchists and I also have done organizing work with local ML parties. Anytime the local MLs want to get involved in the free store, or collaborating on any mutual aid projects the Anarchists have going on its cold shoulders all around "Oh no, those people are Tankies. We can't trust them." It's gotten to the point where everything is separate and there's no talking to each other. One time a Communist party member mentioned they knew someone who could do free glasses repair and thought it would be good for them to come to the free store, and when I brought it up folks just didn't wanna hear it or criticized "the company I keep" as if that would taint them. It's just disheartening because all these MLs locally are almost all LGBTQ, poor/working class, disabled, etc. Just like the Anarchists and want a lot of the same things. I really think anti-communist propaganda has created such an unnecessary divide in our organizing. I'm not asking folks to all just get along and agree, I want different orgs to have their autonomy and own ways of thought. I would just want people to focus their ire on people who ACTUALLY make life shit for us, especially here in the west, which is our own capitalist state and the capitalist class.

Thank you for indulging me by reading my long silly comment.

Peace, Justice, and Anarchy >:3

Digging the anti-corporate vibes of a Games Workshop Chaos Star.

I'm tired of this red scare bs. It belongs in history books, not on the internet.

this has nothing to do with red scare. tankies suck and its not because capitalist states say so
- Can you define what a “tankie” is? It absolutely is red scare bs. No one calls themselves that.
- Also, tankies simply aren't communists.
  
  Liberals not being able to tell the difference (E: or tankies in denial) doesn't make this anti communist.

All my homies agree, I really look good in black, fool.

i deffo hate some tankies, in the same way that i deffo hate some vegetarian/vegans when they actively chase people away for seemingly no reason. sometimes though i do feel like i see more blind hate for entire communities than actual worthwhile discussion.

i guess the problem could really just come down to your definition of “tankie”. to some folks it’s a very specific kind of obvious troll, and to others it’s just anyone on an .ml instance.

and not to turn it into a “lesser evil” discussion, but between .world and .ml, i definitely know which which meme community i’m hanging out in. i’ve yet to have a single bad interaction with anyone in .ml communities, but i also don’t talk politics in fucken marxist/leninist spaces either. YMMV hahahah

Not all ml-ers are tankies, but most of them are, and all it takes is most of them.
- fair! but i do worry the term is at risk of being overused to the point of no longer having a cohesive meaning.

I remember a time when tankies were just the militant leftists that would literally and physically punch nazis. That was pretty much the only qualification required, anarchist or communist: if you were willing to do violence on a nazi you were the tankie and it didn't require some stance on NATO geopolitics.

ig the word changed meaning then :3
- Absolutely co-opted, yeah.
It never meant this. It was a slur against authoritarian "socialists" to start with
- I just remember that's what we called the de-facto bouncers at the bar I used to frequent. Whom I witnessed remove a few nazis. (The bar was not too far from the greyhound station that supplied a frequent supply of tan jumpsuits.) But this was right after Occupy Wall Street, so ancient history.

What is the symbol in the back, behind the person?

It looks like an stylized star of chaos

Edit: Not the warhammer thing, never played it. Its from the writings of Michael Moorock who is an anarchist.
- Nah, that's literally the GW version lol
- Thank you, that seems like the most helpful answer, I'm excited to read about it when I get a moment!
  
  Hope you have a lovely day friend :)
Looks like the warhammer 40k chaos star
- lmao i had no idea. i hope its not some cringe shit
It's the hammer and sicklebehind the no symbol.
- I meant in the center. Another person replied with a potential answer
- No the othef one

While not an anarchist, i approve this message.

I d l t n a t a p w t t a n h . S y a , a I t o o n a h ?

what? X3