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This is probably the best explanation I've seen of the word "tankie". The comparison with "woke" is especially apt imo.
(hexbear.net)
EDIT: @Awoo is awesome :fidel-salute:
Someone pointed out that the deprogram boys might've beaten me to it by like 3 days. It's apparently in their video on it, I watched it but must have not paid attention as I couldn't find the specific part, but worth noting.
Anyway I'm convinced this is the strongest way to push back against it.
Every time someone says "red fash" I ask them this and it pretty much exposes that it's anti-communism and that there is no form of marxist they support.
Do you include Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Vietnam, Laos, Nepal, the Kerala district of India, or more complicated places like Angola, Nicaragua etc in that? Is there a type of “red” (marxist) that you don’t call a fascist? (serious question)
One time I did this with a supposed socialist and he said Cuba didn't count as tankie since they're monoethnic (they aren't). Apparently this person was under the impression socialism is good when it's one ethnicity per society, which doesn't even describe Cuba though. He proceeded to talk about how "tankie countries" are defined by ethnic oppression, examples being Russians oppressing Hungarians or China oppressing the Taiwanese.
I only have an example of one, but I have to believe this is a common ideological underpinning for a lot of confused western leftists
That's just balkanisation propaganda manifesting itself in this person's racial obsessions and fusing into a special kind of brainworms.
Engaging with these people is about performing for the audience, they are not moveable but audiences are. Everything should be about exposing them so that the point that they are just like the people obsessed with "woke" sinks in. Many of them are secretly the same people too.
I always ask them how was Taiwan founded, gets flustered immediately :big-honk:
There’s a lot of truly bizarre opinion on nationalism and ethnicity when it comes to “tankie” and “red fash” discourse. Some streaming had a whole filled diaper moment talking about how anti-imperialist movements in Africa are ethno-nationalists for wanting to kick out their white ruling classes.
All Chinese population policies are applied to Han Chinese only. Abortion and other family planning services are readily available in most of China (although they have been rising in cost), but to say that China is an ethnostate denies the fact that most local CPC political parties are dominated by the majority ethnicity in their areas, even if it isn't Han. Now the central national bureau is still dominated by Han, and the lingua franca is Han, but given the federated enforcement nature of CPC governance, to say that minority ethnicities have no power over policy is a vast understatement.
Like . . . Indigenous Taiwanese, sometimes called Formosans? Or the pre-civil war Han population or the civil war Han population,?
Does he just think Taiwan is like pre-colonial Hawaii?
Cuba? Monoethnic? Like... if there's one thing people know about ethnicity in Cuba it's the contributions of Afrocubans to the revolution
Even fucking Batista had Spanish, African, Chinese, and possibly even Taíno descent lmao
The indigenous people of Taiwan are indeed oppressed
By the Han Chinese majority of capitalist Taiwan
I'm ok with them exposing themselves like that.