I keep hearing the term in political discourse, and rather than googling it, I’m asking the people who know better than Google.
If I wanted to make a high engagement post I would post something like this. Are there any other controversial, not clearly defined words to ask about?
I honestly saw someone use the word, wondered what they actually meant by it, and came here to ask. TBF, I didn’t know much about what “here” was, at the time.
Lemmy is developed by communists, and Reddit banned a bunch of leftist subreddits like r/chapotraphouse, r/GenZedong, and r/TheDeprogram. As a consequence, a bunch of communists are on Lemmy by ratio compared to Reddit, though Lemmy.world is defederated and blocks 2/3rds of the major communist instances, so you can’t actually see them. They usually are on Lemmygrad.ml or Hexbear.net if you want to see the communist side of Lemmy.
Lemmy.ml is the dev’s testing instance, so that’s why a lot of communists are here but also why it’s not defederated by Lemmy.world.
Someone mentioned that, but I have yet to see why dot world blocked the commie instances. Care to share?
Here’s Lemmy.world explaining why. Essentially, for having stances common to communists (opposing western hegemony is a big one they took issue with). Lemmy.world is run by your standard DNC-style liberals, they generally oppose Marxism and communism, and uphold the DNC as good. Some are also zionists.
Now, that’s my perspective as a communist. I’m a Marxist-Leninist, my perspective is as someone who reads theory, does light org work, etc. I’m not a fan of the DNC, I support socialist states, etc. Others may give a different perspective, but it’s also worth noting that there are entire drama communities dedicated to taking comments out of context, witch-hunting communists, etc and this is made even worse by defederation because it creates this “boogeyman” that .world can’t actually see.
Hope that helps, honestly you can just scroll grad and hexbear yourself for a bit without making an account to see what’s up.
Reading that thread, it’s clearly not for “having stances”. Very, very clearly it’s about their intention to push anti-liberal propaganda and dismantle liberalism across the fediverse.
Yours is a clearly disingenuous reading, and I hope people here aren’t just taking you at your word.
It’s absolutely for having stances deemed unacceptable by the admin team. For the admin team, only liberal propaganda is allowable. Any left-critique of liberalism is deemed “extreme,” and was pre-emptively silenced. The admins are trying to have their cake and eat it too, by saying that it’s unacceptable to push viewpoints systemically while cutting out anyone that goes against their own viewpoints.
If you’re really gonna say deliberately connecting to an instance with the stated goal of dismantling and inserting a communist ideology via a propaganda war is tantamount to “just having a stance” then it should be clear to everyone what a bad actor you are.
Imagine if I publicaly stated that the goal of my instance was to build a userbase, infiltrate .ml, dismantle communist ideology, and spread liberal propaganda. Are you really gonna pretend you’d leap to my defense when Dessalines obviously banned/defederated me?
Hell, he loves to abuse rule 2 to silence “Liberals” constantly. Yet you don’t seem to have anything to say about that…
A leftist. Someone with political beliefs, empathy, and conviction.
Not all leftists are tankies the same way not all right wingers are fascists. A tankie is an authoritarian leftist
What makes them authoritarian?
They believe in an authoritarian government systems. Where the state has extra power that they can use to enforce their goals. That is in contrast to anarcho communists where the state is dissolved.
Logically most leftists fall somewhere in the middle as not wanting full on authoritarian government but also not wanting a complete lack of government
In theory if the state has the best interests of the people, then by giving the state extra power all you are doing is reducing bureaucracy and increasing efficiency. That however also makes it easier for the state to abuse that power so I am not saying one is better or worse than the other
Where the state has extra power that they can use to enforce their goals
Extra power in comparison to what? What is the normal amount of state power?
That’s a debate since authoritarianism to libertarianism is a spectrum so there is no official “normal” and its generally used qualitatively on individual polices
Regulated and censoring speech - auth Absolute freedom of speech - lib Limiting speech to prohibit only speech that can cause harm to others - somewhere in the middle
Requiring the state to dispense all drugs - auth No drug regulations, no dea, no fda- lib Some drug regulations including requiring “generally recognized as safe and effective”- somewhere in the middle
No country is full auth or full lib
That’s a debate since authoritarianism to libertarianism is a spectrum so there is no official “normal” and its generally used qualitatively on individual polices
So, essentially, it’s subjective?
All states are authoritarian in that they uphold one class and oppress others. It’s a good thing when the class in charge is the working class, throughout history socialist states have resulted in dramatic improvements in living standards for the vast majority of society. These socialist states, and the ones who support them, are labeled “authoritarian” whenever these states practice land reform, nationalize industries, etc, and are met with mountains of hostility and slander from the west.
Even an anarchist revolution is “authoritarian,” as it involves violently taking control. In practice, “authoritarianism” is more of a vibe than an actual thing we can measure or a policy to be implemented. It’s used as a club against socialist states by those who’ve lost property to land reform or nationalization.
It’s a spectrum and a person who supports the government having more control of their citizens is considering authoritarian. A person who wants to limit government control over their citizens is more libertarian.
It’s a very valid belief that someone might want leftist policies with limited government control over individual citizens so calling them all tankies is inaccurate and confusing
When you utterly erase class analysis, and just group everyone under “citizens,” you run into utter contradictions. Socialist states have been far more liberating for their populace overall, even if they’ve been oppressive towards fascists, capitalists, etc, meaning they would technically belong in the “libertarian” quadrant if we define it the way you claim we should. The entire idea of a “libertarian-authoritarian” spectrum, or even a left-right spectrum and not just various right and left ideologies that cannot be abstracted into a graph-based system, is actively harmful to our understanding of political ideology.
Anarchists want communalism, whereas Marxists want collectivization. Neither is more or less “authoritarian” or “libertarian,” in that even horizontalist systems actually erase the democratic reach of communities to within their communities and immediate surroundings, while collectivization spreads power more evenly globally. This isn’t something that can be represented on the graph in any way, yet results in fundamentally different approaches and outcomes.
This is an intentional strawman right? Like there is no way you are truly misunderstanding this much?
Auth governement dictates what individual citizens can/ can not do
Lib government limits what power the government has over individual citizens
You can’t say we are actually lib because we only are targeting the “bad people”
Show your conviction and don’t dance around your point if you want a government that has more power over its citizens that’s fine, that’s your belief and you are fully entitled to it but if you can’t acknowledge your own beliefs that’s its own problem
Again, you need to look at things from a class analysis. There is no such thing as “libertarian capitalism,” capitalism requires the state, and freedoms for citizens are restricted because they don’t have as much access to necessities and democracy doesn’t extend to the economy.
Socialist countries that provide better access to necessities have more freedom for the average person than capitalist countries. They don’t have the same privledged class of capitalists with unlimited political power, but the people have more power.
This is a false-binary. It isn’t a strawman, the political compass is entirely bogus and cannot accurately depict ideology or structure as they exist in the real world. It does more harm than helps.
I’m not dancing, I’ve said it firm: I want the working class to use the state in their own interests, against capitalists and fascists, to meet the needs of the people and liberate society.
You are the one making it binary when it isn’t and when I say it isn’t you bring it back to being binary. You can have libertarian beliefs without wanting a complete dissolution of the government the same way you can have authoritarian beliefs while still wanting people to have individual freedoms. So yes you can have libertarian capitalism which is simply a less regulated form vs authoritarian capitalism. We can see this in the UK vs EU where the UK is requiring people to submit official IDs to see porn (auth) vs the EU passing data privacy laws (lib)
You are inventing all these other arguments that I am not making. I have never said socialist countries have less freedoms and don’t even remotely believe that so if you are not making a strawman then try rereading what I am saying because you are arguing against an argument I am not making which is the literal definition of a strawman
That’s called being authoritarian, there is nothing wrong with that and as long as the state is using that power fairly that can create a great society but you must realize that on a 1-10 scale of government authority with a 1 being full on anarchy and 10 being the state has full control to make all decisions that you are closer to a 10 then a 1
As soon as you give the state power to go after people with different beliefs (even if those beliefs are deplorable) you are being authoritarian
