The Democratic People's Republic of Tankiejerk @lemmy.world

1w ago

Maybe TWO things can be bad at once! Or even three or four!

90 comments

No, sorry, only one thing can be true at once. My working memory is really small.

Hell, the socialist aesthetics aren't even necessary. Just hating the United States is enough.

Everybody Sucks Here
- AITA Nation Edition v2: Electric Boogaloo
- Truth.

USA <- old and busted
FSA <- new and even more busted because the F is for Fascist.

Aesthetics is doing some heavy lifting in that statement.

Nuance is hard, yo...
- Nah, think I'm going to boil down hundreds of years of history in to 280 characters, that's the best way to get my point across in the tiktok age.

What government hasn't committed an atrocity?
- The "student governments" mock-government things in K-12 school probably

Sure why engage with the actual reasons that leftists express for (varying levels of critical) support for any given country when you can ignore all that and dunk on this vague and convenient strawman.
- Would you like me to drag out quotes of the exact kind of fucking insanity I'm talking about, or will you dismiss those as made-up strawmen that I conveniently planted over dozens of accounts with thousands of upvotes over a space of years and across multiple platforms?

It kinda doesn't matter what you call China, mixed economies outperform market economies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEyUtYBz0v8
- Every major fucking country on earth today is a mixed economy.
  
  Fair point, probably not the best term to use. In the video, Clinton uses "command economy" to describe them, and singles them out as member of the WTO that isn't a market economy.

Hamas are terrorists, they killed civilians on 7th October
- ... okay?
  
  Your meme kind of works for hamas/Isreal too.
  Yes hamas is bad
  But it doesn't mean Isreal should murder civilians
  Or the other way around
  Yes Isreal is bad
  But it doesn't mean hamas should be murdering civilians
  
  oops sorry mistook you for one of those "Israel bad Hamas good"-guys
- Wrong comm, both Israel and Hamas is evil, we know.
- I am more pissed at people who don't know difference between Hamas and Palestine. "Hamas is bad, lets fight palestine. And Syria too. Go for Uzbekistan while at it. I heard Albania is a muslim country too. Indonesia..."
  
  Issue is Hamas are the government of Gaza, and it's pretty hard to get past that.
  Plus the same people can't tell the difference between Israel and Jews in general so maybe it's just a lack of comprehension and reasoning.

I’d still rather have a state that pretends to be socialist than one that upholds capitalism - an ideology that seeks to place everything and everyone under the domination of a few elites.
- "Golly gee, I sure do love this state which pretends to be socialist, but upholds capitalism by placing everything and everyone under the domination of a few elites!"
  
  How is that worse than what we currently have?
- Venmo me $10

don't be a coward and say what counties are you referring to
- Currently, North Korea, China, Russia (which, despite no longer being formally socialist, still widely uses socialist Soviet iconography and has the Russian Communist Party as one of the coalition partners of the regime), Venezuela, Cuba. Until very recently, Syria.
  
  Russia isn't even socialist, not even in aesthetics, Cuba is communist.
  By syria you mean Rojava? not sure if they are socialist, they are more anarchist. But the media has radio silence about them.

that use the aesthetics of socialism
This isn't even a criteria for many
- Can anyone explain what the aesthetics of socialism are and which atrocities are being hidden?
  Could it be China? But they aren't Socialist.
  
  Could it be China? But they aren’t Socialist.
  Take that up with tankies, who will argue long and passionately that China is actually very socialist.
  
  Not in practice, but they do claim to be (and in fairness, do some things in a more "socialist" way - looking at you privatisation in the west...)
  I think this what OOP means with "aesthetics", it's that they claim to be a socialist state, when in many ways, it's rather capitalist.
  Regardless, holding up any country as a beacon of all that is good is pretty silly, if you ask me.
  No where (that I know of) should be emulated in every regard.
  
  I think Xi self identifies as Marxist Leninist

- Don't worry - this is tankiejerk. We're an anti-tankie comm. Bootlickers aren't tolerated here.

That's why they keep repeating the phrase "critical support". They support oppressive regimes in their fight against the US, but still remain critical of them (any criticism of their favorite dictatorship will get you banned).
- It's actually more like "critical hit" in a video game. If they hit a critical support with their internet comment then North Korea gets +5 anti imperialism for 20 minutes. It's the meta bro

"Whataboutism" is one of the most prevalent logical fallacies. It never makes any sense.
- If the much worse enemies of the USA have a lot to gain by the USA's downfall and are actively promoting said downfall, then it's not whataboutism to unmask them like a scooby doo villain.
  Tankies don't give af about trans rights, Tankies don't give af about any human rights, Tankies don't want you to live and flourish in any capacity at all. Do not be fooled by their rhetoric all over Lemmy.
  
  It's mostly from .ml in my experience, Hell, look at the goons spouting off against tgis post in these very comments. .ml
  IMO, self respecting instances need to defederate from .ml so they are not so overrun by tankie clapping sealions... Just like with hexbear, they deserve to be silenced by social forces.
- Another top contender is that all things with defects or drawbacks are equally horrible and unacceptable.
- However it can be used to point out someone's hypocrisy. If country A is genociding people from country B, while screaming about people from country B genociding people from country C, "what about your genocide" is an appropriate response.
  
  Calling out hypocrisy can be valid but it must further discussion, not shut it down. In your example, if country A is committing genocide while condemning country B for genocide, the problem isn't just country B’s actions. It's that country A is deflecting from its own crimes instead of addressing them.
  Saying 'what about your genocide' only matters if it leads to accountability for both. If it's just used to avoid taking responsibility, then it's whataboutism. It shifts the focus without solving anything.
  To reiterate, whataboutism is deflection meant to shut down further discussion.
  
  Appealing to hypocrisy is a fallacy, full stop. Someone can be a hypocrite but that has no bearing on whether an action is justifiable for both/neither.
- The infallabile "ha, gotcha" fallacy

But... dichotomy is best omy? Putin can't be lying, because other states bad.

Also, if we want to make progress in the world and not let billionaires play us against each other, maybe the best judgement process is to evaluate how things are working out overall instead of slapping a black hat on anything that isn't perfect enough for a white hat.

Spoiler: It's waaaay more than three or four.

Dont eat the vatnik soup:
https://vatniksoup.com/en/soups/363/

Gogogo power rangers

Or any "aesthetics" to his atrocities.

If societies intention was to drown me in the bath water how the fuck did i manage to make it this far?

Russia is a right wing plutocracy and isn't using the aesthetics of socialism, so is this about China and not Russia/Ukraine?
- Russia, china etc... Things taht tankies support
  
  How do you personally oppose US imperialism? Do you support "things" like Palestine? Does that make you an Islamist or against LGBTQ or an anti-semite?

See thats one take but is "US Imperialism" not just codeword for NATO?
- If NATO was about countries being subservient to the US, then the MAGA fashy types would be 100% in support of NATO.
  NATO is an alliance and fashy types have a hard time grasping the idea of countries having partnerships that aren't a hierarchical master/servant style relationships. Since it's not a "do whatever the US tells you to do" imperialist style relationship, guys like Trump assume that it must mean the US is somehow subservient to NATO and therefore hate it. They can't understand there being any power structure that isn't hierarchical and therefore is a bad thing.
  It's similar with Putin too. Except he assumes it's a hierarchical power structure where the US is the master and the other members are subservient. Tankies follow the same line of thinking.
  Authoritarian type people simply cannot grasp non-hierarchical relationships so alliances between sovereign nations just don't make sense to them.
- Not unless what you wrote is code for "I'm an ignoramus and like to spout the brand of dogma I've based my identity on".
  But it's not, is it?
  
  I've just always heard "US Imperialism" in context of things like NATO, Ukraine, Vietnam, formerly Afghanistan, and Israel but TBH Israel is more the UK's baby, Vietnam had more French soldiers on the ground, and people like to conveniently leave out US cooperation with Saudi Arabia.
  It just feels like a term with intentionally blurred context and no real meaning outside of a derogatory term for NATO. What do you think it means?
- No

Whataboutism is awesome for the empire. Incidents that happened 40-90 years ago can be equivocated with current empire abuses, and rulers protecting their nations from Empire's "democracy" manipulations meant to destroy those nations can be demonized as less perfect than the utopia of western democracy illusions.
Liberalist freedom or constructive anarchy is only a possibility if US empire is not intent on destroying you.
- Incidents
  Lol

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