I’ve been part of the online left for a while now, part of slrpnk about 2 months, and if there’s one recurring experience that’s both exhausting and revealing, it’s trying to have good-faith discussions with self-identified Marxist-Leninists, the kind often referred to as “tankies.” I use that term here not as a lazy insult nor to dehumanize, but to describe a particular kind of online personality: the ones who dogmatically defend Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and every so-called “existing socialist state” past or present, without room for nuance, critique, or even basic empathy. Not all Marxist-Leninists are like this. But these people, these tankies, show up in every thread, every debate, every conversation about liberation, and somehow it always turns into a predictable mess.
It usually goes like this: I make a statement that critiques authoritarianism or centralized power, and suddenly I’m being accused of parroting CIA talking points, being a liberal in disguise, or not being a “real leftist.” One time, I said “Totalitarianism kills” — a simple, arguably uncontroversial point. What followed was a barrage of replies claiming that the term was invented by Nazis, that Hannah Arendt (who apparently popularized it, I looked it up and it turns out she didn’t) was an anti-semite, and that even using the word is inherently reactionary. When I clarified that I was speaking broadly about state violence and authoritarian mechanisms, the same people just doubled down, twisting my words, inventing claims I never made, and eventually accusing me of being some kind of crypto-fascist. This wasn’t a one-off, it happens constantly.
If you’ve spent any time in these spaces, you know what I’m talking about. The conversations never stays on topic. It always loops back to defending state socialism, reciting quotes from Lenin, minimizing atrocities as “bourgeois propaganda” and dragging anarchism as naive or counter-revolutionary. It’s like they’re playing from a script.
I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand why these interactions feel so uniquely frustrating. And over time, I’ve started noticing recurring patterns in the kind of people who show up this way. Again, a disclaimer here: not everyone who defends Marx or Lenin online falls into these patterns. There are thoughtful, sincere, and principled MLs who engage in real, grounded discussions. But then there are these other types:
- The Theory Maximalist
This person treats political theory like scripture. They’ve read the texts (probably a lot of them) and they approach every conversation like a chance to prove their mastery. Everything becomes about citations, dialectics, and abstract arguments. When faced with real-world contradictions, their default move is to bury it under more theory. They mistake being well-read for being politically mature, and often completely miss the human, relational side of radical politics.
- The Identity Leftist
For this person, being a leftist isn’t about organizing or material change. It’s an identity. They call themselves a Marxist-Leninist the way someone else might call themselves a punk or a metalhead. Defending state socialism becomes a cultural performance. They’re less interested in the complexity of history than in being on the “correct side” of whatever aesthetic battle they’re fighting. Anarchists, to them, represent softness or chaos, and that’s a threat to the image they’ve built for themselves.
- The Terminally Online Subculturalist
This one lives in forums, Discords, or other niche Internet circles. Their entire political world is digital. They’ve likely never been to a union meeting, a mutual aid drive, or a community organizing session. All their knowledge of struggle is mediated through memes and screenshots. They treat ideology like a fandom and conflict like sport. They love the drama, the takedowns, the purity contests. The actual work of liberation? Irrelevant.
- The Alienated Intellectual
This person is often very smart, often very isolated, and clings to ideology as a way of making sense of the world. They’re drawn to strict political systems because it gives them order and meaning in a chaotic life. And while they might not be malicious, they often struggle to engage with disagreement without feeling personally attacked. For them, criticism of Marxism-Leninism can feel like an existential threat, because it destabilizes the fragile structure they’ve built to cope with life.
These types don’t describe everyone, and they’re not meant to be a diagnosis or a dismissal. They’re patterns I’ve noticed. Ways that a political identity can become rigid, defensive, and disconnected from real-world struggle.
And here’s the thing that’s always struck me as particularly ironic: Let’s face it, a lot of these people would absolutely hate to be part of real socialist organizing. Because the kind of organizing that builds power, the kind that helps people survive, defend themselves, and grow; it’s messy, emotionally challenging, and full of conflict. It requires flexibility, listening, and compromise. It doesn’t work if everyone’s just quoting dead guys and calling each other traitors. Anarchist or not, actual socialist practice is grounded in real life, not in endless internet warfare.
That’s why this whole cycle feels so tragic. Because behind all the posturing, the purity tests, and the ideological gatekeeping, there’s a legit reason these people ended up here. Of all the ideologies in the world, they chose communism. Why? Probably because they hurt. Because they saw the ugliness of capitalism and wanted something better. Because, at some point, they were moved by the idea that we could live without exploitation.
And somewhere along the way, that desire got calcified into a set of talking points. It got buried under defensiveness and online clout games. The pain turned inward, and now they lash out at anyone who doesn’t match their script. That’s not an excuse. But it is something to hold with empathy.
I don’t write this to mock anyone. I write it because I want us to do better, recognize our differences and hopefully come to a fair conclusion. And Idk, I still believe we can. Ape together strong 💖
Tankies are just another extremist cult, that’s extremely online.
Authoritarian Communists have a long tradition of fracturing into political sects. The whole theory heavy stuff is alike to religious texts and their interpretation.
These are political cults. They prey on the weak and lost by giving them something to believe in and a community of sorts. They can only stay part of the community by ideological purity.
This gives these small groups outsized propaganda reach. They will attack all leftists for not being extreme enough. That has a chilling effect.
Todays society, especially on social media, is fractured into small groups that punish disagreement harshly. Gen Z is more into conformity for example.
It’s like you said, an identity or fandom picked by vibes. Actual political change is irrelevant.
Prime example: the biggest left political streamer Hassan Piker is an extremist anti west tankie.
This tankie left completely ignores everything Frankfurt School for example. It‘s just about disillusionment and being anti west.
You’re a zionist. I frankly take offense on the behalf of all leftists to have someone like you pretend to represent our world view. You’re not a leftist, you’re a genocide supporting reactionary. The irony of you talking about “preying on the weak” and punching left in your psychoanalyzing drivel is clear as day. All you can do is punch left, because everyone here is left of you.
Also funny that you would mention your own personal parasocial feud with a streamer when everyone else is trying to have an adult discussion about politics, while maintaining that a broad century old worldwide movement is a “fandom”.
Zionist as in, I think Israel has a right to exist, sure. Palestinians have a right to self determination as well. I don’t support genocide.
Hamas are Islamists, which is right wing extremist, if you haven’t noticed. They are against everything leftist.
Is Israel committing a genocide?
But isn’t that irrelevant to whether the country has a right to exist as a country? Does a country only have a right to exist when they do nothing wrong? Are all people in a country responsible for the actions of leadership?
Trump is crashing the entire world’s economy, because he’s a fucking short-bus slack-jawed special-ed moron. Does the harm that Trump and his oligarchs are causing mean that the US as a whole has no right to exist? Does Putin’s invasion of Ukraine mean that Ukraine has no right to exist?
And let’s flip that; Hamas attacks and kills civilians as a political stand-in for the Israeli government. That’s the very definition of terrorism. Hamas is the government in Gaza. Does that mean that Palestinians have no right to a country of their own due to the actions of their gov’t?
You are confused and mix up country and state. Germany didn’t disappear magically after WW2. Do you believe the third reich had a right to exist? International law (as lacking as you might think it is) has prescriptions against that. Israel has been in constant and repeated breach of said law, including but not limited to the Rome Statute and Genocide convention, generally seen as the worst possible offense a state could ever commit. They’ve done nothing but ignore UN Sec Council resolutions.
Using the fact that the US has committed similar atrocities, including this one which they are the main sponsor of, completely unabated is really not the argument you want to make. Also sorry but it’s hilarious to take Trump’s tariffs as an example of something so horrible it would justify the dissolution of the state, consider it’s the US we’re talking about.
Ukraine’s invasion by Russia is illegal, immoral and indefensible and yet is still not even comparable to those atrocities. Russia has faced countless sanctions for their actions, from banks cut off from SWIFT, frozen assets, banned export of petrol and gas, wide international bans on tons of goods, military equipment, and many other sanctions around shipping and transport. To my knowledge, Israel hasn’t received any single coordinated material sanction for their innumerable crimes. I’m assuming you meant “does that mean that Russia has no right to exist”, because otherwise this makes even less sense.
Hamas is but the latest governance of a people who have tried to defend themselves from said continued crimes. But this is just my meaningless opinion as some random guy on the internet, a court should be the judge of whether or not their actions should be sanctioned in the context of the atrocities they faced alongside their oppressor. You’re trying to defend the point of a genocide denier, but hopefully you’ll agree with me on that, right?
You’re trying to defend the point of a genocide denier, but hopefully you’ll agree with me on that, right [emphasis added]?
First, that’s a manipulative way of stating something; it’s intended to force agreement. Although it’s phrased as a question, it’s not. This is a common tactic used by both high pressure salespeople, and by cults. It was one of the ways I was taught to pressure people into joining the Mormon church when I was a missionary. My suggestion is that, if you want to argue in good faith, then that’s a rhetorical device that you should stop using entirely.
You are confused and mix up country and state.
You are correct. I am confusing them. However, in the context of Israel and their genocide against Palestinians, they’re very nearly interchangeable. Hamas–and Iran, I believe–want to abolish Israel. Yes, the land itself would still be there, but it would not be a Jewish state/political entity. The country that Israel is would functionally cease to exist if Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran had their way.
Do you believe the third reich had a right to exist?
If you’re limiting the question to existence, then yes, I do believe that the 3rd reich had the right to exist. However, I don’t believe that they had the right to murder 6M+ Jews, Romani, LGBTQ+ people, and political dissidents, or to start a war of aggression. The force used to stop their murders and aggression also happened to be the same amount of force that ended the 3rd reich, but it’s not necessarily that way.
They’ve done nothing but ignore UN Sec Council resolutions.
Well. Not exactly. I’m pretty sure that it’s usually general assembly resolutions. I believe that the UN Security Council needs to be unanimous to pass a resolution, and the US–as a permanent member–always objects when it comes to condemning whatever atrocity Israel is currently committing. Which is pretty goddamn awful. And Russia does the same thing when one of their allies is doing awful shit. The ability of one member of the security council to hold up resolutions effectively de-fangs the council.
But - to your point, I agree entirely that the government of Israel, with the support of the majority of the Israelis, is committing and has committed war crimes against Palestinians.
“does that mean that Russia has no right to exist”,
Yes, sorry, I flipped Russia and Ukraine there. Me no type good sometimes.
But, at that–it is true that Russia has been severely sanctioned (…although $10 says Trumps ends most/all of those sanctions; did you see that Russia was the only country that didn’t get tariffs?). But should the state of Russia be entirely wiped out? Should Russia–as a state–cease to exist? (Russia certainly wants Ukraine to cease to exist as both a country and a state; Putin wants it to be part of Russia.) And no, Israel has not faced any consequences, and that is an utterly shameful failure of leadership in the US and in the rest of the world.
…But it’s also not directly relevant to the narrow question of whether Israel should be allowed to exist.
You’re trying to defend the point of a genocide denier
How so? He lit. said that he thinks Palestinians should have the right to self-determination, and that he didn’t support Israel’s genocide. (“Palestinians have a right to self determination as well. I don’t support genocide.”)
Israel commission of genocide is independent of their right to exist; they DON’T have the right to commit genocide, and the world should be–should be–united in stopping it. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran want to wipe Israel out, and commit acts of terrorism in pursuit of that; despite their actions–which I can understand given the actions of Israel–Palestinians and a Palestinian state also have, or should have, a right to exist.
I’m not sure where the disconnect is here.
I think that a true 2-state solution is the only realistic option, with borders returning to the, what, 1947? borders. I think that the world probably needs to have UN Peacekeepers there for the next century or so, and those troops should be allowed and required to use force to stop aggression from any side. I think that it was probably a mistake to have shoehorned Israel into the middle east in the first place; we should have given them Florida instead. (…Except that hardline Zionist Jews really, really wanted Jerusalem, because that was the territory that the believed god have given to them.)
First, that’s a manipulative way of stating something
That’s me being charitable and making the assumption that at least you recognize they should face a court of justice. Again, the argument starts at genocide denial here, I’m working with what I got.
However, in the context of Israel and their genocide against Palestinians, they’re very nearly interchangeable
This very confusion is often used to try to extrapolate something that I think is very reasonable, the dismantlement of the state of Israel, into something that is not, like the removal of all jews from the area, or the implicit support of their counter-genocide (which is an old fascist theory that’s very popular in my country, the great replacement).
I do believe that the 3rd reich had the right to exist. However, I don’t believe that they had the right to murder 6M+ Jews, Romani, LGBTQ+ people, and political dissidents, or to start a war of aggression.
I’m trying to assume your good faith, but you’re very conveniently talking about a state before it did any of those acts. Again if I’m being very charitable and assume you talk about the genesis of those states in the context of Israel being a colonial project, then no, of course Israel as a freshly conceived settler colonial state built on ethnic cleansing had no right to exist. But that only highlights the fact that Israel has never been justified, even if that’s not the point I was making.
But should the state of Russia be entirely wiped out?
Like you said, It doesn’t really matter because it’s not the subject. But yes, Russia wants to destroy the state of Ukraine. Russia however is not an apartheid ethnostate built and run on constant ethnic cleansing and genocide. You could argue that in court if you wanted, but as despicable and bloody as Russia is today, it’s not built on an inherently inhumane ideology.
How so? He lit. said that he thinks Palestinians should have the right to self-determination, and that he didn’t support Israel’s genocide.
This is why you misinterpreted my initial question, I didn’t catch it. He never said Israel is committing a genocide. You assume he did because he said he didn’t support genocide, I only asked the question because I know full well he wouldn’t answer. You seem to agree that Israel is currently committing a genocide, and I think you might not have been as exposed to liberal zionism as some of us. He will never admit to that, because he understands as well as I do that this is the greatest sin of states, and you don’t come back from it. If you think a state should survive a prolonged, livestreamed, unapologetic genocide, I urge you to reconsider your position.
I think that a true 2-state solution is the only realistic option
I disagree because it’s untenable. The Israeli state will refuse the presence of UN peacekeepers (the 3 of them that we have). If that was a possibility we could entertain it, but I don’t see another option other than UN administrative control, as has happened in the past in similar cases (Germany, Japan, Somalia, Kosovo, Timor-Leste). The two state solution was defended for decades with similar arguments as yours, but the reality is that an ethnostate is not something that we can ever let happen, and Israel continued existence is truly the perfect example of it.
There had always been very strong opposition both Jewish and not (and way before the formation of Israel) to the creation of a Jewish ethnostate, even in the context of continued Jewish persecution. For fairly nefarious reasons, this was done anyway. I think we’re far enough now into the genocide that this idea should be permanently put to rest and left as one of many dark stains in our history. There’s a very long list of emancipations throughout history, and how oppressed people dealt with their aggressors. The idea that this would be any different in Palestine, especially if it’s done properly, is nothing more than good old fashioned racism, painting Arabs as monsters.
This process certainly isn’t one I’d dare to outline exhaustively, but it would at the very least include the expulsion of settlers from the West Bank, reparations (I would personally consider it unthinkable if the US took on less responsibility than the sum they poured into arming this genocide), the rebuilding of the Gaza strip and of course an international trial of those responsible for this genocide. This might seem like a lofty ideal, but anything else is just defeatism and waiting for the last Palestinian to die or be expelled.
on the behalf of all leftists
Fuck off.
I checked, guys. OP doesn’t have .ml next to his name.
Sadly, this means we can’t just call him out and we have to actually read the post this time.
I read it, it’s very much just going into more detail on what we’ve all been saying about tankies this whole time. In fact while reading it a few… infamous … .ml tankie users popped in my head that fit the description I was reading perfectly LMAO
I appreciate that someone is trying to have a real conversation about this kind of thing. I don’t think leftists have enough conversations where they’re acknowledging the actual sources of conflict within their ranks.
I have a little experience with moderation (including in leftist spaces), and one of the things that I’ve found to be really helpful in understanding these sorts of problems is actually the modern theory of narcissism. A lot has been learned about what happens when a person’s empathy is physiologically impaired in the last decade, and understanding this personality pattern is immensely helpful in navigating interpersonal conflicts and all scales. Tankies as you describe them are actually one of the more clear-cut cases of a narcissistic subculture within the left. The constant abuse of language, bad-faith argumentation, hypersensitivity to ideological or personal criticism of any kind, the dismissal of any legitimate concerns or established facts that would threaten their apparent worldview, etc… This is all classic narcissistic argumentation.
And somewhere along the way, that desire got calcified into a set of talking points. It got buried under defensiveness and online clout games. The pain turned inward, and now they lash out at anyone who doesn’t match their script. That’s not an excuse. But it is something to hold with empathy.
Unfortunately, this narrative is simply wrong. One of the things that you really have to understand about these sorts of people is that the cause and effect between their arguments and their beliefs is reversed from what you would expect. They do not believe things because they buy the arguments that they were given. They hold beliefs abut what is and is not acceptable because of how they want to be allowed to behave and what rights and privileges they feel they deserve, and then they seek out a narrative/ideology that allows them to justify all of that. We’re not dealing with people who are making decisions based on any sort of rational process. We’re dealing with people who are trying to find palatable justifications for them getting whatever it is that they want (power, status, accolades, etc…). The lack of empathy comes first!
The reason that some of these people find themselves in the left is that they can often misconstrue arguments in favor of broad freedom for all into justifications for a system of ‘governance’ where there is no such thing as personal accountability (at least for them, personally). This is where you get your anarcho-nihilists who don’t want any sort of rule-enforcement structures at all, or anarcho-capitalists who believe that rules should be enforced by the people who can pay the private militias to enforce them (and they, of course, would be the sort of people who could afford such a service). Tankies lean on their disordered trait of ‘living in their future success’ more than most - believing that they will somehow rise to the top (or somewhere near it) of whatever authoritarian regime they’re advocating for, essentially escaping any sort of accountability and holding absolute power, all while appealing to the desire for liberation from the disenfranchised.
If you don’t believe me, then here’s an experiment for you. Try to have a conversation about accountability with anyone who is acting suspect like this. Ask them about what sorts of systems of accountability they would like to see in a society, and ask them about where they see themselves fitting into that system. Ask them how they think that system should respond to some of their sketchier behaviors. Accountability is the #1 enemy of any narcissist. The responses you’ll get will be absolutely insane.
Tankies are conservatives acting on a social level instead of an economic level (from what you describe). This makes more sense if you think of military hierarchies and advancement in them.
Accountability is the #1 enemy of any narcissist. The responses you’ll get will be absolutely insane.
I think everyone agrees that there is a connection between narcissism and authoritarianism. This conversation makes me wonder though, if there is not more than a mere correlation. Could it be that authoritarianism is the political expression of narcissism and that there is literally nothing else there?
Could it be that authoritarianism is the political expression of narcissism and that there is literally nothing else there?
I believe that this is actually the case. There are plenty of studies showing strong correlation between political ideology and personality traits. In my personal experience, I’ve yet to meet someone with authoritarian politics who was not also lacking in empathy more generally.
I think that there is even more to it than that, though. There is a really interesting anthropological perspective on this to be had, where we can actually cast the development of authoritarian styles of governance as an expression of narcissism.
When we look at the actual timeline for the emergence of civilization, we see agriculture, then violence (increasingly organized as time goes on) then governance structures that resemble modern states. This is an account of the development of violence in northwestern Europe to help establish that timeline. That paper also cites other papers about the history of violence in other regions. Contrary to the popular narrative (thanks Hobbes /s), we don’t actually see much evidence of violence at all prior to the development of agriculture. It is important to note that agriculture was developed about 40k years ago in response to a major worldwide drought that lasted about 1k years. (I would recommend reading “Civilized to Death” by Christopher Ryan for more on this topic.) Most sources arguing that pre-civilized society was terribly violent points at societies that existed in the 20k years between the development of agriculture and the emergence of modern-ish states (which, in some cases, were terribly violent). The traditional narrative about civilization and war would put the emergence of states before the invention of organized warfare, arguing that warfare was a response to the increasing complexity and scale of the conflicts that arose from the increased societal complexity of states. Archaeological evidence refutes this, so what gives?
There’s more that makes this weird. We also know some things about how pre-civlized societies handled narcissism. Surprisingly often, these societies actually had a dedicated word for these people. The exact translation and connotation of the word varied from one population to the next, but the stories that they told were basically the same. (For reference, we learned this by interviewing members of indigenous societies that had not yet been heavily influenced by civilization. Some of these societies still existed as recently as a century ago - now there are almost none left.) These were the people who were ‘unteachable’, ‘lazy’, ‘troublemakers’ - they caused drama while contributing next to nothing. When these people didn’t improve their behavior (or they did something heinous like commit murder or rape), they were exiled or killed. (Check out literature on ‘rape-free’ societies if you want to read more about this.) These individuals were pretty rare - around 1% of the population - so what little violence was necessary to keep the peace would not account for the evidence that we see from post-agricultural societies. We’ve no reason to believe that these pre-civilized societies suddenly stopped policing themselves when they were pushed into agriculture by the drought (and there’s even some evidence that they did not - again, see “Civilized to Death”), yet the vast majority of us now live in a society where such a penalty for mere narcissism would be unthinkable.
Here’s what I speculate happened. After settling down for agriculture, exile stopped being as lethal as it would have been before. Exiles could practice agriculture on their own and survive, when they wouldn’t have been able to before (due to lack of technology, mostly). Also, stationary groups with fields that they can’t watch literally 100% of the time and stores of food (they wouldn’t have been storing much food prior to agriculture) are much easier to steal from. As such, we started to accumulate a population of these narcissistic individuals. These individuals are inherently self-centered and lazy. If they settled together (which they would have been incentivized to do, for many reasons), they would inevitably try to dominate each other in an attempt to gain power and status and the ability to exploit the labor power of the other exiles for their own personal gain. They would actually have a chance to learn ways of sneaking into other societies and hiding their toxic behavior with clever words. They could actually start working together as a violent force to bully whole other groups into submission, or even claim control of an area. Incidentally, we actually have some evidence that this sort of thing happened pretty early in the game with a riverhead and a group of bullies demanding tribute in exchange for access. These riverheads were an important source of easy food thanks to the salmon that would swim up there to reproduce, so this was a big deal. Here’s an interview with an anthropologist who talks about that.
Naturally, these narcissists aren’t very good at maintaining power over each other or their less-narcissistic peers in the beginning, but as time progresses, they would get better and better at it. They’d learn to pit different groups against each other so that no one group can get large enough to overthrow the minority that holds power (+ the other still-loyal groups). They’d learn that growing their population as fast as possible gives them a major edge over other societies, as it is far easier to bully other groups into submission when you outnumber them. Pretty much every major development in human history related to governance and economics gets cast in a new light with this perspective. Money becomes an ingenious solution to the problem of redistributing tribute/favors to one’s cronies in order to keep them under control. The state monopoly on violence is the perfect hypocrisy for protecting one’s own power with force while denying anybody else’s right to do the same, regardless of where the threat to their power comes from. Not only does this allow you to crush any direct rebellion before it happens, but it also allows you to interfere in the development of various political groups, allowing you to maintain control over the entire political playing field. Capitalism becomes a brilliant way of taking power away from more rigid power structures like the church or the throne without needing to foment a violent rebellion.
A few other fun things result from such a narrative. The cause of sexism and the general disrespect for the rights and intelligence of children becomes obvious. Since all power ultimately comes from the use of force, women and children are at an inherent disadvantage compared to men due to their smaller size and lower physical strength. Forcing women to be breeders for that sweet sweet population growth was also a major contributor to their objectification. Agriculture was hard work, and the narcissistic men didn’t want to do it, so their wives/children became de-facto slaves. (Note: Slave labor would not have existed prior to the development of these narcissistic societies.) Religious and racial discrimination is fundamentally about preventing foreign powers from interfering with local affairs, while also providing a convenient justification for using those out-groups as additional sources of slave labor. Also, we realize that literally no form of governance that has ever been invented since the development of the state has ever been designed to actually serve the people. They’ve always been various forms of compromise designed to consolidate and maintain power for the few while preventing the many from organizing a competent rebellion. The only form of governance that has ever existed to serve the people is anarchism, in the form of the aggressive egalitarianism practiced by pre-civilized societies. This isn’t to say that we should go back to doing things exactly like we did in the stone age, but it does turn a lot of long-standing cultural assumptions about the nature governance and modern society on their head.
I could keep going, but I’ll stop for now. This perspective is a real mind-bender, but way too many things fit into place when you think about history this way. It also makes sense that authoritarianism would be an invention of narcissism generally if authoritarianism was simply the political expression of narcissism on the individual level.
This is very insightful. I’m really interested, are there any books or otherwise sources that helped you draw this conclusion? It makes a whole lot of sense, I guess I was kind of ignoring that possibility.
Pretty much everything on the topic by Dr. Ramani (Here’s her YouTube channel) is worth looking at. I recommend starting here. She has also published a couple of books on the topic which are also good, and generally consolidate a lot of what she has on other platforms in one place, though her most up-to-date thinking on the matter will pretty much always be on her YouTube channel and podcast. Here’s her website so that you can find everything else. If you read any of her books, “Don’t you know who I am?” is probably the most relevant one here.
What you’ll get from her is mostly information on the nature and behavior of narcissists themselves. The primary value of this information is that you’ll be able to spot narcissists and narcissistic behaviors way more easily (and thus, way more frequently) than you would otherwise be able to. We’ve been culturally conditioned to ignore or even justify a lot of narcissistic behaviors, so learning about them is a big eye-opener for seeing just how prevalent the problem is. Simply being able to recognize narcissistic behavior for what it is will go a very long way in helping you see things from my perspective.
You can also talk to me about this kind of stuff if you want. The intersection of narcissism and politics/economics is something I spend a lot of time thinking about. I actually can’t point at anyone else on the internet who is writing about this sort of thing.
Sometimes it’s hard to believe these people are real. It almost makes more sense they exist to make the left appear completely toxic to everyone, including left leaning people.
I hope that’s the case anyway and all the above is just a lot of over analysing, cos man, they suck.
Ding ding ding! The russian troll farms have had spectacular success on right wingers. “Tankies” are the attempt at a disinfo campaign on the left to cause division. Im not saying there are zero real world tankies just that 90% of them are an attempt to amplify and inflame.
I am sure some troll farm amplify them but I have met some IRL. Left wing authoritarianism is a thing, historically and nowadays.
Personally I find their constant bad faith arguments tiring so I usually don’t engage. Many campists have the right critique of the existing systems but are useless at knowing what to do to change it. Their best takes are usually to emulate socialist movements of the early 20th century like a cargo cult and hope if they do the same motions, it will magically lead to the same socialism (with them on the vanguard ofc). So ultimately worthless praxis built on stale rhetoric. It’s telling that even the most “left unity” oriented campists manage to thoroughly alienating most of those they believe they should be united with.
It’s telling that even the most “left unity” oriented campists manage to thoroughly alienating most of those they believe they should be united with.
Every time they say left unity, it means “agree with us or you’re ignored.”
You don’t want to have a state when where done? What about left unity! It’ll go away in 5, 10 years tops.
You think having labor camps makes us as bad as capitalists? That’s silly, what happened to left unity?
Every time an anarchist group works with a state socialist group, they are often the last ones removed when the Statists can secure enough of a foothold without them.
Every. Time. I might be willing to work with them to get something removed but if they want to just swap the flag of the state instead of abolishing it, they just want to be the person who stomps on the faces of the workers they claim to support.
You think having labor camps makes us as bad as capitalists? That’s silly, what happened to left unity?
Exactly this. It makes me more inclined to think all of them are Russian troll accounts sent to further divide us rather than actual people. And if they’re actual people, I still very much don’t find them worthy of engaging with.
I have noticed how they often use identical tactics to the Alt-Right movement in the USA, as described masterfully in Innuendo Studios’ The Alt Right Playbook. As such, I’ve started thinking of tankies as a kind of Alt-Left, where facts matter little to none and instead feelings are supreme - though exclusively theirs, while yours count for little (although ironically not none, bc cruelty is the point).
And since algorithms that foster “engagement” tend to make this argumentation style more prevalent, it is becoming more prominent all over the world.
Sadly, it’s fairly prominent in Lemmy as well, though tbf, we who came here from Reddit joined their space, not the other way around. This is why supporting independent development of software such as PieFed and Mbin is so crucial, bc otherwise authoritarianism seeps into everything. E.g. Lemmy has a modlog but no modmail, no notification sent to inform the recipient of a moderation action, no ability to enquire or dispute it even if you somehow find out about it - bc the modlog simply says it was done by a “mod” - and therefore Lemmy is actually somehow more authoritian than Reddit itself was??? (Caveat: admins have near total freedom, at the cost of potentially great efforts required to modify the codebase, and mods have elevated privileges as well, but for the end user… it is much the same, at least with regard to a specific community - they can take what it offers, or else leave).
What makes the Threadiverse fantastic and worth visiting is its userbase. Highly ironically then, what makes the Threadiverse toxic AF is its userbase. 🙃 (So many people over on r/RedditAlternatives saying how they could not tolerate it…) Thus, blocking it is then, with people who use such bad faith arguments chief among my own prioritization for such. (Btw it’s not really possible to fully block all users from a specific instance on Lemmy - that feature would have far better been named as a “community mute” imho - unless you use the Sync or Connect app, switch to PieFed, or delve into making Ublock filters or creating your own instance to defederate them, none of them particularly easy to do, for a mainstream non-technical normie, who might otherwise be a fantastic content creator if the Threadiverse hadn’t decided to run them off with its high level of toxicity.)
I’ve had a tankie tell me alt right playbook is Nazi propaganda before
Links or it didn’t happen.
Yeah if you can recover my comment and its replies. https://sh.itjust.works/comment/2866047 And if you go to my shit just works account forgive my immaturity and bad arguments, I’ve grown a lot since then
Wow. That’s either some serious head-up-the-ass or a depressing lack of listening comprehension.
“Everything the other side does is wrong, while my own side is incapable of doing wrong.” While somehow at the same time, “bOtH sIdEs SaMe”. It sounds tribal to me… yet what do I know 🤔.
Honestly, a good portion of them probably are the alt right. For some reason leftists on Lemmy have been taken in by this idea that everyone they talk to who purports to be a leftist must be taken at their word in good faith, even if everything they say literally sounds like a right-wing parody of leftism.
The fact that this vulnerability exists necessitates that we assume it’s being used.
Why did the economist walk straight past a $1000 bill sitting in the middle of the sidewalk? Because if it had been there someone would have already picked it up.
It would be absolutely absurd to assume that no conservatives are cosplaying as leftists spouting exactly the stuff they accuse leftists of spouting and doing everything they can to disrupt any form of leftist solidarity. It’s a $1000 bill sitting in the middle of the sidewalk that we can literally watch them picking up if we’re not too willfully naive to acknowledge that it’s happening.
Would you leave a secure server open with the password to the root account literally on the front page? No? Then why is anyone leaving this vulnerability wide open and pretending it isn’t?
I think you just described the genesis of Hexbear:-D.
I’ve been having a decent time here. sure there is an asshole here and there but that’s just GIFT for ya. the threadiverse feels like reddit back when it didn’t suck
The users here are definitely a higher quality than Reddit.
Or much lower, depending on where you go. Your instance is defederated from ~95% of the worst of the bad faith tankie posts though, so your recent experience is a success story that blocking such works to help people enjoy themselves here!
In contrast, I almost left the Threadiverse myself, after being trolled in both Hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml (again, both of which slrpnk.net is defederated from) by making innocuous comments (I thought) yet receiving spam replies for WEEKS and WEEKS afterwards. Tbf that is kinda the entire purpose of ChapoTrapHouse@hexbear.net - to dunk on lib takes (or even ones not leftist enough) - but a new person (me!) wouldn’t know that by arriving at a random post by browsing All, which doesn’t show the sidebar text anywhere before you have a chance to reply in a comment. I would rather not use social media entirely than have to constantly put up with such.
So instead I switched instances, getting rid of lemmygrad.ml, then petitioned the new one to defederate from Hexbear.net, which was successful, then switched to PieFed which allows me to block all users from any instance I choose without requiring admin support, and thereby blocked lemmy.ml. I managed to get rid of the entire Big Three in my feed! And yes it does make experiencing the Threadiverse much better 😊.
I was curious so I checked the hexbear modlog, you posted a weird comment and people posted a lot of “wtf” replies, the mod message for removing your comment was
I’m honestly not sure what you’re referencing, but most of the responses here were just people making fun of you for blaming Putin for funding Israel?
On the alt-right playbook, at the end of the day its mostly an analysis of fascism as an analysis of rhetoric. I would argue that I’ve see most of these strategies used by people of every single tendency. I haven’t caught up since they returned from hiatus, but ironically the way they’re presented would be something I would point to as an example of #1, announcing rhetorical devices authoritatively like you’re reading from scripture or something.
If anything since the first run of alt-right playbook the alt right has just won and become the right.
Let’s face it, a lot of these people would absolutely hate to be part of real socialist organizing
Oh yeah. I’ve worked with an anarcho-socialist group, and shit was rough. And I was just volunteering because I believed–and still believe–in their cause. But eventually I had to give it up, because it was so chaotic that I never knew what my schedule was going to be, and I was wasting tons of time waiting for them to decide whether or not I would be useful that week.
I was a member of another group that was ostensibly anarchistic in theory that ended up being authoritarian in practice, and I quickly dipped.
Shit’s messy and complicated. Getting groups of people to point in the same direction can be hard without some degree of arbitrary authority. But when it all comes together, it’s amazing.
The only thing I will add is that the “Theory Maximalists” don’t actually seem to have read a lot of the theory they claim. Or when they do, they don’t have a border background in political science to contextualize it. It’s literally the leftist equivalent of Plato’s cave.
those miserable fucks are mocking this thread https://hexbear.net/post/4671954?sort=Top
keep an eye out for brigaders (I see at almost a dozen sketchy comments here already) and report anyone you even get a whiff of being tankie alt. Even mild tankie apologetics or sympathy shouldn’t be tolerated or else they start thinking this is a safe space for them.
Yea, I skimmed through the comments. Yikes. Really just proves my point that they take these criticisms like a shot to the chest.
LMAO, my meme I made a bit back is ever relevant
“ThEy jUsT DonT wAnT To reAD [Theory]”
I like how they respond to the first part of the sentence (they’ve read texts) and act like that is the entirety of the critique, despite including the second part in their quote.
As described by OOP, they just take parts out of context and think they somehow “won” the debate.
One thing we don’t understand is why the focus is always on marx/lenin and marxist-leninism. Surely not all anarchist thought and actions are based on that and indeed there has probably been more thought since them which has critiqued it or just moved on from it.
Anyway, interesting writeup and discussion. Not sure we fit into any of these neatly as we’ve had a complicated history politically, we realise there is more we could be doing though, we just aren’t sure how yet.
Some people simply like to be contrarian and troll online communities, including leftist ones. Or they’re doing it out of anger or despair or low self esteem (or they’re paid to by a government lol). Good modding, that has the tools, time, and numbers to do a good job, may be an answer to that side of it.
Otherwise, I think being involved with local irl groups doing things and then posting report backs is going to be a less-theoretical form of posting. I’d hope that would lead to more productive and inspiring discussions.
Thanks for your post!
Well written and sober. A stark contrast to what I typically read coming from the degenerate minds of common Tankies and Tea Party MAGA (who are both cut from the same rotted out cloth).
If what you read angered you, go touch some fucking grass, I don’t care about the opinions from dipshit Tankies or MAGA
I’ve had similar experiences - endless tiring bad faith discussions. I sincerely believe market socialism is a realistic step we can take to improve human condition, but they seem convinced against it and hell bent on ‘revolution’. It’s clearly a cult with group think, they’ve arrived at their conclusions by reading theory, not from personal experience, self awareness, empathy & logic.
Myself, I’ve seen a bit of similar stuff.
Since arriving on Lemmy, I’ve sometimes stumbled on instances where ideological purity is enforced with an iron fist, and dozens of communities have the same overlapping moderators (no point in appealing any decision).
In such places, I’ve sometimes ended up arguing - usually describing history from the viewpoint that Wikipedia takes, from the viewpoint which has the benefit of supporting evidence. In those few places, this has been deemed “reactionary” and I’ve been banned a few times.
Upon examining the moderation logs of the threads where I got banned, I’ve found other peculiarities, like people getting banned for voting the wrong way.
I’ve never been too sure about what the appropriate response is, but my response has been reminding the admin of a local Lemmy instance (I have accounts on multiple instances) that federating with strange places has adverse consequences.
If one federates with an authoritarian place where censorship occurs strongly, everyone will see the counterfactual narratives pushed there, but nobody can argue, since they’ll get banned in those communities super fast. That’s not a balanced exchange of views and I’ve come to dislike that.
I find your use of the phrase “Apes” derogatory, and it completely justifies my vote for Stein in 2024. Slander simians at your peril, liberal stooge.
I mean, the fact that people tear each other into pieces over a Jill Stein vote illustrates how feeble and easily fractured the modern western leftist movements have grown. You’ve got people fighting tooth and nail over a vanity vote in a fully captured and completely undemocratic process.
Nobody seems to have their eyes toward any kind of real social projects. We’re not talking about building up food banks or opening housing to the indignant. We’re not talking about engaging the lumpen proletariat in revolutionary action or disrupting the cash flows and power dynamics of the corrupt elite. We’re not talking about any kind of material accomplishments. Much less doing any of them.
It’s just arguing over your favorite political sports team.
“indigent”, not “indignant”, probably.
I like your comment. I do hear a lot more complaining than organizing.
