The thing that sets off alarm bells in my head for “Tankie but not communist” is someone who uncritically upholds Russia and/or Iran. Take, for instance, one Caleb Maupin. A guy who calls himself a Marxist, but hangs out with noted fascist Alexander Dugin, and was recently outed as a creepy sex pest.

And Hitler was a Vegetarian. Does that mean vegitarians should simp for Hitler because “he had at least one good idea?” I should hope not! Furthermore if they do, even if they only simped for his vegetarianism and not his “political career,” it is gonna come off a bit different than they intend to most people.

Hitler being a vegetarian had nothing to do with his fascism. Mao’s Epistemology was built on Stalin’s synthesizing of Marxism-Leninism from the works of Lenin and the experiences of the Russian Civil War, etc.

There’s actual political philosophy here that we can think through, debate, apply, update, and revise. Mistakes or outright malicious behavior can be learned from or discarded as necessary, because Marxism has within it mechanisms for self criticism and recitification.

You can ascribe to that philosophy or not, I don’t care. But this kind of kneejerk reaction isn’t in line with the way these discussions actually happen within Marxism.

Do dogmatic Marxists who blindly defend bad shit exist? Yes. But they’re commonly denounced and criticized for their garbage analysis.

You’re taking a small subset of, mostly online weirdos, and stawmanning my position, and an entire branch of political philosophy.

By all means, keep those subs dedicated to defending all those atrocities and simping for despots, but people likely won’t be fooled into thinking they only care about epistemology while they say nothing happened in Tienanman Square without a shred of irony

Buddy, I’m not trying to pull wool over your eyes or be sneaky. I literally said to not do this shit. I’m trying to get people to engage with these topics with nuance and critical thinking skills. Not blindly screech uniformed praise or condemnation based on kneejerk, emotional, preconceptions.

Mao and Stalin (though to a noticably lesser extent) actually had insightful things to say though. Mao’s essays on epistemology are genuinely really fantastic. And that can be true alongside all of the show trials and sparrow murder which was genuinely really fucking bad.

Pol Pot meanwhile admitted to never having really ever read Marx, and his faction of the Communist Party of Cambodia was more concerned about Khmer ultranationalism and anti-Vietmamese sentiment that had been brewing over the course of French colonialism, then with anything to do with building socialism.

So, I guess what I’m saying is that we ought to take a nuanced, grounded view of historic socialisms that accounts for their success and failures, and doesn’t fall into either mindless exoneration of awful shit, nor reflexively screeching “TANKIE TANKIE!!!” Every time anything vaguely socialist oriented comes up in discussion.

They do that because of Firefox goes, Google is open to being trust busted. Killing Firefox would be literal suicide for Google

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