this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2025
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Authoritarianism is authoritarianism. Doesnt matter how you paint it.
You wouldn't make it on the grad
On authority, by Frederick Engels 1872
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
Not really, no. To a capitalist, all forms of leftism is 'authoritarian,' because they consider private property natural and oppose leftists 'stealing' in.
'Authoritarianism' just isn't a particularly useful term because nobody who uses is is ever actually categorically opposed to forcefully compelling people to do or not do things. They will always have a build in exception for what ever they consider to be 'legitimate authority', and what they consider justified authority will just depend on what political philosophy they ascribe to. So really calling the word just means "someone with a different political theory to me with regards to legitimate authority."
There are people who are categorically opposed to forcefully compelling people, and many of them use the word 'authoritarian'.
It can be a useful term, not all systems are equally authoritarian. It's a spectrum.
So you’re an author apologist. Got it.
Nah, death to the author
Just because some people might not use the term correctly doesn’t mean it isn’t a useful term
I left lemmy.ml because there were too many people defending or denying historical acts of political violence. That’s what we mean when we say tankies are authoritarian.
If you'd actually read my post, you'd know my point wasn't about it being used "incorrectly".
Defeating the Nazis was an act of political violence, freeing slaves was an act of political violence, over throwing the feudal system was an act of political believe, driving out colonial empires is an act of political violence, enforcing property rights is an act of political violence, ceasing the means of production is an act of political violence.
See? This is exactly, exactly what I was talking about.
Slaughtering protestors was also an act of political violence, but for some reason the moderators on this instance only like it when you talk about the US doing that
I mean we both know I’m talking about specific acts of political violence, but you are right in that I should have clarified.
To be clear what makes it authoritarian is when it’s the state/government/leadership that is using acts of violence against citizens with political ideas that would threaten their power.
And tankies get the name specifically from either defending or denying that specifically the Soviet Union used violence to suppress attempts to leave their union. When I was on .ml I also frequently saw defense or denial of China using violence that way such as the infamous Tiananmen Square Massacre.
People from lemmy.ml love to shout that people who want them defederated are “capitalist” and hexbear has decided accusing people of being anti-trans is their move, but those are simply strawmen, and really poorly constructed ones at that.
Yes, which was my point. These definitions always have some implicit carve out exception to allow the kind of political violence that the person giving them agrees with to "not count".
This would include collecting taxes, enforcing national borders, enforcing private property, all gun control measures, suppressing domestic terrorists and militias, implementing a particular voting system and then enforcing the result, conscription, and indeed, enforcing the concept of "citizen" vs "non-citizens" in the first place. But, again, you've cut out an expectation for political violence you agree with already.
And here's yet another post-hoc definition of tankie that does not actually line up with how anybody uses the term. Or are you willing for me to ping you to chime in every time someone calls me a tankie for something that has nothing to do with the USSR keeping Soviets in the union (incidently, there isn't a country on earth that will willing let parts of it leave.)
Sounds like you're a transphobe who got called out.
Sure, at some point it’s a spectrum. From the perspective of anarchism, any government is “authoritarian”.
I got that from Wikipedia. What I saw more recently on .ml was more often about China, North Korea, or Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
So when a corporation uses or sponsors acts of violence it's not authoritarianism? I guess Coca-Cola-funded fascist death squads are just smol bean libertarians fighting the oppressive tankie socialists!
You can't even get your talking points in order. The main people on lemmy.ml are anti-capitalist, they would accuse those who would censor them of being anti-communist.
Anarcho capitalists genuinly believe this lmao
Until Coca-Cola is its a government, no, that’s not authoritarianism. That doesn’t mean it’s good. Things can be bad without being authoritarianism.
Yeah you’re right I was caught between two phrasings and I mixed them up. I edited it to fix it. Thanks for pointing out my mistake!
Which was more authoritarian: slavery or freeing the slaves? Slaveowners were not the government, therefore, according to you, nothing they did could be considered authoritarian, right?
It seems pretty arbitrary to single out one single heirarchy and say that only that heirarchy is capable of being authoritarian.
Idk what you think we’re arguing about but I’m curious where this is going.
It seems pretty clear to me that applying the definition I gave previously of “authoritarian violence” as “state-perpetrated violence against citizens with ideas the state finds threatening”, slavery could be considered “authoritarian violence” but “freeing the slaves” couldn’t.
If you are specifically talking about the US Civil War, I do think that counts as “authoritarian violence” to the extent that the war was about stopping a group of citizens from rebelling against the government.
To be clear, I’m going off of the Wikipedia definition which defines “authoritarianism” as:
I read that as pretty specifically applying to governments, but I could see how you could apply the idea to describe things like anti-union efforts.
What? How? The state did not order people to own slaves, and the slavers could free their slaves at will. It seems pretty clear to me that the opposite is true, that private citizens were operating in way that most reasonable people would call authoritarian, but by your definition cannot be called authoritarian because it's only authoritarian when the state does it.
I suppose you could argue that the state failing to prevent individuals from performing authoritarian acts is a form of authoritarianism, but at that point the definition starts to break down. Is it possible for a state to be authoritarian through inaction? Suppose, for example, interracial relationships are technically legal, but every time one happens or is even suspected, a lynch mob strings someone up on a tree, and the government fails to prosecute.
If the state can be authoritarian through inaction, then at that point it becomes rather unclear what authoritarianism even means. You define it as, "state-perpetrated violence against citizens with ideas the state finds threatening." But if those people pose a genuine threat to others, then doesn't the state have an obligation to stop them in order to not be authoritarian, just as they do with the lynch mob in the previous example? And for that matter, isn't it authoritarian for the US to allow Coca-Cola to fund death squads, in the original example?
I don't think the term "authoritarian" defined in this way is useful or holds up under scrutiny.
The state absolutely played a roll in using violence to maintain slavery.
This is an interesting point. I think strictly it doesn’t “count” but if you consider this behavior as playing a roll for the state, I could see this counting.
However, again, I think this is missing the point. Something can be despicably violent whether or not it is specifically “authoritarian”.
If it’s a threat to other people yes the state should intervene. If it’s a threat to the political status quo without otherwise needing the government to step in then it’s “authoritarian”. It can be an abuse of power either way.
So I’ll admit I had to look this one up. From what I can tell, the stance of the US in that case that it was Colombia’s job to prevent or prosecute crime occurring in its jurisdiction. Personally I do wish big companies would face international consequences more often.
Applying the definition, I think you could consider this an example of Colombian “authoritarian violence”.
Not Washington nor Beijing, but Washington
Do, uh, do you know which country it was that invaded Ukraine?
Yes, Russia
I fucking knew it, Lincoln was a soviet plant all along, fucking tankies.
Calling the 1989 incidence in Beijing the Tianenmen Square Massacre is like calling the 2021 incidence in Washington D.C. The Freedom Plaza Killings where the Democratic Party ruthlessly slaughtered innocent civilians after a peaceful protest, with the exception that the protesters in 2021 were more reasonable and less violent than the rioters in Beijing. Especially for the fact that when Washington decided to send the military in, the Jan 6 rioters did not decide to stay and try to block the US military from entering the Capitol or Plaza.
I won't be surprised to eventually see an actual equivalent type (demands from pro-palestine protesters for educational reforms) of protest happening in the US with far higher causalties as a result.
First, what the protestors in Tianamen didn’t do was break into the government buildings with the intent to kill specific members of the government and to overturn the results of an election to install a leader of their own choice. That happened in 2021.
Also the death toll in 1989 was much much larger.
If you want a better US example, maybe something like the killing of striking mine workers in the US although I’m struggling to find an example of a single event that comes close to the scale of Tianamen.
That's because at least before any other student group decided to storm government buildings which was rumored to happen despite there already many police and soldiers present, one group of "peaceful" protesters decided to kill over 100 soldiers on the same street and one day before tank man decided to jump on a tank.
The "peaceful protest" was far more violent than the Jan 6 US insurgency was, since the US insurgents did not have such a violent group among them.
That happened in 1989.
It was the Capitol Hill Jan 6 insurgency or the similar Hong Kong 2019 insurgency but got way way more aggressive before any military action or counteraction was taken.
What Jan 6 and Tianenmen square share though is that once the insurgency took place the military was called in, but during the Jan 6 Capitol Hill riots, the rioters Capitol Hill rioters actually all left, not wanting to confront the military, while at least some of the Chinese insurgents on the street stayed and died fighting, while people on the square were peacefully evacuated.
I wouldn’t find it surprising that some of the protestors suggested something like that. But the fact is that this didn’t happen, and the protestors (and bystanders) who were killed were not attempting to break into a government building, attack government officials, or overthrow the government. If they were killed by security guards while attempting to rush the palace, that would be different.
The protestors did fight back. But that’s a way higher number for military deaths than I’ve seen recorded anywhere, and thousands of civilians (including a lot of bystanders) were dead before tank man did his thing.
Source: it came to me in a dream
Source is Wikipedia
Lol. No. Wikipedia didn't exist in 1989. Please learn what sources actually are, rather than doing the usual shitlib thing of assuming that Wikipedia is like the gold tablets of Joseph Smith; a divine font of perfect knowledge straight from God.
I’ve never had any major issues with Wikipedia but I know it can have issues.
Do you have other sources you’d like to suggest I look at?
They didn't "fight back". They killed before any military action was taken.
It was a violent attack. It was an actual attempt to insurgency, rather than the Jan 6 revolt.
Only after the rioters killed over a 100 soldiers was military action taken.
Only after scores of soldiers dead,
did the military enter the street where the killings took place and did Chinese military kill the insurgents that killed their soldiers.
And during this time the protesters from the square were evacuated due to heavy violence from this one group of rioters.
What happened during Jan 6 was that the rioters all left the Capitol when the military arrived.
The rioters of 1989 did not.
The Jan 6 insurgents were more peaceful than the 1989 Tianenmen Square insurgents.
Source? Because that doesn’t match up with what I’ve read, especially the numbers.
I think the best parallel that could be drawn would be the [Kent State Shootings.] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings) given the similarities between the Kent state students' goals and the Tiananmen students' goals.
Though even then there were only four fatalities. No where near Tiananmen. Plus the US government isn't doing anything to try to hide the murders either.
Are you seriously comparing the Tiananmen square massacre where at least 300 peaceful protesters/students were killed by the Chinese military to the Jan 6 riots where there were only two people killed? (Technically there were 5 deaths but three of them were either overdoses or natural causes). One was a cop killed by the rioters and another was a lady warned several times that she was going to be shot if she continued to break into the capital building.
These are not even remotely similar situations.
One group of students or "students" killed at least 100 soldiers before any violent counteractions or actions were taken by the military and that's part of the 300 killed. The situation is very similar since such scenario could have happened if part of the Jan 6 rioters organized to inflict more violence and decided to stay after the storming and convinced part of the rioters to stay as well.
Um. This is just flatly not true. For starters, according to the Chinese government themselves only 23 military personel died. And those casualties only occurred AFTER the peoples liberation army started using live rounds against protesters the evening of June the 3rd 1989. And the 300 number is very conservative. The actual number is likely in the thousands.
You very clearly are either a troll just making things up or you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about
Wow that's quite the revisionism there
Calling an insurgency a peaceful protest is indeed revisionist if one were to do so.
And calling a revolt an insurgency and calling insurgency where rioters kill over 100 soldiers a peaceful protest with counteraction against such insurgency a massacre is also quite the revisionism.
The timeline of Tianenmen 1989 is