Were there really ever? "Anti-tankiism" was never really a tenable position, as it required ignoring the good things communist governments did and inflating, or removing from historical context and comparison with worse capitalist actions, any negative actions.
Yeah I know but like, there's a lot of anti-tankie soft-leftists who claim to be democratic socialists that I've seen be supportive of Cuba in the past and now they're just flat out ignoring it because it doesn't fit into their belief Maduro was an "evil brutal dictator" as I see repeated over and over again.
They also don't seem to know what to think now that Maduro has been captured and yet the socialists still hold power. They've never been told that the socialists are evil, just Maduro. So they seem like they're in a limbo state about what to think about Venezuela right now.
These sound like fascinating people you've encountered. That's not disbelief, mind, but it's interesting how they could come to the belief that Cuba is good but Maduro is bad. It seems like they have a lot of Cognitive Dissonance to contend with. If this is their belief system then it would be logical to assume that they're 100% in support of Venezuela now that their only obstacle to support is in a NY jail.
I can corroborate her, I've met tons of people who defend Cuba because they see it as an underdog basically while calling the PRC and USSR evil empires.
I can't put my finger on this, but I bet there's some psychology behind rooting for the "underdog" and being repulsed by the "powerful"
There's a fair bit of writing on this topic, for example this article
~~There is also this one that more explicitly links this mindset to Christian culture~~
Those are the same essay just published in two different places. It is a banger though
I'm very silly sometimes. I read the first version but not the second. Thank you for the correction.
I have to imagine it has to do with identification. Unless you're at the top of the social order, you're going to identify with the "underdog" to some extent, but few will identify with the powerful. Even at the higher echelons, there's still plenty of people with more power, which can lead one to the false assumption of one's own downtrodden status: hence the difficulty of many white-presenting people to recognize their own privilege, even when it becomes increasingly obvious when bolstered by wealth.
I'll admit that used to be me when I was a radlib but even then I supported Venezuela and Chavez because of how much I hate bush
There's a weird current on the left where you sympathize with Latin American socialists and are willing to consider the material constraints they have to contend with, but you have nothing but disdain for Asian and Russian communists because they didn't just snap their fingers and out of thin air create productive forces and a classless society. I guess it's unexamined Cold War racism?
There's nothing weird about it, it's just good old orientalism.
Huh. Well now I have to do what I always do when confused by confounding situations: Go do some reading. It's hard for me to conceptualize what goes into someone's head to produce such a dissonant view, but it takes all types I guess. Maybe it's incomplete propagandization? Like genetic co-dominance but applied to a worldview.
Yeah, that's my experience too.
I think this also explains why Vietnam is mostly just ignored by these people. It's doing well enough that the "underdog" thing doesn't really work, and it's also not powerful enough to have all that much influence outside its own borders. Doesn't fit any sort of preconceived narrative? Just don't talk about it.
If you use their definition of socialist state, yes definitely. If you use the real definition, definitely not
“DeNmArK iS gOoD sOcIaLiSm”
The liberal is someone who supports all socialist projects except the current one
Only failed socialist projects can be supported by anti-tankies: Allende's Chile, the Spanish Second Republic, hell, even non-socialist States such as the pre-Bolshevik Russia (after the February revolution).
The anti tankie support for Cuba was always framed as support for the people not the government, wasn't it?
That’s just step one of libs getting into regime change. In reality it means they want the U.S., the cause of Cuba’s problems, to turn it into another Puerto Rico.
Of course, they don't actually believe it but that is how they frame it.
that's just anti-Cuba, when the majority of Cubans support the government. It's paternalistic "I know better than you and will dictate what should happen in your country to you"
Makhnovshchina, Paris Commune, that time anarchists took over a part of portland
"anti-tankie" is just another word for the standard foreign policy of the west
"Rojava" (lmao)
Norway
Sweden
Ukraine
Yeah, I support socialist Ukraine
I think I once read a comment in Hexbear that "tankie" is usually a pejorative used by western leftists against other western leftists as a disciplining rebuke.
These sorts are social chauvanists. They do not really engage in political, labor, or social activism outside of their desktops/phones. I think they're just embarrassed & disillusioned Democrats, perhaps as we all once were, but still side with the nation state as a pillar of identity and moral North star.
Did they ever?
Well I had it in my head that they at least nominally thought Cuba was good but now I don't even know. Their seems to be a complete avoidance of the topic when I bring up Cuban officers were Maduro's entire guard, like they don't want to consider that a country they don't see as bad were so supportive of Venezuela, they don't want to think about why.
I wouldn't be surprised if some people think that Cuba is good overall even if they disagree with supporting Maduro. I don't think very many would voice such a stance though because anti-communism and the exaggerated opposition to Maduro mean it would be pretty poorly received.
No, they're all liberal "democracies" now
Democratic Kampuchea
Comrade Chomsky, welcome to the Revolution.
finland lmao
Le epic norway and finland trust me bro they're socialist bro
I thought that was the whole point of being "anti-tankie"
Maaaaaaaybe Vietnam, but even that’s unlikely.
Hell nah, they see Vietnam as following the path of China (correctly, but they see it as a bad thing, obviously).
norway
Did they ever truly support Cuba? Or was it always a "hate the government, not the people" sort of thing? I always got the impression that they wanted Cuba to be less "authoritarian" and have more "freedom" for their people. Though as your conversation shows with that person from mander.xyz, the term "Tankie" is just a floating signifier with no real meaning and just means whatever a person wants it to mean, so an "anti-tankie" is probably not going to have any sort of coherent worldview.
Though as your conversation shows with that person from mander.xyz, the term "Tankie" is just a floating signifier with no real meaning and just means whatever a person wants it to mean, so an "anti-tankie" is probably not going to have any sort of coherent worldview.
Mmmmmm. There's a whole thing to unpack there where a "tankie" is an unreasonable boogieman that some people have been convinced exists but really does not. It's a caricature of a marxist-leninist who reverts to "stalin should've sent more tanks" with no understanding that statements like that are unserious and the real position held by that person in a reasonable conversation is quite different.
They only support dead projects, every AES is not worthy of their support.
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