It should be noted that Feddit.org was included to represent Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
I did not include Baraza.africa as that was too encompassing as it covers the whole African continent.
Hopefully this post inspires more countries to join the blue club!
Oh man I made the mistake of saying the word Russia and now I must be evil. You’re right, they’re not technically communist and after double checking yeah they don’t claim it anymore either. Last time I really cared about Russia’s internals was quite a while ago, and despite few changes to their economic system they definitely used to at least claim to be communist. Or that was my understanding at the time.
The point still stands, a handful of countries claim to be communist. A handful of countries are communist. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is up to you to decide
i don’t think you’re evil. i just think it’s fascinating how pervasive “russia is still communist” is as a talking point when it’s decidedly not
I remember googling “which countries are still communist” back around 2018ish and Russia being at the top of many lists. It’s just another ripple effect from propaganda that hasn’t died out yet.
That being said, fighting propaganda is much easier with gentler words instead of name-calling in my experience
Lol. Must knowledgeable liberal.
Imagine replying to the same person 3 times to say the same thing, and all 3 of them were idiotic because you misread their first comment.
I said “claims to be” not “are” and then further clarified that I was saying that the most recent time I had looked into it I found multiple sources saying they stilled claimed to be communist. I knew they weren’t actually communist, I always did. Because of course I knew about the fall of the Soviet Union. I just didn’t bother to pay attention to the actual internal structure of Russia because it didn’t apply to my life in any way
They don’t though. They don’t now, they didn’t in 2018, and anyone with even the most cursory knowledge on the subject could tell you that.
What is it with westerners arrogantly giving their opinion on things they clearly don’t know the first thing about?
Okay, let’s break down a few things here. I said
I then recognized that I was affected by propaganda and changed my tune. Then, several hours after I had already realized my mistake and changed my behavior, you came and started verbally abusing me for having misspoken in the first place due to my lack of knowledge. Again, I’ve already been educated and changed my behavior.
What value do you believe that your comments brought by being abusive after someone had already recognized their biases and changed them? Do you believe you are helping to further change my beliefs or do you feel like you might just be pushing a wedge between two people who actually agree for no reason?
The value is that maybe in the future you will think twice before popping off about subjects you literally don’t know the first thing about. Just to be clear, thinking that Russia still claims to be communist in 2018 is like thinking Germany still claims to be fascist or France still claims to be a monarchy. There’s nothing wrong with being ignorant, so long as you’re humble about it.
I was humble about it. I publicly admitted that I was a victim of propaganda and adjusted the way I acted going forward.
You’re right that I probably could have put a other moment of thought into it before hitting post and I probably would have googled it and then changed it. Which is exactly what someone else has already pointed out to me and I’ve already done. So you’re repeating them, and bringing no value to the conversation.
where did i name call? i was just pointing out that it’s some tankie propaganda. i think your post was overall fine. ohhhh, wait did you think i was calling you a tankie? shit, i didn’t mean that, i just meant the propaganda was tankist in origin
“Tankie” is a generalist term, the same as “leftist” and whatnot. The goal of terms like these is to put people into camps that are divided and label them as anything other than “human” because it’s a lot easier to say “100 dead tankies” than it is to say “100 dead humans”
My point is that terms like this detract from communication because they obfuscate the meaning behind what is being said. Using these terms, even if it is to fight against propaganda, makes it easier to continue using other terms that are similar in nature. This encourages people to use less people-centric language, which dehumanizes those around them and makes them easier targets. Best to just avoid using them at all IMO
Actually the goal of terms like that is efficiency. We could say “supporter of aggressively implemented authoritarian communism” if we wanted, but tankie is shorter.
Helps if you have the background to understand the specifics of what different “isms” support and thus what they disagree on that leads them into genuinely fighting each other. A fascist, a lib and a tankie really do have very core disagreements that cannot be realistically compromised on. At the most basic, a fascist wants a unified society with a strict hierarchy, the tankie wants a unified society with no hierarchy, the lib doesn’t want any kind of unified society. If any one of these people gets their way, the other two do not, which leads to conflict.
Left/right are more economic arguments with some wiggle room due to being more or less a spectrum, but also tend to feature significant real world disagreements.
Anyways, I do agree that it’s important to have conversations about these underlying details, but when you’re talking amongst other people who know the background already, some shorthand terms are going to start appearing. Since these are overarching governance philosophies that any person can adopt or discard at will, they’re also a little different from more inherent divisions, like ethnicity for instance. Being a tankie, lib or fascist is a choice, where being Arabic or gay or something is not.
Choose the most efficient phrase from these options:
Notice how the message still gets across with that third one? It still tells you “these are lies or exaggerations that have misled you” without needlessly classing the source with a catch-all term that obfuscates their position as human beings with the right to live?
Nothing about the term tankie does or should deny their right to live. Advocating for the deaths of people who disagree with you is profoundly against everything liberalism (the freedom-based guiding principle of what we’d call “the west”) stands for.
To the contrary, as a pretty standard liberal American I fully support their rights to advocate for whatever they wish. Since there is no realistic way to accurately and objectively determine what is or is not propaganda, I support their right to create that as well.
Regarding the utility of recognizing where propaganda comes from, it can occasionally be useful to know, as it tends to follow certain patterns based on the goals of whoever created it.
Can you realistically accurately and objectively determine that the source of the claim was a tankie?
So it makes more sense to make wild claims about the person behind the message than it does to classify a piece of information based off of its linguistic characteristics?
Also, identifying propaganda isn’t difficult, I had to do it for classes in school several times. Here’s a helpful reminder on how to do so.