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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33462 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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That’s fair.

Conversely, my anecdotal experience is that something like a quarter to a third of the actual far-leftists I know will be like “Lenin/Stalin/Mao had the right idea, just went too far/did some things wrong”, “Great Leap Forward is capitalist propaganda”, “Communists would have succeeded and created utopia on Earth if it was not for evil capitalists sabotaging them”, etc. Usually not “everything they did was right”, but absolutely bending over backwards to excuse any “mistake” they made. I’ve heard someone claim that the Great Leap Forward was actually the US’s fault!

I have never seen anyone in real life defend Hitler, like, ever. Not even outside of the West where it’s less of a taboo.

Conversely, my anecdotal experience is that something like a quarter to a third of the actual far-leftists I know will be like “Lenin/Stalin/Mao had the right idea, just went too far/did some things wrong”, “Great Leap Forward is capitalist propaganda”, “Communists would have succeeded and created utopia on Earth if it was not for evil capitalists sabotaging them”, etc.

You have a very different sample than I do, then, because I know some super-leftist, super-woke people, and while they tend to be very enthusiastic about socialism, they think it's all "Scandinavia style socialism"; I know literally none who think the Great Leap Forward is just capitalist propaganda or that Lenin/Stalin/Mao had the right idea but just went too far.

Granted, I don't know any actual tankies in real life.

Also granted, I don't know any actual neo-Nazis in real life.

My suspicion is that I’m undercounting actual neo-Nazis, but I think my intuition that there are a lot more actual tankies than literal neo-Nazis is more accurate than not, especially in the urban West.

(This is different outside of the West, of course. Though Hitler endorsement is also probably less useful as a signifier of far-rightness outside of the West.)

I have never seen anyone in real life defend Hitler, like, ever. Not even outside of the West where it’s less of a taboo.

Of course - if you cheer for Hitler you are spitting on everything Western culture sees as sacred, you are the true counterculture and true rebel, and such rebellion has consequences few people are willing to pay.

Waving red flags with hammer and sickle can make you feel like rebel, but everyone knows it is harmless pastime.

Firstly, the claim was this:

I see a lot more rightists defending Hitler than I do leftists defending Stalin and Mao.

Secondly, that doesn’t hold nearly as well when I hear people say that Mao was “misunderstood”, mm? I think that goes beyond “harmless pastime”.

Secondly, that doesn’t hold nearly as well when I hear people say that Mao was “misunderstood”, mm? I think that goes beyond “harmless pastime”.

Well, TPTB are not worried of world workers revolution, are not worried at all that people with hammer and sickle in their twitter handle are going to seize the means of production and expropriate the expropriators.

Communism in the West was not always perceived as harmless, but it is now.

I mean, I agree with you in that sense; but I still think that both the absolute and the relative number of people who are legitimately, unironically tankies in the left is still greater than bona fide Hitler-did-nothing-wrong neonazi types in the right. That the establishment doesn’t feel threatened by them doesn’t affect the sincerity of the belief.

That the establishment doesn’t feel threatened by them doesn’t affect the sincerity of the belief.

How can you measure sincerity of belief? Only imperfect measure we have is willingness to sacrifice for the belief.

So, what are these "unironic" tankies doing? Do they spend their lives agitating and organizing workers IRL, while facing danger of harrassment, persecution, prison, torture and death, or are they shitposting on the internet?

Honestly, that raises a good question - they were in the normal riots in the last few years (some even went overseas to try to export BLM!), and do some sort of community organisation/support. A few are union organisers; the rest live a pretty bohemian lifestyle. I don‘t think they actually risk anything, given how limp-wristed state response to riots have been, and honestly it‘s difficult to consider the recent riots as being in service of classical Marxism.

But that applies even more to the Hitler-did-nothing-wrong Nazis — really, how many of the far-right are endangering themselves to spread the gospel of (neo-)Nazism, versus the ones who are in it because they think it‘s edgy, or because they have some vague grievance towards progressive politics and it was the easiest thing to latch on to? The lack of mind-reading goes both ways.

And that raises another point — isn‘t it pretty telling that people can get to say shit like “Mao is just misunderstood” and “the Great Leap Forward was the US’s fault for starving China” without getting overwhelming pushback (like someone would if they tried to justify the Holocaust, say) and making them reconsider?

But that applies even more to the Hitler-did-nothing-wrong Nazis — really, how many of the far-right are endangering themselves to spread the gospel of (neo-)Nazism, versus the ones who are in it because they think it‘s edgy, or because they have some vague grievance towards progressive politics and it was the easiest thing to latch on to? The lack of mind-reading goes both ways.

Even anonymous edgy neonazi posting can be dangerous thing. If you are doxxed as someone whose hobby is to shitpost as "Werwolf1488", your life is fucked (while not much will happen to "RedGuard1917", except friends laughing at him behind his back).

And that raises another point — isn‘t it pretty telling that people can get to say shit like “Mao is just misunderstood” and “the Great Leap Forward was the US’s fault for starving China” without getting overwhelming pushback (like someone would if they tried to justify the Holocaust, say) and making them reconsider?

Yes, it is pretty that communism is so completely dead that it can be treated as old unfunny joke and nothing else.

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