What always confuses me is when I see a queer tankie or conservative, it's like why are you shooting yourself in the foot
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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I'm a queer conservative. I believe in conserving indigenous sovereignty, the environment, pagan religions, labour regulations and the strength of unions, and our knowledge of history. I question these newfangled ideas like capitalism and binary gender because I think they're no good. Things were just fine when we had 10,000 genders and I don't see a need to change that!
That's not how that works
That's not how any of that works
Yeah, I know, it's not what's normally meant by the word conservative. But I don't see why we should have to give the idea of conserving things over to the right. There are lots of great things to conserve. And colonialism isn't one of them. Here in australia, we have a 60,000 year history that predates the right wing idea of conservativism.
You're thinking of conservationism. Very different thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values.[1][2] The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in which it appears.
The culture I belong to is the queer community. Thus, the tenets of conservativism, to me, center on the traditional institutions, practices, and values of other people in the queer community. We promote the traditional institutions that rightfully govern colonised land. We promote the traditional institutions of pagan religions. We promote the traditional institutions of labour guilds and unions. We promote the traditional practices of indigenous land management. We promote the traditional practices of nonbinary gender. We promote the traditional practices of the old gods.
The things I am interested in preserving are not the same things a white coloniser binarist capitalist is interested in preserving. And given that whiteness, binary gender, and capitalism have no ancient history and no recent history worth keeping alive, I consider their conservativism far less legitimate. There is a whole lot more to conserve on the left.
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People want a good team to root for. They want simple answers instead of the truth. You can just say your nation or other nations are great and must be defended from justifiable criticism because an attack on them is an attack on your own identity.
Serious question: Why are far-left idealogists being labeled anti-queer? I've simply never heard of this before.
Conservatives (U.S. politics) are 100% in that bucket... But most of them are far-right at this point (and patently nuts.)
tankies actively prop up anything anti-west, and since the west is leading the charge in embracing the queer community, they tend to attack that too. doesn't help that the two regimes they like to prop up the most, russia and china, also have extremely anti-queer policies
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A lot of tankies have killed queer people
While historically, and contemporaneously, communist countries have been harsh on homosexuality, surely next time the gays will be safe!
Show me where it says that anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment or indeed any intolerance is inherent in communism rather than just the backwards thinking of bad leaders. Correlation does not equal causation.
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Are tankies really that big of a problem? No one worth their weight (or not chronically online) actually uncritically worships former socialist projects, the whole point is to study and preserve the nuance of what occured in former socialist projects for future socialism. Tankie is such a chronically online term that kills any discussion of former socialism whenever I see it in service of avoiding it altogether. 196 having it in its community banner screams of insecurity.
Terfs on the other hand have serious intitutional power and have actually shaped international politics in their rhetoric. A few weirdos on an online discussion webpage does not compare to an international counter revolutionary bloc of fascists who have already enacted harm. It's telling when there has already been an incident of terf-adjacent transphobia in this community than a "tankie infestation."
they're not that big of a problem irl, but in the world of lemmy they're a huge annoyance.
Yeah, the lemmy devs/admins of lemmy.ml are tankies. Someone further down in this thread posted a link to an essay of dessaline's (a lemmy dev and admin of lemmy.ml) full-on denying the Uyghur genocide.
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It's been a pattern ever since Adolf "national socialist" Hitler
what does hitler have to do with tankies?
They are both authoritarians who claim to be socialists. And they both spew reactionary rhetoric under the guise of progressivism
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Look up "horseshoe theory", might explain a few things
do you unironically believe in horseshoe theory?
The horseshoe theory is bullshit not because tankies and nazis don't behave similarly, but because they're not the two logical extremes of the same spectrum. You can be far left without being a tankie by just not being a bootlicker, and you can be far right without being a nazi by (you guessed it) also not being a bootlicker. Even with how many boots you lick the left/right division of the political spectrum is still horribly reductive, but it's super important to split the axis of authoritarianism vs liberalism out of it when addressing tankies, because they have a lot of colloquially left beliefs with the authoritarianism and anti-progressivism commonly associated with the right wing.
I don't buy that they have the same beliefs, but it's interesting how the methods have some similarities — the stances definitely have significant enough differences though.
Wow, hold on, you're saying people who want to change society in some way have similar methods? And that these methods are different from people who don't want to change society? Crikey, I'm gonna need you to slow down, these ideas are just too complex, man!
It's in the encyclopedia of political fallacies somewhere between "it isn't corruption if it's legal" and trickle down economics.
*look up "lying about being a socialist/feminist", might explain a few things
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What are the two terms please?
TERF (trans exclusive radical feminists) are basically transphobes who say "trans people are bad for women rights".
Tankies are a bit more vague in usage. But basically these are self proclaimed socialists who are actually more into authoritarian leaders. They will appreciate Stalin for everything he did and defend North Korea's political system. Sometimes even praise China and Russia for being "anti-imperialist". So they have all the social backwards ideas, even more so than TERFS because why would they be feminists.
Yes, Russia is being extremely anti-imperialist in Ukraine, and it's also China's anti-imperialism that's threatening Taiwan. Tankies just hate the west, they don't have principles.
To be more precise it is anti-US-imperialism and hegemony, which itself is a fine sentiment but when you're willing to let any right wing dictator lead that fight you've really lost any credibility as a leftist.
I would argue that Russia was imperialist during the tsar empire, the Soviet union and today. It just never stopped exploiting their colonies (at least everything east of the Ural are colonies inhabited by indigenous communities not recognized in their fight for freedom) and the Soviet union smashed all the attempts to create a socialist community that was beyond bolshevism like the black army in Ukraine or the anarchosyndicalists in Spain. As a leftist myself I don't see any reason to have solitary with Soviets and people who refere positively to them.
yeah, makes sense, but exactly like you said, credibility is important. being anti-imperialist in general with a focus on us imperialism is very different from being against only american imperialism while actively supporting the imperialism of other countries such as russia or china
Tankies just hate the west, they don't have principles.
They do have a principle: "The cruelty is the point". This is usually used for far-right groups, who use conservatism as an excuse to hurt people, but it applies just as well to those who use anti-US sentiment to hurt people.
Either I've aged really fast, or you guys are speaking a new language, can someone explain what any of this means?
TERF = Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism
Feminists who also don't like Trans people, especially trans women.
Tankies = people who support rivals to Western power, usually saying they support communism but they actually just support whatever Russia and China do. Some are state propagandists, some are just edgy teenagers.
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