this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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Mutual aide is not really the issue with tankies, the problem is the authoritarianism. Mutual aide can be very effective when done properly. For example, anarchists tend to answer the question of "leeches" by giving them the resources to self-actualize, and if the "leech" does not care to do that, they can be kicked out of an anarchist community.
Maybe those are problems with the ideology, but its not with the people who believe it. I've met a lot of people who have very incoherent beliefs. Nobody bullied them and so they absorbed the sane beliefs of the group.
I really just don't think exclusion or hostility are useful unless people are dangerous. A Nazi makes Jewish and gay members of a group scared. A tankie really doesn't because 90% of the time they're gay or trans.
Then I haven't even gotten to how a lot of people join extremist ideologies because they are lonely and need friends. So when you combine that with how small scale local activism is, kicking safe useful people out of a group is just abusing the socially inept.
I am a queer person, and I am scared of tankies because they support the creation of an authoritarian state which is fundamentally incompatible with the ideas queer liberation and self-determination.
I'm all for communism. Every day is a new day for me to witness and live the horrors of capitalism. Hell, I got laid off a couple months ago and I may be facing homelessness soon. I could go on a tangent here but it's very clear to me that we need a different system soon. But I don't want to build a "fiscally leftists, socially conservative" society. I want it all left.
The common thread of 'authoritarian' countries isn't communism or fascism. It's having significant opposition. Almost always from the US.
No Communist supports suppression of dissent. It's a countermeasure to foreign interference. It doesn't exist because tankes feel like authoritarian states work better but because the US has an extensive and well known track record of breaking international sovereignty laws and installing fascist regimes by force.
Communists didn't want to be slaughtered for wanting to abolish poverty. Therefore every real life communist is a tankie, either because they understood that class war is war or because they're buried under capitalist soil.
This suppression of opposition doesn't have ideological basis. It's an emergency measure in a time of war. Hence why even every CAPITALIST country opposed to US interests is 'authoritarian'.