west west bad big bad very bad stalin good lenin good ignore starvation ignore deaths ignore everything just read state and revolution bro
Tankies gonna tank. And those two instances constitute two thirds of the tankie triad.
“US bad, so every enemy of US must be good”
Basically it’s a lot of that, plus a bunch of authoritarian and contrarian bootlickers who think they’re leftists.
I think the defense of Stalin comes at the end of a particular path that can be very appealing to people for various reasons.
One potential driver of it is that ML/Stalinist groups are not too dissimilar from a secular religion; it has a group of people ready to welcome you as a friend and ally as long as you agree to a certain worldview and a very specific reading of history from approved texts that always pose historical Maxrist-Leninists as righteous figures who didn’t really do anything that bad, and if they did, it was for the greater good, and justified.
Those texts can even make a certain amount of sense if you’re disillusioned with the status quo, and distrust western media. It’s also likely extremely comforting to believe that while the western world is fucked up and exploitative, there are at the same time powerful allies elsewhere in the form of the AES states, which in their view are making steady progress towards the promised socialist utopia.
So ML groups can offer a feeling of belonging, friendship, a comforting worldview, and the belief that if we just follow the directions of long dead prophet-like historical figures (like Lenin or Stalin), then we will someday have heaven on earth. These are extremely appealing aspects to someone who may be very lonely, or who may have suffered a severe trauma and may not have their basic needs met (which may also be what leads to some people being attracted to the MAGA cult)
To someone well versed in history and a desire to find multiple viewpoints for a historical event to avoid propaganda bubbles, the true nature of ML/Stalinism and its authoritarianism becomes self-evident. But for those who never went down that path and are in a vulnerable state, a ‘scientific’ cult offering you hope, meaning, and companionship is very easy to fall into, and thus willingly self-delude themselves to attain in-group status.
Just like with normal religions/cults, once they are deep inside it, they are heavily encouraged by the in-group to suspect any outside information that challenges their narratives or isn’t approved by the group, and thus the cognitive dissonance they could create if looked at more objectively can mostly be avoided.
Also similar to religions; a ML member is strongly encouraged not to have doubts about the validity of the approved sources/texts/history. If doubts are voiced, the group will attempt to re-affirm the validity of the texts (keep the faith). But if that fails and the member continues to voice doubts, they are likely to be ejected from the group, which is very traumatic for most people, but especially so if there is no other support groups to lean on. This likely results in many keeping doubts to themselves, or convincing themselves those doubts are just CIA lies, similar to how Christians try to reject their own doubts with the concept of Satan spreading lies to tempt a Christian from their faith through logic or archeology.
Why not fedposter if fedposter shape??
They have this quasi-religious cult vibe that makes them like this:
- Sacred texts that give answers to everything.
- Saints and prophets. I mean - they mostly identify themselves by someone else’s name - e.g. stalinists, trotskyists, maoists etc.
- Aggression to outsiders. Building a good sect requires that, it’s how you keep folks inside - just make them hate the outside.
That’s not a scientific conclusion on my part, rather vibe-based one, and some conspiracy theory communities can also be described in that way. Which also leads to next conclusion - they’re kept in by a sense of community, and since that community is built around fringe and often cringe ideas - it only leads to doubling down on ideas that seem stupid or dangerous or simply not thought through to any sensible person.
It seems to me like they take the wrong lesson from leftism, which is that the US is usually the bad guy in most situations and they represent oligarchy interests by default, then extrapolate that to other countries opposed to the US being the good guys by default. Nuance and taking the facts at face value for every situation is much harder to explain to others as an ideology.
They’ve also been infected with a cynicism that makes them open to grifts similar to the right. Our best fighters can’t be perfect, so they try and rip support off of them. Jimmy Dore, the Aussie green party, Jackson Hinkel, the Caleb sex pest dude, they all have criticism of everyone else while providing no real ideas of their own and how to get there. They’re just propped up as a distraction rather than a movement.
It’s the opposite. Most MLs in the West were raised to believe in the West inherent superiority and developed all the socialized habits of minimizing or excusing atrocities as errors in judgment or outright denying them as anti-West propaganda. We have spent many years dismantling this, and each step of the way we are faced with contradictions and nuance.
What eventually happens is that people need to find a worldview, a framework, a set of theories that can situate the facts as they discover them into a coherent picture. Marxism-Leninism is one such framework. Under that framework, we start to see that while nuance is critical and cannot be ignored, there are indeed overarching patterns that guide things and staying stuck in small scope details is insufficient.
For example, let’s take the nuance of the embargo on Cuba. First, I think everyone is now clear that the US is starving Cuba. This was not clear to many people until recently. Some still deny it. But it is also true that until recently the greatest amount of aid to Cuba was also provided by the US, particularly through Catholic Charities. We can stay mired in these nuances for a long time - did Cuba make bad decisions with their investment in their economy, why don’t other countries trade more with Cuba, how much does the US actually provide to Cuba, how much US wealth was appropriated by the revolution…
But the nuance, while real, is not important to communicating and articulating a position on what’s happening. The US is killing children, sick, and elderly all over Cuba through modern-day siege warfare and it needs to stop, it needed to stop 60 years ago, it was never justifiable, it was never reasonable.
We have to deal with nuance all the time, because we are constantly bombarded with specially crafted narratives that pull out all sorts of specifics that feed into the US State Dept narrative and we have to constantly research, analyze, situate, and integrate all sorts of phenomena into the world view. It’s exhausting just dealing with the constant stream of propaganda, but then on top of that we have the propaganda amplification done by true believers and by unexamined believers. We are constantly confronted with nuance and contradictions that are real or imaginary or exaggerated or understated and we process it. Becoming an ML in the West is a huge exercise in nuance. Nuance is how we get to the place where we are willing to be open-minded about potentially having our beliefs about the world changed. And then eventually some of us determine that we need a unifying theory and the MLism fits the bill. And then we turn around and try to communicate the overarching theory and conclusions and get told we don’t understand nuance.
I see a lot of agreement, not “the opposite” in this post. You talk a lot about nuance but didn’t cite an example when you’d use it to navigate a difficult subject to grasp, or what that might look like. You also lean into the America bad trope without showing you can do any different. If it is opposite then make that point, not the word salad of how hard it is to be a ML and be right all the time, btw on topics the left very broadly agrees about as your examples.
Cuba’s embargo is not supported by the left. If you’d like to expand more on my points, then what good does attacking AOC as AOCIA bring to the cause of Cuba’s starvation?
Just because you agree with me on my points doesn’t mean they aren’t nuance.
What good does deriding AOC do? Well, the ML strategy with electoralism is to demonstrate that electoralism doesn’t work. AOC has some history of working with CIA carve outs and she has a tendency to be quite performative in her politics. But we don’t really think individual Congress people have any real power to change anything. No one really cares if you vote for her or not. But if you try to use her as an example of how voting can change things, we’re going to point out her history and her record and sow the field with the ideas that honestly she’s just another sheepdog like Bernie is, attracting organizing power, labor and effort when it needs to be directed at revolution.
I don’t know why the standard should be that I can tie deriding individual politicians to the Cuba situation. That doesn’t make a lot of sense. That’s less “nuance” and more “arbitrary bullshit”.
How about Western , chinese amd russian imperialism is bad?
All of lemmy is a gradual progression to the left. Starts at the average liberal and stretches all way down to them. Then because Republicans/right wing people don’t exist here they get to call liberals nazis. Someone always has to be a nazi and someone always has to be a good guy. They think they are the good guys.
Anyone who’s pro Western imperialism and disregards their culture’s involvement in the subjugation of the global South is right wing and of those there are many here. The only reason it’s such a craaaazy take is because most Americans/Westerners couldn’t give two shits about the death their elected governments push as long as gas at the pump is cheap and Netflix pumps specials.
Why is it only western imperialism that is bad, though? I hate to indulge in whataboutism, but it’s frankly naive and highly revisionist to believe that imperialism is all of the west and only in the west.
My native country suffered from Western imperialism back in the 1500s and still is at the very least “managed” by America today… when we (basically the rest of the world) have to fight the same main villain, that IMO is the result of culture, for over 500y and more even if you’re idk West Asian for example, I don’t really see how you could expect the world to think differently. If we ever have to suffer Chinese or idk Nigerian world control, I’m sure we’ll switch our tone.
hahaha you’re doing the thing that they just said you would
I mean I’d like to believe I said something with a bit more sense, lol. IMO, all of it boils down to “waaaah I don’t like to hear West bad because I’m a Westerner and my identity is tied to this long-standing human cancer”. The smartest among them just wisely understand they can be good and guided even if their neighbours aren’t, that they don’t HAVE to go along with their countries’ crimes, and the other ones complain. 🤷
Yeah, that’s what I mean. Thank you, you’re a good guy, how do I know? You told me.
Are you not?
I’m an American liberal, so, no not according to where you put the goal posts. Especially considering how much I love guns.
What do you mean by liberal? Do you think those who don’t sow have the right to reap? Do you love the subjugation of the global South? Do you think America, despite things like slavery to the police forcen routinely murdering African Americans and now ICE kidnapping Latinos and Trump again, is anything but a white supremacist settler colony turned world hegemon and the culmination of Western imperialism?
Or are you just a not too racist capitalist who doesn’t think about politics that deeply? Liberals are either knowingly disguising their immorality or just too unaware to care or think about it. And idc about your hyperfixation and I assume you like them the way people like trains and not because it makes you feel strong and condone murder, ofc.
No thank you. I made a point, you illustrated it beautifully and stand to be my primary source. That’s good enough for me.
Second case, then. 🤷
I have conversed all the time onthe platforms and with users without it coming upt.
Don’t you think it’s a bit over the top representation of the MLs? They’re way more cohesive than that, and there’s no Stalin in the “Marxist-Leninist”.
It’s not about universal hate towards a particular nation - more about the idea how our current society is becoming progressively more unbearable by denying life basics to the common folk. Things like “earning a living wage” implies that below a certain threshold we don’t deserve to live. Real estate developers scalping the housing, making it unaffordable. All while a few hundred people owns a huge portion of wealth, constantly growing it and meddling into politics.
Other things like the reality of not actually being able to vote things away once totalitarian parties takeover a country’s legal systems using democratic means.
There’s plenty of that going as to why many like Karl Marx as a literary inspiration.
and there’s no Stalin in the “Marxist-Leninist”.
“Marxism-Leninism” is Stalinists’ preferred term for their political ideology. They endorse the genocidal tyranny of Stalin, while claiming that Stalin’s tyranny is justified by Lenin’s and Marx’s theory.
If someone calls themselves a “Marxist-Leninist”, just ask what they think of Stalin’s genocides (plural). Then stand back.
I think OP pointed out Stalin because there’s a disturbing amount of Stalinism coming from there. I think you’d have to search very long to find someone on Lemmy as a whole who actually disagrees broadly with the philosophy of Marx. However, when it comes to turning this philosophy into an actual political system, that’s when things get a lot more iffy.
Well, because they study history deeply and are motivated by universal justice and human dignity
Yes, Stalin, famous believer in justice and human dignity.
EDIT: You do understand that it’s possible to be a believer in those principles without becoming a revisionist who starts brown nosing autocrats?
It is difficult for me to imagine what “personal liberty” is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment.
Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible.
- Joseph Stalin
Advance towards socialism cannot but cause the exploiting elements to resist the advance, and the resistance of the exploiters cannot but lead to the inevitable sharpening of the class struggle.
- Joseph Stalin
The main features and requirements of the basic economic law of modern capitalism might be formulated roughly, in this way: the securing of the maximum capitalist profit through the exploitation, ruin and impoverishment of the majority of the population of the given country, through the enslavement and systematic robbery of the peoples of other countries, especially backward countries, and, lastly, through wars and militarization of the national economy, which are utilized for the obtaining of the highest profits.
- Joseph Stalin
So, since you claim to study history, how well do those quotes align with his actual actions? Or are you simply glossing over how the USSR leadership lived in luxury while the population were little more than mere serfs?
As for starvation, I’m sure you have an interesting take on the Holodomor and how the definition of “Kulak” meant basically anyone with a potato patch, and how the quotas that caused a genocide were totally reasonable.
Extracting big words from famous speeches is easy. Squaring propaganda with actual events and behaviors not so much.
Under Lenin and Stalin? MASSIVE improvements for the masses. To not understand this is the result of not studying ANY of the history of the project.
Besides the obvious defeat of the Nazis and liberation of the 100s of millions of occupied Europeans there’s the obvious number of the life expectancy growing massively. This ONLY happens when you address the issues of the masses. You can’t get life expectancy numbers only working for the minority wealthy. Incidentally, that’s why life expectancy in Russia was so bad pre-revolution, because the Tsarist government actually lived in luxury while the people were literally serfs.
There’s the food situation. Under the Tsarists they never invested in feeding the people and suffered famines every 4 - 7 years for over a century. Lenin and Stalin led the most rapid expansion of food production in the history of the world prior to the Chinese revolution. The famines ended after they got the whole system working, up until WW2, when they had one more induced by the war, and then that was it. Famines were gone. CIA analysis shows that the USSR was 2nd best fed country in the world, second to the USA.
Massive expansion of education, of literacy, of gender equality, elimination of homelessness, rents below 10% of wages, complete overhaul of the economy leading to serfs becoming highly paid workers. Innovations in medicine that are still used globally today. Massive reduction in health crises from preventable illnesses.
In short, it was a HUGE improvement under Lenin and Stalin, and that improvement continued under Kruschev for a long while until the 1970s under Brezhnev.
As for “living in luxury”, Stalin died owning almost nothing - some clothes, a couch, a couple weeks of savings. No, the USSR was not egalitarian, but it wasn’t egalitarian before the USSR and it wasn’t egalitarian after the USSR. What we can say is that it was WAY closer to egalitarian than what came before and what came after and that was because of the ideological commitment to the liberation of the working class from the oppression.
Most of those are fair points in a vacuum, but they all collapse when looking at the rest of the world: These weren’t Stalins improvements. Said improvements happened in many (most?) other countries too, as the industrialization of early 1900s improved life for basically everyone. The only real difference is the repression involved.
Anyway, we’re not going to change each other’s mind, so I see no point in continuing this conversation. Live long and prosper, provided that the state apparatus approves of you doing so.
Most of those are fair points in a vacuum, but they all collapse when looking at the rest of the world: These weren’t Stalins improvements. Said improvements happened in many (most?) other countries too, as the industrialization of early 1900s improved life for basically everyone. The only real difference is the repression involved.
In the early 1900s, the US was leasing black convicts back to their former plantations. In the 1950s, US doctors were lobotomizing women with ice picks to make them docile while not scarring their “pretty faces” for their husbands. In the 1900s there was MASSIVE domestic repression in the US with race riots (a.k.a. white people attacking non-white people) and huge labor repression including bombings and machine gunning of miners by the National Guard.
As it turns out, just because the green revolution happened in the US and changed agriculture doesn’t mean that it immediately became a thing elsewhere. China was still a serf-based agrarian system where NONE of the advances from the West had an impact until finally the communists came to power and they implemented a program to overhaul agriculture. It’s not enough for agriculture to be solved somewhere else. It requires a massive amount of effort to solve in each context. Lenin and Stalin led the USSR’s effort in this regard. I never said Stalin was a plant breeder that invented better agriculture, but it’s undeniable that without the communist party taking power the Tsarists would have let the cycle of famines and the serf economy continue to exist for decades.
It’s not even that you and I will never convince each other. It’s that your position is completely divorced from reality because it’s driven by an absolute need to establish the irredeemable evil of the Communist USSR up to and including making such obviously incorrect statements as to suggest that workers in the USSR were serfs, when that is literally exactly what the feudal system was and exactly what industrialization ended.
OK, I’ll bite one last time:
For starters, you don’t even know what my position is, as evident in you attacking US history, as if I have any interest in defending it.
Secondly, if the USSR population weren’t de facto serfs, why was travel so restricted? Why was the wall built? Why are there so few accounts of people fleeing to the soviet union? Are you really claiming that some dairy farmer in Turkmenistan could decide one day that he instead would like to serve borscht in Moscow for a living, and then just get up and do so?
Dumb kids, mentally challenged and weak ones who are fooling themselves. But mainly mentally challenged I guess. They hate everyone who doesn’t lick their spiritual leaders’ boots. They need a Führer like Nazis because they can’t think and they hate just like Nazis.
This doesn’t make capitalism good but they just don’t get it
