• @xantoxis@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    15
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    OK hang on: “support authoritarianism” or “said something that implied a support for some kind of authority.” These are not the same thing, and if you’re lumping them together, that’s in bad faith.

    The left includes Anarchists, but also a lot of people who aren’t Anarchists. Believing that the concept of authority is not inherently flawed doesn’t make you not-a-leftist. A leftist will acknowledge that authoritarianism is bad: the belief that authority is inherently good and should have supremacy across all aspects of society. But, unless they are an Anarchist (in the literal sense), they may still support some forms of authority with appropriate societal controls.

    If you don’t acknowledge that, you’re gatekeeping leftism.

      • @xantoxis@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        -18
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        The term “tankie” is, on this site, widely in use to refer to anyone left of Joe Biden. I know the origin of the term but I can’t read it as anything any more, it’s just another casualty of the right-wing language corruption. Same thing that happened to “woke” but in reverse: now you’re a tankie if you like anything about communism. It doesn’t help that lots of people still use it in the original sense of “someone who supports an authoritarian regime that labels itself communist”, and that the two language groups think they’re on the same side or even that they hate the same people.

        Insofar as the term is rapidly losing all meaning, the meme could also have been made by anyone, to refer to anything they didn’t like and I’m not going to read it at face value.

        • @gmtom@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          161 year ago

          Nah bro, I’m wildly left wing, but don’t get called a talkie because I don’t support genocidal dictators.

          • @xantoxis@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            01 year ago

            You don’t get it: yes, you do. There are users on this site who will happily lump you in with genocide and oppression because they don’t like that you’re to the left of them.

            • WabiSabiPapi
              link
              fedilink
              English
              3
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              we don’t need to acknowledge or address the efforts of those acting in bad-faith to delegitmize egalitarian leftist philosophy.

              “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. Jean-Paul Sartre”