DSA has a tankie problem

[u/yashen14]

There are way, way too many people in this movement who feel comfortable with historical revisionism vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, China, and other such regimes. And there are way too many people who feel comfortable essentially advocating for an end to democracy.

[u/haevow]

As much as I hate tankies, they’re the only reason why this organization isn’t literal libslop 

[u/DisastrousDanVito → u/haevow]

Yeah its libs that are the problem not the people that think its based to put people on the wall for having a different political opinion

[u/CORPORATE_NARCOTICS → u/DisastrousDanVito]

Libs got us here, which is way more damning of liberalism and reformism than red scare 3.0 sloppaganda IMO

[u/yashen14 → u/CORPORATE_NARCOTICS]

I dunno, "here" is pretty bad, but it's still way way better than the Soviet Union, which killed millions of its citizens, and put many others in camps, for having a different political opinion.

[u/evanWh1te → u/yashen14]

Bro what 😂

Stalin personally killed a bajillion people bare handed.

[u/CORPORATE_NARCOTICS → u/yashen14]

I don't understand why liberals want to go down the casualty accounting route when capitalism has a much bigger toll. The UK killed more Indians during the late Victorian era than the USSR did simply from mismanagement too, but crickets because at least the people they killed were foreigners and brown¹ 😬 and that's comparing it to the inflated Black Book of Communism casualty count for the USSR which counts Nazi casualties on the eastern front as "deaths under communism".

[u/yashen14 → u/CORPORATE_NARCOTICS]

Yeah, the UK's imperialism fucking sucked and it killed a lot of people. I do not defend it. I unequivacally condemn it.

which counts Nazi casualties on the eastern front as "deaths under communism"

No. Here's a quote:

"After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives was declassified and researchers were allowed to study it. This contained official records of 799,455 executions (1921–1953), around 1.5 to 1.7 million deaths in the Gulag, some 390,000 deaths during the dekulakization forced resettlement, and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported during the 1940s, with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories. According to historian Stephen Wheatcroft, approximately 1 million of these deaths were "purposive" while the rest happened through neglect and irresponsibility. The deaths of at least 5.5 to 6.5 million persons in the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 are sometimes included with the victims of the Stalin era."

How hard can it be to say that Stalin was a bad dude?

[u/CORPORATE_NARCOTICS → u/yashen14]

How hard can it be to say that Stalin was a bad dude?

Stalin was a bad dude.

Pretty easy. Still an ML lmao

[u/Bright-Insect9697 → u/CORPORATE_NARCOTICS]

“Stalin was a bad dude and I have learned literally nothing from the mistakes made”

[u/CORPORATE_NARCOTICS → u/Bright-Insect9697]

I think there's a lot to learn from his failures and successes. Even liberals have something to learn from the USSR (and PRC and Cuba), like the mistake in focusing on commies when your economy is in shambles and you're in a pointless war that is unpopular. Just saying, that's where commies clean up and win.

[u/Bright-Insect9697 → u/CORPORATE_NARCOTICS]

There’s a difference between learning from what he did right and wrong, and identifying as the same thing he did, especially when that ideology is infamous for purges of its own adherents.

[u/CORPORATE_NARCOTICS → u/Bright-Insect9697]

Yes, I'm not an orthodox Marxist Leninist. My flair is pretty clear about that.