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I did not include Baraza.africa as that was too encompassing as it covers the whole African continent.
Hopefully this post inspires more countries to join the blue club!
i don't think you're evil. i just think it's fascinating how pervasive "russia is still communist" is as a talking point when it's decidedly not
I remember googling "which countries are still communist" back around 2018ish and Russia being at the top of many lists. It's just another ripple effect from propaganda that hasn't died out yet.
That being said, fighting propaganda is much easier with gentler words instead of name-calling in my experience
where did i name call? i was just pointing out that it's some tankie propaganda. i think your post was overall fine. ohhhh, wait did you think i was calling you a tankie? shit, i didn't mean that, i just meant the propaganda was tankist in origin
??????
It absolutely fucking is not. It's origin is clueless libs whos only knowledge of the subject dates back to the cold war.
It's also US propaganda to discredit communism
"Tankie" is a generalist term, the same as "leftist" and whatnot. The goal of terms like these is to put people into camps that are divided and label them as anything other than "human" because it's a lot easier to say "100 dead tankies" than it is to say "100 dead humans"
My point is that terms like this detract from communication because they obfuscate the meaning behind what is being said. Using these terms, even if it is to fight against propaganda, makes it easier to continue using other terms that are similar in nature. This encourages people to use less people-centric language, which dehumanizes those around them and makes them easier targets. Best to just avoid using them at all IMO
Actually the goal of terms like that is efficiency. We could say "supporter of aggressively implemented authoritarian communism" if we wanted, but tankie is shorter.
Helps if you have the background to understand the specifics of what different "isms" support and thus what they disagree on that leads them into genuinely fighting each other. A fascist, a lib and a tankie really do have very core disagreements that cannot be realistically compromised on. At the most basic, a fascist wants a unified society with a strict hierarchy, the tankie wants a unified society with no hierarchy, the lib doesn't want any kind of unified society. If any one of these people gets their way, the other two do not, which leads to conflict.
Left/right are more economic arguments with some wiggle room due to being more or less a spectrum, but also tend to feature significant real world disagreements.
Anyways, I do agree that it's important to have conversations about these underlying details, but when you're talking amongst other people who know the background already, some shorthand terms are going to start appearing. Since these are overarching governance philosophies that any person can adopt or discard at will, they're also a little different from more inherent divisions, like ethnicity for instance. Being a tankie, lib or fascist is a choice, where being Arabic or gay or something is not.
Choose the most efficient phrase from these options:
Notice how the message still gets across with that third one? It still tells you "these are lies or exaggerations that have misled you" without needlessly classing the source with a catch-all term that obfuscates their position as human beings with the right to live?
Nothing about the term tankie does or should deny their right to live. Advocating for the deaths of people who disagree with you is profoundly against everything liberalism (the freedom-based guiding principle of what we'd call "the west") stands for.
To the contrary, as a pretty standard liberal American I fully support their rights to advocate for whatever they wish. Since there is no realistic way to accurately and objectively determine what is or is not propaganda, I support their right to create that as well.
Regarding the utility of recognizing where propaganda comes from, it can occasionally be useful to know, as it tends to follow certain patterns based on the goals of whoever created it.
Can you realistically accurately and objectively determine that the source of the claim was a tankie?
So it makes more sense to make wild claims about the person behind the message than it does to classify a piece of information based off of its linguistic characteristics?
Also, identifying propaganda isn't difficult, I had to do it for classes in school several times. Here's a helpful reminder on how to do so.
how you recognize propaganda is that everything is propaganda. your comment, this comment, the original article, the concept that russia remains communist, it's all propaganda. the key isn't learning to recognize propaganda, it's learning to analyze the biases of who's presenting the propaganda.
here, i'll tell you my biases. i'm an anarcho communist located in the united states. there. now that you have that intel, you can start to assess what kinds of propaganda you'd expect to see from me. more, when i don't put out the kinds of propaganda you expect, you can question the following:
the kinds of classes we receive on how propaganda works in elementary and high school are meant to get us to rigidly stick to the status quo that benefits the authoritarian rulers of society. they are, themselves, propaganda. in fact, this notion you have that we can talk about propaganda without context i actually find a little bit dangerous. by stripping context and discussion of origins of propaganda, we actually create the exact form of non critical environment that benefits the misinformation peddlar.
then again, you don't have to find my perspective compelling. that's why i told you up front what it was, as well as what my propaganda is.
I don't believe that you can speak about propaganda without context, and I didn't claim that either. The "efficient phrases" thing is part of a puzzle, not the whole puzzle. What I do believe is that terms like "tankie" fill the same role "Jew" or "Gay" fill for the right. It's a term used to change the perception of the speaker from "person/human being" to "undesirable with a bad opinion"
You very well might be able to, actually, though I'm not going to guarantee it. Regardless though, if the line is commonly parroted by a certain group, then the claims are not particularly wild, are they?
And yes, there are lots of very useful tips that can identify most propaganda based off of common traits. This is not foolproof though. Still very good to know, though.
Lol. Must knowledgeable liberal.
Imagine replying to the same person 3 times to say the same thing, and all 3 of them were idiotic because you misread their first comment.
I said "claims to be" not "are" and then further clarified that I was saying that the most recent time I had looked into it I found multiple sources saying they stilled claimed to be communist. I knew they weren't actually communist, I always did. Because of course I knew about the fall of the Soviet Union. I just didn't bother to pay attention to the actual internal structure of Russia because it didn't apply to my life in any way
They don't though. They don't now, they didn't in 2018, and anyone with even the most cursory knowledge on the subject could tell you that.
What is it with westerners arrogantly giving their opinion on things they clearly don't know the first thing about?
Okay, let's break down a few things here. I said
I then recognized that I was affected by propaganda and changed my tune. Then, several hours after I had already realized my mistake and changed my behavior, you came and started verbally abusing me for having misspoken in the first place due to my lack of knowledge. Again, I've already been educated and changed my behavior.
What value do you believe that your comments brought by being abusive after someone had already recognized their biases and changed them? Do you believe you are helping to further change my beliefs or do you feel like you might just be pushing a wedge between two people who actually agree for no reason?
The value is that maybe in the future you will think twice before popping off about subjects you literally don't know the first thing about. Just to be clear, thinking that Russia still claims to be communist in 2018 is like thinking Germany still claims to be fascist or France still claims to be a monarchy. There's nothing wrong with being ignorant, so long as you're humble about it.
I was humble about it. I publicly admitted that I was a victim of propaganda and adjusted the way I acted going forward.
You're right that I probably could have put a other moment of thought into it before hitting post and I probably would have googled it and then changed it. Which is exactly what someone else has already pointed out to me and I've already done. So you're repeating them, and bringing no value to the conversation.
Humble would have been not asserting it in the first place.
You weren't "a victim of propaganda", my god, have some humility. What you were was ignorant.
I didn't assert it. In fact, I very intentionally used passive language to avoid asserting it as a truth. I said "I think there are... That claim to be"
I didn't say "Russia claims to be communist" or the likes.
I specifically phrased it that way to communicate that that was my understanding and not necessarily the truth. Then, someone told me my understanding was wrong and I corrected it. Then you came along, doing whatever this is.
Yes, and that's the arrogance that I was talking out; thinking that your completely baseless thoughts are worth sharing.
From what I can tell, your understanding is still wrong, given this "I was a victim of propaganda" talk.