Maybe I misunderstood your original comment. It seemed like you were saying that it was okay for the CCP to massacre protestors because the protestors were manipulated by CIA plants.

If that’s not what you were saying, then I was mistaken. If it was, then I don’t know how anything you just said is supposed to change my opinion…

How am I being authoritarian?

My prediction about the ad hominems turned out to be accurate, apparently…

Birthday parties are overrated. I haven’t had one since I was 15.

I thought you said you blocked me? Go away.

According to the constitution, running elections is in the purview of the state, by right.

Also, elections should never, ever be run by a party. That’s completely contradictory to the entire basis for american democracy.

I know these things are obvious and shouldn’t need to be said, but apparently they do. Don’t let insanity win by refusing to state the obvious.

“But China is a communist utopia!!! It’s a dictatorship of the proletariat! Any criticism of the CCP is western propaganda!!!”

-tankies

Username checks out.

Tankies will always find any excuse to say China can do no wrong, and if they do it’s the west’s fault…

“We had to massacre those protesters, you see. The US was targeting our military assets! It’s their fault.” Golly.

https://www.rankred.com/how-much-money-is-there-in-the-world/ (January 2, 2026)

Also, I find this tidbit interesting:

According to the US Federal Reserve data, there is $2.3 trillion in circulation and $3.5 trillion in reserve balance.

As of the end of 2024, around 55.4 billion US notes of all denominations were in circulation.

and

As of July 2025, the M1 money supply is $18.4 trillion.

In other words, if these statistics are correct, since trump took office, in approximately one year’s time, the total amount of USD in circulation has increased by over 40×. In case anyone’s not aware, that’s not a good thing.

That’s probably why he keeps saying “the economy is doing great.” He looks at all those dollars and thinks “we’re all rich!” not understanding or not caring that it means the actual value of the USD possessed by most ordinary people is actually being watered down by that increase, while the amount of USD they own is not increasing proportionally to the total amount of USD. (Or he doesn’t care at all and is outright lying, which wouldn’t be out of character. As long as his and his buddies’ bank accounts are going up due to bribes, extortion, and embezzlement, the economy is working fine for him…)

And that’s just physical bank notes! In about half of a year, under trump’s watch, the total amount of USD in cash and checking accounts has more than doubled.

Anyway, my point is, if you include savings accounts, mutual funds, and other M2 assets, the total amount of USD worldwide increases to $123 trillion as of January, 2026.

The US debt, at $38.5 trillion, is nearly a quarter of the total amount of M2 USD assets worldwide. Assuming the relationship is linear, printing that much USD would lower the relative value of each dollar to nearly 75¢ in today’s USD. That’s nearly 25% inflation overnight.

$3 trillion is only enough to cover the annual deficit (that’s how much the debt grows by each year). Oz doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Sovereign wealth fund, universal healthcare, and free education!

Stalin was nominally communist, functionally fascist. It’s not an absurd distinction to make, for anyone capable of understanding nuance.

You’re so fucking dense. You’re the one making strawmen. Just because you can’t comprehend my argument doesn’t mean it’s meaningless.

I know what leftism is, and I know that fascism is a far-right-wing ideology. I’ve stated that in plain terms multiple times, but you ignore that because it gives you an easier attack surface to pretend that I didn’t.

I never said all people who are left-wing are fascists. I said tankies are basically the same as fascists. If you think all left-wingers are tankies, and anyone who’s not a tankie isn’t really left-wing, then you’re a fucking tankie! And you’re the one saying anyone who disagrees with you is bad, so stop projecting that shit on to me.

It doesn’t fucking matter what ideology tankies hold, if their methodology is “kill anyone who doesn’t agree with us,” then they’re no better than fascists! That’s why they’re functionally the same in my eyes. You’re repeatedly ignoring the nuance of my argument to give yourself an easy target to knock down. That’s called a fucking strawman.

Tankies are bad. But I never said everyone who disagrees with me is a tankie. You’re just upset that I pointed out that you’re acting like a tankie, and that’s something a tankie would do. “No, I’m not a tankie! I just believe anyone who isn’t a bolshevik is a class traitor!”

You’re right about one thing though: nothing of value is lost when you block me. Good fucking riddance.

because you disagree with two things doesn’t make them equal

Fascists often say “Just because you disagree with [fascism] doesn’t make it evil!” as a way to deflect from their own moral culpability in their belief systems.

you’re doing the same stupidity liberals do

I’d rather be a liberal than a fucking tankie. If I had to describe myself, I’m somewhere on the spectrum between social democrat and democratic socialist. If that makes me a liberal to you, then so be it.

since anyone who opposes it is obviously an evil authoritarian asshole.

No, that’s what tankies do, accusing anyone who disagrees with them as being evil. I only accuse authoritarian assholes of being evil, and I do that whether they’re tankies or literal fascists.

I’m not a tankie, yet you keep referring to me as such.

Well you’re pulling a lot of water for tankies by trying to defend them…

You’re also pretending some schizo posting is an article in Pravda… You make a strawman of what tankies believe

No, but something doesn’t have to be an official party line for me to recognize patterns and trends. Tankies are all over the internet, especially on lemmy, peddling their bullshit. Don’t fucking gaslight me by pretending that doesn’t mean anything.

…then claim anyone who disagrees with you is such

Again, no, I dont claim anyone who disagrees with me is a tankie. I claim anyone who acts like a tankie, talks like a tankie, posts like a tankie, and argues in defense of tankies, is a tankie.

What you’re doing is no different from when the literal fascists say “You can’t just call anyone who disagrees with you a fascist!” I don’t. I call fascists fascists.

In both cases there’s a specific set of criteria they have to meet in order to reach that threshold. And in both cases those criteria include being overbearing, authoritarian extremists, glorifying violence, and being either intellectually dishonest or stunted. Whether they’re doing it in the name of ethnonationalism or proletarian revolution is small change compared to those aspects.

And if you’re about to label me as an “enemy of the proletariat” just because I’m against revolution until all possible alternatives have been exhausted, just know that that’s something a tankie would do also.

The terms you use certainly imply that.

No, never once did I claim tankies are literal fascists or hold fascist ideologies. I said they act the same. From the get-go, I specified that I was referring to methodology rather than ideology. If you’re incapable of making that distinction, that’s on you.

tried to conflate Lenin with both Marx and Communism

Leninists do that already by calling themselves “Marxist-leninists.” And Lenin himself conflated his personal ideology with communism as a whole when he killed all the communists who weren’t on board with him.

Marx shouldn’t even be a taboo subject, but he is, purely because of how Lenin commandeered and corrupted the entire evolution of the ideas Marx first laid out. Plenty of countries had communist parties before the bolshevik revolution; afterwards, the entire west looked and said “those people are fucking crazy, I don’t want them doing that here.”

I’d love to be able to sit down and have an intellectual discussion on the virtues of Marx’s theories, but if I bring it up anywhere I’ll get one of two reactions: either I’ll be labeled as a communist, get put on a watch list, and get chased out of town, or I’ll wind up listening to a tankie rant for hours about how I’m not radical enough and that if I don’t support the bolsheviks that I must be a fascist.

There’s no fucking middle-ground, no room for nuance, and Marxism itself is barely more than a historical artifact. An interest piece on an ideal that never came to be, and now is far more widely known for being something else which didn’t come until decades later.

Far better to just talk about Merleau-Ponty. At least then anyone who’s heard of him is at least somewhat educated…

Um, no, I’ve put plenty of thought into it and that’s why I said it in the first place. I wouldn’t be arguing something that I’ve never put thought into, because I’m not an idiot. But thanks for assuming that I am solely because you disagree with what I’m saying.

but since the Bolsheviks took it, they own it.

Bolsheviks, tankies, what’s the fucking difference? (Yes, I know historically they refer to specific groups, but in practice today, anyone who identifies with bolshevik ideology is a tankie). I don’t fucking care about the nuances of trotskyism vs leninism, they were both assholes.

And you consider everyone who doesn’t swallow your particular brand of ineffective purity a tankie, it seems.

No, I don’t have a brand of ideological purity. That’s another thing tankies share with the far-right: you’re so zealously committed to your ideology that not only is there no room in your worldview for anyone to hold different opinions, but you also project your fanaticism onto everyone else, so in your eyes anyone who firmly rejects your ideology on rational grounds or otherwise has a more nuanced view, you accuse of the ideological purism that’s actually your own.

And no, calling out tankies for being authoritarian (by calling them red fash) is not the same thing as allying with capitalists and fascists. Yet another thing tankies have in common with the far-right: they think anyone who isn’t on their side is on the opposite side. Tankies are fucking assholes, fascists are fucking assholes. Both things can be true at once, and I’m not being inconsistent by calling them both out in the same paragraph.

Capitalism is destroying the planet and it’s been oppressing and exploiting the majority of humanity since it was invented as a concept, and its precursors have been doing so since before even then. But guess what? I can be a socialist without being a tankie. And that’s another thing tankies share with the far-right: they think all socialists have to be radicalized, fanatic, authoritarian communists.

Which brings us back to the beginning of this conversation: I was criticizing tankies for accusing Mamdani of being a fascist, which is a ridiculous assertion on all levels. He’s a democratic socialist. Two things fascists hate: democracy and socialism. He stands for both, in a time when such leadership is rare. Definitely not a fascist.

But if in your worldview a fascist is anyone who’s not a bolshevik, then we have very different definitions of fascism, and yours is not the correct one. And by the way, if that’s what you believe, then you’re not as different from the fascists as you think you are (need I repeat that refers to methodology rather than ideology, or in terms any erudite communist should understand, praxis rather than theoria. I’m not so fucking stupid that I think communists and fascists believe in the same ideals. But they believe in the same means which they believe their opposing ends justify).

So no, while I’d be onboard with dismantling fascism, if your proposed course of action is a bolshevik revolution then I firmly disagree.

Underrated comment

Exherbo is like the non-mainstream version of Gentoo.

Or you could do Artix and run it with s6 and musl, writing your own compatibility layers.

And if you really want to be unique, you can install LFS and use it as a daily driver after building the whole thing in rust 🤣

I like how you provided an educated and accurate take, and everyone downvotes you because they don’t want to say they agree with the “communist view.”

I will say, however, that it’s not exactly Marxism, but rather Leninism (often called Marxist-Leninism) that you describe.

So people do somewhat have a point, if somewhat pedantic and merely semantic.

It’s not marxist, but it describes leninism to a T. And most tankies tend to be ML, not marxist.

Cause I totally invented the term “red fash” and that’s not something that a fairly large portion of people already recognize and find to be a helpful concept?

Because authoritarianism, ideological purism, and militarism are sooo different when the people perpetuating them call themselves leftists. Not the same thing at all as the people doing the same things in the name of the nation-state, ethnoreligion, and capital. (/s for anyone who missed it).

Lenin killed a bunch of communists after they beat him in an election. But he called himself a communist, so tankies gobble his dick. Tankies love sabotaging electoral processes so they can claim it doesn’t work.

Using logic and physiology to justify why a man or a woman should do a certain thing is certainly not a unique or original take…

I mean I see what you’re saying, and if I had a wife I would gladly take risks for her so that she didn’t have to. But I’ve been told in the past that I was being sexist for having that mentality. Sort of an “I’m not a delicate flower and I don’t need you to do things for me!” type of situation.

So, being amenable to disagreement as I am, I adjusted my mentality. Women can be heros in stories, and they can take risks and handle dangerous situations in real life, too.

That’s why I find it a bit jarring when suddenly it seems the feminist take has become “Actually, men should do dangerous things for the women in their lives.” It kinda just feels like they’re willing to argue any position that 1) disagrees with something a man says; and 2) is convenient for their purposes at a given moment.

It’s just not consistent, and I have a hard time feeling convinced by anyone whose argument is inconsistent…