Marxism-Leninism is the biggest branch of Marxism, and nearly all modern Marxists agree with Lenin's advancements on Marxism to the era of imperialism. Stalin synthesized Marxism-Leninism, but himself did not distort Marxism nor Leninism in doing so.
A few notes:
It's essentially a pejorative for "communist." I recommend the Prolewiki article on "Tankies," as well as Nia Frome's essay "Tankies."
"Tankie" was a pejorative for Marxists that support socialism in real life then as well as now. It originated in the Communist Party of Great Britain. The term was coined because of the British tendency towards silly-sounding insults, and because the Soviet Union sent in the Red Army to stop the western-backed fascist insurrection. This caused a split in the party (as it always does in western orgs).
The Hungarian revolt in 1956 was infested with anti-semitic pograms. MI6 funded, supplied, and trained the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries. These counter-revolutionaries were allied with fascists who were lynching Jewish people and Communists. The Truth About Hungary by Herbert Aptheker heavily relies on citing western sources like the New York Times. Aptheker backs up his claims heavily.
"The special correspondent of the Yugoslav paper, Politika, (Nov. 13, 1956) describing the events of those days, said that the homes of Communists were marked with a white cross and those of Jews with a black cross, to serve as signs for the extermination squads. “There is no longer any room for doubt,” said the Yugoslav reporter, “it is an example of classic Hungarian fascism and of White Terror. The information,” continued this writer, "coming from the provinces tells how in certain places Communists were having their eyes put out, their ears cut off, and that they were being killed in the most terrible ways."
"But the forces of reaction were rapidly consolidating their power and pushing forward on the top levels, while in the streets the blood of scores of massacred Communists, Jews, and progressives was flowing."
"Some of the reports reaching Warsaw from Budapest today caused considerable concern. These reports told of massacres of Communists and Jews by what were described as 'Fascist elements' ...." (N.Y. Times, Nov. 1. 1956)
"The evidence is conclusive that the entry of Soviet troops into Budapest stopped the execution of scores, perhaps thousands of Jews, for by the end of October and early November, anti-Semtic pogroms - hallmark of unbridled fascistic terror - were making their appearance, after an absence of some ten years, within Hungary."
"A correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Maariv (Tel Aviv) reported:
During the uprising a number of former Nazis were released from prison and other former Nazis came to Hungary from Salzburg . . . I met them at the border . . . I saw anti-Semitic posters in Budapest . . . On the walls, street lights, streetcars, you saw inscriptions reading: “Down with Jew Gero!” “Down with Jew Rakosi!” or just simply “down with the Jews!”
Leading rabbinical circles in New York received a cable early in November from corresponding circles in Vienna that “Jewish blood is being shed by the rebels in Hungary.” Very much later-in February, 1957-the World Jewish Congress reported that “anti-Semitic excesses occurred in more than twenty villages and smaller provincial towns during the October-November revolt.” This occurred, according to this very conservative body, because “fascist and anti-Semitic groups had apparently seized the opportunity, presented by the absence of a central authority, to come to the surface.” Many among the Jewish refugees from Hungary, the report continued, had fled from this anti-Semitic pogrom-like atmosphere (N.Y. Times, Feb. 15, 1957). This confirmed the earlier report made by the British Rabbi, R. Pozner, who, after touring refugee camps, declared that “the majority of Jews who left Hungary did so for fear of the Hungarians and not the Russians.” The Paris Jewish newspaper, Naye Presse, asserted that Jewish refugees in France claimed quite generally that Soviet soldiers had saved their lives."
Further, the CIA also backed Hungarian resistance forces:
Prague in 1968 was a similar fascist uprising in both cases there were some elements of progressive protest, but these were greatly overshadowed by the fascist movements. Dubcek wanted to sell out to the IMF, and restore capitalism. The idea that any of this was about "democracy" or "freedom" is silly, it was always about Cold War tactics to destabilize socialism.
TL;DR imagine if the January 6th rioters were armed and trained by foreign governments, started lynching officials and Jewish people, and the US sent in the army to put down the insurrection. The MAGA chuds would claim that it was about "freedom" and "democracy," but we all know that they just wanted Trump in office.
Nowadays, it's used by any random anti-communist to refer to anyone that supports socialist states or doesn't buy into the imperialist narrative about global south countries. It was the ones they call "tankies" that knew the stories of WMD and Saddam's forces leaving babies outside of incubators were both bullshit to manufacture consent for war, but now that its decades later the anti-communists all suddenly have collective amnesia about their willing participation in spreading the lies of empire to murder hundreds of thousands of people.
They're communists and anarchists, you were banned for defending an open fascist just because they fight for Ukraine:
I think it's quite warranted, actually.
Lemmy.ml has a lot of communists, Lemmy.world has a lot of zionists.
Lemmy is awesome!
This is plainly false, though. I already posted ample sources so I won't retread old ground, but the idea that socialism was the problem isn't realistic in the slightest. Western Europe thrived due to imperialism and colonialism, while the USSR aided liberation struggles around the world. This led to sanctions and trade embargoes, limiting access to luxury goods beyond what could be domestically produced. You aren't speaking truth, but you did start lashing out at people and thus your comment was removed. And no, I'm not a moderator.
Nowadays, the largest economy on the planet by PPP is socialist, and both Europe and the US Empire are dying away. Socialism is scientifically superior to capitalism and is the only way out of the pitfalls of the modern era. That's why the PRC is regularly blowing past everyone else while the US Empire and Europe commit genocide in West Asia.
Lemmy is awesome!
The USSR had steady and consistent economic growth, and provided free, high quality education and healthcare, full employment, cheap or free housing, and fantastic infrastructure and city planning. This rapid development resulted in dramatic democratization of society, reduced disparity, doubling of life expectancy, tripling of functional literacy rates to 99.9%, and much more. Living in the 1930s famine would not have been good, but it was the last major famine outside of wartime because the soviets ended famine in their countries.
Literacy rates, societal guarantees in the 1936 constitution, reports on the healthcare system over time, and more are good sources for these claims.
The USSR brought dramatic democratization to society. First-hand accounts from Statesian journalist Anna Louise Strong in her book This Soviet World describe soviet elections and factory councils in action. Statesian Pat Sloan even wrote Soviet Democracy to describe in detail the system the soviets had built for curious Statesians to read about, and today we have Professor Roland Boer's Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance to reference.
When it comes to social progressivism, the soviet union was among the best out of their peers, so instead we must look at who was actually repressed outside of the norm. In the USSR, it was the capitalist class, the kulaks, the fascists who were repressed. This is out of necessity for any socialist state. When it comes to working class freedoms, however, the soviet union represented a dramatic expansion. Soviet progressivism was documented quite well in Albert Syzmanski's Human Rights in the Soviet Union.
The truth, when judged based on historical evidence and contextualization, is that socialism was the best thing to happen to Russia in the last few centuries, and its absence has been devastating.
Capitalism brought with it skyrocketing poverty rates, drug abuse, prostitution, homelessness, crime rates, and lowered life expectancy. An estimated 7 million people died due to the dissolution of socialism in the USSR. To this day, a large majority of post-soviet citizens regret the fall of socialism in Europe. A return to socialism is the only path forward for the post-soviet countries.
As a side-note, Lemmy was made by communists and is actively developed by them, so there are a lot of communists here.
Lemmy is awesome!
Yep, as @Edie@lemmy.ml said!
Lemmy is awesome!
Usually a temp ban for a day or two (up to a month or so depending on how bad), and usually only on one community on one instance. You can't be banned from all of Lemmy unless your own instance admin bans you.
Kobold broke the rules down the comment thread, and was banned for 2 weeks from this community alone, as an example.
Lemmy is awesome!
I sort by "New Comments" and browse Lemmy.ml locally. I don't know who you are, I just responded to what I felt warranted doing so.
Lemmy is awesome!
What sources count as "unbiased?" All sources have bias, that doesn't mean they are wrong inherently.
Lemmy is awesome!
You can critique socialist states as long as they are critiqued from a grounded position not colored by imperialist consent manufacturing, and you can definitely critique the Russian Federation as it hasn't been socialist since the early 90s.
Pejorative for communist.
Nobody believes what you claim they do, many trans folk are heterosexual. Supporting trans rights is a good thing, and opposing it is bigoted. "Left MAGA" doesn't exist.
Can you answer why you're insistent on analyzing processes outside of the context they exist in? That's all this comment does as well. If you're not going to respond to my criticisms of your metaphysical outlook, then defend it, otherwise all I can do is continue to point out that you keep trying to slice away context and view processes in a vacuum that doesn't exist and doesn't represent reality accurately as a consequence.
And yet I don’t think people who believed in WMD stuff from then thought Iraqis were subhuman either. Just a detail there.
Except they did. Anti-Iraqi bigotry was all over the news, manufacturing consent for war. The racism played a part in selling the lies about WMD.
No, you gave me one other data-point from statista that measured attitudes to socialism (not communism). Your other link just referred back to your original communism poll with 30% of under 30s. That same poll also asked people’s opinions on socialism, which is what it also spoke about.
I gave you an earlier poll from 1978 as well, you can feel free to revisit my earlier comments and find it. None of that changes your metaphysical outlook on the world around us, which is the fundamental problem here, one you refuse to even acknowledge as such.
I would assume many people who echo or read the claims here about organ harvesting are convinced, at least somewhat, by the many articles and groups that have investigated it. It has much more body behind it in writing than Trumps claims about Haitians eating cats and dogs which is an attack against individuals Haitians vs. Chinese government.
And these people would be falling for far-right propaganda, same as the anti-Haitian nonsense. The "body behind it" is built on shakey eyewitness testemony from a far-right cult, and counter-investigation has found nothing supporting the cult's claims. This is just Saddam and the WMD allegations all over again, which also had a "large body of writing" that ended up being gibberish to anyone actually investigating it.
Small group says they’re growing. What a surprise.
You are, from what I can see monitoring reasonable rises in ‘socialism’ identification (which could mean a number of things) and then just assuming it’ll continue growing and then also saying it must also be heavily filtering down to communism based on one poll specifically, and which we have no historical polls to compare it to.
I gave you other polls, but more importantly I'm not just assuming proven trends will continue without basis, but by comparing it to other historical trends where support for socialism and communism rose. It climbs in response to decaying material conditions, which are observable in the US Empire. Your intention to ignore context, and to try to analyze everything as a static, unmoving abstract is again an example of metaphysics on your part, which is anti-scientific in analysis.
By this logic, you could say any criticism of China is inherently racist.
No? I criticize the PRC from time to time, just on the basis of material reality, not baseless allegations by a far-right cult magnified by the western press as easy propaganda.
Evangelists don’t force conversion. They’re just shouting in the street at people holding their scripture. They may pester, or holler at people walking by.
And yeah, a hypothetical libertarian or MAGA type would be similar.
Cool, so that doesn't apply to me, then.
I don’t spread it. You bought it up to me originally.
You brought up "evidence" and said it had a good deal of history and investigation. If you haven't investigated it, then don't just do that and legitimize the narrative.
Or people’s understanding of socialism widens and changes. There is a rise to it, but I don’t know if I’d say it’s notable larger than a recent revival to social conservatism as many other polls have depicted.
Contradictions are sharpening, the left is becoming more consistently socialist/communist while the right is becoming more reactionary. Both are true, because this is a dialectical struggle of two opposing tendencies, one seeking to progress forward, the other seeking to wind the clock "back," so to speak. It isn't "either-or," it's "both-and." This is yet anothet example of metaphysics in your analysis, and is why you need to adopt a dialectical viewpoint if you want to accurately see the world.
Google search seems to suggest PSL doesn’t release its membership figures publicly, so not sure what data you’re referring to.
You are also assuming, or seem to be assuming that any relatively rises in communism (which, to be clear is not specifically laid out by any empirical data) will somehow hold and it will keep growing progressively.
PSL membership is increasing, this is coming from the members themselves. They don't release hard data because they aren't stupid, but 2024-2026 in particular have had tremendous growth.
The trends for increasing socialism/communism coincide with capitalist decay, which is an observable, material process. It isn't something that happens because people discuss it alone, but because life has been getting harder and harder for the statesian working classes year over year.
This is why you need to apply dialectical materialism to understand the world accurately.
Why is this out of character? It's entirely like Rimu to stir up drama against leftist instances.