I tried explaining my problems with tankies without calling them tankies. In fact, I used their own terminology to describe my disagreement with them. It, uh… well it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

George Orwell fought in the Spanish civil war on the side of the Marxists. His army was betrayed by the Marxist-Leninists. After that experience, he wrote 1984, in which a totalitarian government uses “newspeak” to suppress dissent by suppressing the very ideas that people are capable of communicating. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Marxist-Leninists describe their disagreements in terms that turn criticism of them into gibberish. I think it’s exactly what Orwell was writing about based on his experiences.

      • Takapapatapaka@lemmy.world
        6·
        9 days ago

        The subset of communists that do not support a state-backed socialist transition and argue for direct implementations of communism are precisely (mostly) anarchists/libertarians, i think that’s what they were saying, so this would be compatible with them being communists.

      • JeSuisUnHombre@lemm.ee
        42·
        8 days ago

        OP is talking about tankies and ML and how he doesn’t like them, but the meme he posted doesn’t describe those.

        also

        Anarchists are communists. No one thinks anarcho-capitalists are anarchist except themselves and those they’ve misinformed.

        • untakenusername@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          8 days ago

          No one thinks anarcho-capitalists are anarchist except themselves and those they’ve misinformed.

          How isnt anarcho-capitalism a form of ancarchy? Like there’s no state, and if some company starts acting like a state, then its not anarchy anymore.

  • GoodLuckToFriends@lemmy.todayEnglish
    13·
    8 days ago

    I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Marxist-Leninists describe their disagreements in terms that turn criticism of them into gibberish. I think it’s exactly what Orwell was writing about based on his experiences.

    Nail on the head. There’s a particularly active lemming from the tankie instances that always, and purposefully, devolves everything into arguing about everyone else using words incorrectly.

  • FundMECFS@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    4·
    8 days ago

    I think this meme is referenced to this quote Orwell wrote after fighting for and living the revolution in Spain.

    Except for the small revolutionary groups which exist in all countries, the whole world was determined upon preventing revolution in Spain. In particular the Communist Party, with Soviet Russia behind it, had thrown its whole weight against the revolution. It was the Communist Party thesis that revolution at this stage would be fatal and that what was to be aimed at in Spain was not workers’ control, but bourgeois democracy. It hardly needs pointing out why ‘liberal’ capitalist opinion took the same line.

  • Ferrous@lemmy.mlEnglish
    13·
    8 days ago

    George Orwell was a snitch who ratted on communists to UK intelligence.