It's a bit more complicated than that. Most leftists will agree with you, the USSR and other Eastern Europe countries that were communist did a lot of damage and most likely more harm. They committed atrocities. They were authoritarian. It was disgusting.

The leftists who still prop those countries up on their shoulders are what many call tankies. Today they sing praise about Russia, China, and North Korea, but your observation is correct, they won't ever move there. These are individuals who repeat propaganda and are, ultimately, just red fascists. When you actually dig into their ideals they parallel and sometimes mirror Nazis.

I believe leftism cannot have an authoritarian element to it. I think most social hierarchies need to be destroyed. I think the only way to have a socialist society is through democratic means. Democracy in the workplace and national level. I think most of us can agree workers need higher wages and there is a wealth gap that needs to be dismantled. I think most of us believe healthcare needs to be universal, food and shelter and water, education, information (internet), speech, and much more should be free and readily available. There is this element of freedom that needs to be achieved that isn't found the countries that are "communist".

I don't want to explicitly say those communist countries wasn't "real communism", but fascists, authoritarianism, always appropriate from progressive movement. There is no freedom, especially of workers, under a dictatorship. If workers are starving, dying, being outright black bagged and killed, i don't think that can be considered communist.

[–] RichCaffeineFlavor@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)

Hello, I'd like to speak for people I disagree with

As a leftist whose platform doesn't seem to include a word about abolishing capitalism, any time I am challenged by someone to the left of Bernie Sanders, I turn into a right wing crank telling people 'if you don't like it get out'

And today I'd like to tell you about horseshoe theory

[–] HelloHotel@lemm.ee -3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Yes, anti-Tankies are verry simmlar to Tankies. However, I think the commenter is coping by being an anti-tankie. Both groups can becone and come back from crazy. People can also safely hold tankie and anti-tankie like beleafs but (like a lot of ideology) run the risk of becoming crazy.

amaricentric peoples perspective (wrough draft probably wrong)

"Tankie" nationallists fail to see the raising over time evil and fantisize the good and the ones who passionately hate Tankies (im guilty of it) fail to see the good slowly rotting away. Then we say the whole country never changed throuout its lifetime, one points to the beginnigng the other points to the end.

Places like the Soviate Union from my limited knolage seem to be a nation with slowly growing leadership alignment problems, slowly using things like nationalism and subverting democracy to flip who should be masters and who should be slaves.

[–] RichCaffeineFlavor@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Can we just go back to saying communists please?

[–] HelloHotel@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago

Absolutely, internal divisions suck. (What people are calling) Tankie and anti tankie ideas have the potential to be useful if and when its not an ideologial snare.

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