SpookyGenderCommunist [they/them]

I’m gonna put on my political scientist hat, and point out that almost every political party on this planet enforces internal discipline in a multitilude of ways, a handful of which have been mentioned in this discussion thread already.

The idea that parties are these big tents where you can’t possibly enforce any kind of internal discipline is both a uniquely America-brained take, and also not entirely true.

Like, there are literally people called “Party Whips” who’s job it is to pressure the party members vote along party lines.

Doesn’t matter, tbh. It shouldn’t be there in the first place

Cool! Now if only it would scrap the shitty DRM

What philosophical stuff by Marx are you trying to get through?

If you’re using Sync for Lemmy, you can filter stuff by instance, and a bunch of other criteria.

Maybe, maybe not. But that statement is going to be deeply confusing to the average American for whom “liberal” is synonymous with “left”.

Note that they said “Most involved” Russia, for instance, has always been the modern “Sick man of Europe” since the fall of the USSR. It’s imperial aspirations don’t extend as far. And it’s relationship to the historic Core of the US and Western Europe, is as a semi-peripheral nation trying to coalesce a regional sphere of influence with itself as the center of gravity. None of that makes it a Core country though.

Maybe if the current world system collapses, and it filled that vacuum. But that hasn’t happened.

Imperial Core refers to the World Systems Theory of International Relations, first put forward by Immanuel Wallerstien. I would suggest you read up on the topic before making half-baked responses like this.

No problem!

Liberalism has a couple of different definitions. The one you’re thinking of is the one in US politics where “Liberal” is synonymous with "Left’. This isn’t how it’s being used here though.

Liberalism, as a broad ideological trend that came out of the enlightenment, contains within it, Conservatism. Conservatism was theorized by people like Edmund Burke who, seeing that the previous feudal hierarchy was dying off, sought to preserve it, at least as much as was possible, by accepting Liberal notions of property rights and capitalism.

So, instead of a social hierarchy being ordained by God, it’s decided by the market, and social conflict is meditated through the liberal, Lockean, Republic.

So when we call Trump a liberal, we mean it in this broad sense. He’s still a conservative, but conservatism is a subset of capital L Liberalism.

This is in contrast to Leftism, which also contains a lot of things within it, but breaks from a lot of the philosophical assumptions that undergird Liberalism.

I genuinely would like to understand what you guys at hexbear are about

Well, I’d be more than happy to have a good faith discussion with you. No dunking, I promise 🙏

“imperial core” isn’t a phrase we made up. It refers to World Systems Theory, a theory of international relations invented by a guy named Immanuel Wallerstein which argues that imperial “Core” countries (think the traditional “developed” or “first world” countries. Mainly the US and Europe) have a particular extractive, colonial relationship with “Periphery” countries (think poor, raw material exporting, rentier states like Kyrgyzstan or Nigeria).

Then there are semi-periphery countries which are still tied into the imperial core in some way, but have enough sway economically and geopolitically to kind of stand on their own. They have a different kind of relationship to the imperial core, compared to the periphery (these would be the BRICS countries, largely).

That’s a gross over simplification, but hopefully that answers your question.

Edit: Here’s a really good explanation of World Systems Theory that goes into more depth

They were very obviously being facetious…

lmao

I’m gonna try and give an actual brief history. The word “Tankie” originated from a split in the Communist party of Great Britain in the 1950s, over the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Those who supported the invasion were called “Tankies” by those who opposed it.

That would’ve been it, and it would have faded into history as an obscure piece of British leftist slang, if it weren’t for the word’s rediscovery decades later, where more modern leftists used the term in a half joking way among each other.

At some point over… Really just the past couple of years or so, tankie breached containment, and has been worming its way into non-leftist people’s vocabularies, where it’s lost any and all connection to its original meaning.

So when, say, OP of this thread uses it, it’s unclear what they mean. Do they mean communists in general? Leftists in general? Supporters of China? What does it mean for a white, Western, leftist to ‘support’ China anyway? Is it just a general term for someone they deem Authoritarian? Or do they mean a specific kind of “Patriotic Socialist” who LARPs as a communist but actually holds deeply reactionary ideas?

It’s all very unclear. So I wouldn’t take “Tankie discourse” too seriously tbh. It’s just a thought terminating cliche at this point. If you want to talk about any of those groups mentioned above… Just be specific and dunk on who you want to dunk on. There’s legitimate, good faith, critiques to be made of all of them. Just make them, and be thoughtful about it.

But running around and calling anyone you don’t like a Tankie doesn’t foster good discussion. Especially when I have to sit down and decipher which one of 6 different possible definitions of “Tankie” someone might be referring to.

Yo, they fucking Lin Bioa’d him for real

homeless people are tankies actually

George Jackson has entered the chat

It’s TayTweets all over again. First as tragedy, then as farce

Oh man, I remember when the anime_titties debacle happened. My front page was suddenly full of hentai one morning, and I didn’t no why. I thought my account had been hacked at first lol

Holy fucking shit

I also heard about Venezuela and Bolivia possibly joining. So… BBRIICKVS?