Adam Something
3 hours ago

This is a brief consideration of my Ukraine content, mainly the responses I got, and the state of online leftism in general.

The underlying principle driving my Ukraine takes is that I don’t like it when autocracies annex democratic countries in 21st century Europe. This is a perfectly defensible position, that no one intheir right mind would oppose. Or would they?

Enter tankies, a.k.a. authoritarian “leftists”. I’ve gotten plenty of responses from them, and based on those, I’ve never been more comfortable calling them what they are: red nazis. It makes sense, since Vladimir Putin himself is a far-right leader who runs an autocratic, crony-capitalist oligarchy. During his address about Ukraine and the Donbass, he even invoked the famous “blood and soil” argument, and I don’t need to tell you where that comes from.

For any leftist in their right mind, “reunification of ethnically homogenous areas” should ring all sorts of alarm bells. I thought one of the main ideas of leftism was that nation and ethnicity are artificial divides, the real one being between workers and owners. The former are still bound by borders, while the latter is increasingly global.

In light of this, tankies told me how the annexation of Crimea and the Donbass are okay, because there is a high percentage of ethnically Russian people in both places. This is the exact argumentation actual nazis used when Hitler annexed the German parts of Czechoslovakia in 1938 (Sudetenland). Isn’t that interesting.

Another big talking point is the “Ukrainian neo nazis”. We can’t support Ukraine, they say, because our aid will also make it to the Azov Batallion, etc. This is a conservative argument, often made against Palestinians, when they try to equate the Palestinian struggle with Hamas. We cant support Palestinians, they say, because our aid will also make it to Hamas and other Islamists.

Generally speaking, conservative ideas involve turning your brain off, and yielding to your biases and intuition. You start out with “trans people are disgusting”, “blacks are violent thugs”, “Muslims are scary”, and so on, and then you go and listen to Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, PragerU, etc. who validate and cultivate these feelings and biases in you.

Leftist ideas tend to involve the opposite. You recognize your biases, and that your intuition might not always be correct, thus you’re willing to consider ideas and possibly change your mind, even if they contradict said biases and intuition.

From tankies, I’ve seen very little of the latter, and a whole lot of the former. Almost as if they hold fundamentally right-wing, authoritarian views with a thin veil of progressivism over it.

This view of mine is reinforced by the kind of responses I got. You know how online conservatives and alt-righters usually respond to my takes? Instead of arguments, it’s either Ben Shapiro talking points, or the usual “soyboy libeuck SJW commie anti-white reeee”.
As for tankies, I cannot recall a single argument against any of my positions regarding Ukraine. It’s always either parroting proven Russian disinfo, or the usual “NATO state department CIA shill US imperialism reeee”.

To quote a Ben Shapiro classic: “Curious.”

Tankies aren’t leftists. They think they are, which is both funny and sad. If they were, they wouldn’t support Vladimir Putin, a far-right leader engaged in ethno-nationalist imperialism.

It’s your ideas and values that make you a leftist, not how much you hate the US.