Red fascists despise minorities and will do everything in their power to ensure we suffer.

When I was a kid in the early-mid 2000s, knocking on the door was always a daunting prospect - people sitting out on their porch or steps were much more approachable, and much more the norm.

lmao

One of the most accurate estimations it’s made thus far though.

Removed by mod

Thanks for that, too

Thank you for having more mercy than hatred.

Gods give me strength

Disagree on the spritzing - perma bans from individual communities cause significant inconvenience to users.

Agree on the civility. Fuck civility politics.

Obama had the White House , House , and Senate and didn’t close Gitmo as promised.

Did you follow the situation? Gitmo wasn’t closed because there was nowhere to transfer the prisoners. It was attempted, numerous times. There were legal battles over this.

Why would it be unfriendly at best towards the US?

In international politics, relations change as quickly as shifting sand. Vietnam is an ally and very friendly towards the US anymore, and they still have the same government that we went to war with. Think in comparison to “We, personally, violated your sovereignty, laid more ordinance on your country than in all of WW2, committed numerous warcrimes, and poisoned the land with chemical defoliant”, “We supported your oppressors and gave only token assistance to your independence struggle” is easier to overcome.

I would have said (and DID say, for that matter) that it would hurt Dem chances of victory back in January, but opinions have changed very rapidly. I’m inclined to think that it would be a wash at this point.

Sure thing. Essentially, the world is mega-fucked. I contend that it is less fucked than it was in the past, but it is still deeply unjust and needlessly ruinous. Being angry with that? Being angry with the people you see as the defenders of that? I get it. Legitimately, I do. And they’re not always wrong - hell, playing nice with people whose views are fucked normalizes those views. There’s only so far you can go with “Agree to disagree” as a core principle until you’re politely shaking hands with a Nazi.

So I get than they’re pissed, and I get that they’re right to be pissed, for that matter. I get that you have to go on the attack, and I get that giving someone asspats for defending oppression because they’re doing it politely is no way to effect change in your communities. And this goes for just about anyone who isn’t a fascist or a conservative (in the literal sense, not necessarily capitalist sense) with 0 imagination - you have to believe in your cause, and if your cause is important enough to fight for, you have to do it with all you’ve got.

BUT.

Tankies have a number of problems, and I won’t get into the whole bit about policies where they’re fascists painted red, because I could go on all day about that. Speaking from a purely strategic point of view, their idea of “No compromise” in some kind of weird accelerationist fantasy, where the liberal left losing means the socialist left will gain is just… not even close to connected to reality.

They’re not wrong to distrust liberals - there are no friends in politics - but they are wrong to oppose cooperation in all circumstances. And make no mistake, whatever their claims, it’s all circumstances. Any time an issue arises, pretty invariably the tankies will be on the wrong side of it, because cooperation is ‘supporting the system’. That would be fair if they were, I don’t know, performing a revolution. But they’re not. So all they’re doing in refusing cooperation is sitting on their asses and helping conservatives win, because it makes them feel smug.

Furthermore, they have the weirdest black-and-white view of the world, where they are more than willing to simp for regimes that are diametrically opposed to their values because “West Bad™”. I had a tankie on here a few months ago defending Iran’s clerical crony-fascism as some kind of noble blow against capitalism, and not a reversion to bureaucratic feudalism (or early European oligarchic mercantilism, if one prefers) of the kind that prevailed in pre-republic China.

Let’s not even get started on the weird China worship when it’s deformed into a pretty blatantly capitalist state, or the fact that they champion Russia as ‘anti-imperialist’ because it’s anti-West. As soon as someone is opposed to one of their pet issues (capitalism, the USA, liberals), and in support of none of the mentioned, nearly anything becomes justified or justifiable - from genocide to autocracy.

So, yeah. I get they’re pissed. I get going on the offensive, and I get not being nice about it. It rubs some people the wrong way, and you may not agree with it as a strategic decision, but that aggression against injustice the least objectionable thing about tankies.

I don’t even mind the hostility. I get the hostility. It’s the dogmatic black-and-white views that irk me. Like, sorry that international politics doesn’t fit into your pseudoreligious slots of absolute good and evil?

I mean, when it’s not the issue of playing apologia for atrocities and totalitarianism. That gets my dander up in a hurry too.

There are a lot of things I dislike about them. But aggression? Nah, I get that.

They had me at “eats mosquitoes”

AA2 and AA3 were legitimately great games.

Thing is, a lot of it was looted. Not even like “Napoleon” style looted specifically for museums, like straight up, “The only reason we have it is because some officer thought it would make a nice trinket and snapped it off of some priceless altar and got bored of it and donated it later in life” sort of thing.

There’s a reason archeologists look on archeology in the 19th century with a good deal of cringe, and it’s not just the rampant racism and sexism. A LOT got destroyed in the process of “We want to learn about these things but we have no cultural frame of reference to study it in except to steal it from These People™”

Individuals, in aggregate, create and shape systems. It’s not an either/or. Examining a system means not just examining the structure of it, but how individuals interact within that structure - such as, say, Tsarist Unshakable Autocracy™.

Please note that Tsar Nicholas II was a horrid authoritarian ruler with a lot of fucking blood on his hands. We’re talking to the tune of millions.

But this is what many authoritarians look like. Ordinary people, with ordinary fascinations and family.

it me fr fr

Really loving the “What does it matter if they support genocide???” commenters in here. Really showing where their priorities are.