I’m not one to post often. I’m not really one to rant to strangers online often, even. But, after migrating from r*ddit to lemmy, I’ve had this on my mind and this seemed like the place to vent.
I see discourse about tankies constantly on Lemmy. This struck me as odd. Why are these so called tankies such a threat? Why do I see people calling themselves left-wing and attacking tankies more voraciously than neoliberals and, sometimes, even fascists?
I think I know the answer, just as well as most people who will read this. These are the Zizeks of the world: people who do indeed think in a left-wing oriented way, but fail to recognise that they’re also Western to the core and the biases that come with that.
I sincerely care about this much less than the actual reason I’m making this post. That is: why don’t these people notice that their talking points, left-oriented as they may seem, always end up supporting US allies or attacking US enemies? I mean, do these people not see that Ukraine winning the war is a boon to the US, regardless of who is “right” in that conflict? Many other such cases, but I think I’ve made my point, or, rather, my confusion, clear.
That’s it. That’s the post.
Radical Liberals is exactly what they are, it’s a decent way of framing it. More accurate than the radlibs self perception that they are “as left as it gets” and tankies are right wing actually
I think it makes sense in their head that there exists a dichotomy between left and right (restricted to liberal/conservative in a very US-centric way) and that they are on the left of that spectrum. Then, being “as left as can be” is a matter of being more what they consider left, which, indeed, they are.
God, I forgot how annoying I find this phrasing they adopt, especially when you know they haven’t done the least bit of reading to inform their opinions.