commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]

Unintended may be somewhat true, in that nobody explicitly had that as a conscious reason, but it was an obvious result that they could’ve known beforehand. So I don’t think it’s useful at all to call it unintended. Just an easily understood and expected side effect

Libs and your obsession with whataboutism. This one isn’t even “whatabout,” the point is that the guy in this picture was fine, and in fact the army did everything in their power not to harm him.

In a complete opposite fashion, US drone operators gleefully shot random people and caused unbelievable harm to an entire region.

I proudly defend whataboutism when it’s used to exemplify the necessity of some tactic elsewhere or to compare similar cases for better understanding. But this isn’t even that

A few things to keep in mind in addition to our comrade’s reply:

1. I’ve never met or talked online with any tankie who is happy with the fact that the “authoritarian oppression” is necessary. We often just take the position of Marx’s quote “we won’t make excuses for the terror.” You don’t have to want it, but because it’s necessary according to history and theory, we don’t bother with the whole game of waiting for the perfect excuse, because then it’s often too late for a movement.

2. The goal of tankies is to also reach that world of no necessary oppression and liberation from it for all through dialectical progression, however long and arduous that task is. We just try to be technical, tactical, and strategic about it. It can seem callous, but it’s a mistake to think we can stay on the emotional/values-only plane of thought while attempting large scale socio-economic changes because the enemies of those changes have a system behind them which fulfills all these tasks with low effort.

3. When we say authoritarianism is meaningless, we mean that the dictionary definition you gave is all encompassing at state-level analyses, rendering it meaningless for distinctions. There is no power which doesn’t fulfill all of those conditions (even just a low-level manager performs the contents of that definition, despite the form it takes being small scale. Like “reductions of the rule of law” can be as simple as asking you to do tasks on outside of your contract). The only difference is a vibe created in the mind of the user of the term.

4. The end of this authority at societal scale is communism. Countries sometimes called communist are better called socialist countries led by communists or something. The whole discussion is rendered confusing by mistaking a process/movement for some definitional standard. No socialist country is socialist for meeting definitions/conditions; they are socialist because they recognize and continue the process to progression to communism. See point 2 for the strategy which countries led by communists are doing.

Come talk with us, we have interesting ideas and people

You replied to someone from hexbear at the top of this chain. Find them then claim they found you. Be serious or PPB

Fully agree with the description. Fuck that lib. Keep tearing them apart til they apologize and edit.

In Dutch-speaking communities i still hear the American phrases a lot, but the equivalents in dutch rarely. But in international groups oriented towards my hobbies, dude is still used a good bit. But I’ll just stay alert, just wanted to hear a bit more from a trans-comrade who most definitely would speak frankly to me (I understand that in-person call-outs can sometimes be difficult for such “small” things). Gonna only use it as a phrase of exclamation among friends that know me well I think and continue checking up regularly on my comrades.

Real talk from a very trans-supportive communist: is this universal? I definitely grew up in a conservative environment but definitely was under the impression that I and the trans people I am close to all thought dude was a term of endearment when used amongst friends, including women and enbys. I likely overuse the term from thinking I would be a skater after playing Tony hawk’s pro skater and being into hiking/climbing/camping culture, but is this a universal thing among trans people you know?

Not defending the other person, libs very often hide behind the argument once called out, and I’d never call you “dude,” or pretty much anyone not my direct friend, but I just wanna make sure I’m not hurting people unnecessarily without knowing it. Maybe it’s the “being friends” part that makes the difference, and I hope so. Otherwise I got some trans-comrades to apologize to

Adding here after thinking more, I guess I usually use it to refer to a non-specific thing, like saying “ah dude, that’s cool” and shit like that. Like saying “oh man.” Is this related??? Need some help here lol