this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2023
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What always confuses me is when I see a queer tankie or conservative, it's like why are you shooting yourself in the foot
I'm a queer conservative. I believe in conserving indigenous sovereignty, the environment, pagan religions, labour regulations and the strength of unions, and our knowledge of history. I question these newfangled ideas like capitalism and binary gender because I think they're no good. Things were just fine when we had 10,000 genders and I don't see a need to change that!
That's not how that works
That's not how any of that works
Yeah, I know, it's not what's normally meant by the word conservative. But I don't see why we should have to give the idea of conserving things over to the right. There are lots of great things to conserve. And colonialism isn't one of them. Here in australia, we have a 60,000 year history that predates the right wing idea of conservativism.
You're thinking of conservationism. Very different thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism
The culture I belong to is the queer community. Thus, the tenets of conservativism, to me, center on the traditional institutions, practices, and values of other people in the queer community. We promote the traditional institutions that rightfully govern colonised land. We promote the traditional institutions of pagan religions. We promote the traditional institutions of labour guilds and unions. We promote the traditional practices of indigenous land management. We promote the traditional practices of nonbinary gender. We promote the traditional practices of the old gods.
The things I am interested in preserving are not the same things a white coloniser binarist capitalist is interested in preserving. And given that whiteness, binary gender, and capitalism have no ancient history and no recent history worth keeping alive, I consider their conservativism far less legitimate. There is a whole lot more to conserve on the left.
No it isn't. Naturel conservationism is about conserving nature political social conservationism often generally just shortened to conservatism is about conserving and preserving political and social power. Nothing more nothing less they are identical just about different topics.
Serious question: Why are far-left idealogists being labeled anti-queer? I've simply never heard of this before.
Conservatives (U.S. politics) are 100% in that bucket... But most of them are far-right at this point (and patently nuts.)
tankies actively prop up anything anti-west, and since the west is leading the charge in embracing the queer community, they tend to attack that too. doesn't help that the two regimes they like to prop up the most, russia and china, also have extremely anti-queer policies
Cuba has the world's most progressive and inclusive legislation affecting lgbt people as of reforming their Family legislation actually.
Ahhh, I understand then. We're thinking of entities like the CCP when we think of "tankies", or the far-left. This makes perfect sense to me.
It's a really strange dichotomy to witness far-left countries like China, and then the "far-left" political spectrum here in the United States. Socialism within each of these contexts seems very different. Like, yes, there are some similarities, but LGBTQ+ folks are treated completely opposite based on my exposure thus far to both of these geopolitical belief structures.
yeah, that's why left/right is super reductive imo. whenever dealing with tankies i tend to refer to the two-axis political compass because tankies are authleft, while the US far-left is libleft, which is a huge distinction. but political opinion is not a scalar, and neither is it a two-element vector, it's a very complex thing, the left/right distinction only works as long as you're discussing a singular country and sometimes not even then. (for example, a lot of european countries have a lot more than two parties in their political spectrum, it's not as simple as a democrat/republican alignment here)
A lot of tankies have killed queer people
While historically, and contemporaneously, communist countries have been harsh on homosexuality, surely next time the gays will be safe!
Show me where it says that anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment or indeed any intolerance is inherent in communism rather than just the backwards thinking of bad leaders. Correlation does not equal causation.
It’s not inherent, but it’s ubiquitous nonetheless. Consolidating power necessitates an “other” and lgbtq+ tends to be part of that other due to the disproportionately reduced population impact. It’s just harder for them to have kids. Unless the one consolidating is simultaneously a literal and metaphorical maniac like Pol Pot, in which case absolutely everyone is an other. It’s unrelated to communism in the same way that trans rights are unrelated to republicans; it’s just a convenient subsect to oppress for a politically savvy despot.
Only demagogues need an other to consolidate power, and even if that wasn't the case, every left wing ideology already has the mother of all "others" in the billionaires that literally seperate themselves from the society they (mostly, but not always) indirectly dictate the rules of.
The modern far left is in favor of radical equality, considers (especially social) progress much more important than tradition, considers diversity a strength and doesn't consider procreation a holy duty.
All of that is incompatible with anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination and also the opposite of Republicans who ARE inherently anti-trans BECAUSE of their fascist ideology.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with you entirely, buuuut somehow nearly every major communist revolution has involved immeasurable suffering to the masses via oppressive dictatorship. To bastardize a quote, the flesh is willing but the spirit is weak. The system is always corrupted by those at the top. The closest to functional communism to my recollection were Yugoslavia, but that collapsed pretty hard once the threats did, and cuba…ish. I’m really not a student of politics, but detecting patterns in history isn’t quite as difficult.
Now with all of that said, if a non-hierarchical communist revolution takes place, send me a message and I’ll still happily fire up the industrial sausage maker for a bit of rich cuisine. Just be sure to watch out for any missed jewelry, wouldn’t want to chip a tooth.
As I see it, one of the main problems is that of suitability: the people suited to win a revolution, which is basically a war, with all the strict hierarchy that entails, are rarely as suited to administrate an egalitarian society in peacetime. It's sorta like putting Michael Phelps in charge of the gymnastics team 🤷
A good (and entertaining) primer on revolutions is the now completed Revolutions podcast. I think you'll find revolutions more complex than that simplistic characterization. Most violence in a revolution happens during the counter revolution.
Raising the spectre of possible revolutionary violence ignores the violence of the current system. Can you imagine the world overcoming climate disaster, with all the carnage it will bring, while under the rule of capitalism? Any revolutionary violence should be compared against the ongoing and future violence of capitalism, and its interconnected systems of white supremacy and patriarchy.
Edit to add url for podcast: http://www.sal.wisc.edu/~jwp/revolutions-episode-index.html
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/revolutions/id703889772
The solution that I personally like is the EU model as a stepping stone. The gradually increased power of a tested system provides resistance against collapse under singular entities. Political metamorphosis can involve bloodshed but doesn’t necessarily have to, which skips over some potential pitfalls while creating some less dire ones. Though it’s slow and bureaucratic. Still, nothing preventing someone from opening a ritzy little butcher shop on Fleet Street in the meanwhile to expedite the process.
If nearly every communist leader has been anti LGBT maybe they were all just bad leaders which makes it seems largely inherent to its ideology.
Nearly every capitalist leader has been anti-LGBT. This is silly.
Lots of capitalist leaders (or at least leaders of capitalist countries given the difference in state involvement) these days are LGBT friendly (T admittedly not as well supported by some). How many currently Communist countries are?
Capitalists just reflect the views of their customers. When society was anti-LGBT, so were they, now LGBT people are accepted by the public, the capitalists are falling over themselves to get a float at Pride.
Considering every "communist" nation is actually authoritarian I don't think communism is inherently homophobic. Also every one of those leaders are bad, they run authoritarian countries.
After the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, homosexuality (as well as abortion) was decriminalized.
It was only after Stalin's counter-revolution that gay sex (and abortion) were made illegal. People spoke out against it, including queers and feminists in the Comintern. Again, wtf are queer (or feminist) tankies thinking?