no, that dismissing all MLs as tankies has a tendency to erase the real liberatory movements of the global south. criticizing the politics is fine, but applying a hard line against tankies means excluding a vast swath of people who aren't white and don't speak English. he's calling for left unity.
I can’t even parse this. I read your comment as saying that criticizing “tankies” (whatever that means these days) is not ok because some people, who are left but might not be Tankies, are not white and don’t speak English.
The point is that the vast majority of national liberation movements in the Global South against colonialism and imperialism were led by and performed by huge amounts of popular tankies. Liberal movements quite often claim to have ended colonialism and apartheid and stuff, but a better analysis of it is that liberals accepted these results once it was more profitable to stop investing money in maintaining the horrors DUE to global southern tankies resisting and doing organized violence to end it.
Dismissing all tankies with a simple word is really condescending to the vast majority of the world who is only even possibly liberated from direct colony due to these radicals. And it's possibly racist considering it upholds the idea that these global southerners are structurally 'lesser" for needing to resort to such "authoritarianism" to progress out of their suffering. Maybe not racist in the individualized way, but in the way that allows the propogation of inequalities which reify those things: yes it is.
no, that dismissing all MLs as tankies has a tendency to erase the real liberatory movements of the global south. criticizing the politics is fine, but applying a hard line against tankies means excluding a vast swath of people who aren't white and don't speak English. he's calling for left unity.
I can’t even parse this. I read your comment as saying that criticizing “tankies” (whatever that means these days) is not ok because some people, who are left but might not be Tankies, are not white and don’t speak English.
That can’t be right.
The point is that the vast majority of national liberation movements in the Global South against colonialism and imperialism were led by and performed by huge amounts of popular tankies. Liberal movements quite often claim to have ended colonialism and apartheid and stuff, but a better analysis of it is that liberals accepted these results once it was more profitable to stop investing money in maintaining the horrors DUE to global southern tankies resisting and doing organized violence to end it.
Dismissing all tankies with a simple word is really condescending to the vast majority of the world who is only even possibly liberated from direct colony due to these radicals. And it's possibly racist considering it upholds the idea that these global southerners are structurally 'lesser" for needing to resort to such "authoritarianism" to progress out of their suffering. Maybe not racist in the individualized way, but in the way that allows the propogation of inequalities which reify those things: yes it is.