As someone who used to be in those circles, it wasn’t always like that but quickly devolved into it. And I went along with it not even really because I believed everything that was there but because that was where all my friends were, and I tried questioning some of the principles but was then met with cold responses like “why are you questioning us?” And so I kind of just went along with everything. It took me a long time to get de-radicalized, but it’s something to keep in mind that a lot of what keeps communities bound like that has nothing to do with the politics and everything to do with maintaining social connections. Which isn’t to excuse any of it, but just provide a succinct explanation for how and why they proliferate.

The concept of a tankie is a person with the cognitive dissonance necessary to both have majority leftist ideology yet still believe in and support authoritarian governments

Right, my above comment was a bit disjointed. The vocabulary gets a bit vague when it comes to putting a political spectrum on a 1D axis.

My concern with my comment is that I wouldn’t know where to put, e.g., the Chinese government on the political axis. It’s both communist-like yet authoritarian.

in fact, left stand for equality and right stand for liberty. That’s all.

I’ve seem many people from Europe refer to communist parties and Russia as far left because they do embody certain socialist ideas that are leftist but take it well beyond the point of being a good thing, so in this regard yes they are far left. Thing is you absolutely can go way too far with any philosophy. I do agree that what they did with the political compass is good though because it reflects the actual nature of being an extremist socially while also representing the economic value, though in these situations they are still very far to the left of countries with economies that aren’t exclusively controlled by state (North Korea is a great example).

Now this is a wider issue, the Red Army did liberate the largest part of Europe from Nazi rule, the US basically tried to liberate France but the Red Army was in Germany before the US crossed the border. In Yalta the three, US/UK/USSR divided the pie, Spain and Greece went on the other half and remained fascist till the 70s (meaning anticapitalists were executed, prisoned, exiled, etc). Yugoslavia went its own way. The US UK handed Hung/CZ over to them, but unlike other places the USSR had to use force to take over what was given to them in the pe cutting.

This is not defense of tankie-ism it is pretty much what happened. Now between 90 and 2024 the 90/1 agreement was no Nato expansion beyond its current borders, and that was severely violated by NATO, to the last ring around the chain being Ukr and Belarus. So the not so red not so hot army anymore had to either react or accept total defeat and submission to NATO. There was no alternative for Russia other than to turn history back which in 30y proved impossible.

I am not passing judgement on which dictator is better, I hate Biden as much as the next guy, but the narrative of recent history appears to have left out all petitions to the UN filed by Russia for the violation of the agreement. The UN’s excuse, NATO is not a UN member, and you can’t blame any particular state member of NATO for what NATO does. Unfortunately a state (Russia) which wasn’t part of the Yalta agreement the SU was, signed an agreement with NATO, not with any particular country. They should have had a better lawyer and not a drunk for a president.

So Russia will evolve to yet another oil-rich country that is blockaded and cut-off from world markets like Iran and Venezuela. Unlike Iranians and Venzuelans Russians get really nasty when they get pissed, hungry, or out of vodka. So this is not going to go well too far too long. We shall see. Oil production and distribution, held by a handful of US based multinationals, will increase their profits in a further restricted oil market. So Iran, Russia, and Venezuela’s isolation does serve a profitable industry’s interests.