The truth is, I have no idea and I don’t think it’s all that productive in most cases to try to sort it out or talk about it. I didn’t actually say anything at all about what the person was; I simply highlighted flaws in their argument and linked to one of their other comments and let the reader draw their own conclusions. In this case I think they were so self explanatory that I didn’t really need to indicate any of what my conclusions were.
But… to deal explicitly with my conclusions, I’ll say that in almost every case where there’s some kind of weird nonsense-logic, and then poking through the person’s history instantly yields some “let’s not vote for Biden” advocacy, I do personally tend to draw the conclusion that they’re a political shill. If I saw a bunch of geopolitical stuff or extended arguments about Marxism then that would tilt the scales in favor of tankie (although like I say, this is only my private logic about it, not like anything I would present as conclusive, because it’s basically impossible to tell.) Going into mainstream political forums and getting real vocal about how people involved with mainstream US politics are supposed to engage with it doesn’t strike me as real common tankie behavior.
Going into mainstream political forums and getting real vocal about how people involved with mainstream US politics are supposed to engage with it doesn’t strike me as real common tankie behavior.
Really? Hm. Maybe I’m using it wrong, it seems like that’s a big thing they do. Like we don’t support third parties because we’re terrible liberals who love war, and not because third parties have zero chance and almost always hurt the chance for progressive reforms. (Also ‘liberals love war’ is just Qanon level batshittery, I just can’t)
I classify most of those people as shills. The people who want to talk about communism or anarchism or pro-China/Russia-ism, and lack of any interest or hope for US electoral politics as kind of an outgrowth of that but US electoral politics is not the main thing they are interested in focusing on, I classify as probably authentic tankies.
Like I say, of course, I have no idea. That’s just how I write it down in my head.
The truth is, I have no idea and I don’t think it’s all that productive in most cases to try to sort it out or talk about it. I didn’t actually say anything at all about what the person was; I simply highlighted flaws in their argument and linked to one of their other comments and let the reader draw their own conclusions. In this case I think they were so self explanatory that I didn’t really need to indicate any of what my conclusions were.
But… to deal explicitly with my conclusions, I’ll say that in almost every case where there’s some kind of weird nonsense-logic, and then poking through the person’s history instantly yields some “let’s not vote for Biden” advocacy, I do personally tend to draw the conclusion that they’re a political shill. If I saw a bunch of geopolitical stuff or extended arguments about Marxism then that would tilt the scales in favor of tankie (although like I say, this is only my private logic about it, not like anything I would present as conclusive, because it’s basically impossible to tell.) Going into mainstream political forums and getting real vocal about how people involved with mainstream US politics are supposed to engage with it doesn’t strike me as real common tankie behavior.
Really? Hm. Maybe I’m using it wrong, it seems like that’s a big thing they do. Like we don’t support third parties because we’re terrible liberals who love war, and not because third parties have zero chance and almost always hurt the chance for progressive reforms. (Also ‘liberals love war’ is just Qanon level batshittery, I just can’t)
I classify most of those people as shills. The people who want to talk about communism or anarchism or pro-China/Russia-ism, and lack of any interest or hope for US electoral politics as kind of an outgrowth of that but US electoral politics is not the main thing they are interested in focusing on, I classify as probably authentic tankies.
Like I say, of course, I have no idea. That’s just how I write it down in my head.
Fair enough. I just think of “shill” in a context of paid advertiser or, well, useful idiot. Yeah, ok I could see that.