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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35398 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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I'm curious what folks here think about tankies.

I remember seeing a twitter thread during the onset of the Ukraine war explaining why Russia and China growing powerful even to the point of imperialism is vital to combat western imperialism, "someone has to do it". Whether one agrees that Russia has been constantly provoked by NATO or not, its difficult to spin Russian actions as "anti-imperialist". Similarly, China's land and water disputes with its neighbours. It appears both these countries have become a sort of canvas to project their ideologies. They often call western conservatives "far right" and often attack their criticisms of feminism. But how do they explain China's own censorship of feminist activism, the fact that independent labour unions are illegal, the push for pro-natalism, the push for masculinity training, etc.? I've seen many articles countering the stories about Uyghurs, but not much on the above. What really makes the "tankie ideology" attractive? I can fully understand and even sympathise with their gripes over western imperialism and even Israel to an extent, but I don't get the narratives that its all the neoliberals and the "far right" against China, essentially projecting the whole issue as a new cold war of ideologies between neoliberalism and communism.

There was an amusing article linked on /ssc the other day (since deleted) which decried those who supported Russia's invasion of Ukraine as "brainwashed empire automatons" and "imperial apologists."

Whoops, I got that mixed up. The author actually meant that if you opposed Russia's war of conquest you were an imperial apologist.

All it is is that that some people hate western liberals (the people they know, and meet, and talk to on the internet) more than they do people committing war crimes. You've read the SSC essay.

About a decade ago I read a history of the Third Republic and found myself bemused that there were so many French who hated the opposing political faction that they would very literally prefer a German or Russian takeover (and the ensuing bloody purge of their rivals) than trying to work together and prosper. Now I don't find it so amusing.

The pro-surrender side which says the West and Ukraine need to capitulate ASAP to avert a nuclear war, really, really needs to address the problems that incentivizing nuclear blackmail this way are guaranteed to have. I've seen plenty of articles and posts like the one you listed, and none of them get into this issue despite it being extremely important and despite it being brought up as a response to basically every one of these articles. It's getting aggravating at this point. It's not like there are no responses at all, but the pro-surrender side just blissfully pretends like the issue doesn't exist and that nobody has even thought of it before.

I think there's simply widespread disagreement about the validity and brand of used game theory. Some people really do conceptualize their behavior with causal decision theories and some with timeless/functional kinds.

I'm not sure exactly what you're saying. Are you implying they don't think acceding to nuclear blackmail will have any major implications for proliferation? If so, they should state that explicitly and give some evidence to back their claim.

I think they see the immediate round of the game and their actions as influencing only or primarily the outcomes of that round, yes.

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