I made the mistake of balking at some particularly unhinged Ukraine/Russia rhetoric offline yesterday and got called a vatnik, a tankie, a Russia lover and I was even suspected of being pro-Israel and apparently a nazbol Aimee Therese follower or something
I’m not even invested in this shit, I just find the insane saber-rattling and warmongering unsettling 
When someone tells you Putler’s going to invade Estonia, Poland and Finland for Lebensraum next if he’s not stopped in Ukraine, just nod your head solemnly
apparently a nazbol Aimee Therese follower
Oh no, you found another terminally online person. Nobody offline knows Aimee.
I was about to say I’ve never heard of her and I thought I was very online
She makes an appearance in c/the_dunk_tank periodically, but not nearly as relevant than in the past.
Idk who that is
Probably for the best, but imagine c/the_dunk_tank were a Twitter account.
I assume that’s who they meant
Aimee Therese
Aww. Whats she up to these days?
If the right were dictated by money, rather than values, the left would have bought us out years ago. Money is easy, it’s fungible. Morals are much harder to eliminate. Much harder to live without.
11hours ago
pure projection. so good.
Theres no way you post something that self important and unselfconscious if you are sober.
My friends: you hear about Russia sending ships to Cuba?
Me: yeah, it’s great.
My friends:
I just want the US embargo to end so people can get essential supplies. If they have to get them from somewhere else, whose fault is that…
This attitude is so baffling to me
US doesn’t like them so now Cuban people can’t have food and medicine??
I know, I know, USAmericans and similar (assuming) are raised from birth to be good running dogs, but damn, just think about how you would feel in that situation…
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Americans are the most propagandized (and dumbest) people on the planet
You got called a tankie IRL? That’s so fucking funny, who were you even talking to? some Vaush horse enjoyer?
I would love to be called a tankie irl instead of having to debunk “Oh Israel is a ethnostate but they’re a lot of ethnostates in the world and they don’t get any flack” over and over again.
Combat Liberalism
Depending the crowd usually can feign being a pacifist and then start to bring in counters to their brainworms slowly. Libs love idealism, talk idealism then give them the ‘weird internet politics’ in small pieces and they’ll be nodding their heads.
Liberals love to talk down to others, and hate being talked down to. If you can shape your argument such that they can feel some bit of smugness you can reel them in. It works especially well for intellectual liberals if you appeal to their intelligence.
Just pretend to agree with them and put words in their mouth. “Yeah, I can’t believe that deranged trumpists think {thing that the libs are trying to advocate for}, you’re so right that {position you want the lib to hold}.”
This is what all my successes in this boil down to
counterpoint: trueanon rule: be normal
Death to America
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There are ways to hide your power level but you have to be very accomodating, not get heated, and figure out what direction to guide someone to get them started questioning the dominant narrative, instead of going debate bro mode. People want to be listened to and respected, and will remember your tone, affect, and willingness to treat them like a person far more than they will your points 90% of the time.
Don’t: rant to people how you comment on here among communist hardliners
Do: understand their language and worldview, twist it rhetorically to serve our ends. Class war against all bourgeois parties domestically, anti-imperialism abroad. These are essential to be pushed at all times among any western leftist.
In groups settings, pushback and mockery can completely turn a vibe around.
I feel this, but at the end of the day I guess I’m not really interested in socializing with people who can handwave away a man holding his headless child
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The “normal” in America is incoherent potato in a sack with a random grab bag of loosely held opinions on a bullet point list of “issues”.
Instead of trying to be a rational debater building on first principles and being boring as hell and caught up in the liberal gishgallop, you should instead find their language and speak it - insofar as it aligns with communism in any way.
Most people aren’t “normal” is the boring CNN way. Most people have a few “extreme” beliefs that are incoherent when held with their other opinions.
If I’m talking to a libertarianesque boomer white guy with a few conspiracisms I will talk about NSA, CIA coups, US deep state, corporate lobbying and control, democracy being incompatible with large capital accumulation, wars, etc.
If I’m talking to my social liberal Egyptian Muslim aunt I will focus on US destroying Arab nationalism, Nasser, Israel, the destruction of the progressive nations throughout the Middle East and backing of extremist jihadist forces that are all complete infidel mercenaries posing as devout Islamists - fake Muslims.
Don’t “be normal”. Read the room and speak in their language, always bring the point back to anti-imperialism, revolutionary defeatism & class war. These concerns override all others when speaking of politics in the imperialist west, however you can twist the potatoes logic against them towards these aims is how you should approach it
If I had to choose between listening to the revolutionary hero Mao Zedong or the attention-seeking podcaster who sometimes does good interviews Brace Belden . . .
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Start slow and from believable axioms and make small steps so your logic is understandable
Nah jump right to CIA operation timber sycamore under Obama and show them that American foreign policy is the source of the most evil on Earth, they are ISIS, Democrat or GOP they will be Nazis to the 80% of world that resides in the “jungle”.
Are you trying to convince people or show how correct you are? Because if you start with timber sycamore, people will just discredit you and stop listening but it you go from the more economic side up, people will understand you.
No they won’t, documented specifics is how many people understand reality. It is indisputable
There will just ignore it and write you off as crazy. People ignore specifics and anecdotes all the time.
99% of Americans are cranks. Crankery is generally a plus among most working class people in terms of fitting in. The “normal” CNN watching drone is a myth. Joe Rogan is more popular than The Daily. More people get their news from random parasocial YouTubers than establishment news sources.
I always argue when I get the chance. I’ve had family members who I thought were regular libs call for dobas/gaza to be ethnically cleansed, no way I’m letting that shit fly unchallenged.
Just openly snickering at my uncle saying China plans to invade the Continental US, asking him with what transportation while trying to hold back laughs
the SEE SEE PEE is going to build an EVIL HIGH SPEED TRAIN across the pacific
He was frustrated by the question and suggested shipping containers, and I asked him if he knows about port controls and scanners
the conversation did not go further, lmao
Wait like the entire PLA was going to hid in shipping containers and invade by popping out all at once like a Trojan horse?
lol. Lmao even. This dude sounds hilarious
Long retired former cop, too, so… Just the most wretched brainworms.
My earliest memory of visiting him (he lives in a different state) involved 10yo me shooting one of his full auto uzis into his leech pond, and telling me in his workshop with a bill Clinton picture w/ target superimposed on it that when I’m old enough I should conceal carry without a license because getting the license means you agree to a bunch of worse penalties (for doing illegal shit!).
leech pond
Not loaches?
Do they like septic systems?
to be fair I took his advice from my preteen 90s years and on the rare occasions that I pack a heater (stay gold pony boy) I do it without a license because I’m a rebel
as explained in the films & video games providing documentary evidence of soviet plans for a cross-pacific invasion such as Red Dawn, World in Conflict, and Homefront, an invasion force can totally be conveyed in an unscheduled, unescorted container fleet arriving on the west coast
you were speaking to a true scholar of the art of warUS CENTCOM: hey there’s like two hundred container ships headed to our coast without any port destinations logged, should we check on that? Oh, right, probably just Amazon orders.
Operation Temu Trojan
“Those Temu ads really work?”
World in Conflict
I knew the container story sounded familiar! Had to rewatch the intro’s to Red Dawn, Freedom Fighters and a few others to check, when you reminded me
Just fyi there’s a tracking parameter in your link which Google/Youtube can use to deanonymize you. You should remove ?si=blahblah and everything afterward.
it’s a very tight game despite the silly premise lol
I got it for free a while back and played thru the campaign and it absolutely kicked my ass, mostly due to my insistance on trying to rely on infantry more than vehicles lol. The final mission especially wants you to pile on with the tanks.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Please president xi
I held back on telling him China would be greeted as liberators, in retrospect I shouldn’t have
Often the best method. Don’t try to argue just clown on and mock
got called a vatnik, a tankie, a Russia lover
that is more online than being against the ukraine war
I had a friend yesterday say Ukraine has to win… I just said “but they aren’t and they won’t, the occupied area is going to be annexed”. Then went on about how the major powers are just treating the country as a pawn. They shut up pretty quick.
Based and realism-pilled
The best way to defeat Liberal idealist nonsense is dunking their head in cold water
The news will probably sell to your friend how Ukraine has won after the peace agreement comes and Ukraine gets divided.
It’s funny because my friend group basically does that when I go off on political stuff because A) my sheer force of will, B) I have a degree in history (associates, but still) and C) they’re mostly laid-back nerds
The one time there was push back, it was the member of the friend group we expelled because he yelled slurs at his newborn son while we were playing a game
How dare you oppress him for his culture
At this point it’s widely acknowledged that ukraine cannot win back the territory militarily. So build everything on that undeniable standpoint and you can’t really be accused of anything. The onus is them to convince you you should gaf about the territorial integrity of a country halfway around the world that didn’t exist before 1990. NYT reported that US intelligence does not believe russia wants to invade other countries (this was phrased as “it has always held this to be true”, a hilarious admission).
If they really push the issue I might bring up that east & west ukraine have very different attitudes toward Bandera so what’s the loss, let the banderites have the west where they can all circlejerk about their fascist hero in peace.
Communists disdain to hide their views.
I’m not gonna jump straight to stanning DPRK with people (though I definitely will plant the seed about the insane propaganda being fake and the insanity of the US bombing campaign and shit) but honestly its rare that I get someone who is committed enough to their political stances to push back when presented with someone who clearly has thought more about it and is more familiar wit hthe situation. So I just go for it, more or less.
I’m only here because they call me tankie everywhere else and I dont even like any of you.
ok tanky
That’s because you’re actually a liberal
OK but we love you
I’m not crying….ive just got something in my eye…
That’s all of us
Yeah I’m a russia lover. I love Russia so fucking much. I want them to have nothing but amusement parks, sweet treats, and good times. My little babies.
A little while ago my friend and I were talking and he was despairing of the left’s chances generally because of us politics horserace stuff. I pointed out that China is doing pretty great and he hit me with “authoritarianism.”
But we’ve both been to China so I just asked him if it seemed authoritarian when he was there and he said no.
It sounds like the person you were talking to also has weird internet politics
