Kiss the Boot of Shiny Leather

Herein I bitch about everyone I don't like.

[thomasthetankieengine]

Tankie/Campist blog drinking game

For whenever you're really bored or feel like getting wasted alone.

Take a shot every time:

Complaint about the very idea of voting 

Fundraiser 

Dismisses charities as corrupt

Praises Russia 

Praises China

Praises Syria

Praises Iran

Praises North Korea 

Praises Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Houthis 

Link to Grayzone article 

Suicide baiting or wishing death on other users 

Anime mention

Video game mention

Says (or implies) that Hitler or Mussolini were elected 

"Death to America" (take an extra shot if user is an American) 

Treats Muslim and Arab as synonyms or near synonyms

"Death to Israel"

Dismisses misogyny as not real or unimportant

Dismisses antisemitism as not real or unimportant

Calls Jews white (especially if it's in relation to Israel) 

Complaints about white people when user is also white 

User is not American, but is very invested in American electoral politics  

Complaining about "homonationalism" (by which they mean talking about homophobia in any place other than Western Europe, Israel, or the Anglosphere. If you do this you are implicitly arguing for an invasion ... somehow)

Complaining about neoliberalism, when it's plain they're using the term incorrectly (neoliberalism actually refers to support of free market economics, shrinking the size of the state, and privatizing public or government-owned industries)

Complaining about Zionism

Uses phrase "imperial core" 

Uses phrase "global south"  

Reinvents idea of social fascism. (Take an extra half shot if they don't note how that worked out poorly for German communists in the 30's)

Denies mass killing or atrocity of communist or leftist regime 

Denies mass killings of non-left authoritarian regime that they want to defend for ... some reason 

Praises mass killings as long as it's of "bad people"

Vladimir Lenin mention, painting, or photo 

Joseph Stalin mention, painting or photo

Mao Zedong mention, painting or photo 

Take two shots when: 

Tantrum about someone asking them to tag graphic war footage or photos 

Dunks on anarchists

Long post with no paragraph breaks 

Anger that people aren't donating enough to fundraisers 

They seem so angry or depressed you actually worry for their well-being 

Dismisses the idea of war crimes or human rights as liberal praxis 

Presents themselves as expert on the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia when you're fairly sure they aren't aware that Turkey, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Iran aren't Arab countries

Drink a whole glass when:

Talks about their volunteer work

Posts links about how to volunteer at soup kitchens, homeless shelters, or co-ops

Talks about reading a book (or even just mentions one)

Disclaimer: I am NOT responsible for any liver damage you suffer. Play at your own risk.

[thomasthetankieengine]

TFW you just straight up lie about people's actual views b/c you're salty that they DARED to criticize your dreams of embarking on a new Red Terror as a millennial version of Rosalia Zemlyachka ◕‿◕✿

[thomasthetankieengine]

Full illiteracy in the year of our lord 2026 absolutely WILL negatively impact one's life in most of the world.

But I suppose hagiomoto completely forgot about job applications, forms, instructions, price tags, food and product labels, maps, and road signs and is assuming the the only drawback of full illiteracy is that you can't read for fun... Yeah, no. If anything, that's the least of your problems.

And yes, I realize that it's easy to take it for granted how much basic reading is necessary in day-to-day life in most of the world, but still. The way that most of the world is currently set up assumes that adults have at least basic literacy skills and if someone doesn't have such skills, their life is going to be much more difficult.

[thomasthetankieengine]

It greatly distresses me to find that some people on this site are even bigger losers and stalkers than I am, but boy, horsesharkinahatadventures is a champion.

This is just one example

And then you click on the proof and it's nothing more than that... they reblogged from someone horseshark has decided is a Zionist.

And there are plenty of other examples, but here's just one

Like 95% of these cases are simply reblogging from someone who horseshark has decided is a Zionist, sometimes with reason, but many times without.

Many of these blogs haven't even openly expressed any opinions on either Israel or Palestine, but horseshark can apparently psychically tell their political convictions based on who they reblog from.

[thomasthetankieengine]

Speaking of pivoting, weren't Iranian protestors obviously all American/Israeli agents just a few days ago?

And now they're simply monarchists instead?

Sarcasm aside, I'd suggest that tamamita actually read something produced by Iranians to get an idea of what the regime he's so zealously defending is actually like...

I mean, just for one thing, are the numerous Kurds involved in the protests also Iranian monarchists?

... But we all know that tamamita and his ilk much prefer the imaginary Iran they've made up in their heads to the real thing, so they automatically dismiss anything that contradicts their preferred view as "lies".

[thomasthetankieengine]

These types of posts are frustrating to me, because they're not necessarily completely untrue. On the one hand, it's certainly true that people from Western Europe had a long tendency of treating Russia as being the way it is because of its inherent "Asiatic savagery" or whatever. Typically, talking posts you'll find along these lines include the idea that the Russian absolute monarchy was derived from the Mongols. If you actually dig into the history, though, there's not much to actually support this idea. Mongol khans were always at least technically elected and their power was never close to absolute.

Russian absolutism instead mainly derived from the exact same source that French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Danish absolutism did: the Roman Empire and especially the emperor Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis. This is why the Russian tsars used a title derived from Caesar before later switching to Emperor, called themselves the Third Rome, and used the double headed eagle as a symbol.

It's also important to constantly ask yourself how much, say, Ivan the Terrible actually differed from other early modern monarchs and rulers to his west. Many of them were also incredibly paranoid and likewise enjoyed ordering judicial murders of nobility whom they suspected of disloyalty and numerous massacres of their own subjects and embarking on aggressive wars for no other purpose than to enlarge their kingdom.

However, as is typical for posts like this, while Occidentalist seems to know quite a lot about how westerners have viewed Russia, there's not much said about how Russians have viewed themselves or about the long history of Russian expansionism. Her idea that Russians somehow exist on the fringes of empire is a load of bullshit. While the Spanish, Portuguese, English, and Dutch were extracting resources from the Americas to enrich themselves and slaughtering whatever indigenous peoples got in their way, the Russians were doing exact the same thing in Siberia. This too was a colonialist venture even if Yermak Timofeyevich, Vassili Poyarkov, Semyon Dezhnev, etc. didn't have to use boats in order to get to Siberia.

And that's just the beginning. The Russians also took Finland and Estonia from the Swedish Empire, carved up the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth along with Prussia and Austria-Hungary, and conquered most of Central Asia and the Caucasus. Between 1763 and 1864, they waged a war of conquest against the Circassians that ended with the ethnic cleansing of least of 80% of them and perhaps as many as 97%.

And then there's the Crimea. Once populated primarily by Crimean Tatars, it was conquered from the Ottoman Empire by Catherine the Great, who then embarked on a policy of de-Tatarization. Prior to the Russian annexation of the Crimea, it was 95% Tatar while today, it's only 10% Tatar and over 65% of its population identify as Russians.

Occidentalist's nonsense about how the current Russian Federation is an enemy of empire is particularly mendacious. Yup, that must be why Russia's current rulers behave as if Ukraine and Georgia especially are silly children who must be forcibly brought back under the loving control of Mother Russia.

I am constantly perturbed at people fall for the line of Russia being a victim of European imperialism rather than one of its biggest perpetrators: at its greatest extent, the Russian empire covered 1/6 of the world's land mass and even today, the Russian Federation remains the world's largest country by landmass.

And yet you somehow believe this came about by accident and not by colonialism on a grand scale? Come on now.

Bonus! Occidentalist reserves pushback on their post from a Pole, completely misunderstands why they brought up Poles and Ukrainians, and then makes a new post wishing they could order mass executions like Stalin

I suspect that gryficowa brought Poles and Ukrainians up because a great deal of Poland and Ukraine used to be part of the Russian Empire, though, admittedly, they didn't articulate that point very well).

Occidentalist, though, chooses to ignore that elephant in the room and instead whines about grifcowa mistaking them for an America and how MEAN it is that Poles and Ukrainians aren't always exactly enamored with Russia and say mean things about Russia.

HMMM. I WONDER WHY THAT MIGHT BE? Did Russia ever do something bad to them? Or are they just being ever so mean and nasty because they're Orientalists?

[thomasthetankieengine]

Is it just me or does this attempt at backpedaling actually make no fucking sense...?

This is the context, BTW

Right, so!

Apparently, atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, the US, and Israel = "very calculated evil"

... but Imperial Japan's war crimes and atrocities are "brutish uncoordinated barbarism"

Or maybe it's the reverse?

Either way she meant it, this attempted backpdealing still makes absolutely no fucking sense.

The "comfort women", Kamikaze, Unit 731, Baatan Death March, Holocaust, Porajmos, Generalplan Ost and extensive of use of slave labor by both regimes all took a great dealing of planning to put into place and were signed off on by the highest officials of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.

The same is true of the numerous ethnic cleansings that the governments of the US and Israel ordered, which is hardly an arcane secret.

Unfortunately, CD-call seems to only have a vibes based knowledge of world history that is based on pop culture and half-remembered lessons from high school.

[thomasthetankieengine]

why are tamamita, fellahimedia, etc clutching their pearls so much over iranian protestors burning mosques lmao

It is because they seem to want to believe that the protestors are American and/or Israeli agents and not real Iranians.

Not having had first-hand experiences with theocratic regimes or the intellectual curiosity to look up how such regimes work, they don't seem to understand that places of worship can be instruments of state power in theocratic regimes as well as any regime that, while not exactly being a true theocracy, still invokes divine authority for its claim to political legitimacy.

This is why French revolutionaries nationalized property of the Roman Catholic church and ordered the arrest and execution of Catholic clergy and why the Russian revolutionaries also confiscated property of the Russian Orthodox church and ordered the arrests and executions of Russian Orthodox clergy. (Well, that and the fact that the Bolsheviks were militant atheists who thought religion was nothing more than an instrument of bourgeois oppression, which is why they also targeted religions that had not been fully endorsed by the Tsarist state.)

This type of context is very important.

I don't want to be too nasty, but let's face facts here: fellahimedia and tamamita (also hagiomoto) do not have any first-hand experience with how Islam is practiced or implemented in Iran and don't appear to be all that interested in hearing from anyone who has. tamamita might also be a Twelver Shia, but he lives in Sweden and frankly, his experiences are necessarily going to be very different there to how it is Iran. Just for starters, there are no Guidance Patrol or Revolutionary Courts in Sweden.

Religions might claim to be eternal and universal institutions, but they are not and never have been and instead vary considerably in practice based on time, place, and circumstance.

[thomasthetankieengine]

[thomasthetankieengine]

Hagiomoto on why it is dumb to believe that Ali Khamenei can violently crack down on protestors and it pisses her off to think that anyone could believe that.

This is the post that was being referred to, btw, which also features tamamita and stoptheantisemitism

I completely agree that starting a war with Iran would be a horrible idea, but like... that's not a particularly profound or insightful statement.

Anyone with an ounce of sense knows that ... though that obviously excludes the moron currently installed as chief executive of the US of A.

[thomasthetankieengine]

In this post: the same circle of twits who've defended bombings and mass shootings and tried to minimize the Bondi beach shooting because Chabad are evil and deserve it or complained about how it was taking attention away from Gaza, suddenly think that targeting places of worship, children, and civilians is verboten and should never ever be done.

Also, it's straight out of the Zionists' playbook or something.

Also also, fellahimedia and tamamita are in no way Iranian (neither by citizenship or blood), but still feel they definitely know better than someone who is.

And now for some receipts

[thomasthetankieengine]

You see, boys and girls, this is why you should always try to limit how much time you spend the internet, especially social media.

If you don't, you'll become as brain fried as hagiomoto and start to seriously believe that politicians and government officials virtue signaling on Twitter is WAY more important than boring material conditions, such as "the Iranian rial is now the least valuable currency in the world", "Iran is suffering from rampant inflation", and "Iran is in the middle of a serious water crisis".

Bonus!

Komsomolka reporting on even more nonsense on Twitter. Cause as all good Marxists know, posts on social media >>> analysis of economic conditions.

[thomasthetankieengine]

Why are people calling you a nazi?

I dunno. Perhaps because I said that the Holodomor actually happened and that it wasn't actually the result of kulak sabotage?

I gather that some Stalinists 100% believe that saying that makes you a Ukrainian nationalist and also a Nazi by default.

Or it could be because I said the Bondi Beach Shooting was wrong, regardless of whether some of its victims were Chabad and/or posted gross shit on social media.

Both seem quite possible.

[thomasthetankieengine]

While a good chunk of Iran's economic problems do stim from international sanctions, acting like they are somehow the only cause is ridiculous.

Iran also has serious problems with "brain drain", the causes of which cannot all be blamed on sanctions.

Emigration can be prompted by highly skilled Iranians’ perceptions about the potential for their future careers, earnings, and ability to express themselves. Often, Iranians studying abroad do not return after graduation, instead putting their expertise to work in their countries of residence. In the process, they deprive Iran of the brainpower that could propel a stuttering economy worsened by international sanctions; they also send a signal to others that career prospects are better elsewhere. At times, the government has adopted a hostile attitude towards academics and researchers, making alternate countries more attractive. Other factors are also at play in Iran, including an infrastructure that has not developed in proportion to rapid population growth over the past 40 years, as well as bribery, corruption, and mismanagement that have had a significant negative impact on people's quality of life. Western rivals, meanwhile, have long encouraged scientists and other experts to leave Iran. Critics say this “brain drain” has contributed to a dearth of expertise, innovation, and productivity that is holding back advancements in Iran’s economy and cultural institutions. Iran's population more than doubled from 1979 to 2019, to 83 million people. Over the same period, Stanford University researchers have estimated that the share of emigrants—including both permanent and temporary migrants—has grown nearly threefold. A large number of these emigrants have been well educated or are in prominent social and cultural positions. Gallup’s Potential Net Migration Index, taken between 2015 and 2017, found that more than one-quarter of highly educated Iranian residents would leave the country if they could.

Iran Loses Highly Educated and Skilled Citizens during Long-Running “Brain Drain”

Large numbers of well-educated Iranians have left their country of birth since its 1979 revolution, in a “brain drain” that has held back Ir

All that aside, LOL forever @ the idea the guilt by association in the tags.

[thomasthetankieengine]

I lol'd when I saw it a Bad Empanada video being linked. You'll have to forgive me if I'm going to take the word of someone who constantly downplays antisemitism like so...

Yeah, and Indian-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Japanese-Americans, and Iranian-Americans also tend to have similarly high average household incomes, therefore discrimination against Asians and Muslims in the US are also not serious issues, either! QED!

[maknaasfalti]

America invaded a country and kidnapped a world leader, you wanna talk about that?

[thomasthetankieengine]

With you, not particularly.

Mind you, I am no expert on 21st century Venezuela, but I am aware of the the US government's long history of sponsoring coups and regime changes in Latin America and thus don't believe for a second that the Trump administration's orchestrating of Maduro's kidnapping was for humanitarian reasons.

If you want sophisticated political analysis of the situation, though, you should look elsewhere. I won't pretend to have great expertise on every political topic.

From perusing your blog, though, it seems like coming up with half-baked hot takes and trolling other users about every subject under the sun are some of your favorite things to do... So have fun with that. 🫡

[maknaasfalti]

Idk how on earth you of all people get to use "you sometimes post contentious political opinions on the internet! that's weird, get a life." When your entire gimmick is being an "anti tankie activist"

[thomasthetankieengine]

No, the main issue is that you strike me as a habitual troll and not a particularly funny or clever one, either.

And my blog is not activism. It's just taking cheapshots at people on the internet. There are some activist blogs out there, but I make no pretense about mine being one of them.

Still, if it's any consolation, we do have one thing in common: I also think Hazbin Hotel is dumb fluff.

Your Deep Thoughts™ on how art should always have a clear defintion purpose that is enforced and mandated by the government is where I started what the hell you've been smoking. In 7000 years of human civilization, no one has yet come to an agreement on what is art and what is not, much less on what purpose it serve, but I'm sure your plan is just so very viable.

[maknaasfalti]

"i just feel like like you're habitual troll"

Over like 3 posts.

"I just like taking cheap shots at people on the internet"

and it's your entire blog theme, at least i reblog puppies and shit sometimes.

Post 1 is pointing out that whitewashing of the Romanovs that Ukrainian is complaining about is a symptom of the broader anti communist propaganda that they support. And that they should unlearn their knee jerk reaction to everything Russia adjacent if they want to exist on the international web.

2 and 3 are just taking the broadly popular and agreeable critique that "the desire for marketable appeal is damaging to the artistic merit and cultural enrichment that media provides" to the natural conclusion that the means by which art gets produced should be politically reconsidered.

Also you're just wrong about that history lol.

[thomasthetankieengine]

I'd have more respect for you if you'd just admit that you think it's funny to make people angry online than trying to wrap it in stupid platitudes like how you're trying to teach liliyawnas to unlearn her kneejerk reaction to Russia and Russian culture. She seems to realize just fine that her reaction IS partially irrational.

In any case, if you're so certain that I am wrong about art and its history, then consider just this one question...

Should art depict and human society realistically or should it seek to improve on nature and human reality by showing us what both should be? Despite your pseudo-certainties, there has never been anything close to universal consensus on this topic. My wishy-washy answer to this debate is that there's plenty of room for both realistic and idealistic art and one is not necessarily better than the other.

Do you feel differently? If so, why?

[thomasthetankieengine]

I lol'd when I saw it a Bad Empanada video being linked. You'll have to forgive me if I'm going to take the word of someone who constantly downplays antisemitism like so...

Yeah, and Indian-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Japanese-Americans, and Iranian-Americans also tend to have similarly high average household incomes, therefore discrimination against Asians and Muslims in the US are also not serious issues, either! QED!

[maknaasfalti]

America invaded a country and kidnapped a world leader, you wanna talk about that?

[thomasthetankieengine]

With you, not particularly.

Mind you, I am no expert on 21st century Venezuela, but I am aware of the the US government's long history of sponsoring coups and regime changes in Latin America and thus don't believe for a second that the Trump administration's orchestrating of Maduro's kidnapping was for humanitarian reasons.

If you want sophisticated political analysis of the situation, though, you should look elsewhere. I won't pretend to have great expertise on every political topic.

From perusing your blog, though, it seems like coming up with half-baked hot takes and trolling other users about every subject under the sun are some of your favorite things to do... So have fun with that. 🫡

[maknaasfalti]

Idk how on earth you of all people get to use "you sometimes post contentious political opinions on the internet! that's weird, get a life." When your entire gimmick is being an "anti tankie activist"

[thomasthetankieengine]

No, the main issue is that you strike me as a habitual troll and not a particularly funny or clever one, either.

And my blog is not activism. It's just taking cheapshots at people on the internet. There are some activist blogs out there, but I make no pretense about mine being one of them.

Still, if it's any consolation, we do have one thing in common: I also think Hazbin Hotel is dumb fluff.

Your Deep Thoughts™ on how art should always have a clear defintion purpose that is enforced and mandated by the government is where I started what the hell you've been smoking. In 7000 years of human civilization, no one has yet come to an agreement on what is art and what is not, much less on what purpose it serve, but I'm sure your plan is just so very viable.

[thomasthetankieengine]

In an anarchist society, how would mob violence against extreme minorities like the jews be prevented?

I don't know. Perhaps you should ask an anarchist that question?