Tanks a lot, assholes!
Jack Dawkins and Vladimir “Vova” Romanov are working with other leftists to establish an anti-Trump organising group. Jack and Vova are excited to have invited two activists to join them—Ben (Hess Sakal) and Caleb (Yavari Romanov [then Caralize])—but are quickly dismayed to find out that they’re talking to a pair of bona fide tankies! Who are tankies, you may ask? They’re a seriously weird agglomeration of leftists who think that North Korea is a workers’ paradise rather than a totalitarian hellhole, Joseph Stalin was a shining example of humanity, and any power opposed to the United States and NATO (for example, Russia, China, and Iran) is worth supporting for that reason. Clearly unaware that two wrongs don’t make a right, tankies are a nuisance in any left-wing movement—and Jack and Vova learn this firsthand. (Aside: We should tell you about the time that we were moderating a LiveJournal plurality community and came across Headmate Stalin, but that’s a story for later…)
Featuring Jack Dawkins (himself), Vladimir Romanov (himself), Hess Sakal (Ben), Yavari Caralize (Caleb), and Zip T. Wexler (himself). Recorded in October 2023.
Jack Dawkins and Vladimir “Vova” Romanov are working with other leftists to establish an anti-Trump organising group. Jack and Vova are excited to have invited two activists to join them—Ben (Hess Sakal) and Caleb (Yavari Romanov [then Caralize])—but are quickly dismayed to find out that they’re talking to a pair of bona fide tankies! Who are tankies, you may ask? They’re a seriously weird agglomeration of leftists who think that North Korea is a workers’ paradise rather than a totalitarian hellhole, Joseph Stalin was a shining example of humanity, and any power opposed to the United States and NATO (for example, Russia, China, and Iran) is worth supporting for that reason. Clearly unaware that two wrongs don’t make a right, tankies are a nuisance in any left-wing movement—and Jack and Vova learn this firsthand. (Aside: We should tell you about the time that we were moderating a LiveJournal plurality community and came across Headmate Stalin, but that’s a story for later…)
Featuring Jack Dawkins (himself), Vladimir Romanov (himself), Hess Sakal (Ben), Yavari Caralize (Caleb), and Zip T. Wexler (himself). Recorded in October 2023.
Transcript:
*a clip from The Beatles’ “Back in the USSR” plays*
Jack: Fucking hell, where are those two? Organising groups is like herding cats.
Vova: I know. I’ve been doing this for years and it’s still so fucking difficult. But at least we have two new people to join us in our efforts to take down Donald Trump once and for all. *clip of Fuck Donald Trump’ plays in the background* Perhaps we can get some left unity.
Vova: Oh, look! There’s a knock at the door. *knocking*
Ben: This is Ben, and I’m here with Caleb.
Jack: Oh, brilliant! Come in! Welcome to the Fuck Donald Trump Team, for lack of a better name.
Caleb: Oh, that’s an awesome name, actually.
Jack: Brilliant. So, how should we start organising our plan? You know, Trump has decided to run for president again.
Caleb: Wait a second, you’re British. Wouldn’t you be considered a kind of foreign agent?
Jack: I’m an expat, Caleb. I think it’ll be just fine.
Caleb: OK.
Ben: I know. I think the first thing we need to do is consider the material conditions behind support for, er, Donald Trump. (And I’d be a foreign agent too. I’m from London, so you’re just going to have to deal with it. Anyway, I think we need to look at the material conditions behind support for Donald Trump. *A clip of Madonna”s “Material Girl” plays for a few seconds.* We need to consider the base and not just the superstructure.
Caleb: Yeah. I think we need to go back to the basics. Y’know, Vladimir Lenin said—
Vova: What?! I don’t think what Vladimir Lenin said is necessarily relevant.
Caleb: What do you mean Lenin’s not relevant? He’s as relevant as he was a hundred years ago. Lenin’s work is timeless. You can’t beat the classics! UGH!
Ben: Aren’t you tired of working with these bourgeois pseudo-leftists?
Jack: Who are you calling a bourgeois pseudo-leftist?
Ben: We didn’t say you were, but. I noticed that, uh… what’s that guy’s name? I know we’ve met you, Jack. I know we’ve talked to you online, but…
Vova: Hi. I’m Vova.
Ben: Vova, that’s an interesting name.
Vova: It’s short for Vladimir.
Caleb: Oh my god! You’re Russian! That’s so cool. I love Russia. Vladimir Lenin was from Russia. And there was no more important political and social movement than the Russian Revolution. And here we are organising with an actual Russian! Isn’t this amazing?
Vova: Uh… thank you?
Caleb: You know, I have an ushanka!
Vova: You know, I’ve worn an ushanka maybe twice in the past six years.
Caleb: Oh, I wear mine every winter and it’s got a big red star on it.
Ben: Oh yeah, I’ve got an ushanka too! Isn’t it brilliant? We love Russia! Oh god!
Vova: That’s… nice? I’m—I’m very flattered to hear that you love Russia. Especially since Russia has pissed me off a lot lately.
Caleb: Don’t tell me you don’t support the special military operation.
Jack: Special military operation! I thought we were here to organise against Trump!
Caleb: We are. But you keep spouting bourgeois propaganda about the special military operation and about the timeless work of Vladimir Lenin. And we are supposed to be a leftist group. How can you do this? You know, if you’re not a Marxist, you’re a liberal and you’re bourgeois—
Vova: *rolls over laughing*
Caleb: What are you laughing at, Vova?
Vova: *laughs* You’re—you’re telling US that you’re spouting propaganda. What are you doing? Don’t tell me you like North Korea too.
Caleb: Don’t call it North Korea! It’s the DPRK.
Zip: What the hell is the DPRK? Is that like Deepak Chopra or something?
Jack: Zip, what are you doing here?
Zip: I sneaked in. Also, who the fuck are these clowns? Vladimir Lenin? North Korea? What the fuck? DPRK? It’s North Korea!
Caleb: Stop calling it North Korea! It’s the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or People’s Korea. It’s not North Korea. That’s just what liberal bourgeois media call it!
Vova: It is Korea, and it is the northern half of it. Therefore, it is North Korea.
Ben: North Korea! *scoffs* North Korea. The only people who call it North Korea are people who don’t approve of its government.
Vova: That’s most people, because North Korea starves its own people and is basically George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four in real life.
Caleb: Oh my god. Nineteen Eighty-four is an anti-communist tract created by MI6 to turn people away from a legitimate proletarian movement. They say Orwell was a leftist. No, he wasn’t. He was just a liberal in leftist’s clothing.
Ben: I know, right? I just—Orwell! It’s Orwellian! It’s Orwellian! Oh, please. Orwell! Orwell! And who quotes Orwell? A bunch of old neoconservatives who hate communists. And if we want to organise against Trump, we need to do it in a way that is truly based on the material conditions that people are dealing with.
Zip: Trump supporters are dealing with economic anxiety. That’s just an excuse for racism, asshole.
Ben: No, it isn’t. How could you—Don’t be racialist. You can’t put race in there. It’s about class. The class struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat. And if the proletariat take control of the means of production, then we can have a free society. We can establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, and get rid of all these class differences, and we won’t need to worry about racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism. All of it is subordinate to the base, and the base is the class struggle and the material conditions that lead to dissatisfaction among the proletariat.
Caleb: Yeah. You wanna hear about the labour theory of value?
Jack: No, I don’t. I want to talk about how we can concretely—
Caleb: Concrete! That’s a material cond—
Jack: Shut up. I want to talk about how we can help defeat Donald J. Trump.
Zip: Yeah. We’ve gotta beat Trump! We can’t just sit around here talking about… What next, you guys like Stalin or something? You already said you like North Korea. Surprised we haven’t heard anything about Stalin yet.
Caleb: Stalin is deeply, deeply misunderstood by bourgeois liberals.
Jack: If you say the word “bourgeois” one more time…
Zip: Bourgeois, bourgeois, bourgeois!
Jack: Shut up, Zip!
Zip: Bourgeoooooois!
Jack: Shut up, Zip.
Caleb: Anyway. Bourgeois propaganda likes to portray Stalin as a tyrant. But he was deeply misunderstood, and it was mostly his advisers that implemented the policies that are widely associated with quote-unquote “Stalinism.” There is no Stalinism. There is just Marxism-Leninism, which is built on the ironclad work of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, and, of course, Stalin. But we don’t call it “Stalinism.” Because anything else is revisionist bullshit. Trotskyism? Revisionist. And you guys sound like a bunch of revisionists too. But we’re willing to work with you. Because we hate Trump too, because he’s a fascist piece of shit.
Jack: For once I agree with you… but still… Stalin?
Caleb: Yeah, Stalin. Anyway. Stalin took the Soviet Union to new heights. But all you hear in school, all you hear, is nonstop slurs and smears about Stalin.
Vova: Stalin… Stalin… Stalin. I don’t—Please. You know, I had relatives who were terrified of Stalin.
Caleb: What the hell is this? You are a Russian leftist and you don’t like Stalin?
Vova: No, I don’t like Stalin. I think he was monstrous. I think he was a totalitarian dictator. Yes, I’m a socialist. Yes, I’m Russian. No, I don’t like Stalin. They are all equally possible.
Ben: *sighs* I can’t believe you! We came here to organise with fellow leftists, but all we hear is a bunch of bourgeois propaganda.
Zip: Bourgeois! Bourgeois, bourgeois, bourgeois!
Ben: Caleb is right. People don’t get Stalin, you know?
Jack: Can you two shut the fuck up about how you want to fellate Stalin and get back to work!
Zip: Aw man, these guys are nuts!
Jack: Tell me about it. How did you even find about our group anyway?
Caleb: Oh, um. We were on, I think it was some, like, kind of Discord group, and somebody was sending links to organising anti-Trump groups. And we thought this group sounded pretty cool. You said you were explicitly leftist. You said you were not interested in just copying what CNN and the New York Times said. And so we thought it would be a great idea? I think we got a link to it from—there was this group that was, uh, supporting the special military operation.
Jack: What? How do you find us through a pro-Putin group?
Caleb: It’s not a pro-Putin group, Jack. It’s a leftist group that’s opposed to US and NATO imperialism and their war against Russia.
Jack: You just called it a war.
Caleb: It’s a war by NATO and the US. It is a special military operation from Russia. If NATO hadn’t expanded to Russia’s borders, then Russia wouldn’t have launched its special military operation.
Ben: And the CIA launched a coup in Kiev in 2014 that turned Ukraine into a Nazi regime. Putin launched his special military operation to demilitarise and denazify the Ukraine.
Vova: Bullshit! I don’t like the Ukrainian government much either, and the far-right problem is real, but the only person who chose to do this is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. And CIA did not start a coup in Kiev. Is this InfoWars?
Zip: *imitates Alex Jones’s voice* They’re turning the friggin’ frogs gay!
Jack: Shut up, Zip. Again.
Zip: They call me Zip because they’re always telling me to zip it!
Caleb: Uh, no. Alex Jones is a fascist nutcase.
Ben: Yeah, but he’s right about the CIA. He gets traction because the bourgeois media isn’t speaking to proletarians like you and I!
Jack: You and me. In any case…
Ben: You know, if you want real news, I recommend RT, or Sputnik, or Telesur, or Press TV for proper news instead of all the imperialist propaganda you can find in the Collective West. You know, CNN, and NBC, and the New York Times.
Jack: Ugh. The New York Times has got a transphobia problem, as does The Guardian…
Ben: Oh yeah, The Guardian’s terrible too.
Jack: I don’t like The Guardian either, for that reason—for the transphobia problem. BUT. That doesn’t mean that RT, Sputnik, or Telesur, or Press TV are necessarily reliable sources… In fact, they’re propaganda as well.
Caleb: Ben’s right. This is great anti-imperialist coverage that you don’t see in the West.
Vova: Since when is anything from Russia anti-imperialist?
Caleb: Russia is not an imperialist power. Vladimir Lenin says that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism. Russia is not extracting resources from other countries. Russia is a petrostate that uses its own resources. It does not set up colonies in the same way that the Statesians—
Jack: Statesians? You mean Americans.
Caleb: No, Statesians. America is not an accurate name, because it also refers to North America and South America. And we’ve heard from our comrades in Venezuela that you don’t call the entire—that you do not call the United States “America” because it represents an arrogant form of American imperialism.
Jack: But that’s what Americans call themselves.
Caleb: So? I don’t care. It’s imperialist. And Russia’s not imperialist though.
Jack: So, it tries to take over a country it used to control. Since when is that not imperialist? Also, what happened to that Russian Empire…
Caleb: Oh, shut up, Jack.
Jack: Don’t tell me to shut up. I’m the organiser here. You’re not going to tell me to shut up. This is my group and you’re not—
Caleb: Ex-cuuuuuse me? I have every right to talk about how imperialism has—
Jack: And you don’t think Russia’s imp—
Caleb: No, it’s not. Not according to Lenin…
Jack: I don’t give a tinker’s fucking damn what Lenin has to say. What do you have to say?
Caleb: I’m a Marxist, Jack! My thinking—
Vova: It sounds like you’ve outsourced your thinking to Vladimir Lenin, or Stalin or, god forbid, Kim Jong Un.
Caleb: Kim Jong Un. He’s so misunderstood. It’s important to support actually existing socialist states like the Democratic Republic of—the Democratic People’s Republic…
Jack: You can’t even say the whole name! You just want to call it North Korea like everyone else.
Caleb: I mean the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea.
Jack: See, you keep wanting to call it North Korea.
Caleb: I mean, the People’s Democratic Korean Republic of the North.
Zip: Just say North Korea, bud.
Caleb: Uh, the People’s Democratic Republic of North Korea? The North Korean Popular Republic of… I mean the the North Kor—Aaaah! Ugh! I think your bourgeois revisionism is starting to infect my brain. I mean the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea. I mean, uh, the Democratic People’s Republic of North—Ugh! I mean the People’s Democratic Republic of Nor— Ugh! I mean the Democratic People’s Republic of Nnnnnn—Korea. What was I saying before you guys threw me off about North—the DPRK? Oh, right, we were talking about the bourgeois media and great alternatives to it, right? You know, Sputnik, RT, Telesur, Press TV? Great stuff.
Vova: Are you being paid by the Kremlin? Or Iran or Venezuela?
Zip: You mean Vuvuzela! *Zip plays a vuvuzela*
Caleb: Are you being paid by George Soros?
Ben: Comrade Lenin says…
Jack: *snorts* Is everything you say a paraphrase of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, or Mao?
Caleb: You forgot Kim Jong Il and Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping?
Ben: Putin’s not a communist, mate. The only Vladimir to praise is Vladimir Lenin! After all, I’m an MLM: Marxist–Leninist–Maoist.
Vova: Marxism–Leninism–Maoism is as fraudulent as multilevel marketing. That’s why you get screwed either way.
Ben: We just support Putin to stave off NATO. The Soviet Union fell apart thirty years ago. I agree about the other ones, though. BRICS and Belt and Road will revolutionise the world thanks to China’s leadership.
Jack: Oh, you lot.
Caleb: We’re sick of this bourgeois bullshit! We’re outta here! We’re going to find a real left group.
Ben: Bye! See you… or not.
Jack: Good riddance. FFFFFF.
Zip: Were those guys tankies or something?
Jack: Yes, Zip, they are tankies.
Zip: No tanks!
Vova: Ugh, seriously. Who the fuck… STALIN!
Jack: I… ugh.
Zip: NORTH KOREA!
Jack: You mean the North Korean People’s Democratic Republic or something.
Zip: Seriously, though, fuck tankies! Tanks a lot, assholes!
*Back in the USSR plays again*