Good point.
I still am not convinced that it’s clearly sympathetic, but I’ll certainly acknowledge I’m not an expert in tankie culture so I should beware this kind of plausibly deniable speech.
If they don’t have a consistent ideology, then determining sarcasm would be nearly impossible, even amongst themselves.
Not even sure that sympathetic is really the right word. “Critical support”, when it’s not just used to mean “I love bootlicking but I realize it looks bad”, means something closer to “I understand these people are bad, but I think the opposition is worse” - ie that they regard weakening America as more important than opposing the Taliban.
As such, personally, I’m not saying that this guy loves the Taliban - but that he probably means ‘critical support’ more seriously than joking.
I finally went ahead and looked up what he linked to, and it was a joke about giving critical support to Trump.
At this point I’m pretty sure it was actually a joke.
Although you still make a very good point about ideological (in)consistency and being cautious of plausibly deniable speech.
Good point. I still am not convinced that it’s clearly sympathetic, but I’ll certainly acknowledge I’m not an expert in tankie culture so I should beware this kind of plausibly deniable speech.
If they don’t have a consistent ideology, then determining sarcasm would be nearly impossible, even amongst themselves.
Not even sure that sympathetic is really the right word. “Critical support”, when it’s not just used to mean “I love bootlicking but I realize it looks bad”, means something closer to “I understand these people are bad, but I think the opposition is worse” - ie that they regard weakening America as more important than opposing the Taliban.
As such, personally, I’m not saying that this guy loves the Taliban - but that he probably means ‘critical support’ more seriously than joking.
I finally went ahead and looked up what he linked to, and it was a joke about giving critical support to Trump. At this point I’m pretty sure it was actually a joke.
Although you still make a very good point about ideological (in)consistency and being cautious of plausibly deniable speech.