The Problems with Tankies

TLDR: You have to rob a bank.

Music is by Gabor Szabo, a Hungarian musician. Selected tracks from all of this greatest hits and albums.

Annotations:
1. Remember this is oversimplified for time, I advise reading up on the first hand accounts of the events as they transpired. (Also because I know people will ask, 'Magyar' is Hungarian for Hungarians.)

2. Marxism-Leninism is an ideology made up of a synthesis between the writings of Marx and Lenin, popularized by Stalin. It was throughout the cold war, the mainstream current of Communist thought.

3. ‘Real Dengism’ is a political current in the CCP which is relatively small and refers more to Deng’s specific views and thought, not an umbrella term for the Post-Deng Chinese economy

4. *Trotsky was the leader of the Left Opposition after Lenin's death, which was in favour of eventual liquidation of the Kulaks, the Right Opposition namely Stalin and Bukharin were more in favour of letting it slide. After Trotsky went into exile Stalin went ahead with liquidation after he saw the threat. Given Trotsky’s record when it comes to these sorts of situations it isn't too hard to believe things would've gone quite similar to how they ended up happening.
Actually Existing Socialism, or 'REAL' Socialism generally refers to the Soviet aligned countries of the cold war.

5. Sadly I can’t find the video but after he left for Africa he did an interview where he derided Marxism-Leninism.

6. Foco is a theory of revolution advanced through guerilla warfare, largely inspired by Guevara. As said it is not a revolutionary current in the modern day with small exception.

7. An overview of Che's thoughts on the USSR can be found here:
https://johnriddell.com/2008/06/06/ch...

8. 'Euston Street Fools' refers to the Euston Manifesto in which a bunch of leftists felt the left were overly critical of the actions of the west, their response resulted in Guardian level analysis of contemporary events, many even sympathetic to the invasion of Iraq.

9. The Khaliq faction were the more militant branch and the more powerful faction during the 78-79 period, they were the ones that wanted these progressive reforms pushed through fast and wide irregardless of the circumstances, much to the Soviet’s discretion. The Parcham faction wanted a softer touch.
The first thing the soviets did after invading was install the Parcham Karmal and bring their faction to prominence as they were more ‘reliable’ for the USSR to deal with.
PDPA defenders push the line about the progressive reforms, yet ignore that Soviets themselves didn’t want this and preferred the less hardline approach of the Parcham.

10. The Mujahidin/Mujahedeen (Yes I know I spelt it wrong)  were a broad church of ideologies, mostly pushed on by their opposition to invasion which they saw as an attack on their culture and religion, not ‘Islamo-fascism’. The Taliban formed from a faction of the Mujahidin during the civil war 92-96. The two are not interchangeable.

11. This doesn’t mean of course that you should throw out ALL testimonies as trash as some do, which for the record is really infuriating, just that you should be sceptical of certain elements.

00:00 - Intro
01:48 - Definitions
09:30 - Idol Mining
16:25 - Anti-Americanism
20:04 - Convenient Narratives
22:20 - That being said...
25:50 - Conclusion