The libs have finally learned a new word! Just like tankie it’s actually an old word that gets misused, but they have learned a new word! Looking forward to seeing it everywhere.
If you don’t believe me then check the modlog: This meme got removed for being “campist” 
They’re using it more and more
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Why aren’t socialists who support Ukraine considered campists? Ukraine didn’t even claim to be socialist for 35 years, it’s a brutal capitalist hellhole where gay people can’t even get married.
The most extreme of this new generation of American leftists have found a home on sites like Twitter and Reddit, where Maduro’s “wokewashing” is designed to earn their retweets and upvotes. Colloquially known as “tankies,” a term originally used disparagingly to denote pro-Soviet British leftists, the members of these online communities of leftists who support foreign authoritarian regimes — many of whom decorate their profiles with a hammer and sickle or emoji flags of countries like Cuba, Venezuela and China — range from the niche to the verified, with hundreds of thousands of followers.
For Smith, the politics and economics blogger, “the new tankies have no personal connection with the old tankies” and would more appropriately be called “campists,” a term he uses to denote leftists who support certain countries only for their mere opposition to the U.S. and its allies, while disregarding the actual political situation of these countries.
Lmao you’re all campists
mere opposition to the U.S. and its allies
merely a fairly sound moral index
merely the most basic tactical position for moving toward anything except the status quoMaduro’s “wokewashing”
There seems to be confusion in the comments about what “campist” means. The pejorative “campist” in this instance means someone who anti-US imperialism. That mod is angry that NATO is compared to Nazism and NATO is an enacter of US imperialism. That mod supports NATO.
“Tankie” is used a pejorative for communist. Campism, in this case, means that you have the tendency to side with whatever country the US is attacking.
Campism means categorizing countries into camps on whether the countries support US imperialism or are against US imperialism or neutral.
The alleged criticism of campism is that being anti-US doesn’t mean pro-Socialism. The accuser would say, “You shouldn’t support Russia/Iran because those countries are not socialist”. The campist pejorative is meant to mean that you are a fake socialist for liking certain countries that aren’t socialist.
I’ve seen the leftist tiktoker Madeleine Pendleton self-identifying as a campist.
The point of my post was to say that the word has taken on the role that used to be carried by “tankie”. The actual meaning of the word is irrelevant, to libs it’s just an intellectual-sounding pejorative to describe ostensibly leftist people they dislike for daring to criticise US politicians or foreign policy. Just like how tankie was divorced from it’s actual meaning.
I just hope the next word is Trot or Ultra
Yeah, but the people in the comments “clarifying” it mostly aren’t getting it right. We both know it’ll never be “Trot,” especially since “campist” is a Trot term to start with. It probably won’t be Ultra either. There is a genuinely higher chance that the next term taken from leftist infighting would be “Revisionist” or something of the sort.
Revisionist or alarmist are both good bets.
I would die for seeing right wingers call each other revisionists.
I’m not disagreeing with you. I was just noticing some people replying that they didn’t know what the word means. I would agree that the anti-US position is the correct position 95% of the time.
I believe that “ultra” has probably already reached the media-sphere. I’ve seen the word “ultra” used by liberals to describe socialists who are against participating in US electoralism. Also seen the phrase “purity test” used in a similar way.
“Trotskyist” would be funny but I think main stream media would view Trotskyism positively.
m not disagreeing with you.
My bad, I thought you were explaining the concepts to me, even though you made it pretty clear you were responding to the vibe in the comments.
I believe that “ultra” has probably already reached the media-sphere.
This is the verbiage version of the hantavirus cruise ship.
Trotskyist" would be funny but I think main stream media would view Trotskyism positively.
I think "“trot” could be seen as it’s own thing by libs though.
I think it came out of this Vox article calling Hasan Piker “campist.” I basically never heard it before that. https://www.vox.com/politics/486091/hasan-piker-democrats-israel-china
They are campists too though, they’re removing the meme because it’s opposed to the camp they support.
Calling anyone a campist while disagreeing with them is completely ridiculous lol.
Alliance or Unifying ideology I like = Pragmatic liberalism
Alliance or unifying ideology I don’t like = Campism
OP’s meme is clearly promoting the ideology libs don’t like (anti-imperialism/BRICS) instead of the the ideology they do like (liberalism/NATO). Therefore, it’s it’s campism.
Campism is when you say stuff I don’t like. The post isn’t even mine, I just went looking for the first the best example to my post and the modlog was timed perfectly
“Campist” AKA “people having different political beliefs” AKA “literally just politics”
I like camp, both in the gay sense and in the re-education sense. I guess i am quite the campist.
Well, I dislike camp, in both the sleeping outside and the concentration sense… Does this make us both campist?
One of the greatest celebrity moments I have ever had (and I have had a few) was meeting John Waters at a video store.
That does sound pretty great
Yeah he’s a real gem, very down to earth ironically.
From the modlog looks like you hit someone straight in the cognitive dissonance.
I love getting really angry!
It’s why I’m a Communist!
Is this “wingnut” in a different form?
Like the bat from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?
I do think it’s fine for people on the left to channel 2010s-era r/atheism energy toward “USA bad” until [online] people understand this obvious fact.
And I know I’m a few months behind with this news, but I finally saw it on reddit so now it’s official
Campism is a good word don’t let the centrists ruin it, they are the campists! its true that campism exists on the left, but since leftists actually do shit IRL, even if an individual or an org holds some campist views they actually have some practical experience navigating the political contours of an issue. Meanwhile, centrists just sit at home, watch Game of Thrones and glaze NATO.
Campist doesn’t mean different sides of a political argument. It means there are distinct sides, which have developed from or into distinct opposing “camps”. I can be in a camp, and you can disagree with me, but that doesn’t put you in the other “camp” until you start accepting everything from the other camp as truth without criticism. You can critically support, or be critically supported by, a side of a campist arrangement without being in that camp.
Campism is structural not just individual. Camps often establish themselves over a political difference, but have many qualities defined by opposition to the other, not only response to human need.
Campism is a kind of political idealism. It isn’t the role of socialists to form or dissolve our perspectives into camps. Sometimes we join a side and try and reform it, but since the revolutionary’s aims are to prepare the masses for revolution through educational and organization; and the revolutionary potential of the working class is often dispersed across different camps, socialist’s job is to peer into the real conditions, uncover the actual antagonisms, develop a revolutionary strategy along with the workers and carry out tactics that expose actual causes of oppression. To be Marxist is to be against camps.
Camps are stagnancy and corruption that develop around actual social contradiction.
Campism is mostly associated with Trotsky’s commentary, and the way that he used it is not very much like you describe.
Can’t believe I would ever consider suggesting someone read Trotsky
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. I haven’t read a ton of it but I’ve read some, and even the most dedicated Trotsky Hater himself had a fair amount of Trotsky’s writings in his personal library because it’s important to know your enemy. All the more so today in the west, where the Trots are such an over-represented voice in nominally-communist political commentary.
I know you’re probably joking, I just wanted to mention because others might take it more seriously.
No, campism is not from Trotsky, but Trotskyists have a developed criticism of it, because of the Trot tendency of “third campism.”
When there are two sides to a conflict: One, imperfect but on the side of decolonizing struggle, and the other side, the colonizer. Trotskyists, as left-critics, will find a position outside of the two “camps” and choose another camp: the camp of the revolutionary proletariat.
Sounds nice until you realize that Trotskyists, though maybe not Trotsky himself, have now occupied an idealist position that presupposes a verifiable basis for a left criticism. Both Trotsky and Fanon have proven the international struggle is only possible through national liberation struggles. But American Trots had to be told explicitly to side with workers rather than oppose legislation that would send them to war; and then over corrected and embarked on various adventures of entryism.
Campism is just like, applied phenomenology. As Marxists we have to avoid getting caught up in rationalizing or steel-manning, and just go to the source of the real struggle. It’s interesting how recent events have shaken some Trot tendencies out of their weird sectarian positions. Anyone who tried to third camp about Hamas and the Gaza genocide was completely delegitimized. Other stuff, like “the Epstein files” have also led to the Sparts finally shaking off their disgusting legacy of defending Roman Polanski and age of consent discourse.
But yeah if its not a useful term for you in the spaces you work in then w/e. Just sharing perspective from someone who has gotten to participate in a lot of these discussions.
But all in all, it’s just dialectics and class antagonisms. I’m not describing anything that isn’t explicit in like the Eighteenth Brumaire or The German Ideology.
