My point isn’t that there isn’t such thing as a tankie, or a dictatorship. Pinochet, Pol Pot, Hitler, and by some stretches, Stalin, are all dictators.
‘You could call Stalin a dictator,’ allows someone previously going to the paint to declare there’s no possible way Stalin was a dictator.
Someone now pretending that when I condemn tankies, I must be describing all leftists, and all leftists don’t believe what I’m condemning, therefore nuh-uh. Even though that’s completely fucking stupid and the opposite of how labels work. Like there’s no possible way I am specifically talking about a minority of crazy people, the same way there’s no possible way I am specifically talking about the abuses of a by-some-stretch-dictator, even though you freely fucking acknowledge both problems do exist.
and you extend it to anyone on the left
An accusation based on literally nothing. The opposite of everything I’ve argued here. A fantasy of your own invention.