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important rulepost
important rulepost
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Honest question - what's a tankie? I feel like I've seen them mentioned a ton on Lemmy but I'd never heard the term prior to a few days ago. From the image it looks like a maga/skinhead combo?
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They're communists, but not your every day "people should hold the power" communists. More like "tianenmen never happened, and if it did it wasn't that bad" type
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Which makes them no different from the western imperialists they hate so much.
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exactly
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When you definitely understand what words mean
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Tankie was first used for that kind of communist supporter who kept singing Russia's praises/defending Russia even when Russia was sent 5000 tanks to crush a popular uprising in Czechoslovakia (the "Prague Spring") on August 20, 1968. Some people just couldn't accept that a communist country could do something bad, so defended the action.
Nowadays, it's used to refer to those that are strongly supportive of Russia, completely ignoring the awful things they do. Often these days there's a lot of anti American bent to it. Like, anything anti America and American "imperialism" must be good - even blatant and awful Russian Imperialism.
These days they calmly explain how Ukraine just needs to come to the table and discuss peace (ignoring that Ukraine wouldn't exist if they did so) and blame America for the war in Ukraine for... well... they're America. The people who want war, or are causing the war, are those giving Ukraine weapons - not the country that is literally invading it.
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Thanks for the explanation. I believe they are also called Rashists, at least Ukrainians call them that.
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I think a better term is "Campist" which is the trend within revisionist marxists to side with one imperialist camp to oppose another. it's the same shit the SPD did during WW1
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Careful, these liberals will attack Trotskyists the moment they offer any positive opinion on the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. It won't get you anywhere trying to be One of the Good Communists, it will just give you a chance to be a useful idiot for liberals who don't actually support you.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
Basically, it's Communists who support authoritarianism.
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what is "authoritarianism" to you?
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heirarchy in any form
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"he's not hurting the right people, " painted red
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Sometimes its about helping the right people. Sometimes that means taking direction, working together, and not simply following your own bloated ego.
Liberals seem to get that when they're vote canvassing, fund raising, and brigading on some social media jerk off sight.
But as soon as they see anyone to their left with any kind of organization or even a respect for their forebearers, a switch flips in their brains and all they see or hear is "tyranny".
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I'm an anarchist, but nice try.
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I believe the insinuation is that at the moment there is very little difference between your flavor of useful idiot "anarchism" and liberalism
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well that's just childish isn't it
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do you consider that a rebuttal?
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yes because it's not anything intelligent enough to be thoughtfully argued against. a 7 year old could see the holes in such an idea
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I oppose one more system of authority than you do, in the interest of ideological consistency, intellectual honesty.
are you taking the position of a literal child?
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is revolution not putting the authority of the people over those in power, and bringing those people low? that's "hierarchy"
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that depends if you draw distinction between the people and the state (which is merely an abstraction of capital)
state capitalism, as defined by lenin, is not a classless society, and is indefensible as a liberatory philosophy.
just as liberalism abolished the monarchy only to replace it with a dictatorship of private capital, authoritarian socialism replaced monarchy with a beaurocratic ruling class and unilateral control of the means of production.
the neck cares not the color of the boot
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Thanks for posting this.
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how is a small group of people commanding a big mass better?
at least over time there will always be power hungry asshole or just an idiot in position of power.no power for no one is the only concept that can really work over time. but you need self-responsible and educated people for that
edit: and yeah, it is a utopian idea, but one I believe it is worth working for
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Then every social structure is authoritarian.
Anarchists usually distinguish between just and unjust hierarchies, by the way, and svoid the word "authoritarian" when describing just ones. Anarchists still need to organize themselves to have leadership and delegation.
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You should read about anarchy before you speak on it lol
There are all kinds of organizational styles that are non heirarchical.
Look into horizontal organization
Also look up the zapatistas, while they do not call themselves anarchist. They use a non heirarchical form of government.
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There's a lot of abstractions in that link but I think the following action is a meaningful distinction to call out:
The term is also used to describe people who endorse, defend, or deny the crimes committed by communist leaders such as Vladimir Lenin,[7][8] Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Kim il-Sung.
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No way they support pol pot. I refuse to believe that
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Originally, it was used to describe communists who followed the party line and supported suppressing Hungarian workers with tanks.
Today it means ultra-authoritarian marxist-leninist.
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I mean there is a word for that that's less derogatory: Stalinist
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It's not entirely the same though. Some of the "tankies" in the West seem to be Maoists more than Stalinists, as far as I can tell. Besides, some (many?) Stalinists also consider the term "Stalinist" derogatory, and prefer to call themselves "Marxist-Leninists".
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Ok but let's not pretend that either Marx or Lenin envisaged their form of communism as what Stalin was doing
It's no different to "free speech" suddenly meaning "free hate speech, but restricted speech on anything else"
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From the image it looks like a maga/skinhead combo?
For context, the image originally said kick nazis out of punk.
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genocide denier and hard authoritarian. fash dressed in red, basically.
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Concrete views like the idea that the government being able to jail dissenters at will is bad? That unlimited state power inevitably leads to authoritarianism? That labeling yourself socialist doesn't necessarily mean you're actually a socialist state?
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That labeling yourself socialist doesn’t necessarily mean you’re actually a socialist state?
Can you give me a single state that you consider to be socialist today and that has your support? If not, has there ever been a socialist state that is worthy to be considered as that by you?
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Does that mean I have to support shitty states that pretend to care about their own citizens?
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No, I was just wondering if you could name any, but it looks like no state so far has been pure and beautiful enough to at least get critical support from you. I don't suppose this will change, idealism is one hell of a drug.
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I am sorry, but ethnic cleansings are not good. If I had to pick, I think Cuba has the highest probability of achieving communism. Sadly, I have not had the time to learn all the nuances of Cuban society and political system.
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ethnic cleansings are not good
Not sure why you're saying this, did I say they were?
I think Cuba has the highest probability of achieving communism
Why? By what metric?
Also be careful out there, people smear Cuba with lies the same way they do to China, Vietnam, DPRK and Lao, some people will also call you a "tankie" for defending the "cuban regime".
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Socialist Cuba would not exist today without the support of the Soviets, especially but definitely-not-exclusively Khrushchev, who I hate but need to give credit on this issue and acknowledge is some kind of leftist even if not a Marxist.
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You're so insufferably cocksure in your positions everywhere else, but when someone honestly asks what a tankie is, you just get defensive and can't master up the courage to just say what it is that you stand for? I really get the impression that you're just here to stir up shit.
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Okay but some of them are in power right in front of you and vastly more bloodthirsty and likely to be responsible for your misery.
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I personally live in Russia.
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And so the threat to you is a capitalist order installed through collaboration with the United States.
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Why not?
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"extremism" is distance from the status quo, it doesn't have inherent properties in terms of the outcome because it is a relative term.
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Instead of fascists and capitalists
MLs not realizing that they are pretty much both.
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Or, to put it another way: socialism has powerful enemies. Those enemies don’t care how you feel about Marx or Makhno or Deleuze or communism in the abstract, they care about your feelings towards FARC, the Naxals, Cuba, North Korea, etc. They care about your position with respect to states and contenders-for-statehood, and how likely you are to try and emulate them. They are not worried about the molecular and the rhizomatic because they know that those things can be brought back into line by the application of force. It’s their monopoly on force that they are primarily concerned to protect. When you desert real socialism in favor of ideal socialism, the kind that never took up arms against anybody, you’re doing them a favor.
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It's an insult used by liberals to punch left. Because liberals, as a rule, don't really read history or politics with any depth, they don't use it consistently. Sometimes it is conflated with communist. Sometimes they throw it at liberals that are just a bit less racist and xenophobic than them.
Originally it meant communists who supported the 1956 invasion of Hungary, and was used by British communists to split up their own parties on the issue.
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603 comments