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Anarchism and Social Ecology @slrpnk.net
banan67 @slrpnk.net

An honest discussion about Tankies, from an Anarchists Perspective

I've been part of the online left for a while now, part of slrpnk about 2 months, and if there's one recurring experience that's both exhausting and revealing, it's trying to have good-faith discussions with self-identified Marxist-Leninists, the kind often referred to as "tankies." I use that term here not as a lazy insult nor to dehumanize, but to describe a particular kind of online personality: the ones who dogmatically defend Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and every so-called "existing socialist state" past or present, without room for nuance, critique, or even basic empathy. Not all Marxist-Leninists are like this. But these people, these tankies, show up in every thread, every debate, every conversation about liberation, and somehow it always turns into a predictable mess.

It usually goes like this: I make a statement that critiques authoritarianism or centralized power, and suddenly I'm being accused of parroting CIA talking points, being a liberal in disguise, or not being a "real leftist." One time, I said "Totalitarianism kills" — a simple, arguably uncontroversial point. What followed was a barrage of replies claiming that the term was invented by Nazis, that Hannah Arendt (who apparently popularized it, I looked it up and it turns out she didn't) was an anti-semite, and that even using the word is inherently reactionary. When I clarified that I was speaking broadly about state violence and authoritarian mechanisms, the same people just doubled down, twisting my words, inventing claims I never made, and eventually accusing me of being some kind of crypto-fascist. This wasn’t a one-off, it happens constantly.

If you've spent any time in these spaces, you know what I'm talking about. The conversations never stays on topic. It always loops back to defending state socialism, reciting quotes from Lenin, minimizing atrocities as "bourgeois propaganda" and dragging anarchism as naive or counter-revolutionary. It's like they’re playing from a script.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand why these interactions feel so uniquely frustrating. And over time, I’ve started noticing recurring patterns in the kind of people who show up this way. Again, a disclaimer here: not everyone who defends Marx or Lenin online falls into these patterns. There are thoughtful, sincere, and principled MLs who engage in real, grounded discussions. But then there are these other types:

  1. The Theory Maximalist

This person treats political theory like scripture. They’ve read the texts (probably a lot of them) and they approach every conversation like a chance to prove their mastery. Everything becomes about citations, dialectics, and abstract arguments. When faced with real-world contradictions, their default move is to bury it under more theory. They mistake being well-read for being politically mature, and often completely miss the human, relational side of radical politics.

  1. The Identity Leftist

For this person, being a leftist isn’t about organizing or material change. It’s an identity. They call themselves a Marxist-Leninist the way someone else might call themselves a punk or a metalhead. Defending state socialism becomes a cultural performance. They’re less interested in the complexity of history than in being on the “correct side” of whatever aesthetic battle they’re fighting. Anarchists, to them, represent softness or chaos, and that’s a threat to the image they’ve built for themselves.

  1. The Terminally Online Subculturalist

This one lives in forums, Discords, or other niche Internet circles. Their entire political world is digital. They've likely never been to a union meeting, a mutual aid drive, or a community organizing session. All their knowledge of struggle is mediated through memes and screenshots. They treat ideology like a fandom and conflict like sport. They love the drama, the takedowns, the purity contests. The actual work of liberation? Irrelevant.

  1. The Alienated Intellectual

This person is often very smart, often very isolated, and clings to ideology as a way of making sense of the world. They’re drawn to strict political systems because it gives them order and meaning in a chaotic life. And while they might not be malicious, they often struggle to engage with disagreement without feeling personally attacked. For them, criticism of Marxism-Leninism can feel like an existential threat, because it destabilizes the fragile structure they’ve built to cope with life.

These types don’t describe everyone, and they’re not meant to be a diagnosis or a dismissal. They're patterns I’ve noticed. Ways that a political identity can become rigid, defensive, and disconnected from real-world struggle.

And here’s the thing that’s always struck me as particularly ironic: Let's face it, a lot of these people would absolutely hate to be part of real socialist organizing. Because the kind of organizing that builds power, the kind that helps people survive, defend themselves, and grow; it's messy, emotionally challenging, and full of conflict. It requires flexibility, listening, and compromise. It doesn’t work if everyone’s just quoting dead guys and calling each other traitors. Anarchist or not, actual socialist practice is grounded in real life, not in endless internet warfare.

That’s why this whole cycle feels so tragic. Because behind all the posturing, the purity tests, and the ideological gatekeeping, there’s a legit reason these people ended up here. Of all the ideologies in the world, they chose communism. Why? Probably because they hurt. Because they saw the ugliness of capitalism and wanted something better. Because, at some point, they were moved by the idea that we could live without exploitation.

And somewhere along the way, that desire got calcified into a set of talking points. It got buried under defensiveness and online clout games. The pain turned inward, and now they lash out at anyone who doesn’t match their script. That’s not an excuse. But it is something to hold with empathy.

I don’t write this to mock anyone. I write it because I want us to do better, recognize our differences and hopefully come to a fair conclusion. And Idk, I still believe we can. Ape together strong 💖

99 comments

  • I appreciate that someone is trying to have a real conversation about this kind of thing. I don't think leftists have enough conversations where they're acknowledging the actual sources of conflict within their ranks.

    I have a little experience with moderation (including in leftist spaces), and one of the things that I've found to be really helpful in understanding these sorts of problems is actually the modern theory of narcissism. A lot has been learned in the last decade about what happens when a person's empathy is physiologically impaired, and understanding this personality pattern is immensely helpful in navigating interpersonal conflicts at all scales. Tankies as you describe them are actually one of the more clear-cut cases of a narcissistic subculture within the left. The constant abuse of language, bad-faith argumentation, hypersensitivity to ideological or personal criticism of any kind, the dismissal of any legitimate concerns or established facts that would threaten their apparent worldview, etc... This is all classic narcissistic argumentation.

    And somewhere along the way, that desire got calcified into a set of talking points. It got buried under defensiveness and online clout games. The pain turned inward, and now they lash out at anyone who doesn’t match their script. That’s not an excuse. But it is something to hold with empathy.

    Unfortunately, this narrative is simply wrong. One of the things that you really have to understand about these sorts of people is that the cause and effect between their arguments and their beliefs is reversed from what you would expect. They do not believe things because they buy the arguments that they were given. They hold beliefs abut what is and is not acceptable because of how they want to be allowed to behave and what rights and privileges they feel they deserve, and then they seek out a narrative/ideology that allows them to justify all of that. We're not dealing with people who are making decisions based on any sort of rational process. We're dealing with people who are trying to find palatable justifications for them getting whatever it is that they want (power, status, accolades, etc...). The lack of empathy comes first!

    The reason that some of these people find themselves in the left is that they can often misconstrue arguments in favor of broad freedom for all into justifications for a system of 'governance' where there is no such thing as personal accountability (at least for them, personally). This is where you get your anarcho-nihilists who don't want any sort of rule-enforcement structures at all, or anarcho-capitalists who believe that rules should be enforced by the people who can pay the private militias to enforce them (and they, of course, would be the sort of people who could afford such a service). Tankies lean on their disordered trait of 'living in their future success' more than most - believing that they will somehow rise to the top (or somewhere near it) of whatever authoritarian regime they're advocating for, essentially escaping any sort of accountability and holding absolute power, all while appealing to the desire for liberation from the disenfranchised.

    If you don't believe me, then here's an experiment for you. Try to have a conversation about accountability with anyone who is acting suspect like this. Ask them about what sorts of systems of accountability they would like to see in a society, and ask them about where they see themselves fitting into that system. Ask them how they think that system should respond to some of their sketchier behaviors. Accountability is the #1 enemy of any narcissist. The responses you'll get will be absolutely insane.

    • Tankies are conservatives acting on a social level instead of an economic level (from what you describe). This makes more sense if you think of military hierarchies and advancement in them.

    • Accountability is the #1 enemy of any narcissist. The responses you’ll get will be absolutely insane.

      I think everyone agrees that there is a connection between narcissism and authoritarianism. This conversation makes me wonder though, if there is not more than a mere correlation. Could it be that authoritarianism is the political expression of narcissism and that there is literally nothing else there?

      • Could it be that authoritarianism is the political expression of narcissism and that there is literally nothing else there?

        I believe that this is actually the case. There are plenty of studies showing strong correlation between political ideology and personality traits. In my personal experience, I've yet to meet someone with authoritarian politics who was not also lacking in empathy more generally.

        I think that there is even more to it than that, though. There is a really interesting anthropological perspective on this to be had, where we can actually cast the development of authoritarian styles of governance as an expression of narcissism.

        When we look at the actual timeline for the emergence of civilization, we see agriculture, then violence (increasingly organized as time goes on) then governance structures that resemble modern states. This is an account of the development of violence in northwestern Europe to help establish that timeline. That paper also cites other papers about the history of violence in other regions. Contrary to the popular narrative (thanks Hobbes /s), we don't actually see much evidence of violence at all prior to the development of agriculture. It is important to note that agriculture was developed about 40k years ago in response to a major worldwide drought that lasted about 1k years. (I would recommend reading "Civilized to Death" by Christopher Ryan for more on this topic.) Most sources arguing that pre-civilized society was terribly violent points at societies that existed in the 20k years between the development of agriculture and the emergence of modern-ish states (which, in some cases, were terribly violent). The traditional narrative about civilization and war would put the emergence of states before the invention of organized warfare, arguing that warfare was a response to the increasing complexity and scale of the conflicts that arose from the increased societal complexity of states. Archaeological evidence refutes this, so what gives?

        There's more that makes this weird. We also know some things about how pre-civlized societies handled narcissism. Surprisingly often, these societies actually had a dedicated word for these people. The exact translation and connotation of the word varied from one population to the next, but the stories that they told were basically the same. (For reference, we learned this by interviewing members of indigenous societies that had not yet been heavily influenced by civilization. Some of these societies still existed as recently as a century ago - now there are almost none left.) These were the people who were 'unteachable', 'lazy', 'troublemakers' - they caused drama while contributing next to nothing. When these people didn't improve their behavior (or they did something heinous like commit murder or rape), they were exiled or killed. (Check out literature on 'rape-free' societies if you want to read more about this.) These individuals were pretty rare - around 1% of the population - so what little violence was necessary to keep the peace would not account for the evidence that we see from post-agricultural societies. We've no reason to believe that these pre-civilized societies suddenly stopped policing themselves when they were pushed into agriculture by the drought (and there's even some evidence that they did not - again, see "Civilized to Death"), yet the vast majority of us now live in a society where such a penalty for mere narcissism would be unthinkable.

        Here's what I speculate happened. After settling down for agriculture, exile stopped being as lethal as it would have been before. Exiles could practice agriculture on their own and survive, when they wouldn't have been able to before (due to lack of technology, mostly). Also, stationary groups with fields that they can't watch literally 100% of the time and stores of food (they wouldn't have been storing much food prior to agriculture) are much easier to steal from. As such, we started to accumulate a population of these narcissistic individuals. These individuals are inherently self-centered and lazy. If they settled together (which they would have been incentivized to do, for many reasons), they would inevitably try to dominate each other in an attempt to gain power and status and the ability to exploit the labor power of the other exiles for their own personal gain. They would actually have a chance to learn ways of sneaking into other societies and hiding their toxic behavior with clever words. They could actually start working together as a violent force to bully whole other groups into submission, or even claim control of an area. Incidentally, we actually have some evidence that this sort of thing happened pretty early in the game with a riverhead and a group of bullies demanding tribute in exchange for access. These riverheads were an important source of easy food thanks to the salmon that would swim up there to reproduce, so this was a big deal. Here's an interview with an anthropologist who talks about that.

        Naturally, these narcissists aren't very good at maintaining power over each other or their less-narcissistic peers in the beginning, but as time progresses, they would get better and better at it. They'd learn to pit different groups against each other so that no one group can get large enough to overthrow the minority that holds power (+ the other still-loyal groups). They'd learn that growing their population as fast as possible gives them a major edge over other societies, as it is far easier to bully other groups into submission when you outnumber them. Pretty much every major development in human history related to governance and economics gets cast in a new light with this perspective. Money becomes an ingenious solution to the problem of redistributing tribute/favors to one's cronies in order to keep them under control. The state monopoly on violence is the perfect hypocrisy for protecting one's own power with force while denying anybody else's right to do the same, regardless of where the threat to their power comes from. Not only does this allow you to crush any direct rebellion before it happens, but it also allows you to interfere in the development of various political groups, allowing you to maintain control over the entire political playing field. Capitalism becomes a brilliant way of taking power away from more rigid power structures like the church or the throne without needing to foment a violent rebellion.

        A few other fun things result from such a narrative. The cause of sexism and the general disrespect for the rights and intelligence of children becomes obvious. Since all power ultimately comes from the use of force, women and children are at an inherent disadvantage compared to men due to their smaller size and lower physical strength. Forcing women to be breeders for that sweet sweet population growth was also a major contributor to their objectification. Agriculture was hard work, and the narcissistic men didn't want to do it, so their wives/children became de-facto slaves. (Note: Slave labor would not have existed prior to the development of these narcissistic societies.) Religious and racial discrimination is fundamentally about preventing foreign powers from interfering with local affairs, while also providing a convenient justification for using those out-groups as additional sources of slave labor. Also, we realize that literally no form of governance that has ever been invented since the development of the state has ever been designed to actually serve the people. They've always been various forms of compromise designed to consolidate and maintain power for the few while preventing the many from organizing a competent rebellion. The only form of governance that has ever existed to serve the people is anarchism, in the form of the aggressive egalitarianism practiced by pre-civilized societies. This isn't to say that we should go back to doing things exactly like we did in the stone age, but it does turn a lot of long-standing cultural assumptions about the nature governance and modern society on their head.

        I could keep going, but I'll stop for now. This perspective is a real mind-bender, but way too many things fit into place when you think about history this way. It also makes sense that authoritarianism would be an invention of narcissism generally if authoritarianism was simply the political expression of narcissism on the individual level.

    • This is very insightful. I'm really interested, are there any books or otherwise sources that helped you draw this conclusion? It makes a whole lot of sense, I guess I was kind of ignoring that possibility.

  • Personally I find their constant bad faith arguments tiring so I usually don't engage. Many campists have the right critique of the existing systems but are useless at knowing what to do to change it. Their best takes are usually to emulate socialist movements of the early 20th century like a cargo cult and hope if they do the same motions, it will magically lead to the same socialism (with them on the vanguard ofc). So ultimately worthless praxis built on stale rhetoric. It's telling that even the most "left unity" oriented campists manage to thoroughly alienating most of those they believe they should be united with.

  • I don’t write this to mock anyone. I write it because I want us to do better, recognize our differences and hopefully come to a fair conclusion. And Idk, I still believe we can. Ape together strong 💖

    I've always defended that aswell, and I guess I've chosen my communities well enough to never see outright hatred towards anarchists within the ML circles I'm a part of. Not gonna argue that it's not the case when it comes to talking about liberals, there is a lot of frustration and resentment, but I think the current state of the world and the historical treatment of commies/anarchists alike justifies that.

    There's disagreements of course (regarding the nature of authority and some historical events), and some unserious jokes, but the news sources, podcasts, online discussion that I consume often feature anarchists in a completely non-adversarial way. There's quite a few anarchists who I defer to first when it comes to current and historical analysis. I've recently discovered Greg Stoker on an ML podcast for example. He is a US army veteran turned anarchist, has great insights into US military and foreign policies and is someone I've listened to a lot ever since.

    I do see a lot of hate aimed at Marxism-Leninism, but I choose to ignore it. I'm responding to this post because I think it is genuine. Marxism (dialectical materialism) has been the most valuable tool for me to make sense of the world, but the main drive that makes me desperately need to understand the world and try my best to move in the right direction is anti-imperialism.

    It's not the need for an identity, dogmatism to fit in, or because I think it's "cool" (which would be delusional, even among leftist spaces). If there's one reason it's all the horrors I've seen and read about that keep me up at night. There's psychos in all our movements, and you won't see me stand for people defending the invasion of Ukraine for example (I'm not sure what's going on in those folks' heads to be honest, but it's definitely not theory). While I can't take seriously a lot of the accusations commonly thrown at Marxism-Leninism, I at least understand the fear and unease behind authority as a whole.

    My informed belief is that this fear is manufactured in big part as a way to prevent oppressed people from seizing power (directing very real oppression towards "human nature" or the nature of authority), and this is something that has sunk its teeth so deeply in us that I can't seem to find a TV show or movie these days that doesn't feature the "false prophet that ended up being worse than the oppressor" trope.

    Regardless, I've seen countless grounded, empathetic discussions between different leftists currents that didn't resort to name calling and willful mischaracterizations, so I second you entirely on this point comrade, I'd love to see more of that ❤️

  • Myself, I've seen a bit of similar stuff.

    Since arriving on Lemmy, I've sometimes stumbled on instances where ideological purity is enforced with an iron fist, and dozens of communities have the same overlapping moderators (no point in appealing any decision).

    In such places, I've sometimes ended up arguing - usually describing history from the viewpoint that Wikipedia takes, from the viewpoint which has the benefit of supporting evidence. In those few places, this has been deemed "reactionary" and I've been banned a few times.

    Upon examining the moderation logs of the threads where I got banned, I've found other peculiarities, like people getting banned for voting the wrong way.

    I've never been too sure about what the appropriate response is, but my response has been reminding the admin of a local Lemmy instance (I have accounts on multiple instances) that federating with strange places has adverse consequences.

    If one federates with an authoritarian place where censorship occurs strongly, everyone will see the counterfactual narratives pushed there, but nobody can argue, since they'll get banned in those communities super fast. That's not a balanced exchange of views and I've come to dislike that.

  • Of all the ideologies in the world, they chose communism. Why? Probably because they hurt. Because they saw the ugliness of capitalism and wanted something better. Because, at some point, they were moved by the idea that we could live without exploitation. [...] The pain turned inward, and now they lash out at anyone who doesn’t match their script. That’s not an excuse. But it is something to hold with empathy.

    I wish I could easily subscribe to your call for empathy. The reason why I can't is because I have seen so many tankies deny the pain of others. It's not just the historical revisionism and the denial of Stalinist atrocities, but denying that people in the here and now are suffering like they do. Often this was tied to them insisting that they had every right to abuse others, because they themselves were suffering from capitalism. They completely failed to acknowledge that everyone around them was suffering under the very same conditions.

    And there is the crux of the issue: One unspoken, implicit tenet of their beliefs is the denying others the same humanity they claim to uphold and represent. They demand to be accepted and their behavior to be tolerated, but will not grant the same basic rights to others.
    The same notion allows them to deny the humanity of victims of Stalinist and Maoist terror.

    And that's why I have a hard time to show them empathy, because I know they will not show the same empathy towards me.

    • I have seen so many tankies deny the pain of others

      That's as often as not tit-for-tat. In my experience, particularly when "Tankie" is flung out as a slur rather than a serious material analysis, you'll see people respond in what is effectively an in-kind retort. "My grandparents left Cuba because they were being persecuted by the villainous Castro government! You're a tankie if you support them!" often signals a person (or online persona) that's aligned itself with a class of Cuban who profited from the abusive practices of slave plantations and child brothels, pre-Revolution.

      Go straight back to the term's root - the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the subsequent quashing by Khrushchev's armored cavalry - and what you're effectively advocating in defense of is a CIA/Nazi collaborative stay-behind network that ushered in the Years of Lead. Are we expected to show empathy for the Hungarian Rebels if they'd been bombing and butchering civilians a decade earlier without compunction?

      One unspoken, implicit tenet of their beliefs is the denying others the same humanity they claim to uphold and represent.

      Empathy cuts both ways. It isn't merely a sense of naive compassion and maudlin despair at the atrocity du jour. Empathy can be a source of fiery opposition and vengeful passion, in response to historical crimes and horrors committed by the current-day self-professed victims.

      that’s why I have a hard time to show them empathy

      Understandable. But again, that's exactly the position these "tankie" types are coming from. They're reading the history from a different angle and viewing the revolutionary violence of a given period as social justice extracted by an empowered proletariat. They're reading your defense of the historic persecutors as a defense of prior persecutions and an obstruction of justice - possibly even an apology for revanchism and a return to the old horrors.

      To reference Mark Twain

      “THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”

      ― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

      • I am not going to respond to you in detail, because - I think - we mostly agree with each other, but allow me to explain where I am coming from with an anecdote: I was once part of a grassroots movement which aimed to unionize a particular sector of the entertainment industry. (Sorry, for being vague, even after all those years, the events are still a sore point for many involved.) There were a few hundred people taking part in all of this.

        One chunk of people who joined the group were the worst kind of tankies who would hurl abuse at anyone who did not agree with them. The reasons for that behavior varied and ranged from the entirely trivial to the usual "Stalinism was great, anybody who says something different is a CIA plant."

        One regular point of contention was tankies' demand to include praise for China in the group's official communications, which was way off topic for what the group was about. Of course, most of the group refused and - because the tankies were a very vocal minority, they could not ultimately prevent democratic decisions of the majority. Which - of course - annoyed them even more and created even more drama. Rinse and repeat.

        The group ultimately imploded during the Black Lives Matter protests. One major reason for that was because the tankies prevented a statement of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. AFAIR the justification was something like "fighting racism is a distraction from the real struggle of the working class". Most of the PoCs left the group in exasperation because the group could not even speak out against racist police violence without the tankies completely derailing the proceedings.

        The reason why I bring this up is because this was a group of workers who were actively working on organizing a worker's movement. But it was not enough for the tankies, they had to bring in their political sectarianism and demanding adherence to it, while simultaneously claiming that the others in the group did not represent workers like they did and thus the tankies were justified to pressure and abuse the other members until they agreed with the tankies' positions.

        So yes, empathy cuts both ways. And I may have empathy for tankies on a personal level, but if people can't leave their ill behavior at the door and show solidarity towards their fellow workers when trying to get a grassroots movement off the ground, then these people have no place in it.

      • Go straight back to the term's root - the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the subsequent quashing by Khrushchev's armored cavalry - and what you're effectively advocating in defense of is a CIA/Nazi collaborative stay-behind network that ushered in the Years of Lead. Are we expected to show empathy for the Hungarian Rebels if they'd been bombing and butchering civilians a decade earlier without compunction?

        You are conflating the resistance to the Russian backed Hungarian regime with the 'years of lead' in Italy, which are two entirely unrelated events.. also you call the uprising a CIA/Nazi collaborative.

        I've never read anything from any scholar (holding a degree in history) that has used those terms in discussing the Hungarian uprising and frankly... It smacks a bit of:

        reading the history from a different angle and viewing the revolutionary violence of a given period as social justice extracted by an empowered proletariat.

        That's your quote on what tankie terrific is like.

  • One thing we don't understand is why the focus is always on marx/lenin and marxist-leninism. Surely not all anarchist thought and actions are based on that and indeed there has probably been more thought since them which has critiqued it or just moved on from it.

    Anyway, interesting writeup and discussion. Not sure we fit into any of these neatly as we've had a complicated history politically, we realise there is more we could be doing though, we just aren't sure how yet.

  • The internet tankies are just a small, mostly self-isolating group of authoritarian west-haters who wank each other off about how much theory they've read. They do not reach out to engage with the rest of the internet for any other reason than because their usual circlejerk spankbank ran dry and they need to refill it with new material. That entails baiting unsuspecting people into arguing with them by spouting rehearsed and reused, easily disproven talking point so the unsuspecting person is engaged with them for a few replies until they're deep enough into a comment thread that nobody else is going to read it. That's when their friends show up and they begin jerking each other off over you.

    If you get to this point, you lost. Further replies add to their spankbank. Not replying proves them right and adds to their spankbank.

    The only winning move is not to reply.

  • Not an anarchist, but I think this is an excellent write-up, good job.

    Though, I could argue that points 2, 3 and 4 aren't necessarily exclusive to ML's but rather the online ideology cultures as a whole - Anarchists, Communists, Liberals, Conservatives or Nazis included. There's always going to be terminally online people who make political ideologies as their personality and attacks upon them being taken as personal attacks, and this doesn't apply to ideologies exclusively but rather to hobbies like video games as well. However, both from what I've seen and experienced, it is just a phase that does blow over - after a while the enthusiasm subsides, other interests start taking priority, and while the ideas do stay, they do become less prominent and room opens for a more nuanced discussion.

  • Tankies are just another extremist cult, that’s extremely online.

    Authoritarian Communists have a long tradition of fracturing into political sects. The whole theory heavy stuff is alike to religious texts and their interpretation.

    These are political cults. They prey on the weak and lost by giving them something to believe in and a community of sorts. They can only stay part of the community by ideological purity.

    This gives these small groups outsized propaganda reach. They will attack all leftists for not being extreme enough. That has a chilling effect.

    Todays society, especially on social media, is fractured into small groups that punish disagreement harshly. Gen Z is more into conformity for example.

    It’s like you said, an identity or fandom picked by vibes. Actual political change is irrelevant.

    Prime example: the biggest left political streamer Hassan Piker is an extremist anti west tankie.

    This tankie left completely ignores everything Frankfurt School for example. It‘s just about disillusionment and being anti west.

99 comments