Kick tankies out of 196

Just like fascists, tankies could theoretically hang out here without getting the boot. It's just that genocide denying authoritarians cannot be tolerated in a tolerant, democratic society. The reason tankies and fascists get the boot is because they can't resist trying to bully and intimidate those that find their views abhorrent. They simply can't resist being terrible.
They're cultists with views that can't stand up to scrutiny, so they need use other tactics to spread their shit and gain power. They use the real downsides and weaknesses of democracy to argue we need an even worse system. Then they argue you actually hold the worst views of their enemies, even though they usually support exactly the same things that make those enemies bad. Tankies claim you're a free-market liberal for opposing them, when the countries they support are state capitalists. Fascists claim you're against freedom of speech, while they are always trying to ban ideas they hate. Some of them are misguided and believe their own lies, but others are just awful people.
- Tankies traditionally are associated with communists, but today's tankies (even those that call themselves communists) are really after authoritarianism than communism, and given the history of the name (that they supported using tracks on civilians). I don't think they're is much difference between current communists and current fascists, both groups seem to support authoritarianism and feels like term "tankies" fits both of them well.
  
  I learned about a week ago why they are the way they are. See the soviet union was the closest in their mind the world has ever come to communism, so even though it's fallen into fascist oligarchy, they still hold hope that the anticommunist putin is going to rise up and reestablish global communism once more. The only problem with that is that... well Russia doesn't want communism. This is their playbook Yeah, that doesn't look socialist, that looks like "we tried communism it didn't work so lets do fascism this time" so they end up throwing their support towards red flavored fascism since it's the best chance (in their minds) at getting global communism. When the alternative is an american nazi world order, or tiny countries with no power, you don't really have much choice.
  But here's something I want every single one of you to realize having read all of that: Even the most fascist redfash still would have killed the nazis. The same cannot be said for the average (in-power) liberal today. Anticommunism is always pro-fascism. Never let your critiques of the left turn into support for the right.
  EDIT: Case in point, the person i'm responding to is never going to see this post because they're on a nazi bar instance that banned me.
  
  I hate it when threads like this make me have to repeatedly post the mainstream Jewish holocaust historian "stop conflating fascism and communism" article
  https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
  
  Wait but I'm a communist. As in communes first, no state, no hierarchy, collective ownership, and all that jazz. I'm not super well read on the theory. Its really easy to see the difference, we're not splitting hairs here.
  
  Yes, when it comes to the axis from authoritarian to anarchist. Things all tend to narrow in to a single point at either end. In regards to authoritarians, it's all about the hierarchy and holding power for themselves. They don't give a shit what form of government sits under that. When it comes to anarchists and libertarians, no government other than a largely flat form of socialism is acceptable. Simply because they are focused on freedoms both individual and social. And large monolithic hierarchies tend to get in the way of that.
  And when I use the term libertarian I of course mean actual libertarians. Not temporarily embarrassed Republicans, or teenage capitalists. The easiest test to find out whether someone might accidentally be a libertarian or not. Is to find out if they belong to the Libertarian party, or ever plan to vote for their candidates. No one who would ever do that could ever be a libertarian lol
  
  It's called campism and it's dumb teenager stuff.
- 🤔 There should be a fediverse-wide rule against genocidal rhetoric. Who cares what side it's from?
  
  In that case i'm fucked, because I called for the genocide of mosquitoes about a month ago.

- Yeah, we ignored the Tea Party as silly folks in 2008 and 2012, but by 2016 they had rebranded as MAGA and now they run the GOP.
  Any delusional, hateful ideology -- be it tankies, Nazis, or whatever -- will fester if you let it.
  
  And you are extremely out of touch if you think tankies could ever manifest into anything more than a threat than a Unabomberesc bad actor. Tankies arent organized whatsoever in the west, while Nazis are have actual rallies in broad day light, while the GOP is actively championing causes that they support. Tankies want to kill landlords, Nazis want to kill Jews, Black People, Queer folk, and Liberals that wont toe the line. I dont agree with either of them, but i can recognize that the Nazi threat is much more metastasised in America and a much greater threat. If you cant see that you need to get your head out of your ass.
- I hate tankies
  So you hate them more than nazis?!?
  wat
- Sure, nazis are a bigger problem than tankies, but no one here needs to be told to look out for nazis. That's kinda self explanatory.
  But tankies are a lot less well known, but still have a very destructive ideology. Just look at the comments here — there are multiple people who asked what tankies even are.
  Saying "Kick nazis out of 196" would be redundant, which can't be said for "Kick tankies out of 196".
  
  The only issue is that I'll see perfectly logical socialist, communist or anarchist arguments get attacked as "tankie" and I worry that all this hullabaloo is just rightists trying to set back leftist ideology by painting it all as tankie ideology.
- Nazis are literally just less common here. There's not much reason to constantly talk about them in a meta sub fashion when they are already so rare I haven't seen one in weeks and are routinely and swiftly banned.
  Tankies on the other hand, are not.
  Your protest just looks silly and obviously ridiculous. Not talking about the problem of Nazis in online discourse 24/7 isn't an endorsement of them, different spaces have different problems.
  
  Exactly. Shocking as it may be to some people, we can hate 2 flavors of fascism at the same time. And it's not like lemmy as a whole has had to defederate from 2 Nazi instances in the past couple of months due to their awful behavior, which cannot be said for a certain 2 tankie instances.
  
  The goal of a progressive community is not just to protest its own reactionary elements, but the reactionary elements across all society.
- What about
  
  but what about?? hmm???
- I've seen this reposted on the original 196 on Reddit multiple times so saying this is the worst 196 on the basis of this meme being posted makes no sense.
  Also nazis are very unlikely to be participating in this community anyway, and if they are then they are either hiding to the point of indistinguishably or getting the ban-hammer really quickly. In the latter case, the problem is solved by the mods and in the former case, with the internet's anonymity, someone fully to be a member of a digital community is just a regular member of the community.
  Tankies on the other hand share many more values with the core demographic of this community so they might be less inclined to fully hide their views and their views simmering through might not immediately get them a ban (depending on what they let shine through, of course).
  
  The blahaja zone 196 literally says fuck tankies on its header...
  
  Nah, Nazi dogwhistles are accepted here. Admin banned me for calling out someone who "hates politics".
- Right, I hate tankies on the internet and Republicans in real life (and also on the internet). It's not my fault that tankies are more marginalized. But I assure you I have no shortage of contempt to go around.
- Jessie what the hell are you talking about
  
  He's got a point, I hate tankies on my instance, but in the real world Nazis infiltrating conservative politics and getting elected presently is a much more pressing problem.
- tankies just want to LARP as revolutionaries online while never doing any real praxis
  So you're saying the more praxis I do, the leas tankies I will meet?
- I used to do a little Praxis back in college, but I quit before it became habit-forming.
- I think they're probably thinking about it in a strictly Lemmy context, in which case tankies definitely are a much bigger problem than Nazis, who as far as I can tell have virtually no presence on Lemmy at all.
- True. Yall just Putin apologists.

Hexbear disliked that
- I think we should consider the feelings of Hexbear users when posting or commenting.
  If you think they'll dislike it, it's probably a good post.
  
  Hexbear REALLY dislikes my compilation of their queerphobia at !dronerights@lemm.ee
- Good
- they don't have the ability to dislike, they removed the downvotes (i think) lmao
- who is hexbear
  
  A website on the fediverse for transphobic stalinists

These threads are odd to me, considering how many people call all communists tankies. The word seems to be used by anarchists, conservatives, communists, anti-communists, and more, and every person has a slightly different definition.
Half the people here could consider the other half to be the tankies everyone is mad at.
To be clear this isn't me saying "be nice to the tankies" this is me saying "the overuse of this word is confusing the shit out of me."
- I'm an anarchist, we don't call anybody tankies. Tankies is a term coming from the UK i think the 80s some eastern european nation was taken over by the USSR and some Brittish came out in support of it. So they were called tankies.
  These political fighting words need to be layed to rest. Communists hate me as much as anybody else but I'd rather engage on the idea level instead of ad hominem attacks and name calling.
  I suspect this whole tankie thing might be a coordinated propaganda campaign geared at discrediting communists and at the same time creating tension between them and other leftits. I suspect this as this whole infighting over small differences doesn't lead to a victory for the left but effectively disables and neutralizes it.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsqE9kEsDVY
  
  I’m an anarchist, we don’t call anybody tankies.
  Speak for yourself... anarchists are very prone to using that term to describe the technocratic left. I know, I'm one of them.
- It became confusing when liberals learnt of the word - now they hurl the word at anyone who dares to remind them that being pro-capitalist is still a right-wing thing to be.
  
  Capital co-opting and perversing anticapitalist rhetoric to its own benefit, in my Lemmy? It's more likely than you think.
  
  Anybody left that is not libertarian or social democrat from what I've seen tbh. And often weaponised.
- Maybe it's just the circles I run in, but I understand "tankie" to mean leftists who think Soviet/Maoist/vanguard-party styles of Communist revolution/rule were good, actually, to the point of denying any bad things they did/do as "Western propaganda".
  Given the red scare in the US, our ability as a whole to use any sort of leftist political labels accurately across the population is basically non-existent, so I do understand the frustration by both tankies and non-tankie leftists about how the term gets used lately, especially in produce circles on social media.
  But again maybe that's just me. I don't know if I would consider myself a communist, but I do consider myself as a yet undetermined variety of socialist, if that helps at all.
- ...because none of those groups are Tankies and they are all unified against Tankies.
  Tankies aren't socialists or communists (not that those two things are the same either). They are the purist ideologues of communism, where compromise is defeat. Rampant in telling you why you're wrong, and why only the purest form of communism will bring nirvana. All without understanding the consequences of what they propose.
  Even the Communists don't want them on their side.
  
  I think you kinda missed my point. Sure, socialists and communists don't like tankies, but conservatives think the socialists and communists who don't like tankies are tankies. They aren't "unified against tankies", they don't agree who, what, and where "tankies" are.
  
  Tankies aren’t socialists or communists (not that those two things are the same either). They are the purist ideologues of communism, where compromise is defeat.
  They literally support a transitionary period and a capture of the bourgeois state for the interests of the proletariat instead of its immediate dissolution, compromise is the thing ultralefts criticize them for.
- Anyone who supports the idea of communism isn't very intelligent to begin with.
  Anyone who makes a wack generic statement like that can't be particularly "intelligent" either
  
  Anyone who supports the idea of communism isn’t very intelligent to begin with.
  Good job projecting there... I award you ten out of ten PragerU coins for that one.
  dislike Isreal people because thier allegiances lay the opposite to the United States.
  Oh, it has nothing to do with the fact that Israel is a genocidal white supremacist settler-colonialist state?
  
  Anyone who supports the idea of communism isn’t very intelligent
  This isn't fair. Anybody who can read through "das Kapital" must not only be very persistent and have endurance, no they also have to be fairly intelligent. I am surprised by the number of people who claim to have read "das Kapital" it has 4 VOLUMES ! 4 you can die if your bookshelf doesn't hold and these 4 volumes fall on you.
  Being a communist is just a function of your social class in society. If you are a laborer or poor you are naturally going to seek to pursue your interests for example you do not want to labor and have all the value you create go to the owners. You want to have a bigger share of the outcome of your labor. Communism is the consequence of this. Just like the royals and aristocrats and the captains of industry have the conservative ideology to further their interest so do the poor have communism. Neither conservatism nor communism make you smart or dumb. All it is is people pursuing their interest based on what position in society they hold. Both are ok. And none are dumb. It is inherently intelligent to pursue your own interest together with others who share that interest.
  Edit: I am not getting into the support of any regimes or factions of wars as that is a can of worms i have no appetite for. 😅
- Then there's folks like me who have no idea what the term means, you're not alone in your confusion.
  Edit: thanks for all the replies folks! TIL
  
  Tankies are 'communists' ala Mao and Stalin, i.e. okay with the violent opression of democratic movements and minorities.
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsqE9kEsDVY
  
  https://youtu.be/LcJ5NrJtQ8g?si=mOa-prQldsGdK7s4
  
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
- Communists seem to be sad, pathetic people now. I thought ya'll had something, but you're all just a bunch of fractured apologists trying to get one over on each other.
  Sad, ya'll actually had something going on at one point, now you're just irrelevant
  
  I can't tell if you are just angry and on a weird internet tantrum or a communist who made this account to do a bit

Based AF
Fuck tankies

Hey everyone, just a reminder:
Yes Nazis are also bad, we don't have Nazis pop up anywhere near as often as Tankies
We remove and ban Nazis too
We're aware of Lemmy's main code writers being ML's, and it's not great.
Please report any bigot bullshit, or fascist/tankie dogwhistles.

- @LtLiana puzzled by this comment. "Tankies" have been around since long before most people on reddit were even born.
- I've met tankies irl. They just keep their mouths shut offline.
- So, Whats a chapo? Are chappies tankies?
  I feel so old. My bones ache.
  
  It's the name of a podcast they're all fans of
- pro-Israeli pagan plural trans anarchist
  I was going to say that this sounds made up cause I never once saw one, much less in Lemmy, and point out the big contradiction . Then I noticed I haven't met any actual tankies in both here and IRL either so point taken.
  
  over here (germany) you actually meet tankies every now and again at leftist protests, but they usually aren't taken very seriously
- you critiqued the tankie discourse
  then proceeded to bullshit the tankie discourse
- Word comes from 80s Britain as far as I'm aware.
- I mean, I tend to interpret 'tankie' to be people who support Lenin's dictatorship of the proletariat or similar ideas. Basically, the idea that in order to institute communism you should aim to take power and force everyone to comply with your new state through violence against dissenting parts of the populace.
  Personally, my reading of Marx and Engels is a descriptive one rather than a proscriptive one. If the forces of workers haven't spontaneously risen to throw off their chains and seize the means of production, I don't think you can force it. The victory of communism is one of human autonomy that comes as a natural result of capitalism's unsustainability. That's not the same thing as systematic reform, but it's not the same thing as attempting to impose the change on the populace either.
  I don't think it can happen until the workers are sufficiently pushed into a corner and decide to do it themselves.
  
  I tend to interpret ‘tankie’ to be people who support Lenin’s dictatorship of the proletariat or similar ideas
  That's just Marxism. That idea started with Marx, not Lenin. He even talks about it in the Communist Manifesto, saying:
  We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
  Not even mentioning his Critique of the Gotha Programme where he talks about the dictatorship of the proletariat and the transition from capitalism to communism extensively. It's okay to not be a Marxist, but it's just factually incorrect to claim that the dictatorship of the proletariat isn't integral to Marx's understanding of the transition to communism.
- At yes the glorious centrist arrived /halfjoking
  
  Also note how similar to a Nazi they sound (mind you i am not calling this person one). Nazis always argue we should debate their ideas but we know that shit doesn't work and is a way to legitimize their genocidal rhetoric.
  Then there's the whataboutism and concern trolling. We should think about UnItY when tankies have the fascistic ideals and cause this divisiveness. This hit all and people got pissed.
- Have you seen hexbear? They seem to fit the tankie category to a tee
  
  Right down to the transphobia while saying "just trust me bro, abolishing capitalism will end identity discrimination, I'm totally an ally"
- and the pro-Israeli pagan plural trans anarchist
  What if I'm an anti-israel pagan hivemind trans anarchist?

196 is one of the greatest ~~subs~~ communities
ya'll should be proud. Thank you for adding a little queer fun to my normal CIS life

- What's your issue with Yitzhak Rabin? With the Israeli Labour party in general? I mean short of any issues you might have with socdems in theory or practice.
  
  Social democrats are still imperialist.
- wouldn't that make you a nazi

The guy needs a speech bubble that says "Stalin did nothing wr-"
- I mean when people give Stalin shit yet don't bat an eye at what Lenin did, I can safely assume they're going off cold war propaganda.
  
  Lenin had some legitimately good takes, e.g. that Stalin should, under no circumstance, ever be allowed to come to power. His analysis was also usually spot-on, but his solutions to things either hare-brained or naive, leading to, well, history. Or, put differently, on a scale from tragic hero to villain he's at least in the middle while Stalin is a straight-up villain.
  
  Nooo, you don't understand. It was the material conditions that were forcing Lenin to order Trotsky to murder his way through the free territory of Ukraine.
- "We should all look up to Chi-"

Fuck tankies.
- instructions unclear-

I think most of you need to worry way less about sounding sufficiently the "right kind" of leftist and focus more on promoting leftism through action. More than half the "tankie" discourse is, at best, a needless distraction from actual progress. Lose your buzzwords and stop the ideological purity pissing contest and actually put in the work in your communities instead, goddamn.

- Jessie what the fuck are you talking about
  
  Paradox of tolerance
- Could you please show me the people defending Nazis here on 196?
  It's possible to be opposed to authoritarian state-capitalism and opposed to Nazism at the same time!
  
  Nonono you see if you are not with them you are evil
  
  Here's someone in this thread posting a meme that celebrates the fascist dictator Pinochet killing ~10,000 to 30,000 communists and communist sympathisers as well as "students, militants, trade unionists, writers, journalists, artists and any citizens suspected of being left-wing activists"
  
  WDYM possible? it's a necessity
  
  It’s possible to be opposed to authoritarian state-capitalism and opposed to Nazism at the same time!
  As an idea or as a practice? Because historically anti ML movements have relied on fascists in order to function, have you invented a new way to oppose MLs that doesn't rely on fascism?

It's funny that everyone is up in arms about this post but the literal sticky post says no tankies
- Tankies can't read.

- The Soviet Union did not kill all those nazis out of the goodness of their hearts, but rather because they were in active warfare with Nazi Germany and thus needed to kill a large number of nazis to win the war. Throughout history, authoritarian "socialists" have backstabbed, betrayed, and otherwise killed anarchists and democratic socialists. I absolutely do not trust tankies to fight against fascism in the United States or Europe in any effective manner. Russia and China are not friendly countries to queer rights, though being gay is legal in both countries they do not have any anti-discrimination laws that apply to queer people and the reason there are fewer hate crimes is simply because they don't count them. Russia and China are also not socialist, Russia is an explicitly oligarchical capitalist Presidential republic and China has a mixed economy that heavily relies on markets with private owners. This is honestly a good part of the reason I'm suspicious of tankies, the United States sucks but that doesn't mean that every nation that opposes the United States is automatically good.
- The Soviet Union also invaded a democratic nation alongside the Nazis, proceeding to then steal half that country's land and murdering a large number of 'undesirables'.
- Tankies and the soviet union aren't the same thing though.
  
  I mean, the term literally originates as a label for British socialists/communists that were sympathetic to the USSR when they were invading Hungary (pretty sure it was Hungary?)
- Red army also raped more women and children than any other in our written history. Just because they helped clean up some shit in Europe doesn't make them good guys
  
  Oh look Nazi propaganda. I've yet to see anything indicating the red army was exceptionally bad compared to other armies in this regard.
- If by "fight by our side" you mean sell us out to the Kremlin or the CCP, sure.
- the Soviet army killed more Nazis than any other in history
  Nah, actually Hitler killed more Nazis than anyone else in history, including Hitler.
  Believe it or not, fascists also kill fascists.

I'm not against the hostility being shown towards tankies here... but it should be remembered that there are a lot of well-meaning and well-intentioned people who get caught up in the technocratic ideology tankies buy into. Let's face it... if you google anything about leftism you are more likely to end up reading about Marx and Engels than Bakunin or Goldman - and right-wing propaganda is as perfectly fine with conflating everything "leftist" with the technocratic (ie authoritarian) left as tankies themselves are.
If we are leaving some doors open for fascists and capitalists who turn against their programming, we should remember to do the same for tankies.
- As someone who's read Marx and lenin, and Bakunin and Goldman... not to mention kroptikin(god damn that guy bullshat his way through conquest of bread)
  The anarchists always decry practical steps that are needed for the transition, but they have a poverty of ideas when it comes to propose better alternative solutions to the problems faced by actual revolutions. And frankly, reading their literature I understand why. They're still hung up on ideas and values and not material analysis much more than MLs. They're still trapped within liberal hegemonic thought though they are against liberal capitalism.
  
  Neither the anarchist revolutions in Ukraine nor Spain seemed to lack "practical steps"... what they did lack, however, was practical steps for turning into a reactionary elite as soon as they seized power - something the Bolsheviks and their ideological spawn seems to have no problems with.
- The stupid part is that the third-way labor parties and social democrats are doing a much better job at socialism than any Leninist or Maoist tradition. But every leftist space on the internet seems to hate these "fake socialists" as much as anything else. That's really all the evidence I need that these people are more interested in revolution fetish fan service than anything resembling actual statecraft.
  
  The stupid part is that the third-way labor parties and social democrats are doing a much better job at socialism
  Well... no, not really. It's not that leftists hate social democrats... every anarchist I've ever spoken to appreciates the effort of people like Bernie and AOC - it's just that we understand what they are allowed to do and what they aren't. The political establishment will allow them to protect capitalism from itself by restraining it's most obscene aspects it to a certain extent (and even such meagre self-protective measures are a bridge to far for the right-wing hivemind)... but that is all they could ever achieve.
  Remember - no matter what the media hysterically screeches - the term socialism has a very hard and uncompromising meaning... a condition wherein the workers control the means of production. If it doesn't measure up to that or only pretends to measure up to that, we can't call it socialism with a straight face.
- Bakunin or Goldman
  who are these people, i've only heard of marx and engels. Didn't they found the commie ideology?
  
  who are these people, i’ve only heard of marx and engels.
  Yes, and this is why...
  and right-wing propaganda is as perfectly fine with conflating everything “leftist” with the technocratic (ie authoritarian) left as tankies themselves are.
  There are two sides to the left... and they are violently incompatible. You've never heard of that other left because both tankies, fascists and capitalists like pretending that there is only one.

i wonder why this post about tankies is suddenly popular
sees top posts criticising israel and fascism
ah there it is

Eh this argues that we even have a democracy that is functional enough to undermine in the first place, and I reject that premise.
- Better than a single oligarch for sure.
  
  I’m not sure it’s that different. In place of a real personality, you get the country’s persona. With US foreign policy for example it matters little who leads because they are adhering to the persona. While the majority of Americans don’t want war, the US persona does. That results in the same thing (a population ruled by one idea set) just a hologram of person rather than an actual one.
  
  Many oligarchs is better than a single oligarch. In true capitalist fashion, they are sociopathically self interested and their undermining of each other can occasionally benefit the rest of us.
  And one time they almost got into a ring to fight, which was pretty funny.
  
  oligarch is a group, you're thinking of autocrat
  I don't know who yall are but im beginning to think this place doesn't know basic grammar

what democracy?
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
[...]
In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
something like 70% of Americans want universal healthcare and yet it remains politically impossible.

Bro what, if we can stop leftist infighting for one fucking minute that would be great. We all have 90% of the same goals so how about we work on that and not build artificial walls to those to the left of us. Also being pro western „democracy“ is cringe.

Loving to see tankies come out of the woodwork to seethe and troll at this

I swear almost every American election cycle, some weird word will start popping up everywhere. like how all the trump supporters started saying cuck out of nowhere in 2015-2016
- Tankie has been a thing for over half a century. The Soviets used tanks(from other countries) to invade and crush antisoviet revolutions/protests in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
  This was considered shocking for some communists and other leftists while some communists supported those actions. Those who supported this "intervention" were called tankies, in order to differentiate them from the non tank invasion supporting communists.
  In Greece(my country), which was in the "West", this event caused the split of the greek communist party(KKE) into 2 separate parties, KKE(Moscow controlled tankies) and KKE "interior"(weak ass soy communists who cant stomach the use of tanks in order to create a better tomorrow).
  KKE "interior" kinda eventually became SYRIZA which surprisingly won the elections in 2015(breaking the 2 party status quo). Then the EU decided that the greek people decided poorly and punished them. So when the greek people decided correctly(elected a right wing government), the EU rewarded them. Carrots and sticks make the world go around. Thats how you make a majority leftist country, into a right wing one.
  PS Greek debt is as high as it has ever been but Greece issued negative interest bonds. Tell me again how is the economy supposed to work? Noone talks about the greek debt anymore, it's a non issue, Greece has been accepted into the EU's infinite money glitch scheme.
  
  Huh.
  On my side of the Atlantic the US usually just chooses which right wing dictator they want to rule directly
  
  Tankie has been a thing for over half a century.
  Disingenuous in regards to their point.
  "Cuckold" had been in use for a long time before it's cultural adoption in 2015 too. They weren't disputing the appropriate use the term, they were clearly commenting on the shift from appropriately-applied usage to the saturation within the cultural lexicon as a buzzword. Why is this thread full of disingenuous asides and non-sequiturs?
- This is more a lemmy thing. Tankie is an older word but like you dont usually run into stalinists in the wild too much. The Lemmy creators and one of the biggest instances when the site was still small was a communist one promoting not just like the ideal of communism but legit stalinism.
  As a result there was a lot of weird very pro russia pro china pushback and whataboutisms on the platform in the early days before the number of non stalinist users drowned them out
- That one didn't come from nowhere, it's in the porn they like.
  
  I'm both worried and curious at what kind of porn has tanks involved
- tarted saying cuck out of nowhere
  You know they have been wanking of to cuck porn for decades... it was bubbling below the surface...

- You are aware that the .ml doesn't stand for machine learning, right?
  
  Some people made an account there right in the beginning of the Reddit fiasco before there were any viable alternative instances, like I did. Looking at the age of the account, I'm guessing that's what they did too.
  
  Yeah it's the TLD for the country of Mali
  
  This weird equivalence some people draw between liking/agreeing with a significant amount of ML work and defending everything the Soviet Union and CCP have ever done....it's really weird
  
  what does machine learning have to do with it?
- Fuck tankies, but I'll start with the much more pressing problem with Nazis and alt right.
  
  Why not both?
- It’s been done before. There’s a documentary about it called The Act of Killing, and a book called The Jakarta Method.
- very tankie of you
  
  this post is about removing them from 196. we desperately need to eliminate them, great post. but you sympathize with them when we take it to the next level?
  Disgusting.
- You know that's a fascist meme right? And that right now you're celebrating a fascist dictator doing mass killing of civilians just because (alongside the thousands of dead union members, democratic socialists, reporters, human rights protesters and students) he also killed thousands of marxist leninists and their sympathisers
  https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/physical-removal-physically-removed-so-to-speak
  https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/free-helicopter-rides
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War
- wants to remove people from society
  claims they're NOT a tankie
  Well, aren't you a cute contradiction!

I'm not sure anyone knows what a tankie is.
Apparently saying any country other than the US should take a turn at world leadership is a tankie opinion.

the only tankie with rights
- who is they?
  
  lori petty from the movie tank girl which is amazing

Tankies as well as fascists are imperialistic scum.

Agree, but to me they're no different from any other genocide denying pieces of shit. If you are a NATO apologist that sees what happened to Iraq or what is currently happening to Gaza as any less abhorrent, you are just as bad as someone apologizing for Russia or the USSR.
- The economically motivated NATO intervention in Libya was justified with false claims of a genocide. This was the conclusion reached by the British parliament report. Now Libya is a war-torn failed state with open-air slave markets. That intervention was less than a decade after “Iraq has WMDs,” a lie that has killed over a million people. When we have all witnessed these events in our lifetimes, I think we should be a little skeptical when enemy states are vilified. I don’t know if public backlash could have prevented the intervention in Libya, but I hope we’ll at least try to prevent the next one.
- Am I an apologist if I say, "It's okay for them to exist, they just need to stop doing bad things"?
  
  How the hell did commies just become pro capitalist?
- Only difference is in magnitude. Authoritarian countries are remarkably efficient at killing huge numbers of people.
  
  I wonder where all the native americans went

I don't wanna be a tankie, but I want hot alt people to physically abuse me 😔
- Have you tried therapy and/or a mosh pit
  
  Instructions unclear, opened up therapy practice in a mosh pit. 7/10 would treat again.

Do you have nothing better to post?

I still don't understand what a tankie is
Edit: From what I gathered, they're essentially authoritarian communists
- The type of "communist" that supports authoritarian, usually state capitalist regimes like the USSR, China, and the DPRK.
  The lack of meaningful worker enfranchisement in any of those regimes should tell you all you need to know, really - they're red-coded fascist lunatics.
  
  Soo is it still okay to support good communism which doesn't spy on the people and is cool?
- @backhdlp the term was invented to describe those communists in the West who thought ~~Rákosi (a Hungarian Stalinist)~~ [edit: whoever it was, there's a communist historian correcting me downthread] did nothing wrong when he and Kruschev sent military tanks into Hungary to force them to stay in the Soviet Union. That was in the 1950s.
  Wikipedia on Hungarian Revolution
- It seems to be commies getting angry at other commies, which seems very counterproductive
- Hakim has a good video about it https://youtu.be/LcJ5NrJtQ8g?si=Fgc2HTHJHd-pJvPC
- This might help https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
- If communism isn't inherently authoritarian then why are all the existing communist countries so authoritarian?
- stalinists basically

Hell yeah!

Unfortunately, the only way to kick tankies out of 196 is to get 196 out of Lemmy. Because Lemmy is being developed by two tankies themselves, with a third one about to join. And because despite being defederated from hexbear and lemmygrad, lemmy.ml is still a free roam place for tankies from those two cesspool places. So, either defederate yourselves from lemmy.ml (nobody would do that), or fork lemmy into a new clean place (not impossible, but difficult to perform), or do as beehaw will do soon.
- So, either defederate yourselves from lemmy.ml (nobody would do that)
  I mean, if push comes to shove why not? It’s not the “main instance” anymore, it’s only got twice the users of Hexbear. Around a third of .world. I don’t think defederating would be that bad of an idea if they get too oppressive.
- I had some hexbear posters argue with me that apparently North Korea isn’t actually a bad place and it’s all evil western propaganda making us think it is. Gave me a real headache, that
  Edit: Some great tankie examples below too
  
  Leave it up to the Tankies to out themselves by defending north korea
  
  Mods of large lemmy.ml subs are doing it in this very thread.
  
  They're not wrong though, especially if you compare to SK which is a capitalist shithole where suicide is through the roof. People don't realize how much we know about NK is flat out lies told by people who need to tell them in order to survive across the border. It's not exactly what you would call a utopia but considering how much they're getting slammed by sanctions, they're doing pretty well for themselves.
- I feel like wanting to defederate from .ml is showing your whole ass for all to see. I get wanting to defed from hexbear and grad because they genuinely have problems that even I've personally ran up against, but ml? You just hate anything left of hilter if you have an issue with them.
  
  The issue with .ml isn't that they're tankies, it's that they have fully open registration and are huge. The whole instance is a massive vector for abuse that makes it effectively impossible to stop determined trolls if you're federated with them.
- Lemmy.ml is NOT defederated with lemmygrad.ml or hexbear.net
  In fact, the lemmy.ml admins/devs are admin on lemmygrad.ml
  Choose an instance that defederated with hexbear and lemmygrad and you won't see many tankies. Even if they post on Lemmy.ml you won't see it because that is how federation works.
  
  In fact, the lemmy.ml admins/devs are admin on lemmygrad.ml
  Why do you think so? Can you prove it?
  
  I didn't try on any lemmy instance, but while I was on Kbin, I've posted some comments on lemmy.ml (worldnews, if I remember correctly). Nothing out of the ordinary. One tankie called me a nazi (I had to change my profile photo becuase of that), and other tankie called me a loser, having myself ADHD and ASD.
- If you don't mind, what is beehaw doing?
  
  Beehaw is looking for a new place to be, mostly because of the lack of modding tools (I think there is a post on that instance). But if that migration allows them to avoid tankies and other kind of fascists, that's better. Can't blame them, I was harassed by tankies as well some weeks ago.
- So, either defederate yourselves from lemmy.ml (nobody would do that), or fork lemmy into a new clean place (not impossible, but difficult to perform)
  How forking will help in any way?

Wtf are tankies?
- Theoretically, they're authoritarian leftists. In reality, leftism has little to do with it. They glorify former communist authoritatian countries and are anti-west no matter what the west does. There are pro-russia tankies (Lemmygrad.ml) and pro-china tankies (hexbear.net), with some overlap between them.
  
  Calling them left at all is playing into their game of self-legitimacy at best or trying to delegitimize actually leftism at worst.
  
  Pretty sure those are run by APTs.
- The types of leftists that will defend any regime that opposes the US/the west, and say any ethical/human rights violations done by them are either necessary in the moment to fight capitalism or is just fake news. You usually find them celebrating China's government.
  
  Tankies are absolutely not leftists, they are right wing fascists that call themselves leftists. About as left as North Korea is a democracy.
- “Tankie” is a term that was originally coined (ironically, by Marxist-Leninists themselves) to describe members of the CPGB (Communist Party of Great Britain) who justified the Soviet Union’s invasion of Hungary in 1956. It has since become a catch-all term used to describe (self-described) leftists that slavishly adhere to the propaganda of or justify the actions of authoritarian regimes that are (or are perceived to be) “socialist” such as China or (bizarrely enough) modern-day Russia.
  
  I can't thank you enough for this. I've been too afraid to ask what the labels all mean.
  It's nice to get some clarity on these things sometimes. I'm just trying to live my best life over here and not step on anyone's freedoms... I'm not in the know enough to be familiar with all the parlance of the various movements, despite supporting many of them (mostly from the sidelines as a straight white male).
- they're communist scum, wannabe terrorists
  
  Tankies are not Communists, they're authoritarian fascists. About as communist as North Korea is democratic.
- Every time
- Waiting for an answer
  
  Authoritarian apologists that pretend to be communists. You can find them in the wild typically talking about how great and strong the Chinese government is and how evil and corrupt the "US Imperials" are.
  Historically the term was used to describe communist members that defended the use of tanks against civilians during an uprising idln Hungary, hence the name.

Arent they already gone?
- If your instance has defecated from Hexbear, then you wouldn't see any of their posts or comments.
  
  Defecated from Hexbear?
  
  Tankies are found in almost all instances that end in .ml
  
  wouldn't they create alts

What is a Tanky?
- It's a pejorative term to describe authoritarian Chinese government apologists. Historically it was used to describe communist members that defended the use of tanks against civilians during a Hungary uprising.
  
  TIL. Thank you.
- Authoritarian communists.
  
  Authoritarian ~~communists~~.
  You can only have one or the other, not both, since they are inherently incompatible. People calling themselves communists, doesn't mean that's what they are.
- Anyone to the left of you
  
  That's impossible, I shoved all those counter-revolutionaries into a ditch and ran them over with t-
  Uh oh
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
- "Tankie" is a term that was originally coined (ironically, by Marxist-Leninists themselves) to describe members of the CPGB (Communist Party of Great Britain) who justified the Soviet Union's invasion of Hungary in 1956. It has since become a catch-all term used to describe (self-described) leftists that slavishly adhere to the propaganda of or justify the actions of authoritarian regimes that are (or are perceived to be) "socialist" such as China or (bizarrely enough) modern-day Russia.
- they're communist scum, wannabe terrorists
  
  Tankies are not Communists, they're authoritarian fascists. About as communist as North Korea is democratic.
- The key requirment is authoritarianism, especially now. Being left has little to do with it anymore. When you defend modern Russia, you aren't left. It's a fantasy about former communist authoritarian countries with little to no regard for modern reality.

Rule.

upvote required

Uh but isn't a revolution an undermining of democracy? I don't know who these tankies are, but it seems like yall commies just making some big deal about your little beef with other commies. Its kinda silly.

Since when are screwdrivers tankie symbols?
- The original says keep nazis out of punk. Skrewdriver is a neonazi band
  
  I mean, yes, but also Phillips screwdrivers can die in a fire
- They aren't. The meme is originally about Nazis.

In practice, (representative) democracy is a sham, anyways
The actually imporant thing they undermine, as does capitalism, is autonomy.
- Using the term "personal freedom" in a liberal environment is deceiving, because often "personal freedom" also entails rights to property and other methods the bourgeoise use to oppress the working class.
  Liberals have successfully merged ideas of personal freedom and capitalist freedom. It's important that people have access to homes (which liberals call private property). It's bad to have a leech class scalp homes (which liberals also call private property) and use their excess supply of that necessity to make a profit off working class people.
  Conflating ideas is an important rhetorical strategy for capitalists that allows people to easily stomach exploitation in the name of basic personal freedoms.
  
  They "rank higher" according to certain metrics and certain definitions of "democracy" and "liberty". Take some more honest definitons, and take a more holistic perspective, taking into account how many of those countries are simply really good at exporting their exploitation, and they won't score so highly. Also, being better than fascism is a really fucking low bar.
  Or in other words, just because your shit sandwich doesn't have cyanide in it doesn't mean it isn't still a shit sandwich.

Can't we all just get along?
- No.
- I refuse to get along with people who support genocide.
  
  which genocide?
- With genocidal twats? No.
  
  so what are your instance on the genocide Israel is doing?

- id love to but a bunch of people decided to make me entire existence political
  
  I'm talking about all the hard left tankys and woke extremists.
- Depends on your definition of political. Anything not saying America is the greatest is political to many. Anything involving LGBT people is political. Anything involving religion is political. And a while bunch of other examples.

What is “196”?
- It was a meme community on Reddit, but I don't know the origin. Seems to have a lot of non-binary folks in here, so I'm still wondering why reddit thought it applied to me, but they had some good memes over there.
- It is a spinoff of 195. 195 had a rule where you had to post before leaving, and most of the posts were people pasting their clipboard, usually a screenshot. 196 is supposed to be similar I think but is mostly just people posting memes and has a specific subculture.
  
  Further down the rabbit hole… what’s “195”?

Based

Want to see the transphobia and homophobia that Lemmy tankies from Hexbear are getting up to? Check out !dronerights@lemm.ee (https://lemm.ee/c/DroneRights) to see their months long harassment of a single trans person for being nonbinary.
- What’s with the chaser username?
  
  I'm gay. I'm a fat enby and I'm attracted to fat enbies because I'm gay. My username is a joke about the fact that I'm gay.
  A lot of people think only a chaser or a fetishist could ever be attracted to a fat person, but that's a fatphobic trope and it's time to move past it.
- what happened to your username https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/u/PM_ME_FAT_ENBIES ?
  
  You know how The Gamers hate it when the left shoves "politics" into media and by "politics" they mean women and queer people? Yeah, well someone on Blahaj said they hate "politics" and I said I hate reactionary scum like them. Ada took this as harassment because apparently she thinks it's okay to hate "politics"
- They did that to me too. Banned me for being "reactionary" because I was too left-wing for them.

A-fucking-men, brother!

Eliminate the state UwU

"The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.... Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly"
- Whose quote is this?
  
  GPT 4 says:
  That quote is from Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience". Thoreau was an American essayist, poet, and philosopher known for his writings on nature and his advocacy for civil disobedience against unjust laws. In "Civil Disobedience", he discusses the individual's responsibility to prioritize conscience over the dictates of laws and the role of the state in relation to the individual. The quote reflects his belief in the rights of the individual and his skepticism about the finality of democratic governance as we know it.