Are you a 'tankie'
edit: this is now closed future comments won't be counted
I keep seeing this instance is overrun with tankies so hey, lets do an informal survey like I've seen on hexbear
respond with YES or NO in the first line of your comment and i'll tally everything in a couple of days, lets say I'll try and collect everything on the sunday the 9th (10+gmt sorry)
not sure thisll work, be nice, have fun
Tankie is a floating signifier. If you ask twenty liberals what a tankie is you’ll get
100 percent agreed. They'll group anything too far left of them under the same name. Don't care anymore. If they want to whine then fuck it, I'll wear the term.
Like how fascists think liberals are marxists, despite liberals and marxists both knowing how dumb that is
Great synopsis. I may have found a twenty first definition if you want!?:-P
no. I'm probably a communist but authoritarianism can fucking shove it
Fredrich Engels, 1872: On authority
Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is. It is the act by which one part of the population imposes its will on the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannons — by the most authoritarian means possible; and the victors, if they do not want to have fought in vain, must maintain this rule by means of the terror which their arms inspire in the reactionaries. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if the communards had not used the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach them for not having used it enough?
Therefore, we must conclude one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don’t know what they’re talking about, in which case they are only sowing confusion; or they do know, in which case they are betraying the proletarian movement. In either case, they serve reaction.
At what point does a leftist system become authoritarian? Where is the line? Is it just a vibe check, or is there a definitive metric we can check?
Yes
Love how all of the tankies on this thread are open about their views while all of the non-tankies are wondering what the term even means, or think that people won't self identify as a tankie. Reminds of that quote from the manifesto
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.
I'm not from this instance, so probably not totally relevant to this poll, that said
NO, I'm not a tankie.
I think, however, it's worth considering that a lot of people that could be considered tankies probably wouldn't apply the term to themselves, and that could skew the results of your poll. First of all, tankie is sort of a pejorative term, and many wouldn't want to apply it to themselves for that reason alone. Secondly a lot of people just may not consider themselves to be a tankie, and genuinely do not recognize their own tankieness.
I don't think I'm the guy to come up with a definitive checklist of what does or does not make someone a tankie, but for the sake of getting the conversation going (and feel free to disagree with me here, I welcome the discussion) I think two of the biggest hallmarks of being a tankie are
I think the authoritarianism aspect is going to trip some people up trying to answer this truthfully. A lot of authoritarians probably wouldn't consider themselves authoritarians, most people like to think they're standing for freedom, justice, liberty, equality, etc. even if their actual actions tell another story. Don't get me wrong, there are people out there who are openly authoritarian and proud of it, but a lot of authoritarians are a little brainwashed to the point they've lost sight of what they're actually supporting (take a look at the MAGA crowd, they think they're about free speech and anti-censorship but want to keep books they don't like out of libraries, they think they're about small government but want to regulate what kind of medical care you can get, they think they stand for law and order but also proudly proclaim that they are all domestic terrorists and have a convicted felon as their poster boy)
And politics are messy, full of moral grey areas and times where you have to choose between the lesser of two evils, make uncomfortable alliances, difficult choices, and kick some cans further down the road to deal with later while you tackle the current crisis. It's not always easy or feasible to draw a crisp line in the sand and say "we will not ally with/support/turn a blind eye to these authoritarian regimes," sometimes you have to play a little bit of the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" game if you want to actually make any progress against that enemy, or you may have to prioritize and deal with something else before you deal with them. There is a whole lot of grey area to explore about when, why, how, how long, and how much you can support or ignore them before you're advancing their cause as much or more than your own.
I think there's probably some tankies who have been taken for a ride on the propaganda wagon and don't truly realize how authoritarian they are, and there's others who have justified it, thinking that they're only going to be/support authoritarians temporarily to achieve a specific goal and will pivot away from that later, but have gone too far or keep moving the goalposts.
Couple last thoughts from me.
There can always be bad actors who are falsely claiming to be (or not to be) tankies for their own purposes. Not really much you can do about that.
Personally, a lot of the criticism I've seen about tankies here has been directed towards the mods and admins, not necessarily the rank average users.
"Tankie" in the traditional sense of someone who uncritically supports the USSR in the handling of 1956's uprising? Probably not.
While Kruschev's use of tanks in 1956 was heavy handed, the Hungarian alliance with the Axis in WWII and participation of Operation Barbarossa, lingering fascist sympathisers and nationalists remained in Hungary.
This coupled with the Communist Party of Hungary's less than equitable redistribution of land/castles/other properties earlier in the 1950's (favouring giving properties to ranking CPH members instead of distributing it to the proletariat equally). This created resentment for the Party, and an image of the Communists as no better than the Monarchy that came before or the Fascists that came after.
The Hungarian uprising had elements of fascist sympathisers, monarchists, bourgeoisie, etc but also legitimate critics of the handling of the situation. It never should have come to that, and a more educated/self critical Communist Party in Hungary could have prevented things from getting that far. The people should have benefitted a lot more from a better redistribution of wealth.
The above issues coupled with Soviet distrust of Hungarians (since they did invade the Soviet Union in the 40's) led to a swift and harsh reaction towards the uprising, seeing it as just a reactionary revolt.
Now, am I a tankie in the Reddit redefinition, of anyone that critically supports Cuba, China, Vietnam and their style of government? Yeah, I suppose I am. This is no more radical a position than Malcolm X or the Black Panthers who also supported the late USSR, China and Cuba.
Serious question, I mean I feel you dislike the "west" or jow it is governed (I guess) and to each their own but are you against democracy? And if so, how do you get rid of dictators like Putin if needed?
Cheers
Our definition of what is and isn't a democracy is significantly different than that of liberals. We wouldn't consider Europe and America to be democracies meaning that we have no sympathies for those style of governments and societies.
To contextualize this, one thing you have to understand is that there are many formulations of democracy that have existed historically. Athenian democracy is very different from liberal democracy, which is in turn very different from democratic centralism (the formulation most used by Marxist states). And there were probably many forms of democracy that hunter-gatherers and indigenous peoples used (which I unfortunately don't know much about).
The main problems with how democracy is talked about in liberal philosophy (the hegemonic philosophy) is that only the liberal formulation of democracy is considered valid, even if its performance has historically been extremely subpar. Furthermore, class is completely ignored, as all "democracies" have existed in service of a class (in athens, for the slave owners, in liberal republics, for the bourgeoise, in ML republics, for the proles).
Because we do not consider liberal democracies to be a valid form of democracy, liberals take this disingenuously as if Marxists hate all democracy.
YES
They would have burned me as a heretic in the middle ages.
Just like calling someone a "witch" or heretic in the middle ages, a "barbarian", or "savage", or "commie" or "pinko" in the 20th century, these terms are less about the actual meaning, and more about a demonization, scapegoating, or a power relation between the dominant class, and a group they seek to malign and rally their people around.
Creating a useful enemy promotes group bonding, unity, a sense of strengthened identity, and self worth.
"Tankie" had a meaning that generally referred to non-pacifist leftists (or those that agreed with using violence to defend socialist projects), but now it just means, "any leftist I don't like".
It functions in the exact same way that "commie" did in the the McCarthy era, as a xenophobic and western-supremacist scapegoating of socialist countries, and an internal purging of the working-class communist movement.
It's additionally useful because it deters people from reading or engaging with the worldwide communist / socialist movement.
If someone uses this term, this is what they're doing without realizing it:
now it just means, "any leftist I don't like".
With respect, there's a bit more to it than that.
The way political discussions are often policed on ML instances (This one, Lemmygrad, and Hexbear) is not conducive to helping new people see your point of view. If a, let's say, social democrat says something critical of the CCP and then is immediately censured or banned, they are going to be left with a very negative impression that feeds into the stereotypes that already exist about these instances.
Creating a useful enemy promotes group bonding, unity, a sense of strengthened identity, and self worth.
Aren't people on ML instances also doing the exact same thing when they shout down and decry the wretched "liberals" (which seems to refer to anyone left-of-centre who doesn't support communist party rule)? Whether it's "tankie" or "liberal", it only further entrenches the us vs them mindset.
It's a shame that leftist infighting exists to such a degree when we often share about 95% of the same views, compared to the general public.
Aren’t people on ML instances also doing the exact same thing when they shout down and decry the wretched “liberals” (which seems to refer to anyone left-of-centre who doesn’t support communist party rule)?
Liberal is a well defined category though. Liberalism as a self-described ideology opposed to both communism and monarchy has been around for centuries at this point. Most people being decried as liberals would themselves identify as liberals.
The way political discussions are often policed on ML instances (This one, Lemmygrad, and Hexbear) is not conducive to helping new people see your point of view.
If you ask in earnest, you'll get good responses. A good number of people ask questions not to learn a different point of view, but to reinforce their own existing biases, which naturally becomes exhausting. Kind of like how POC get tired of justifying their existence to white supremacists, communists often for good reason get tired of trying to justify the existence of countries who choose to follow their own path, outside of the model of bourgeois democracy.
Aren’t people on ML instances also doing the exact same thing when they shout down and decry the wretched “liberals” (which seems to refer to anyone left-of-centre who doesn’t support communist party rule)? Whether it’s “tankie” or “liberal”, it only further entrenches the us vs them mindset.
Liberal, unlike tankie, has a fairly precise meaning in political discourse. It can be used too loosely IMO, but it generally means pro-capitalism, pro-individual freedom (including to exploit labor power to earn surplus value), pro free-market, pro-free speech (for all including reactionaries), pro wage-slavery, as well as specific limitations imposed on those considered outside of the "community of the free". Its important to realize that even the US mis-definition of liberal (as vaguely socially progressive) includes all of the above, and the internationally accepted definition of liberal, is right wing (for example, the right wing party in Australia is the liberal party). The best book I can recommend here, is Losurdo's Liberalism - A counter-history.
Not only that, but liberals rule most of the world, and especially most of the economies and governments of anglo-speaking countries, extracting a surplus from the sale of their labor power (who are mostly extremely poorly paid proletarians in the global south), and are responsible for most of the suffering of working-class people worldwide.
Don't like people putting up a mirror to you?
No.
That said most MLs are my comrades anyway
Also liberals still always call me a tankie anyway so idk it doesn't mean anything anymore.
Also no
I land somewhere on the anarcho side of politics, but I'm certainly not a tankie. Still get called one though.
A better world is possible and none of us can accurately predict how we will get there but if we don't quit rehashing hundred year old ideological beefs that occurred within very different material conditions we're all fucked anyway.
The tankies aren't gonna murder the anarchists and at this juncture there is no revolution to speak of for anarchists to have a hand in betraying (for reasons that I have never heard a compelling case for its inevitability). If we don't get our shit together the billionaires are gonna kill us all and who knows maybe it's already too late but we have to at least try.
What's the definition of tankie ?
It originally meant someone who supported the USSR's intervention in the 1956 Hungarian revolution. Now it means whatever the labeler wants it to mean, usually as a means of punching left.
Explained in this post to !nostupidquestions@lemmy.world.
Supposedly it is a pejorative label applied to authoritarian communists, particularly Marxist–Leninist socialists. I presume it is the "pejorative" part that people do not like, b/c many of the places labelled as tankies by others unabashedly do precisely that!
I've only used the term twice myself, both kinda self-questioning what it even means, but if it is truly pejorative, then I should stop regardless.
I wouldn't feel bad using a pejorative for fascists. Neither do I feel bad using a pejorative for other authoritarians. Their disrespect for human dignity, liberty, and worth disqualifies them for protection against such a minor indignity.
Tankies is fine for anyone on the side of the tanks at Tiananmen Square.
People who root for the tanks when pictures of tiananmen square are posted.
“The term ‘tankie’ was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defense of the Soviet use of tanks to suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions.”
See: Tankie - Wikipedia
Where do people get this stuff from when Wikipedia is right there?
But since you brought it up, I’ll copypasta myself.
NO
Tankie is a meaningless word. If you point out China has undeniably made progress under communism, you’re a tankie. If you point out Stalin wasn’t the evil dictator westerners make him out to be (even though it’s disproven by the literal CIA itself) you’re a tankie, if you think capitalism is causing problems in the USA you’re a tankie. If you criticise US or NATO foreign policy you’re a tankie. If you criticise the Republicans you’re a Tankie. If you criticise the Dems, guess what also a tankie. If you think that the USSR and the PRC are/were perfect little angels that never made any mistakes or did anything wrong ever then you’re also a Tankie.
It’s just too broad a term for me or anyone to identify with any way. It’s not an ideology. It’s a dumb insult to dismiss the opinions of others you disagree with without having to engage with their point at all or critically analyse your own beliefs in any meaningful way.
Organizing a union? Pushing for higher wages? Defending your people from reactionary aggression?
Not voting? Don't hate the US's main enemies, like Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Syria, Palestine, the DPRK?
Believe it or not, tankie.
Eat beans instead of meat for protein? No trial, no jury, straight to being a Tankie. Not eat a specific brand of beans I.e. Goya? Believe it or not also a Tankie. We have the best diets in the world.
It's a PDF file from a .gov website. Are you fucking dumb?
That’s a lot of mod interventions for a one month old account.
You’re what I might call “high maintenance.”Yes, although I personally prefer "central planning enthusiast".
I think we're approaching the point where the word gets taken back by the community it was used to malign, if not there already. "
No. I'm a non-tendency leftist. But I disagree with tankies being labelled as "fascists". They're not. They're just Marxist-Leninists/Stalinists and I find their views pretty consistent with orthodox ML-ism.
I agree with this. I see a lot of people erroneously label tankies "fascist," but fascism is an entirely distinct ideology with different end goals.
I also wouldn't call myself a tankie, although I've received some nasty DMs calling me one, which is somewhat humorous to me since I identify most with anarchism. I feel like some people think a tankie is defined as "anyone to the left of Ronald Reagan."
I wish stalin drove tanks straight into west berlin, then france, then the UK, then atlantis, then NYC, then chicago, then seattle, then anchorage, then Tokyo, then Seoul, then Beijing, then KFC/tacobell.
Yes.
The last time I smiled was on August 19th, 1991. I wear a dirty ushanka at all times, do not shave, and only take cold sponge baths because hot running water is bourgeoisie decadence. Every day at exactly noon I have the same meal of an expired Maoist MRE I store in a pit covered in old issues of a revolutionary newspaper. I sleep in a bed made of flags from every failed revolution so that they are never forgotten. In the evenings I stare at a picture of vodka by candlelight, but I do not allow myself to drink because there is nothing to celebrate. Every local org has banned me after I attempted to split it by assassinating the leadership. There is no plumbing in my house I shit in a brass bucket with a picture of Gonzalo and Deng french kissing in the bottom of it. My house is actually an overturned T34 in an abandoned junkyard in Wisconsin. I have a single friend in this world and it is a tapeworm named Bordiga that I met after ingesting spoiled borscht on 9/11 in the ruins of building 7 (I blew it up after finding that a nominally leftist NGO inside of it wasn’t sufficiently anti-imperialist, the attacks on the world trade center were a perfect revolutionary moment for me to enact direct praxis against liberalism). My source of income is various MLM schemes in the former soviet bloc that have been running for so long no one remembers who I am, they just keep sending money. I have not paid taxes since McGovern lost the Democratic nomination for president and my faith in electoralism died more brutally than my childhood dog after it got into an entire jar of tylenol. I own 29 fully automatic rusted kalashnikovs and three crates of ammunition entirely incompatible with them or any other firearms I own. My double PHD in marxist economics and 18th century Swiss philosophy (required to understand Engels) sits over the fireplace of my home, my fireplace is a salvaged drum from a 1950s washing machine that was recalled for locking children inside of it. I chose that washing machine model on purpose because I am anti-natalist. During the latest BLM protests I firebombed a Nikes outlet in the middle of a peaceful candlelit vigil. William F Buckley and I wrote hatemail to one another for 47 years until my final letter gave him an aneurysm. The only water I drink is from puddles. George Lucas and I dropped acid together during an MKULTRA southern baptist summer camp and he went on to write the movie Willow about our time together. The best way to test whether an electrical wire is live is to drool on it and shrimp salad is racist. You can make an IED out of potassium and the instructions are online thanks to Timothy McVey, who was actually a committed antifascist communist slandered by the deep state as part of operation condor. Every time a liberal files a restraining order against me, I carve a mark into the wall. I am running out of walls. When Amerika finally collapses I will be ready to lead the revolution. I am very smart and people like being around me.
The only part of this I cannot parse is "shrimp salad is racist" that's the only thing I don't get the reference for and it always drives me nuts.
YES
Everybody to the left of biden is considered a tankie nowdays, and I'm proud of being to the left of (and opposed to) genocide enablers.
Not so. There are many progressives who stand with Marxists on issues like social justice, LGBTQ issues, and Palestine but who do not feel welcome on instances like Hexbear because they also criticize the CCP.
And they sometimes get called "tankies" too by people to the right of them. That's why I both think it's a useless term (if everybody is a tankie, then nobody is) and why I think I fall in the definition (as most leftists do, I've seen pretty mild social democrats being called "tankies" by liberals)
Plus ultimately these blanket descriptions are pretty useless IMO, you'll find extremely heated debates between "tankies" themselves on many topics, there's no consensus, and there are many different ideologies "tankies" subscribe to. It would be like saying that Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians and Greens are all the same thing. We could call them "dronies" maybe.
on the one hand: there is no such thing as a tankie, the word doesn't mean anything besides "person to the left of me whom i disagree with"
on the other hand: hell yeah i'm a tankie
Death to America
i am a meat popsicle
Wrong answer
I have a new favorite description for human that I hear today: terrified electric meat. Perfectly sums up the human experience
Anarchist. I look forward to being kill by tankies moments after the revolution.
To anyone on .world, which is obnoxiously in line with the United States status quo, I am a 'tankie' because I do not believe that China is evil, that Russians are 'orcs', that the Cuban people deserve to be starved by our sanctions, that Joe Biden has to support Palestinian genocide and continue Trump's border policy because 'its complicated', and anything else that is critical of my own country and its actions that continue to harm people not as fortunate to be born in my same geographical location.
I wouldn't call you a tankie for that. The closest thing may be the Russian orc thing, but that is more a statement that Russians are still human while fighting an immoral war.
That the Cuban sanctions are still going on are stupid and support for Palestine is consistent with general leftist theory regarding freedom.
No I'd rather be morally righteous and sit on my ass and blame "the left" as the world collapses.
yes
but no in the way you mean
I am to the left of Ronald Reagan. A lot of people would classify that as tankie.
But that’s not a no.
No, i'm not a tankie, i wasn't even born yet in 1956 not to mention i'm not British.
Yes
Stalin is cool.
Idk. I'm really bad at history and such cause I never pay attention. I used to take everything I saw on the internet at face value, so I decided to slow down on current news. Doesn't help that I like programming and video games a lot, so I don't spend a lot of time thinking about world events.
I just like communities that are tolerant and won't let people bully the lgbt or the disabled. It feels less tiring.
Believe it or not, some people would call you a tankie for that.
I never got called a tankie, so idk about that.
Then again, I rarely participate in political discussions that I don't know about. I try to read as much as possible to get an idea, but I never go in dept, like read sources.
I'm going to go to uni soon. I'll try to spend more time into learning history properly.
<(YES.)
Anti-Semitism
January 12, 1931
Reply to an Inquiry of the Jewish News Agency in the United States
In answer to your inquiry :
National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.
Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism.
In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.
J. Stalin January 12, 1931
First published in the newspaper Pravda, No. 329, November 30, 1936
ERMM WTF, BASED????
a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle
Love the direct reference to Lenin's What Is To Be Done? here.
Maybe?
What the heck is a tankie, anyways? Every person I have asked has had a different answer, and the vast majority of these definitions don't really fit any major communities on Lemmy, not even Hexbear or Lemmygrad.
I have been called a tankie for numerous reasons, like saying that people should read Marx, to saying the US is a net negative on global stability.
Is being a Marxist sufficient for being a tankie? What about a Marxist-Leninist? Are only Dengists tankies? Is Anarchism the only non-tankie leftist position? I've even seen Anarchists be called tankies over on Lemmy.world, which is currently undergoing Red Scare-era anti-leftist witch hunts (like return2ozma's recent ban for "bad-faith spam").
I think this question needs a definition first. If you ask 10 different people what a "tankie" is, you'll get 11 different answers.
This is the crux of it: where once there was some kind of definition, now it's just a snarl word for "leftist who makes points I can't refute."
I mean we asked you and got six, so...
I've seen all of them, I don't personally endorse any of those definitions, haha
Does it count if I've actually driven tanks?
Not unless you enjoyed the crunching sounds
yes.
Yes
I think people would probably call me a tankie
Why
A ridiculous question. "Tankie" isn't a term anyone self-identifies with, it's mostly a term used by liberals to hurl at anyone to the left of them or anyone who agrees with western foreign policy. The survey results will be as meaningless as the term "tankie" itself.
Yes.
Just go ask the 196 mods.
i'm tankie and gay and covered in feces (some of which is my own)
I think it's just mostly teen drama from Lemmy.world users. :)
YES
No
To clear definitions, at least for me"tankies" are a subset of communists, who praises/defends the actions of all/most communist states far more than similar actions from capitalist states. The difference between communists and tankies is a bias in favor of communist states when looking at things like human rights violations. Very few people will self identify as a tankie, since it's hard to see your own bias.
YES
NO. Not a fan of the current or former CCP or the former Soviet Union
No, I think?
I don't actually know what a "Tankie" is. I tend to try to steer away from labels; I consider them a form of intellectual laziness. People will use them to either try to gain a feeling of belonging by adopting a line of thinking shared by their peers, or they will use them to smear those who they have defined as "others" without consideration of why these "others" might hold opinions that they don't. Labels and label-based thinking lead to tribalism and division.
If you want to know what I think about something, ask with specifics. If you want to convince me of something, present an argument with reason and evidence, and be prepared for me to pick it apart and look for flaws. There is nothing I respect more than somebody who takes a comment I make and considers it, researches it and then comes back to me with a response, or presents me with a perspective that compels me to do the same. I find both depressingly rare.
I always love when people answer my questions with an "I need to do some research", that's how you know you have a valid argument with someone.
Last time I can remember getting that response in an actual conversation was during the NFL kneeling protests. I guy I work with kept repeating how disrespectful it was to kneel, so I asked "Is it disrespectful to God when you kneel in prayer?" You could practically see the hamster fall off the wheel, and he said he needed to speak with his pastor.
The .world libs just couldn't help themselves but ruin our circlejerk.
Sure fuck it. I'll Tankie. Castro is a hero. Western news knows nothing of glorious DPRK Juche, and comrade Stalin did nothing wrong.
Yes.
Almost none of us were alive when Hitler was alive.
You should still have a clear and simple opinion of anything Hitler is known for.
The reason that MovingThrowaway said ‘Almost none of us were alive when Khrushchev rolled tanks into Hungary’ is that certain British socialists coined the pejorative ‘tanky’ to nickname communists who approved of the Warsaw Pact intervention in the Hungarian People’s Republic (and later, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic), but hardly anybody uses the pejorative this way anymore.
In practice, application now varies widely, from approving of the Bolsheviki to opposing the Ukrainian government to suggesting that maybe North Korean politicians think and behave like ordinary human beings. The contemporary criteria are so variable that many would argue that the term is too vague to be useful.
YES
My understanding is that a tankie is defined as someone who seeks to promote global peace, understanding, and equality, with nuanced views that incorporate marginalized and international perspectives, grounded in historical evidence.
That's how I see it used anyway.
I havent figured out yet what a tankie is.
The original definition comes the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 to describe communists who supported the crushing of the uprising.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
A lot of people who use that term to describe other tankies seem to be using it the correct way while people who are tankies seem to want to change it to something else because of the implications of that definition.
It reminds me a lot of how conservatives will claim nazi or racist or fascist has lost all meaning
it's what people who are literally demanding that the west sends tanks to the proxy war in Ukraine are calling people who want to end the war right now
You know how a conservative calls anyone to the left of them "woke"? Well it's exactly that but with democrats.
Tribalists whose ingroup-uber-alles identity is any kind of leftism. The sort of person who would excuse unimaginable cruelty so long as it's done in the name of opposing "the west."
Maybe I am… or maybe we’re all tankies now. What’s the difference?
You don't have to answer everyone already knows. This question was directed at .ml users.
No.
Maybe I'm way off the mark here but... I think the reaction to tankies seems very overblown. No one you could describe as a "tankie" is currently in charge of any of the countries/companies/organizations that are busy destroying the world right now, so I don't super understand why everyone's talking about them like they're at all a priority? The authoritarians that tankies are obsessed with are all either long dead, or totally unaware of their existence.
Maybe some people on the left are just trying to look at future dangers here, like tankies are gonna be "Bolsheviks Part 2", somehow come into power, and then purge all the anarchists or something. But didn't Bolsheviks actually have a lot of power and influence prior to the revolution? Tankies don't seem to.
why everyone’s talking about them like they’re at all a priority?
Because the red scares and the cold war[1][2] never actually ended, and our government, think tanks, and corporate media still feed us a constant drip of spooky stories.
NO
I like having no boots on my neck, not just changing out what demographic is wearing it
I wear tankies when it is hot out.
