this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2025
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Hey whats a tankie
In case you're asking out of good faith curiosity:
Tankie is a pejorative (and rightfully so) term for a particular brand of communist/socialist. It's worth noting that I have nothing against communists or communism in general (even though I don't agree with it as a political system). A tankie is someone whose standpoint is that communism can do no wrong; anything that went wrong in USSR and China is CIA's fault, and the Czechs, Hungarians, and Tibetans had it coming.
Oh, and to any tankies who are reading this and are tempted to engage in sealioning, don't bother - I don't care and probably won't respond. Plus there's a pretty good chance you're already on my block list. Call me fascist if you will (I'vebeen called worse things), but at least tell me a definition of fascism that doesn't also encompass todays China and Russia
Basically, it's a label applied to people of a communist persuasion who have given up on any form of critical thinking, and just defaults to "America bad, therefore anything opposing it must be good". Yes, America bad indeed. But that doesn't automatically Pol Pot, Kim Young Un, and Stalin are good.
Also, don't be surprised if this comment is downvoted to oblivion after someone links it on hexbear or lemmygrad. It's quite telling that comments like this are usually attacked based on syntax rather than substance, while refusing to actually explain what happened at Tianmen Square or during the Holodomor, without citing russian or Chinese propaganda.
Also, the name is a reference to communist countries sending tanks against civilians, RE: Hungary 1956, Prague 1968, and Tianmen Square 1989
As a leftist pinko card-carrying Democratic Socialist of America, I can't agree that Tankies are on this side of the fence. I think they're all either brainwashed or trolling... Either way, they have no idea what they're saying most of the time.
That being said, they've ruined the ability for some of us to give honest constructive criticism of the American left.
What does "pinko" mean in this context? (Or any context, for that matter... can't recall having heard that term before)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinko
TIL...
I shy away from defining myself on the left/right axis, as this depends a lot on where you are and what is defined as the center. But let's just say I'd love to hang out with Bernie.
I'm certainly not a "Liberal." They are not the same thing.
Libs in the USA are right-of-center. Examples in my mind are Pelosi or Schumer. The ones who kowtow to business interests and pay lip service to social injustices while doing nothing in their personal life or legislative maneuvering to support it.
And while I agree the bidirectional "left" or "right" thing isn't ideal, and the Compass method is only slightly better, I am far better described as Leftist than I am anything else. I fall more inline with the Scandinavian countries' left than that of the USA's.
Me personally, politically, I'm the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
Isn't it more than that though? A lot of the US intervention stuff can be true, but I thought the whole thing that made a tankie a tankie was the support of an authoritarian dictatorship and wanting that to be implemented?
Like I totally believe the US does and will try to destroy any communist country that arises, but I dont support the idea of a "dictatorship of the proletariat" so hopefully that doesn't make me a tankie lol
True. I just tried to give a short primer. I am indeed part of (to an extent) the "America bad"-camp, but it doesn't make me sverve so hard I crash into a ditch on the opposite side.
haha, love that picture!
Edit: Also I think hexbear and lemmygrad can't downvote due to being defederated from blåhaj.
Ah, I wasn't aware of said defederation. Good on Blåhaj
Just a friendly suggestion. Leninism isn't communism. Don't give them what they want by referring to them as communist. It gives actual communist/anarchist even more undeserved grief and misinformation to counter.
Leninism often referred to as ML is an authoritarian ideology. Which is a socialist in name only. They will gladly sacrifice actual socialism to protect the ruling Vanguard ala the tankies. Claiming their ideology is to facilitate building an economy that can then somehow transition to communism. They have no outline or mechanism for this to happen. In fact they would kill most anyone who tried. As those people would be a threat to the Vanguard.
Communism is a classless stateless society. A Society with a separate Vanguard party has classes. And authoritarian state is not stateless. Therefore they are not communist no matter how much they use the term. You are spot on with everything else though.
I love all the whackadoo shapes like stethoscope, horseshoe, and fishhook that people are forced to use to cling to the notion that political ideology is linear.
There are two legislative variables- societal and economic. That requires two axes for accurate plotting, and why it’s so difficult to fit an authoritarian socialist on a line that is primarily determining a socialized vs. conservative economy.
Realistically, even the political compass is a vast simplification of how real politics works. We usually visualise most mainstream democratic parties on the y=x line on the compass, but there are almost as many exceptions to that guideline as there are examples of it.
For example, left leaning parties overwhelmingly are more likely to support gun control or anti-hate-speech laws, although those are essentially authoritarian social policies. And conservatives support left-economic policies like restricting companies' ability to moderate their content as they see fit. Or their support of the army, which is an enormous government-run organisation.
But still, yeah, having a 2d set of axes gives you a much better look at where parties sit in relation to each other than trying to visualise it on a single line.
Well the 'America bad for the world' is arguably not wrong.
True. The problem is their thought process is "therefore every country that's adversarial to the US is good" including Russia, China, North Korea, etc.
I'll just add one more detail that hasn't already been said. Although they profess to be left-wing communists, tankies will defend countries like 21st century Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, despite Russia not even pretending to be communist, and in fact being the very worst that crony capitalism has to offer.
Tankies in reality, at least on Lemmy, seem to position themselves primarily as anti-America and anti anything America supports, rather than being for any specific policies associated with communism.
Tankie's Prayer
So a narcissist?
Shit, I found this on a leftist community and It was called the narcissists prayer, so you're actually right
So if youll join me down disinformation avenue, do you think these are largely real people? I only ask because every time i find myself turning back to corporate social media its because the high polarization of all topics by people like that on lemmy.
It seems like a good deterrent to the adoption of FOSS social media if someone were to employ ai to do so, but i can also believe that the first people to transition to FOSS would be highly radicalized people.
Lemmy's main developers are avowed communists who run one of the tankie instances themselves. I prefer Occam's razor here. They are what they say they are.
I'm an advocate for defederating all their instances. But it's because they make the fediverse a worse experience for users and I believe in curated positive spaces (à la the Nazi bar thought experiment) over unfettered free speech. It's not because I believe they're a false flag operation or bots.
To me the tankies here are like T_D was on reddit. Hell, their posting style is similar in many ways.
If anything, it made my transition to Lemmy more smooth. Oh, we have a different-yet-faimilar brand of idiots here! Cool.
Self proclaimed communists that claim to want power for the people but rally for an authoritarian dictator who holds all the power. Not much different from monarchists.
Usually a strong idolatry and religious type fixation of deifying individuals to remain in power.
Otherwise true, but I really wouldn't compare tankies to monarchists, since AFAIK a lot of monarchists are only in favor of having a monarch as a figurehead and an elected government that holds the actual power.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tankie (urban dictionary usually sucks but good definition here)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
tl;dr fascists in red
So they are people who want to violently or otherwise enforce their ideal view of some flavor of communism on the rest of the world? And they try to realize this by organizing and radicalizing people on social media?
Its more than that (supporting totalitarian genocidal dictatorships just because they oppose the west or are "communist") but that is part of it too
Apparently, yes lmao. They are the most twitter brained people alive. (i know ML parties exist irl, but i wouldn't say they are all tankies)
They have the brain capacity of a child, unable to comprehend beyond "my side good, your side bad"
https://lemmy.ml/u/yogthos
This is a tankie. Nothing they say is genuine or in good faith. Their agenda is to manipulate and lie because they're miserable. Feel free to check out their post and comment history if you want to see what a stain on humanity looks like.