this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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Tankiejerk

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Dunking on Tankies from a leftist perspective.

A tankie is someone who defends/supports authoritarian or even totalitarian regimes who call themselves "socialist". The term originated from people supporting the 1956 invasion of Hungary by the Soviet Union. Nowadays they are just terminally online, denying genocides, and falling for totalitarian propaganda and calling such regimes "true democracies". remember to censor usernames when necessary.

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Can't they see this? I mean, I just said it.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

There are two camps. People will constantly try to drag you into one. They will get mad if you resist. They will call you a filthy centrist if you resist.

It doesn’t not matter what’s your political view, if it is not radical enough, if it does not align unquestionably with one of the camps, people will get mad.

This is just how it is nowadays.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Politically active people generally tend to be more hipocritical, because it is not in their interest to see nuance or to self-criticize.

And then there is the Chomsky approach that you should only criticise that which you can influence...which leaves all the dictatorships free from criticism...but they still have to share a world with other states.

Even in the UN, the general assembly members always vote according to their own interests, not as a jury for the application of the principles of the UN charter. The SG at least has kept some ethical consistency, but it is still disheartening.

e.g. how most tankies push the notion that whenever someone commits a crime and it goes unpunished, none of the rules apply anymore and when you point it out, they eventually devolve to the fascist motto "those who have power do what they want and the others suffer what they must".

This boils down to tribalism, but I imagine these talking points come from people of all political colours living in large countries without any threat of ever being invaded, because every smaller country from Uruguai to Belgium to Moldova understands the need for rules and multilateralism. Otherwise, it's back to warring empires :/