Comment on Stay Mad

• agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  A tankie is, broadly, someone who wants to effect left-wing ideology using authoritarian methods. It originally referred to those who defended the USSR using tanks to suppress the Hungarian Revolution, but it could be aptly used to describe those who defend China’s actions in Tiananmen Square. It’s rightfully used as a perjorative, since authoritarian enforcement is antithetical to leftism, particularly communism.

  Tankies are hypocrites who didn’t understand their self-proclaimed ideologies. If someone’s idea of communist praxis is lining up dissenters for the firing squad, you’re dealing with a tankie.

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  • go_go_gadget@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    wants to effect left-wing ideology using authoritarian methods

    Odd. I’m getting called a tankie because I just won’t vote for Biden (or Trump). Someone must have gotten confused.

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    • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      By their reasoning:

      No vote for Biden is a vote for Trump. Trump is fascist and authoritarian. Tankies are authoritarians. Therefore, you are a tankie. /s

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    • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Lots of people say lots of silly things, nonetheless Trump is worse for the proletariat than Biden, and turning your nose up at the lesser evil endangers real people when the greater evil wins. You don’t have to vote for the greater evil to help tip the scales in their favor. Accelerationism is authoritarianism with extra steps and no one in the driver’s seat.

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      • go_go_gadget@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Biden doesn’t accept blame for tipping the scales in their favor. Biden’s family doesn’t accept blame for tipping the scales in their favor. Biden’s campaign doesn’t accept blame for tipping the scales in their favor. The DNC leadership doesn’t accept blame for tipping the scales in their favor. People who voted for Biden in the 2020 primaries don’t accept blame for tipping the scale in their favor. Moderaters and political analysts don’t accept blame for tipping the scales in their favor. People like you letting those people get away with that and focusing on telling me to vote for Biden don’t accept blame for tipping the scales in their favor.

        I don’t accept blame for it either.

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  • ssj2marx@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Tankies are hypocrites who didn’t understand their self-proclaimed ideologies.

    Tankies are very frequently the only people in the room who’ve done the reading. If you believe that so called “authoritarianism” is antithetical to leftism, then I recommend you read the following pamphlet by Engels.

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    • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Tankies have read Marx and Engels, yes, but there are many other forms of leftism besides ML. Also, it’s possible to do the reading and disagree with the methods of implementation.

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      • ssj2marx@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        but I don’t believe authoritarianism is the best way to go about it.

        Humor me for a moment, which of the following do you consider authoritarian?

        • asking your boss for better wages
        • using the power of a union to force your boss to give your coworkers better wages
        • using the power of the state to force all bosses to pay all workers better wages

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    • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      There’s a difference between someone-needs-to-coordinate-and-manage-complex-undertakings “authoritarian” and line-the-dissidents-up-against-the-wall “authoritarian”. Tankies are the latter.

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      • ssj2marx@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        We have class war waged against us by the bourgeoisie, and thousands of people are casualties of that war every single day. Expecting to turn the tide against them without getting our hands dirty in turn is useless idealism.

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• Objection@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’m a tankie. What tankie is supposed to mean is someone who blindly supports anything anyone does so long as they claim to be communist and wave a red flag. There’s maybe a handful of edgy teens who actually fit that description, but the way it’s actually used is to punch left at anyone who supports anything a socialist country has ever done, or who is insufficiently patriotic/nationalistic and is willing to consider things from an internationalist perspective.

  If you say for example that Cuba under Castro had a successful literacy program, then there are people who will accuse you of being a tankie. Because it gets used this way, some people like myself chose to reclaim the insult and wear it proudly.

  Generally, the actual term for most “tankies” would be Marxist-Leninist. But I actually prefer tankie because it’s a more general, big tent label. It’s used so broadly that even anarchists can be called tankies. It’s basically like “woke” where it doesn’t actually have any real meaning.

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  • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Well I think there are probably a half dozen interpretations that people on Lemmy use. One I have heard repeated is that they view the Tiananmen Square event as something that China rightfully did… hence “Tankie”

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    • Objection@lemmy.ml ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The idea that that’s the origin of the term is a common misconception. The actual origin was about the USSR under Kruschev sending in the military in response to a rebellion in Hungary. Some British communists supported the move, while other communists opposed it and labeled the supporters as tankies.

      But regardless of the origin, it’s changed to where now it’s liberals using it to criticize socialists in general.

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  • uis@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If you say for example that Cuba under Castro had a successful literacy program, then there are people who will accuse you of being a tankie just for that.

    $COUNTRY had a successful literacy program under $LEFT_GOVERMENT.

    Image

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• awwwyissss@lemm.ee ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  People that are happy to run people over in tanks to force their communist version of society on everyone else.

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• glitchdx@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I am by no means an expert, but the test that was explained to me is that if you look at the famous tianamen square picture of the guy holding grocery bags facing down a line of tanks, and then proceed to side with the line of tanks, then you’re a tankie.

  When I say that I am not an expert, what I actually mean is that I’m a random idiot from the internet, so don’t take anything I say as gospel truth.

  I’ve only been on lemmy for a few months, and I’ve never heard the term tankie on any other platform. My understanding is that a tankie is a militant supporter of communism, who completely disregards (or is in support of) how every time it’s ever actually been done it turns into an authoritarian dictatorship (or something similarly unpleasant to live under).

  My own biases exposed: I am an american, and most of what I know I learned in the absolutely fucked american public education system, which says communism = evil, because of the red scare a while back.

  If you do some googling, there’s a wikipedia article on the subject. I’ve forgotten most of the content of that article shortly after I read it, I should look at it again and maybe it will stick this time.

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• ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Militant leftist, in the most basic sense.

  But anti-leftists tend to co-opt the term to replace ‘fascist’ or ‘nazi’ in their discourse.

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