this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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Holy shit. Too bad instances can't defederate HB. They seem to not understand that they're tankies.
What is a tankie?
No one seems to know
a miserable little pile of secrets?
The term originates from Soviet and aligned regimes sending in tanks to brutally crush protests and rebellions. E.g. The Hungarian Revolution, The Prague Spring Uprising, Tiananmen Square, etc. Some communists were disgusted at their fellows for cheering on said oppression ("Send in the tanks!") and started calling them Tankies.
Tankies fellate oppressive regimes and dictators. They're the smooth-brained "communists" that live in a binary world where anything "their side" does is good and anything the west does is "evil". They'll claim any criticism of historically "communist" countries like China and Russia is a CIA talking point ... because they're idiots.
TL;DR -- they're the MAGAts of the left.
Random observation but I find it kind of interesting how the talking points anti-tankies tend to bring up are things that, even if the worst allegations are accepted, are relatively minor compared to some other events you could bring up. I've heard so much about Tienanmen Square under Deng, but much less about the Cultural Revolution under Mao. And the Hungarian Revolution and the Prague Spring happened under Khrushchev and Brezhnev respectively, when there's much worse stuff you could bring up about Stalin.
I can't help but think that this conflicts with the supposed definition of tankie of just knee-jerk defending anything someone does if they wave a red flag. If that were actually true, wouldn't you focus on the most extreme examples by the most extreme leaders? The fact that there's so much focus on people like Khrushchev and Deng, who were both more moderate than their predecessors, seems more like the point of the word is specifically to attack people who might have a more favorable view of those more moderate figures, while being critical of their predecessors' actions.
Which is to say, tankie isn't actually meant to be directed towards someone who knee-jerk defends anyone with a red flag, but rather, it's meant to be directed towards someone who defends anything at all about anyone at all with a red flag, by accusing them of being the former. In other words, it's a word that demands the exact kind of knee-jerk response it's supposedly criticizing, just in the other direction.
In fact, it's particularly interesting that these accusations of ideological rigidity and blind loyalty are in reference to Khrushchev, who did nothing but criticize Stalin, and Deng who controversially said that Mao was "70% good, 30% bad." I don't think it's even possible for someone to defend everything done by both Stalin and Khrushchev
Tbf the hungarian coup was actually connected to an mi6 operation. And the people involved started killing Jewish people and communists, so...
On brand for libs
Oh, so calling people Tankie is just red scare propaganda then. Thanks for the heads up.
I support crushing fascists with tanks.
Nooo not tankies! Don’t they know it’s illegal to be a communist
they wish it was and will side with Nazis to make it a reality
Can you please elaborate?
Tankie is a social construct and is used to lazily discredit everyone to the left of bernie. It functions to libs the same way as "woke" functions for chuds. As a term it's basically meaningless to anyone outside of the internet.
I love how you guys have decided that your definitions are the only correct ones. It's your primary weapon here, for obvious reasons.
You're strawmaning hard here, because I never said it's a definition or that it's the only one. It's just my understanding of the term. What part of it is wrong in your opinion? I want to consider it
Because it's obvious that when you're challenged on your understanding of words you have nothing to say?
Communism is political science, words have meanings and we tend to use the correct ones, yes.
I have only seen it used in reference to people who support dictatorial regimes with socialist aesthetics, mostly MLs. I have yet to see an anarchist be called a tankie. Also you can hear it IRL, not commonly though since most MLs are on twitter and the like and not IRL.
Based on your answer, I've discovered what tankie means: Tankie = Marxist.
Successful Marxist movement results in a dictatorship of the proletariat. Dictator = tankie.
Hence tankie is a term used to describe any Marxist.
Thanks for contributing to this scientific breakthrough!
Nah, first premise is false in more than one way. You are conflating the ideology Stalin made with Marxism.
The second error is that there has never been a dictatorship of the proletariat, every time it has been a political party that seizes power for themselves and not the workers. In doing so they become the ruling class with differing class interests than the workers.
Marx must be rotating in his grave with the speed to power the whole globe at this point.
What my society looks like when a party seizes power for themselves and not the workers
(Source: Thomas Piketty's World Inequality Report 2022, for fun maybe try poking around and finding a non socialist state with any comparable inversion of income inequality.)
Yeah, clearly the Soviet, Chinese and Cuban workers had completely different interests than being raised out of poverty and squalor. Damn those dastardly political parties and their... diligent work towards eradictaing poverty while promoting actual, decentralized democracy.
I would say Lenin was more instrumental in the creation of Marxism-Leninism, Stalin was just the guy who happened to be in charge when they named it. It's also a tendency that has evolved a lot from what it was in the 40s.
You mean the guy in charge after the death of Lenin? Who Lenin warned against?
I mean the guy who had the support of 99% of the communists, yes.
You didn't do the reading :(. Dictatorship of the proletariat is a concept Marx and Engles adopted. Stalin didn't create it.
I don't know what you think the proletariat taking control of the state is suppose to look like, but there will always be a communist party involved. The mechanisms of power exist to be ruled by a party.
Communist parties should be judged by what they do for their poorest citizens. With that in mind, AES countries are doing a decent job. Things get better when they are in power, and get way worse if they are overthrown
You're wrong, what Marx talked about was the whole class of workers being in power. Stalin perverted that idea to a vanguard party. Stalin's system has always resulted in a ruling class composed of a class that was no longer the proletariat (if they even were to begin with). That system is not socialist, it is in fact no better than a capitalist system, as the hierarchies at work are equally unjust.
Russia and China were never Marxist.
Have you read any marx?
https://hexbear.net/post/214901
https://hexbear.net/post/374789
https://hexbear.net/post/126901
There's more in the_dunk_tank if you're willing to dig
https://hexbear.net/c/the_dunk_tank
Pro Tip: Sort by Top All. Anarchists getting called tankie tends to get a lot of upbears because we have anarchist comrades on our instance. We're a left unity instance
https://hexbear.net/search?q=tankie&type=All&listingType=All&communityId=31&page=1&sort=TopAll
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]
No idea what the first link is even about, seems incomprehensible. The second link seems true but I have no idea what was said prior. The third link is about programming. Seems there is one potential example of an anarchist being called a tankie. Seems like the vast majority of times it's being used in reference to MLs still.
In all seriousness there are plenty of people who misuse words but tankie seems to have a very clear and easily defined definition, it has even remained the same historically. Comparing it to the crazies using 'woke' is dishonest at best.
lmao no it hasn't. It originally referred specifically to people that supported the USSR putting down the Hungarian anti-communist protests. By the time "tankie" became a word (that only really ever had relevance in the UK) Stalin was long dead.
Yea, people that supported a dictatorial regime with socialist aesthetics as in the USSR. What part of that has changed?
The USSR was literally more democratic than bourgeois democracy.
It really depends on which bourgeois democracy. I may agree if compared to the US (I'm not too educated on the US so I could be wrong) but few others.
Though I fail to understand how that has anything to do with the topic of tankie having a consistent definition.
You claim that the USSR was a dictatorship with socialist aesthetics.
Also, no, no bourgeois democracy is or was as democratic as the USSR. Look up dictatorship of the bourgeoisie vs dictatorship of the proletariat.
And I assume by "dictatorial regimes" you mean any actually existing socialist country, right?
No, I do not. I made it clear multiple times that dictatorships with socialist aesthetics aren't socialist in any other way.
Sure, but the evil potato chips are still Cuba, China, Vietnam etc, right?
Literally every one of our anarchist users have been called tankies, lmao
Have fun worshipping the machinery of enslavement and death. As it crushes you, I hope it comforts you knowing at least you weren't a tankie.