this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2024
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Is "Tankies" a new term? I've never heard it before a week or two ago.
It's decades old. Refers to people who support communist regimes regardless of what they do. Originally because the Soviet Union used tanks to quell rebellion and some people in the west still cheered for them.
I believe it was coined by the British left when the USSR quashed the Hungarian revolution by driving tanks through their streets. Anyone still in support of them is deemed a "tankie." Nowadays it was meant to criticize authoritarian communists.
quashed the Hungarian communist (democratic worker) revolution; lowercase.
Right, right, they were like "you're not doing it right!"
Was it from the Soviet Union? I always assumed it was a reference to justifying Tianamen Square.
I guess that more you know.
Yup, it even predates Tiananmen Square by a few decades IIRC
I've seen it a lot more often after joining lemmy
That is because you joined a social media platform made by socialists.
Yup, when I first joined I wanted to join lemmy.ml because "oh I like machine learning".
Those were the days...
Expecting ML to mean machine learning, when signing on to lemmy, must have lead to confusion, maybe shock.
I picked it because it had open signups and were high up in some random list, I promptly switched lol
Ah yes. Lemmy.ml, the instance about machine learning....
Havent heard that one.
It's members certainly talk like chatgpt
you being funny? It's 68 years old this autumn.
I apologize I'm only up to 's' in my quest to memoriz3 every fucking word ever used in the English language. 🙄 The fuckin word, "meme" is like a million years old. It doesn't mean it was as regularly used in conversation before social media. On a different note, for how many other languages use Lemy how would you know English is my primary language?
You shouldn't be getting downvoted for asking a question. Asking genuine questions are good
I started to see the term around the time of the Russian invasion of ukraine
Is that when you joined Lemmy? Because Lemmy is infested with Tankies, and you'll hear someone calling them out before long
edit: Spelling Errors
No, but considering Lemmy overall has grown 5800% in active monthly users in the first month the Reddit protests began, it's safe to assume most people haven't been here much longer than that lol. How long have you b3en using Lemy? 20 years? 50 years? Lol /s
I joined during the Reddit migration and ended up dealing with Tankies almost immediately. Before Lemmy I always thought most Communists would claim that true communism hasnt happened yet, I was NOT expecting people who aggressively protected safe spaces and didnt allow any level of words that could be considered slurs to think that Russia and China have done nothing wrong and are super great countries
Yeah I have been hearing the word "tankies" thrown around since joining during the great migration, too. I still don't understand what the term means lol
Its a communist who thinks Russia and China are ideals to follow, easy enough to understand.
The current use of it to mean "people I disagree with" is.
Lmao