edit: this is now closed future comments won’t be counted
I keep seeing this instance is overrun with tankies so hey, lets do an informal survey like I’ve seen on hexbear
respond with YES or NO in the first line of your comment and i’ll tally everything in a couple of days, lets say I’ll try and collect everything on the sunday the 9th (10+gmt sorry)
not sure thisll work, be nice, have fun
no. I’m probably a communist but authoritarianism can fucking shove it
At what point does a leftist system become authoritarian? Where is the line? Is it just a vibe check, or is there a definitive metric we can check?
I mean that’s a good question but there’s no reason to apply it just to leftist governments
There is, for the purpose of this question.
You have separated “Authoritarians” from the rest of “Communists.” At what point does Communism become authoritarian?
I’m framing this question in this manner to try to understand what you believe Communism should look like in a manner that goes against what people often described as tankies want it to look like.
The line is when the communist system collapses as usual and a dictatorship seizes power.
So Cuba, China, Vietnam, and the DPRK are by your definition not authoritarian, got it.
Does that make you a tankie?
I’m not from this instance, so probably not totally relevant to this poll, that said
NO, I’m not a tankie.
I think, however, it’s worth considering that a lot of people that could be considered tankies probably wouldn’t apply the term to themselves, and that could skew the results of your poll. First of all, tankie is sort of a pejorative term, and many wouldn’t want to apply it to themselves for that reason alone. Secondly a lot of people just may not consider themselves to be a tankie, and genuinely do not recognize their own tankieness.
I don’t think I’m the guy to come up with a definitive checklist of what does or does not make someone a tankie, but for the sake of getting the conversation going (and feel free to disagree with me here, I welcome the discussion) I think two of the biggest hallmarks of being a tankie are
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Communism- not all communists are tankies, but all tankies at least claim to subscribe to some sort of communist ideology.
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Authoritarianism- tankies either are authoritarians themselves, or are willing to support or overlook authoritarians as long as they see them as being in some way opposed to “the west”/capitalism/etc.
I think the authoritarianism aspect is going to trip some people up trying to answer this truthfully. A lot of authoritarians probably wouldn’t consider themselves authoritarians, most people like to think they’re standing for freedom, justice, liberty, equality, etc. even if their actual actions tell another story. Don’t get me wrong, there are people out there who are openly authoritarian and proud of it, but a lot of authoritarians are a little brainwashed to the point they’ve lost sight of what they’re actually supporting (take a look at the MAGA crowd, they think they’re about free speech and anti-censorship but want to keep books they don’t like out of libraries, they think they’re about small government but want to regulate what kind of medical care you can get, they think they stand for law and order but also proudly proclaim that they are all domestic terrorists and have a convicted felon as their poster boy)
And politics are messy, full of moral grey areas and times where you have to choose between the lesser of two evils, make uncomfortable alliances, difficult choices, and kick some cans further down the road to deal with later while you tackle the current crisis. It’s not always easy or feasible to draw a crisp line in the sand and say “we will not ally with/support/turn a blind eye to these authoritarian regimes,” sometimes you have to play a little bit of the “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” game if you want to actually make any progress against that enemy, or you may have to prioritize and deal with something else before you deal with them. There is a whole lot of grey area to explore about when, why, how, how long, and how much you can support or ignore them before you’re advancing their cause as much or more than your own.
I think there’s probably some tankies who have been taken for a ride on the propaganda wagon and don’t truly realize how authoritarian they are, and there’s others who have justified it, thinking that they’re only going to be/support authoritarians temporarily to achieve a specific goal and will pivot away from that later, but have gone too far or keep moving the goalposts.
Couple last thoughts from me.
There can always be bad actors who are falsely claiming to be (or not to be) tankies for their own purposes. Not really much you can do about that.
Personally, a lot of the criticism I’ve seen about tankies here has been directed towards the mods and admins, not necessarily the rank average users.
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What’s the definition of tankie ?
It originally meant someone who supported the USSR’s intervention in the 1956 Hungarian revolution. Now it means whatever the labeler wants it to mean, usually as a means of punching left.
Dealers choice, no wait thats me, colour me surprised, it feels like one of those words that basically means whatever you want it to mean ay this point, answer the question bub ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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beep beep beep
Salty takie calling others Nazi… Cope harder 😏
If you don’t want to be called a nazi, simply don’t have the same opinion of communists as adolf eichmann. it’s that easy!
Lmao
If you are commie then you must love sending people to gulags, right ?
it’s that easy!
Cool, face the wall lib.
Ahhh, only tankie haters are libs ??
I must have forgoten the memo 🙄
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Explained in this post to !nostupidquestions@lemmy.world.
Supposedly it is a pejorative label applied to authoritarian communists, particularly Marxist–Leninist socialists. I presume it is the “pejorative” part that people do not like, b/c many of the places labelled as tankies by others unabashedly do precisely that!
I’ve only used the term twice myself, both kinda self-questioning what it even means, but if it is truly pejorative, then I should stop regardless.
I wouldn’t feel bad using a pejorative for fascists. Neither do I feel bad using a pejorative for other authoritarians. Their disrespect for human dignity, liberty, and worth disqualifies them for protection against such a minor indignity.
Tankies is fine for anyone on the side of the tanks at Tiananmen Square.
That’s not even where the term originates. Come on, if you’re going to use the term at least do the 10 second Google search.
People who root for the tanks when pictures of tiananmen square are posted.
“The term ‘tankie’ was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defense of the Soviet use of tanks to suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions.”
See: Tankie - Wikipedia
No. I’m a non-tendency leftist. But I disagree with tankies being labelled as “fascists”. They’re not. They’re just Marxist-Leninists/Stalinists and I find their views pretty consistent with orthodox ML-ism.
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yes
but no in the way you mean
Anarchist. I look forward to being kill by tankies moments after the revolution.
i am a meat popsicle
Wrong answer
I have a new favorite description for human that I hear today: terrified electric meat. Perfectly sums up the human experience
YES
They would have burned me as a heretic in the middle ages.
- Carl Jung
Just like calling someone a “witch” or heretic in the middle ages, a “barbarian”, or “savage”, or “commie” or “pinko” in the 20th century, these terms are less about the actual meaning, and more about a demonization, scapegoating, or a power relation between the dominant class, and a group they seek to malign and rally their people around.
Creating a useful enemy promotes group bonding, unity, a sense of strengthened identity, and self worth.
“Tankie” had a meaning that generally referred to non-pacifist leftists (or those that agreed with using violence to defend socialist projects), but now it just means, “any leftist I don’t like”.
It functions in the exact same way that “commie” did in the the McCarthy era, as a xenophobic and western-supremacist scapegoating of socialist countries, and an internal purging of the working-class communist movement.
It’s additionally useful because it deters people from reading or engaging with the worldwide communist / socialist movement.
If someone uses this term, this is what they’re doing without realizing it:
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None of them are considered Marxist or even Socialist in the country now unfortunately. They have been successfully whitewashed as nationalist heroes.
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now it just means, “any leftist I don’t like”.
With respect, there’s a bit more to it than that.
The way political discussions are often policed on ML instances (This one, Lemmygrad, and Hexbear) is not conducive to helping new people see your point of view. If a, let’s say, social democrat says something critical of the CCP and then is immediately censured or banned, they are going to be left with a very negative impression that feeds into the stereotypes that already exist about these instances.
Creating a useful enemy promotes group bonding, unity, a sense of strengthened identity, and self worth.
Aren’t people on ML instances also doing the exact same thing when they shout down and decry the wretched “liberals” (which seems to refer to anyone left-of-centre who doesn’t support communist party rule)? Whether it’s “tankie” or “liberal”, it only further entrenches the us vs them mindset.
It’s a shame that leftist infighting exists to such a degree when we often share about 95% of the same views, compared to the general public.
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The way political discussions are often policed on ML instances (This one, Lemmygrad, and Hexbear) is not conducive to helping new people see your point of view.
If you ask in earnest, you’ll get good responses. A good number of people ask questions not to learn a different point of view, but to reinforce their own existing biases, which naturally becomes exhausting. Kind of like how POC get tired of justifying their existence to white supremacists, communists often for good reason get tired of trying to justify the existence of countries who choose to follow their own path, outside of the model of bourgeois democracy.
Aren’t people on ML instances also doing the exact same thing when they shout down and decry the wretched “liberals” (which seems to refer to anyone left-of-centre who doesn’t support communist party rule)? Whether it’s “tankie” or “liberal”, it only further entrenches the us vs them mindset.
Liberal, unlike tankie, has a fairly precise meaning in political discourse. It can be used too loosely IMO, but it generally means pro-capitalism, pro-individual freedom (including to exploit labor power to earn surplus value), pro free-market, pro-free speech (for all including reactionaries), pro wage-slavery, as well as specific limitations imposed on those considered outside of the “community of the free”. Its important to realize that even the US mis-definition of liberal (as vaguely socially progressive) includes all of the above, and the internationally accepted definition of liberal, is right wing (for example, the right wing party in Australia is the liberal party). The best book I can recommend here, is Losurdo’s Liberalism - A counter-history.
Not only that, but liberals rule most of the world, and especially most of the economies and governments of anglo-speaking countries, extracting a surplus from the sale of their labor power (who are mostly extremely poorly paid proletarians in the global south), and are responsible for most of the suffering of working-class people worldwide.
If you ask in earnest, you’ll get good responses. A good number of people ask questions not to learn a different point of view, but to reinforce their own existing biases, which naturally becomes exhausting.
That is understandable, however I was more talking about good-faith attempts to express views that are contrary to ML orthodoxy being dogpiled, removed, and banned. I have personal direct experience with this, as do many others who have attempted to engage in political discussions in ML communities. Perhaps users of the ML persuasion are used to being attacked and this why contrarian views are so heavily moderated on ML instances, but quite often this defensive response only leads to alienating other leftists who could be sympathetic to your point of view.
Also, I already understand quite well the differences between classical, social, and neo-liberalism, and how the term is used in the US; I have a degree in political science. My point was that users on ML instances weaponize the term in the same way that other users utilize the term “tankie” in order to dismiss people who disagree with them, ad hominem.
If you ask in earnest, you’ll get good responses.
This is not the case. Every time I’ve asked in earnest, I’ve faced mobs of lunatics.
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To anyone on .world, which is obnoxiously in line with the United States status quo, I am a ‘tankie’ because I do not believe that China is evil, that Russians are ‘orcs’, that the Cuban people deserve to be starved by our sanctions, that Joe Biden has to support Palestinian genocide and continue Trump’s border policy because ‘its complicated’, and anything else that is critical of my own country and its actions that continue to harm people not as fortunate to be born in my same geographical location.
I wouldn’t call you a tankie for that. The closest thing may be the Russian orc thing, but that is more a statement that Russians are still human while fighting an immoral war.
That the Cuban sanctions are still going on are stupid and support for Palestine is consistent with general leftist theory regarding freedom.
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No
To clear definitions, at least for me"tankies" are a subset of communists, who praises/defends the actions of all/most communist states far more than similar actions from capitalist states. The difference between communists and tankies is a bias in favor of communist states when looking at things like human rights violations. Very few people will self identify as a tankie, since it’s hard to see your own bias.
So Tankies are just Communists sympathetic towards other Communists? What would a non-tankie Communist look like?
Supporting communism’s ideas, while still fairly condemning terrible things done by historical attempts at implementing it.
What constitutes “fairly?” Maybe because I am on Lemmy.ml and thus can see Hexbear and Lemmygrad, I don’t think I’ve seen many people genuinely refusing to condemn horrible or tragic events within Communist countries or by Communists. Perhaps a vast minority, but at that point, why is this even an issue in the first place?
Are there examples of “good” Communists that aren’t tankies that you can point me to?
YES
Everybody to the left of biden is considered a tankie nowdays, and I’m proud of being to the left of (and opposed to) genocide enablers.
Not so. There are many progressives who stand with Marxists on issues like social justice, LGBTQ issues, and Palestine but who do not feel welcome on instances like Hexbear because they also criticize the CCP.
And they sometimes get called “tankies” too by people to the right of them. That’s why I both think it’s a useless term (if everybody is a tankie, then nobody is) and why I think I fall in the definition (as most leftists do, I’ve seen pretty mild social democrats being called “tankies” by liberals)
Plus ultimately these blanket descriptions are pretty useless IMO, you’ll find extremely heated debates between “tankies” themselves on many topics, there’s no consensus, and there are many different ideologies “tankies” subscribe to. It would be like saying that Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians and Greens are all the same thing. We could call them “dronies” maybe.
Oh, I agree - calling people Tankies/Liberals/Dronies, especially ad hominem, is reductive and generally unhelpful.
Liberal is a term for a real ideology, Tankie is not.
ML people often tend not to apply ‘liberal’ correctly either, so it goes both ways.
NO. Not a fan of the current or former CCP or the former Soviet Union
Yes, although I personally prefer “central planning enthusiast”.
I think we’re approaching the point where the word gets taken back by the community it was used to malign, if not there already. "
I am to the left of Ronald Reagan. A lot of people would classify that as tankie.
But that’s not a no.
Yes.
The last time I smiled was on August 19th, 1991. I wear a dirty ushanka at all times, do not shave, and only take cold sponge baths because hot running water is bourgeoisie decadence. Every day at exactly noon I have the same meal of an expired Maoist MRE I store in a pit covered in old issues of a revolutionary newspaper. I sleep in a bed made of flags from every failed revolution so that they are never forgotten. In the evenings I stare at a picture of vodka by candlelight, but I do not allow myself to drink because there is nothing to celebrate. Every local org has banned me after I attempted to split it by assassinating the leadership. There is no plumbing in my house I shit in a brass bucket with a picture of Gonzalo and Deng french kissing in the bottom of it. My house is actually an overturned T34 in an abandoned junkyard in Wisconsin. I have a single friend in this world and it is a tapeworm named Bordiga that I met after ingesting spoiled borscht on 9/11 in the ruins of building 7 (I blew it up after finding that a nominally leftist NGO inside of it wasn’t sufficiently anti-imperialist, the attacks on the world trade center were a perfect revolutionary moment for me to enact direct praxis against liberalism). My source of income is various MLM schemes in the former soviet bloc that have been running for so long no one remembers who I am, they just keep sending money. I have not paid taxes since McGovern lost the Democratic nomination for president and my faith in electoralism died more brutally than my childhood dog after it got into an entire jar of tylenol. I own 29 fully automatic rusted kalashnikovs and three crates of ammunition entirely incompatible with them or any other firearms I own. My double PHD in marxist economics and 18th century Swiss philosophy (required to understand Engels) sits over the fireplace of my home, my fireplace is a salvaged drum from a 1950s washing machine that was recalled for locking children inside of it. I chose that washing machine model on purpose because I am anti-natalist. During the latest BLM protests I firebombed a Nikes outlet in the middle of a peaceful candlelit vigil. William F Buckley and I wrote hatemail to one another for 47 years until my final letter gave him an aneurysm. The only water I drink is from puddles. George Lucas and I dropped acid together during an MKULTRA southern baptist summer camp and he went on to write the movie Willow about our time together. The best way to test whether an electrical wire is live is to drool on it and shrimp salad is racist. You can make an IED out of potassium and the instructions are online thanks to Timothy McVey, who was actually a committed antifascist communist slandered by the deep state as part of operation condor. Every time a liberal files a restraining order against me, I carve a mark into the wall. I am running out of walls. When Amerika finally collapses I will be ready to lead the revolution. I am very smart and people like being around me.
