Forest of trees

Credit: https://x.com/BanhmiBrieoche/status/1858838454546682001/photo/1

354 comments

Let's bracket the "was the USSR in the right?" question, and let's ask the "how brutal was the Soviet clampdown on these two uprisings?"
1956 Hungary: 2000-3000 killed by the USSR
1968 Prague: 137 killed by the USSR
How does this compare to clampdowns by NATO countries (excluding the US)?
Indonesian National Revolution against the Dutch: 100 000 Indonesians killed by the Dutch
Algerian War of Independence: 250 000 killed by the French (French estimate) - 1.5 Million (Algerian estimate)
French War against Vietnamese Independence: 200 000 dead
Portuguese Colonial Wars: 70,000–110,000 civilians killed by Portugal
Mau Mau Uprising against the UK: "Officially the number of Mau Mau and other rebels killed was 11,000, including 1,090 convicts hanged by the British administration. The Kenya Human Rights Commission has said 90,000 Kenyans were executed, tortured or maimed during the crackdown, and 160,000 were detained in appalling conditions. "
This is a non-exhaustive list with estimates. The actual brutality is not conveyed. The war crimes are often comparable to the Waffen SS.
You get the idea: the colonial powers were incomparably worse.
- this is the most appropriate "both sides" argument i've ever seen.
  
  "Both sides" is when you equivocate two things which are not equal, you're looking for "whataboutism" which is not an actual fallacy, claiming "you're doing whataboutism" was a PR tactic first used by British colonizers when Irish people brought up British violence in response to anti-IRA propaganda.
- Off topic: It's times/comments like these that I wish people kept in mind when they start clamouring for defederation
- tankie to the rescue
- "Yes, the USSR performed atrocities, but the fact that the west has as well excuses that."
  It's not like those are the only two instances of human rights violations by the USSR, and they're infamous for lying about numbers.
  Misery is not s competition. You don't have to pick sides. There can be more than one violent authoritarian regime in the world, they can all be bad, and you can oppose all of them. There's really no reason to defend any imperial powers.
  
  “Yes, the USSR performed atrocities, but the fact that the west has as well excuses that.”
  I don't think that's what Kieselguhr was trying to say.
  As I see it, they are simply pointing out that, when ever the USSR does something bad the west are quick to let you know all about it and how EVIL the USSR is, but when the west does something bad or worst, they don't seem so eager to let you know about it. It's not that the west did something bad, it's that they usually don't tell you anything about it, but at happy to show the atrocities the others have committed.
  But I'm not them so I guess we could ask them to clarify.
  
  I actually support the side which is magnitudes less violent. And there is a difference between killing fascists like the Soviets did and killing anti-colonial freedom fighters but mostly civilians like the colonial powers did.
  You can only oppose everyone if your opposition doesn't actually do anything. If you're actually affecting things your opposition of one will strengthen the other. You have to be against the US empire and for multipolarity or against multipolarity and for the US empire. There isn't a third option.
  
  Deeply unserious and reactionary reply. Accomplished with signature feigned stupidity to fully sidestep the point being made.
- While your points are true, here is an interesting and recommended reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
  
  Oh, i liked this section
  According to lexicographer Ben Zimmer,[13] the term originated in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. Zimmer cites a 1974 letter by history teacher Sean O'Conaill which was published in The Irish Times where he complained about "the Whatabouts", people who defended the IRA by pointing out supposed wrongdoings of their enemy:
  I would not suggest such a thing were it not for the Whatabouts. These are the people who answer every condemnation of the Provisional I.R.A. with an argument to prove the greater immorality of the "enemy", and therefore the justice of the Provisionals' cause: "What about Bloody Sunday, internment, torture, force-feeding, army intimidation?". Every call to stop is answered in the same way: "What about the Treaty of Limerick; the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921; Lenadoon?". Neither is the Church immune: "The Catholic Church has never supported the national cause. What about Papal sanction for the Norman invasion; condemnation of the Fenians by Moriarty; Parnell?"
  — Sean O'Conaill, "Letter to Editor", The Irish Times, 30 Jan 1974
  Good example of how claims of whataboutism are used to try to remove actual important context from a discussion.

The use of the word "tankie" these days is so over-used it has become synonymous with "left of the DNC." I've even seen Anarchists described as "tankies," it's getting ridiculous. Still, the word "tankie" is most often used by liberals against Marxists, though they won't admit to having an anti-Marxist bias, mostly because they think they agree with Marx generally but are unfamiliar with Marxist analysis.
Really, more people need to read theory before having an opinion on it to avoid speaking past each other. I wrote an introductory reading list for Marxism-Leninism if anyone wants to get a better understanding of Marxism.
- Back when I used reddit it seemed like everyone threw around Fascist in a similar way. Lemmy seems to prefer Tankie. For a lot of people the thinking doesn't go any farther than "I disagree with you, therefore you are ________ist" or whatever.
  It is what it is.
  
  It varies from instance to instance. The main users of the word "tankie" are blahaj.zone, lemmy.world, and sh.itjust.works from what I've seen, most other instances generally aren't as bad about it IMO.
  
  The devs are tankies and there are some notorious tankie instances, like Hexbear and Lemmygrad, so they're a lot more visible here than on reddit.
  
  Probably because there are a lot of tankies here. 🙃
- thank you for that and the "what is socialism" post; but i'm encountering that theory is somehow still a HEAVY read for someone like who me has been inside the leftist sphere of influence for his entire life; there's needs to be some sort of sound-bite-able way of sharing these messages and i wish that ml's had the capitalists' deep pockets that guarantees a deep bench of talent that could figure something like this out.
  it reminds of my own own experience of going from technical support to software engineering by simply reading. your ignorance makes it daunting as first and you have to put in A LOT of effort to understand it when you don't even know the basics and you'll get there eventually if you stick with it; but most won't stick with it and if you're REALLY knowledgeable at it, it becomes difficult to understand why it's difficult for other people.
  
  We need to make more parentiwave tbh, we've been slacking on that
  
  It's certainly difficult, but when in doubt I love sharing this person's articles as more bite-sized bits of theory and soundbites from Michael Parenti speeches, haha.
- As I said in another comment, Tankies are often in support of the modern Russian state and the modern CCP. These are not positions that are "left of the DNC".
  
  Supporting the PRC is absolutely a Leftist position, as a Socialist country and a rising superpower it's the current best hope for Socialism, whether you agree with all of the CPC's actions or only some.
  Critical, reserved support for Russia's temporary and strategic anti-US Hegemony stance does not mean Leftists critically supporting Russia agree with the Russian state or support it.
- I, for one, haven't seen people over-using the word "tankie", I haven't seen people getting called tankies for the reason alone that they are leftists or even communists.
  However, I've seen many tankies insisting that the word is meaningless or that it just means anybody on the left.
  People I've seen using the word tankie have been surprisingly consistent about who they call a tankie: supporters of authoritarianism, especially Putin and the CCP.
  
  The only Communists that don't support the PRC are Maoists, generally, Marxists and Marxist-Leninists consistently support the CPC. None of them support Putin, only critical, reserved support for the Russian Federation's temporary and strategic opposition to US Hegemony, which Communists see as the primary obstacle in the way of Socialism across the world.
  
  They're using the same playbook as the fascists, insisting the word is overused and meaningless while painting themselves as victims. It's actually fascinating how similar hexbear snd the_donald feel.
- Marxism and Marxism-Leninism are not the same, and should not be treated as the same. One is an economic theory/philosophy, one is an ideology. I'll leave it to you to figure out which is which.
  
  Marxism is broken up into 3 major components:
  Dialectical and Historical Materialism
  Critique of Capitalism via the Law of Value
  Advocacy for Revolutionary and Scientific Socialism.
  Marxism-Leninism carries these 3 foundations forward, and analyzes Capitalism as it reaches Imperialism, as well as numerous expansions on the foundations of revolutionary theory and practice.
  They are not "the same," but the vast majority of Marxists are Marxist-Leninists, because Lenin's application of Marxism to higher stages of Capitalism are invaluable to Marxism.

The biggest irony of our times is blood thirsty liberals who are cheering for as much war as possible running around calling people tankies.
- Those fucking bloodthirsty tankies don't want us sending more tanks to nazis
- Iraq war supporters calling anyone a tankie, should be immediately flattenned by a tank

nowadays tankie just means someone who shills for china/russia with a communist background
- Communists support the PRC as a Socialist state run by Marxist-Leninists, yes. No Communist supports the Russian Federation outright, however, only reserved, temporary, and highly critical support for Russia's anti-US Hegemony stance, which it only adopts for its own survival and not out of any moral superiority. No Communist "shills" for the Russian Federation.
  
  If China is a socialist state worth supporting then I'm a donkey with a laser dick :P But I'm more anarchistically inclined so different perspective.
  I see your point though. What I'm saying is not that communist = tankie, on the contrary. I'm saying that tankies claim to be communists but spend all day parroting their favorite Russian or Chinese state propaganda because they believe everything else is clearly controlled by Obamna™ himself. They rarely actually talk about communism, they just roam Lemmy all day calling everybody who disagrees with them a liberal :D
- It’s not shilling, it’s nuance. American main stream thinking is full of lies about both China and Russia. And both conservatives and liberals HATE when people don’t fall in line.
  
  Your second and third sentence are true. I have definitely seen plenty of shills though.
  In my experience I've only seen the word tankie be used by leftists. Libs and conservatives don't even know what a tankie is.
- Weird way to say has at least modicum of understanding of geopolitics and doesn't support the genocidal western empire.
- Yet again begging liberals to understand what the word "shill" means.
  
  Define liberal please because I don't like being called one.
  In the same way that some people will shill for billionaires or for some billionaire-owned company, aka a corporate shill. People who fail to see that (capitalist) companies are just a way to extract profit. In the same vein, some people fail to see that nation states are just instruments of power. Some are better than others in different ways of course, but I get real itchy when people jump to defend a nation at the first smidgeon of criticism. I hate nationalism.
- Or someone who slightly disagrees with a republican
  
  Or even a democrat. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been called a tankie, by liberals, for simply not adhering to status-quo ideology.
- That's in theory. In practice it's only used by liberals to insult leftist when they criticise the US or liberalism.

For context: these are the original lines
- For whatever reason, I've seen fascists try to claim they are not fascists because they haven't done anything yet or are not close to the levers of power.

If you don't have an opinion on it, you might when you learn the fascists were putting chalk marks on the doors of communists and jews

It's always funny to me how the go-to examples of like, "See, they just blindly support anything the regime does!" tend to be relatively minor events after the state in question has considerably chilled out. Like, Stalin and Mao did much worse things compared to Khrushchev/Hungary and Deng/Tienanmen. The problem being, communists are generally willing to criticize things like the Great Leap Forward, because, surprise surprise, we don't just blindly support anything they do. The reason for this is that the word tankie isn't meant to describe someone who blindly supports everything a communist country does, as it's claimed to, but rather, someone who supports anything any communist country does.
The fear Western leftists had that led to the term being coined was that people who had previously been critical of Stalin and Mao would respond positively to the countries moving away from their approach, and so they had to create a label to discredit such people and associate them with the previous leaders. It's one of the reasons Khrushchev's approach was questionable, because no matter how much you try to distance yourself from someone like Stalin and paint yourself as "one of the good ones," you're still never going to appease the Western left that demands absolute perfection, let alone the West in general.

I have actually found the “tankie” moniker to be useful IRL:
Tell someone you’re a Marxist-Leninist and you just get a blank stare.
Tell someone you’re a socialist and they think you mean you’re simpatico with AOC and Bernie.
Tell someone you’re a communist and they will just shut down and not hear anything else you say.
But “tankie” seems to convey enough truth - that you support past and current efforts from AES states to build socialism - to be useful.

The first time I saw this word being used was here on Lemmy, when I arrived during the reddit exodus. I'm not a native English speaker though.
- It was used on Reddit, but not widely. Mostly by insufferable 'enlightened centrists' who didn't want to engage in good faith argument.
  It's now a blanket term for "anyone left l politically left of me" used by insufferable liberals who don't want to admit that trying to curry votes from Republicans lost them the election.
  For a time it was being used to describe actual Chinese and Soviet sympathisers, but given how quiet that particular group has been after the election, I suspect it was interchangable with state sponsored bot accounts.
  
  Exactly this! I've never seen the term used by anyone but liberals to taunt, attack or divert a debate.

Much like the Scots ruining Scotland, liberals seem to delight in ruining liberalism. As time passes, I see liberals more worried about some other liberal's little slot in life. And less and less concerned with getting things done. The Big Picture is eschewed in favor of fighting over minutia.
We get what we are asking for.

And then there is me who keeps getting called both tankie and liberal.
This is the part where I would normally state my opinion in geopolitics but since both sides have their sources and "fact checks" I won't. I'm tired of this information war. The only geopolitical thing both sides (yes even the great majority of liberals) can actually agree on is the Palestinian genocide. The rest is split between Western and Anti-Western reporting with both sides having blind spots for sources favouring their side whilst denouncing the sources that do not fit their world views.
And whilst we - the economic left - are fighting an unwinnable war over geopolitics the economic right is making the economy less social whilst radicalising in nationalism and conservativism with every election.
- And then there is me who keeps getting called both tankie and liberal.
  Only one side has a concrete definition so I'll ask the one question that determines if you're a liberal: do you want to overthrow capitalism?
  
  A consumer capitalist society that is focused to see infinite GDP growth is incompatible with saving the planet and collective health. Plus seeing the human being as a mere "resource" whilst promoting individualism is deeply cynical.
  The capitalist ideal is that you can be yourself as long as you can afford it. "Oh so you like playing soccer? Sorry bud, but since you have a higher probability of getting injured you've to pay 100$ more than your neighbour who does not.", "Oh, you're playing video games after your 9-5 office job? Sorry, but you spend way too much time sitting, we will therefore not cover the cost of your knee operation. You should have done more exercise." is peak capitalism, you don't want to live the healthy most health efficient life then better start affording the cost your decisions bring. Meanwhile corporations try to blame their heavy usage of public infrastructure and the environmental impact of their cheaply produced goods on the individual so they can wind themselves out of paying taxes so their leadership & shareholders can get another sweet bonus even tho they all already own 3 yachts, 10 supercars and 5 private jets.
  Why should anyone rationally thinking want to preserve a deeply unfair economic system like capitalism? The whole system only survives because people actually think they could become the next super rich guy by chance whilst in reality over 99,9% fail to come even close to that dream but still everyone thinks they're gonna be the 0,1%.
  What I want is a system where you actually get the chance to make it from the bottom to the top if you are skilled enough. It starts by free public access to education & healthcare, investments into public transport with individual transport only for the last kilometre (or kilometres if you live in the countryside) and a social net for the jobless, homeless and retirees. Even better would be if the state would limit the amount of money the CEO can earn to max 5 times the minimum wage that the company pays and company bailouts at the cost of them becoming (partially) state owned. I have the luxury to live in Central Europe, where public services are in place but I've been watching the libertarians dismantling them step by step over the last few years.
  My family experienced both socialism and capitalism and whilst they love the freedom of travel and the possibility to voice their opinion and go demonstrate they really miss the working atmosphere under socialism where "life was less hectic with more free time and people were friendlier and more helpful. Yes, we had to wait for certain products and maybe sometimes couldn't afford something but the neigbors would always be helpful and borrow their stuff if it arrived first and so would we borrow our stuff to our neigbors in return. The times were tough just like nowadays, but unlike today where we feel like being left alone we felt like going through them together." But sadly my granny also told me a lot of shit she experienced like that she lived near soviet barracks and they'd hold military roll calls at 6:00 am and if a non-soviet wasn't there they'd find them, take them into the backyard and beat the shit out of them whilst racially insulting them and like telling them to admit they were the inferior race because they had to be liberated. But I guess no military in the world is free of nationalist pigs (who else would want to die for their country anyways)?

As somebody who isn't much on social media, I often have to look up slang terms I don't use. It's actually kind of relatable when an explanation doesn't convey the nuances people feel when these terms are just part of normal speech. Also tbh the general idea of mocking people for not knowing things doesn't really seem that cool.

/acc in name
Worse than tankie tbh

i’ve only ever seen tankies complain about the word “tankie” being over used. i guess us non-tankies just don’t hear it very often.
there’s also this false dichotomy i’ve seen many tankies present where they try to argue that people are either liberals or tankies. it is possible to be a leftist and not support authoritarian governments.
- I've seen Anarchists, Marxists, and progressive liberals all called "tankie" before, so either you aren't looking or you consider them to be "tankies." Secondly, I don't know what you mean by "supporting authoritarian governments," leftists don't support the US Empire.

I thought tankie was for any government that used tanks on their own people? So many others should be included, China is missing, I think the Phillipines maybe? There's more. I'm open to being corrected.
- The word "tankie" originated as the OP describes, referring to members of the Communist Party of Great Britain that supported the USSR putting down the color revolutions in Hungary and Prague Spring. Nowadays, it is used as a catch-all pejorative for anyone to the left of the DNC.
  
  That's not entirely accurate. I'm sure some use it that way, but it's not "left of the DNC" to support the modern Russian state and its actions, which is the problem most people have with Tankies.
  
  Examples? Seems like it's used for Russians that fail to stand up to or actively support their government to me.
  
  Somehow supporting colonial aggression by a totalitarian state is a left cause.

354 comments