Kick tankies out of 196

Tankies traditionally are associated with communists, but today's tankies (even those that call themselves communists) are really after authoritarianism than communism, and given the history of the name (that they supported using tracks on civilians). I don't think they're is much difference between current communists and current fascists, both groups seem to support authoritarianism and feels like term "tankies" fits both of them well.

🤔 There should be a fediverse-wide rule against genocidal rhetoric. Who cares what side it's from?

I think we should consider the feelings of Hexbear users when posting or commenting.

If you think they'll dislike it, it's probably a good post.

Good

who is hexbear

It became confusing when liberals learnt of the word - now they hurl the word at anyone who dares to remind them that being pro-capitalist is still a right-wing thing to be.

I'm an anarchist, we don't call anybody tankies. Tankies is a term coming from the UK i think the 80s some eastern european nation was taken over by the USSR and some Brittish came out in support of it. So they were called tankies.

These political fighting words need to be layed to rest. Communists hate me as much as anybody else but I'd rather engage on the idea level instead of ad hominem attacks and name calling.

I suspect this whole tankie thing might be a coordinated propaganda campaign geared at discrediting communists and at the same time creating tension between them and other leftits. I suspect this as this whole infighting over small differences doesn't lead to a victory for the left but effectively disables and neutralizes it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsqE9kEsDVY

Maybe it's just the circles I run in, but I understand "tankie" to mean leftists who think Soviet/Maoist/vanguard-party styles of Communist revolution/rule were good, actually, to the point of denying any bad things they did/do as "Western propaganda".

Given the red scare in the US, our ability as a whole to use any sort of leftist political labels accurately across the population is basically non-existent, so I do understand the frustration by both tankies and non-tankie leftists about how the term gets used lately, especially in produce circles on social media.

But again maybe that's just me. I don't know if I would consider myself a communist, but I do consider myself as a yet undetermined variety of socialist, if that helps at all.

...because none of those groups are Tankies and they are all unified against Tankies.

Tankies aren't socialists or communists (not that those two things are the same either). They are the purist ideologues of communism, where compromise is defeat. Rampant in telling you why you're wrong, and why only the purest form of communism will bring nirvana. All without understanding the consequences of what they propose.

Even the Communists don't want them on their side.

Then there's folks like me who have no idea what the term means, you're not alone in your confusion.

Edit: thanks for all the replies folks! TIL

Communists seem to be sad, pathetic people now. I thought ya'll had something, but you're all just a bunch of fractured apologists trying to get one over on each other.

Sad, ya'll actually had something going on at one point, now you're just irrelevant

I mean when people give Stalin shit yet don't bat an eye at what Lenin did, I can safely assume they're going off cold war propaganda.

"We should all look up to Chi-"

instructions unclear-

Tankies can't read.

As someone who's read Marx and lenin, and Bakunin and Goldman... not to mention kroptikin(god damn that guy bullshat his way through conquest of bread)

The anarchists always decry practical steps that are needed for the transition, but they have a poverty of ideas when it comes to propose better alternative solutions to the problems faced by actual revolutions. And frankly, reading their literature I understand why. They're still hung up on ideas and values and not material analysis much more than MLs. They're still trapped within liberal hegemonic thought though they are against liberal capitalism.

The stupid part is that the third-way labor parties and social democrats are doing a much better job at socialism than any Leninist or Maoist tradition. But every leftist space on the internet seems to hate these "fake socialists" as much as anything else. That's really all the evidence I need that these people are more interested in revolution fetish fan service than anything resembling actual statecraft.

Bakunin or Goldman

who are these people, i've only heard of marx and engels. Didn't they found the commie ideology?

Better than a single oligarch for sure.

Tankie has been a thing for over half a century. The Soviets used tanks(from other countries) to invade and crush antisoviet revolutions/protests in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

This was considered shocking for some communists and other leftists while some communists supported those actions. Those who supported this "intervention" were called tankies, in order to differentiate them from the non tank invasion supporting communists.

In Greece(my country), which was in the "West", this event caused the split of the greek communist party(KKE) into 2 separate parties, KKE(Moscow controlled tankies) and KKE "interior"(weak ass soy communists who cant stomach the use of tanks in order to create a better tomorrow).

KKE "interior" kinda eventually became SYRIZA which surprisingly won the elections in 2015(breaking the 2 party status quo). Then the EU decided that the greek people decided poorly and punished them. So when the greek people decided correctly(elected a right wing government), the EU rewarded them. Carrots and sticks make the world go around. Thats how you make a majority leftist country, into a right wing one.

PS Greek debt is as high as it has ever been but Greece issued negative interest bonds. Tell me again how is the economy supposed to work? Noone talks about the greek debt anymore, it's a non issue, Greece has been accepted into the EU's infinite money glitch scheme.

This is more a lemmy thing. Tankie is an older word but like you dont usually run into stalinists in the wild too much. The Lemmy creators and one of the biggest instances when the site was still small was a communist one promoting not just like the ideal of communism but legit stalinism.

As a result there was a lot of weird very pro russia pro china pushback and whataboutisms on the platform in the early days before the number of non stalinist users drowned them out

That one didn't come from nowhere, it's in the porn they like.

tarted saying cuck out of nowhere

You know they have been wanking of to cuck porn for decades... it was bubbling below the surface...

who is they?

The economically motivated NATO intervention in Libya was justified with false claims of a genocide. This was the conclusion reached by the British parliament report. Now Libya is a war-torn failed state with open-air slave markets. That intervention was less than a decade after “Iraq has WMDs,” a lie that has killed over a million people. When we have all witnessed these events in our lifetimes, I think we should be a little skeptical when enemy states are vilified. I don’t know if public backlash could have prevented the intervention in Libya, but I hope we’ll at least try to prevent the next one.

Am I an apologist if I say, "It's okay for them to exist, they just need to stop doing bad things"?

Only difference is in magnitude. Authoritarian countries are remarkably efficient at killing huge numbers of people.

Have you tried therapy and/or a mosh pit

The type of "communist" that supports authoritarian, usually state capitalist regimes like the USSR, China, and the DPRK.

The lack of meaningful worker enfranchisement in any of those regimes should tell you all you need to know, really - they're red-coded fascist lunatics.

@backhdlp the term was invented to describe those communists in the West who thought Rákosi (a Hungarian Stalinist) [edit: whoever it was, there's a communist historian correcting me downthread] did nothing wrong when he and Kruschev sent military tanks into Hungary to force them to stay in the Soviet Union. That was in the 1950s.

Wikipedia on Hungarian Revolution

It seems to be commies getting angry at other commies, which seems very counterproductive

Hakim has a good video about it https://youtu.be/LcJ5NrJtQ8g?si=Fgc2HTHJHd-pJvPC

This might help https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

If communism isn't inherently authoritarian then why are all the existing communist countries so authoritarian?

stalinists basically

So, either defederate yourselves from lemmy.ml (nobody would do that)

I mean, if push comes to shove why not? It’s not the “main instance” anymore, it’s only got twice the users of Hexbear. Around a third of .world. I don’t think defederating would be that bad of an idea if they get too oppressive.

I feel like wanting to defederate from .ml is showing your whole ass for all to see. I get wanting to defed from hexbear and grad because they genuinely have problems that even I've personally ran up against, but ml? You just hate anything left of hilter if you have an issue with them.

Lemmy.ml is NOT defederated with lemmygrad.ml or hexbear.net

In fact, the lemmy.ml admins/devs are admin on lemmygrad.ml

Choose an instance that defederated with hexbear and lemmygrad and you won't see many tankies. Even if they post on Lemmy.ml you won't see it because that is how federation works.

If you don't mind, what is beehaw doing?

So, either defederate yourselves from lemmy.ml (nobody would do that), or fork lemmy into a new clean place (not impossible, but difficult to perform)

How forking will help in any way?

Theoretically, they're authoritarian leftists. In reality, leftism has little to do with it. They glorify former communist authoritatian countries and are anti-west no matter what the west does. There are pro-russia tankies (Lemmygrad.ml) and pro-china tankies (hexbear.net), with some overlap between them.

The types of leftists that will defend any regime that opposes the US/the west, and say any ethical/human rights violations done by them are either necessary in the moment to fight capitalism or is just fake news. You usually find them celebrating China's government.

“Tankie” is a term that was originally coined (ironically, by Marxist-Leninists themselves) to describe members of the CPGB (Communist Party of Great Britain) who justified the Soviet Union’s invasion of Hungary in 1956. It has since become a catch-all term used to describe (self-described) leftists that slavishly adhere to the propaganda of or justify the actions of authoritarian regimes that are (or are perceived to be) “socialist” such as China or (bizarrely enough) modern-day Russia.

they're communist scum, wannabe terrorists

Every time

Waiting for an answer

If your instance has defecated from Hexbear, then you wouldn't see any of their posts or comments.

It's a pejorative term to describe authoritarian Chinese government apologists. Historically it was used to describe communist members that defended the use of tanks against civilians during a Hungary uprising.

Authoritarian communists.

Anyone to the left of you

"Tankie" is a term that was originally coined (ironically, by Marxist-Leninists themselves) to describe members of the CPGB (Communist Party of Great Britain) who justified the Soviet Union's invasion of Hungary in 1956. It has since become a catch-all term used to describe (self-described) leftists that slavishly adhere to the propaganda of or justify the actions of authoritarian regimes that are (or are perceived to be) "socialist" such as China or (bizarrely enough) modern-day Russia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

they're communist scum, wannabe terrorists