Remember kids, Tankies wants to undermine democracy - same as facists.
this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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These threads are odd to me, considering how many people call all communists tankies. The word seems to be used by anarchists, conservatives, communists, anti-communists, and more, and every person has a slightly different definition.
Half the people here could consider the other half to be the tankies everyone is mad at.
To be clear this isn't me saying "be nice to the tankies" this is me saying "the overuse of this word is confusing the shit out of me."
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.
Speak for yourself... anarchists are very prone to using that term to describe the technocratic left. I know, I'm one of them.
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.
Capital co-opting and perversing anticapitalist rhetoric to its own benefit, in my Lemmy? It's more likely than you think.
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.
I think you kinda missed my point. Sure, socialists and communists don't like tankies, but conservatives think the socialists and communists who don't like tankies are tankies. They aren't "unified against tankies", they don't agree who, what, and where "tankies" are.
They literally support a transitionary period and a capture of the bourgeois state for the interests of the proletariat instead of its immediate dissolution, compromise is the thing ultralefts criticize them for.
Anyone who supports the idea of communism isn't very intelligent to begin with. But Tankies are those who support oppressive dictators that claim to aline themselves with the left no matter what.
They support China in light of thier awful track of human rights and terrible government policies.
They support Russia in the Russia vs Ukraine conflict.
They support Hamas instead of the Palestinian people and dislike Isreal people because thier allegiances lay the opposite to the United States.
Anyone who makes a wack generic statement like that can't be particularly "intelligent" either
That doesn't feel like a good argument, there are many reasons why a government descends into any of those, for one the CIA is known to disrupt any socialist/communist attempt at government and that can and did cause brutalism.
I mean if any attempt to give an alternative to the suffocating order of power is going to have to survive against the pressure of such power of course the only "successful" ones will have traits of authoritarism and strict even violent control of power itself.
Now don't misunderstand me I'm not saying that authoritarism is good or even that communism would certainly be able to lead to a better rule, I'm arguing that we don't know that because there are many other factors that can lead to the failures of a system.
Also really a blanket statement followed by generic stereotypes meant to undermine any other opinion will not lead to any intelligent discussion and betterment of any of the sides, we can do so much better.
Why do you think communism "lead" to authoritarianism? Do you think communism is inherently authoritarian? Is the distinction between Marxism-Leninism and Anarcho-Communism and other 'communisms' meaningless to you?
What do you think communism means?
You lack substance, attack the idea not who voiced it. I am NO communist, but you are intellectually dishonest. If you don't like communism (the idea) critisize the idea. You don't even seem to have read "das Kaptial" so how can you even know what Communism even is to begin with?
Authoritarianism, brutalism and opression are independent of economic model. In argentinia they had the most free market capitalism ever in the 80s and they are guilty of all three: Authoritarianism, brutalism and opression.
Please do not conflate these things. The idea and a person claiming to implement that idea are not the same thing. Communism is an idea. Tell us what exactly about that idea you take issue with. Nobody is saying USSR was an El Dorado of free speech. Tbh I would probably have been murdered in the USSR but I probably would have shared the same fate in many other places like post ware spain ....
... name one country where communism was adopted in the first place lol
Democracy wouldn't work if you tried to set it up in middle ages Europe either. All that proves is that the dominant kingdoms would close ranks and sabotage you, because you're an obvious threat to their power.
It doesn't mean that democracy is a bad system, or that it would never work. Although plenty of cogent and well lettered people over the centuries have spilled boatloads of ink arguing it was "unnatural" (goes against human nature) or "naive" (it might be nice, but the people can't be trusted). But it still happened. It just took a while to get there.
I'm a bit of a gradualist in that respect, I admit. But that's another topic.
Says the person so smart they capitalize the word communism.
Good job projecting there... I award you ten out of ten PragerU coins for that one.
Oh, it has nothing to do with the fact that Israel is a genocidal white supremacist settler-colonialist state?
This isn't fair. Anybody who can read through "das Kapital" must not only be very persistent and have endurance, no they also have to be fairly intelligent. I am surprised by the number of people who claim to have read "das Kapital" it has 4 VOLUMES ! 4 you can die if your bookshelf doesn't hold and these 4 volumes fall on you.
Being a communist is just a function of your social class in society. If you are a laborer or poor you are naturally going to seek to pursue your interests for example you do not want to labor and have all the value you create go to the owners. You want to have a bigger share of the outcome of your labor. Communism is the consequence of this. Just like the royals and aristocrats and the captains of industry have the conservative ideology to further their interest so do the poor have communism. Neither conservatism nor communism make you smart or dumb. All it is is people pursuing their interest based on what position in society they hold. Both are ok. And none are dumb. It is inherently intelligent to pursue your own interest together with others who share that interest.
Edit: I am not getting into the support of any regimes or factions of wars as that is a can of worms i have no appetite for. 😅
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
Tankies are 'communists' ala Mao and Stalin, i.e. okay with the violent opression of democratic movements and minorities.
At the end of the day, who gets to decide what the ideal "Worker's Paradise" looks like? You? Me? Tankies are convinced that their vision is correct and will broker no compromise
Any 'Worker's Paradise' wherin the freedom of speech is curtailed and protestors are shot in the streets isn't one I want to live in.
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