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
Tankie is a floating signifier. If you ask twenty liberals what a tankie is you’ll get
- Twenty different answers, and
- Several people upset at being called a liberal because they don’t have even a Wikipedia-level understanding of liberalism or socialism.
100 percent agreed. They’ll group anything too far left of them under the same name. Don’t care anymore. If they want to whine then fuck it, I’ll wear the term.
Great synopsis. I may have found a twenty first definition if you want!?:-P
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Fredrich Engels, 1872: On authority
Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is. It is the act by which one part of the population imposes its will on the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannons — by the most authoritarian means possible; and the victors, if they do not want to have fought in vain, must maintain this rule by means of the terror which their arms inspire in the reactionaries. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if the communards had not used the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach them for not having used it enough?
Therefore, we must conclude one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don’t know what they’re talking about, in which case they are only sowing confusion; or they do know, in which case they are betraying the proletarian movement. In either case, they serve reaction.
Found the tankie! ☝️
How about, I don’t know, establishing some sort of democracy? Just a crazy idea
Maybe capitalist states should do that, but they won’t because they’re capitalist states. They’ll form bourgeois democracies at best and fascism at worst[1][2][3].
You misunderstood me. I’m saying after the revolution. The Engels quote implies that because revolution is authoritarian, so is whatever system it implements. Which I disagree with
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?
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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?
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:
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. "
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I agree with this. I see a lot of people erroneously label tankies “fascist,” but fascism is an entirely distinct ideology with different end goals.
I also wouldn’t call myself a tankie, although I’ve received some nasty DMs calling me one, which is somewhat humorous to me since I identify most with anarchism. I feel like some people think a tankie is defined as “anyone to the left of Ronald Reagan.”
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.
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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.
i am a meat popsicle
Wrong answer
Yes
I think people would probably call me a tankie
Why
I am to the left of Ronald Reagan. A lot of people would classify that as tankie.
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NO
I like having no boots on my neck, not just changing out what demographic is wearing it
The .world libs just couldn’t help themselves but ruin our circlejerk.
Sure fuck it. I’ll Tankie. Castro is a hero. Western news knows nothing of glorious DPRK Juche, and comrade Stalin did nothing wrong.
Yes.
Maybe?
What the heck is a tankie, anyways? Every person I have asked has had a different answer, and the vast majority of these definitions don’t really fit any major communities on Lemmy, not even Hexbear or Lemmygrad.
I have been called a tankie for numerous reasons, like saying that people should read Marx, to saying the US is a net negative on global stability.
Is being a Marxist sufficient for being a tankie? What about a Marxist-Leninist? Are only Dengists tankies? Is Anarchism the only non-tankie leftist position? I’ve even seen Anarchists be called tankies over on Lemmy.world, which is currently undergoing Red Scare-era anti-leftist witch hunts (like return2ozma’s recent ban for “bad-faith spam”).
I think this question needs a definition first. If you ask 10 different people what a “tankie” is, you’ll get 11 different answers.
I mean we asked you and got six, so…
I’ve seen all of them, I don’t personally endorse any of those definitions, haha
yes
but no in the way you mean
