Tankie is a floating signifier. If you ask twenty liberals what a tankie is you’ll get

1. Twenty different answers, and
2. Several people upset at being called a liberal because they don’t have even a Wikipedia-level understanding of liberalism or socialism.

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. "

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.

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.

i am a meat popsicle

I am to the left of Ronald Reagan. A lot of people would classify that as tankie.

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.

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.

NO

I like having no boots on my neck, not just changing out what demographic is wearing it

Yes

I think people would probably call me a tankie

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.

yes

but no in the way you mean

I think it’s just mostly teen drama from Lemmy.world users. :)

If Tankie means somewhat supporting what the URSS/China did, then YES.

I’m not communist, I’ve never read the manifesto but I’m more aligned with their ideals and the materialism philosophy than anything else, and I saw this quote that marked me. I paraphrase: “… the worst communist implementation was still better/on par than the best capitalist country”.