Remember kids, Tankies wants to undermine democracy - same as facists.

      • Grayox ( Grayox@lemmy.ml ) 
        23·
        3 years ago

        And you are extremely out of touch if you think tankies could ever manifest into anything more than a threat than a Unabomberesc bad actor. Tankies arent organized whatsoever in the west, while Nazis are have actual rallies in broad day light, while the GOP is actively championing causes that they support. Tankies want to kill landlords, Nazis want to kill Jews, Black People, Queer folk, and Liberals that wont toe the line. I dont agree with either of them, but i can recognize that the Nazi threat is much more metastasised in America and a much greater threat. If you cant see that you need to get your head out of your ass.

          • regul ( regul@lemm.ee ) 
            15·
            3 years ago

            they’re too busy wanking off to their own perceived superiority

            Unlike all the people commenting on this post!

            This is just another stupid online factionalism post. None of what anybody says online (especially on a tiny niche forum) matters one fucking bit.

            Antifa, feed the homeless, or get social housing or public transport built

            This is what matters. And I guarantee you there are MLs participating in black bloc protests, Food not Bombs, and all sorts of other useful things you can think of, but your tendency doesn’t matter when you’re actually out there helping people. Did you turn to your fellow protestors and ask them what they think about China or what they think about some shit that happened a hundred years ago? Or did you just do what needed to be done in the moment?

            • barsoap ( barsoap@lemm.ee ) Banned from community
              2·
              3 years ago

              factionalism

              You sure you aren’t a tankie or why else would you use the word with a negative connotation? When two actual leftists meet there’s going to be three factions, yes, but shit is still going to get done. Factions means plurality, plurality means diversity of tactics, all that is good shit.

              And I guarantee you there are MLs participating in black bloc protests

              MLs, yes. As in Trots and stuff. But actual tankies? Nope. That would require a capacity to cooperate, they even discourage participation internally (mostly by claiming it’s a waste of time, doesn’t contribute to the revolution, whatnot) as it’s dangerous to them, in the sense that people who have not yet completely bought into the cult might choose praxis over brainwashing: Those things are by and large run by Anarchists, with Anarchist organisation principles, and that shit working flies right into the face of democratic centralism.

              • regul ( regul@lemm.ee ) 
                9·
                3 years ago

                …okay. I guess I missed the dude with the clipboard checking everyone’s tendency at the protests but I guess you saw him.

                I think posts like this are just emblematic of being too online. And if, like you’re saying, tankies don’t do anything because that would be counterrevolutionary or whatever, then what’s the problem? Keyboard warriors aren’t changing shit.

                I find all this weird exclusively online rhetoric around what’s an acceptable type of communist to be exhausting. My metric of whether or not someone is a good communist is if they help their community and help workers. You can have whatever takes you want on the kulaks or the Hungarian revolution as long as you’re standing next to me at the soup kitchen. You know why? Because nobody’s thoughts about the Hungarian revolution or even the war in Ukraine matter one iota. In the west we’re all so far from even seeing a lever of power that it doesn’t matter one whit what any of us think. There’s not about to be a tankie coup d’etat of the American government any sooner than an anarchist one.

                All this post and the responses to it are are leftists wrestling in the mud to see who can have the fewest allies when they get crushed by global capital.

                • barsoap ( barsoap@lemm.ee ) Banned from community
                  6·
                  3 years ago

                  And if, like you’re saying, tankies don’t do anything because that would be counterrevolutionary or whatever, then what’s the problem?

                  I find all this weird exclusively online rhetoric around what’s an acceptable type of communist to be exhausting

                  Oh it’s not at all exclusively online. Like, I’d prefer not to be put into a gulag, thank you, or have a vanguard start revolutions when conditions aren’t met, ultimately delaying the actual fall of capitalism. This shit has real-world implications, and them being tolerated in online places gives them power to recruit, to propagandise, ultimately to act like that AFK so we can’t have that.

                  Yes I’m saying tankies should be deplatformed. Deal with it.

          • Grayox ( Grayox@lemmy.ml ) 
            6·
            3 years ago

            I agree that the purity check politics is counter intuitive, and also why they pose no threat of violent revolution in the west. The real threat to Western Capital comes from what the they have labled Cultural Marxism because the glaring hypocrisies of Capitalism are impossible to logically refute, hence the rise of Fascism. Also:

            • barsoap ( barsoap@lemm.ee ) Banned from community
              3·
              3 years ago

              State capitalism is not worker ownership. Hence the “capitalism” part. Say what you want about Lenin but he used accurate terminology, there.

        • lemillionsocks ( lemillionsocks@beehaw.org ) 
          2·
          3 years ago

          And you are extremely out of touch if you think tankies could ever manifest into anything more than a threat than a Unabomberesc bad actor.

          We’ve literally had and still have totalitarian regimes that claimed to be communist what the hell are you talking about?

    • Umbrias ( Umbrias@beehaw.org ) 
      71·
      3 years ago

      Nazis are literally just less common here. There’s not much reason to constantly talk about them in a meta sub fashion when they are already so rare I haven’t seen one in weeks and are routinely and swiftly banned.

      Tankies on the other hand, are not.

      Your protest just looks silly and obviously ridiculous. Not talking about the problem of Nazis in online discourse 24/7 isn’t an endorsement of them, different spaces have different problems.

      • Khotetsu ( Khotetsu@lib.lgbt ) English
        7·
        3 years ago

        Exactly. Shocking as it may be to some people, we can hate 2 flavors of fascism at the same time. And it’s not like lemmy as a whole has had to defederate from 2 Nazi instances in the past couple of months due to their awful behavior, which cannot be said for a certain 2 tankie instances.

    • LazyCorvid ( LazyCorvid@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 
      64·
      3 years ago

      Sure, nazis are a bigger problem than tankies, but no one here needs to be told to look out for nazis. That’s kinda self explanatory.

      But tankies are a lot less well known, but still have a very destructive ideology. Just look at the comments here — there are multiple people who asked what tankies even are.

      Saying “Kick nazis out of 196” would be redundant, which can’t be said for “Kick tankies out of 196”.

    • Mirodir ( Mirodir@discuss.tchncs.de ) 
      31·
      3 years ago

      I’ve seen this reposted on the original 196 on Reddit multiple times so saying this is the worst 196 on the basis of this meme being posted makes no sense.

      Also nazis are very unlikely to be participating in this community anyway, and if they are then they are either hiding to the point of indistinguishably or getting the ban-hammer really quickly. In the latter case, the problem is solved by the mods and in the former case, with the internet’s anonymity, someone fully to be a member of a digital community is just a regular member of the community.

      Tankies on the other hand share many more values with the core demographic of this community so they might be less inclined to fully hide their views and their views simmering through might not immediately get them a ban (depending on what they let shine through, of course).

  • Stoneykins [any] ( Stoneykins@mander.xyz ) English
    65·
    3 years ago

    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.”

    • vonbaronhans ( vonbaronhans@midwest.social ) 
      22·
      3 years ago

      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.

    • wewbull ( wewbull@iusearchlinux.fyi ) 
      15·
      3 years ago

      …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.

      • Stoneykins [any] ( Stoneykins@mander.xyz ) English
        14·
        3 years ago

        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.

      • OurToothbrush ( OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml ) Banned from community
        4·
        3 years ago

        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.

        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.

    • CaptKoala ( CaptKoala@lemmy.ml ) English
      4·
      3 years ago

      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

  • Queue ( queue@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English
    41·
    3 years ago

    Hey everyone, just a reminder:

    • Yes Nazis are also bad, we don’t have Nazis pop up anywhere near as often as Tankies
    • We remove and ban Nazis too
    • We’re aware of Lemmy’s main code writers being ML’s, and it’s not great.
    • Please report any bigot bullshit, or fascist/tankie dogwhistles.
    • TheSaneWriter ( TheSaneWriter@lemmy.thesanewriter.com ) English
      40·
      3 years ago

      The Soviet Union did not kill all those nazis out of the goodness of their hearts, but rather because they were in active warfare with Nazi Germany and thus needed to kill a large number of nazis to win the war. Throughout history, authoritarian “socialists” have backstabbed, betrayed, and otherwise killed anarchists and democratic socialists. I absolutely do not trust tankies to fight against fascism in the United States or Europe in any effective manner. Russia and China are not friendly countries to queer rights, though being gay is legal in both countries they do not have any anti-discrimination laws that apply to queer people and the reason there are fewer hate crimes is simply because they don’t count them. Russia and China are also not socialist, Russia is an explicitly oligarchical capitalist Presidential republic and China has a mixed economy that heavily relies on markets with private owners. This is honestly a good part of the reason I’m suspicious of tankies, the United States sucks but that doesn’t mean that every nation that opposes the United States is automatically good.

        • TheSaneWriter ( TheSaneWriter@lemmy.thesanewriter.com ) English
          3·
          3 years ago

          From what I can tell, China has a low rate of hate crimes against queer people in general, though the culture still has issues with enforcing conservative gender roles (as does basically everywhere else, this isn’t a China-specific problem). For happiness, the data I could find generally pointed to the United States being happier, but I think that measuring such a thing is difficult and rife with systemic issues (Source). China has significantly better homeownership statistics than the United States, I agree with you on that. The United States and China seem to have a comparable number of doctors per capita, with the United States having significantly more nurses. Healthcare in the United States is significantly more expensive, though I think that’s a somewhat unfair comparison as the United States is uniquely bad in this regard; there are other nations with similar political and economic systems to the United States with significantly better healthcare.

          I think saying that Biden is failing is an overstatement. Biden has made very unethical decisions regarding Israel in recent times but has also been a very pro-labor president, his NLRB has been possibly one of the most pro-union iterations of the institution in its history. Biden’s approval rating is poor, but that’s typical of modern U.S. presidents. In terms of the general election Biden is polling fairly evenly with Trump, but this far out from the election that could change drastically, and Trump himself is drowning in legal issues that are drastically reducing his ability to campaign. I’m not sure how the 2024 election is going to go, but I think Biden has a decent chance.

          A mixed economy is viable, in fact, it’s probably the best type of economy. Most nations that are economically successful have mixed economies. My main problem is that China claims to be a socialist economy when it is not. China has private companies, which are owned by a private owning class. China has a stock market with major stock exchanges, and though its government exercises greater control over private interests it still has private interests. An economy that would at least be far closer to socialism would be one where private ownership of corporations was illegal, all corporations would either be employee-owned or state-owned and within employee-owned corporations, there would be regular elections to determine upper management and to make important decisions. There are other models of how to build a socialist economy, but none of them involve private ownership of economic structures. Beyond the non-socialism of the economy, I also believe that China is not a proper democracy. The only roles that are directly elected by the Chinese people are local legislators, who then vote for the legislators above them and so on. I am strongly against this form of democracy, as it leads to enough abstraction that by the time you reach the national legislator there is a strong chance the local people don’t even know the people being elected. In my preferred model for a representative democracy, the voters vote for every level of the legislature.

          • mycorrhiza they/them ( mycorrhiza@lemmy.ml ) 
            1·
            3 years ago

            In China it’s also illegal for gay couples to marry and adopt

            Most American states only legalized same-sex marriage and adoption in the 2010s. Like America, China has socially conservative older generations and socially progressive younger generations. The country and its people are not monolithic, they’re not some alien land where people are fundamentally different from here. Support for marriage equality is widespread and rising in China, they appear to be on the same track as America.

            stop pretending like you care about LGBTQ rights

            Stop making paranoid assumptions about people. How is anyone supposed to communicate when that is the dynamic?

            • FaeDrifter ( FaeDrifter@midwest.social ) English
              2·
              3 years ago

              It’s really simple, stop cherry picking bits of information to try to make any one country look good. Don’t be a propagandist. Be aggressively critical of America and China for every single way in which they oppress LGBTQ people.

          • Rambi ( Rambi@lemm.ee ) 
            4·
            3 years ago

            Cities in China are ranked in terms of population and overall prosperity. So Beijing, Shenzen, Shanghai and maybe some others are tier 1. Then other ones, like perhaps Tianjin and Wuhan would be tier 2 etc. I think India has a similar system, probably because they both have at least one or two hundred cities each

    • FaeDrifter ( FaeDrifter@midwest.social ) English
      8·
      3 years ago

      the Soviet army killed more Nazis than any other in history

      Nah, actually Hitler killed more Nazis than anyone else in history, including Hitler.

      Believe it or not, fascists also kill fascists.

    • hemko ( hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English
      7·
      3 years ago

      Red army also raped more women and children than any other in our written history. Just because they helped clean up some shit in Europe doesn’t make them good guys

  • Vespair ( Vespair@lemm.ee ) 
    37·
    3 years ago

    I think most of you need to worry way less about sounding sufficiently the “right kind” of leftist and focus more on promoting leftism through action. More than half the “tankie” discourse is, at best, a needless distraction from actual progress. Lose your buzzwords and stop the ideological purity pissing contest and actually put in the work in your communities instead, goddamn.

    • nicetomeetyouIMVEGAN ( nicetomeetyouIMVEGAN@lemmings.world ) 
      6·
      3 years ago

      No fuck that bullshit. The largest leftist majority is aligned with non-revolutionary socialist democracy… Tankies are actively undermining the largest leftist group by refusing to partake in democracy. And now WE need to stop complaining and work together and not be so pure. Fuck off with this absolute disgrace of a discourse. The group that controls the purity of its members by refusal to partake in progress through democratic means are tankies. They want it all to go down in flames. Their idea of progress is revolutionary uprising.

      • PM_ME_FAT_ENBIES ( PM_ME_FAT_ENBIES@lib.lgbt ) English
        4·
        3 years ago

        I for one 100% believe in purity tests. For example, anyone who hates trans people isn’t a real leftist, doesn’t belong in the community, and needs to fuck off. Purging the community of reactionaries is the only way to protect our most vulnerable members and create a unity of people who truly believe in equality and justice. There are lots of marginalised peoples who feel disrespected by mainstream left movements and cannot afford to participate in direct action for their own safety. Liberty for one means liberty for all. We need to kick tankies out of the left so we can actually get some shit done

      • floppade [he/him] ( floppade@lemm.ee ) 
        12·
        3 years ago

        I’m not sure it’s that different. In place of a real personality, you get the country’s persona. With US foreign policy for example it matters little who leads because they are adhering to the persona. While the majority of Americans don’t want war, the US persona does. That results in the same thing (a population ruled by one idea set) just a hologram of person rather than an actual one.

      • jeremyparker ( jeremyparker@programming.dev ) 
        7·
        3 years ago

        Many oligarchs is better than a single oligarch. In true capitalist fashion, they are sociopathically self interested and their undermining of each other can occasionally benefit the rest of us.

        And one time they almost got into a ring to fight, which was pretty funny.

        • mycorrhiza they/them ( mycorrhiza@lemmy.ml ) 
          3·
          3 years ago

          Both situations are bad, but I don’t think oligarchs hinder each other that much. They compete, but in their overall control of society they are fairly unanimous, because they all share the same basic material interest to pay us as little as possible for as much work as possible and to destroy any trace of meaningful working class political power that might challenge them.

          • jeremyparker ( jeremyparker@programming.dev ) 
            1·
            3 years ago

            For the most part, their interests align, that’s true. And it could be copium to say that many is better than one - since that’s what we have.

            At least if there was only one oligarch, we could have direct communication - as it is now, all the oligarchs can just kinda shrug their shoulders and mumble something in the universal language of plausible deniability.

  • fritz ( fritz@feddit.de ) 
    29·
    3 years ago

    Bro what, if we can stop leftist infighting for one fucking minute that would be great. We all have 90% of the same goals so how about we work on that and not build artificial walls to those to the left of us. Also being pro western „democracy“ is cringe.

    • FluffyPotato ( FluffyPotato@lemm.ee ) 
      13·
      3 years ago

      All tankies seem to want is a strongman dictator and to hate the US. I don’t care about the US but I’m definitely opposed to having a strongman dictator. Like if there was a group that wanted 90% of what I did but also wants to form an ethnostate, I would not work with that group.

    • nicetomeetyouIMVEGAN ( nicetomeetyouIMVEGAN@lemmings.world ) 
      7·
      3 years ago

      Artificial walls? You’re literally implying that if you’re pro democracy you aren’t leftist. You yourself are putting up a wall.

      When we ask tankies, in lieu of a communist state, to vote as left as possible, they start foaming at the mouth how cringe lefties voting are… I mean that’s a pretty fucking high wall… How else are we, the general non-revolutionary left, ever going to fucking ‘work together’.

      • Rooskie91 ( Rooskie91@discuss.online ) 
        4·
        3 years ago

        People are incapable of fathoming that resistance AT EVERY LEVEL is necessary for a successful revolution. Voting is just as important is throwing Molotov cocktails is just as important as producing leftist propaganda is just as important as non-violent protests are just as important as protest involving private property destruction is just as important as militant opposition under oppressive regimes. Resistance at all levels is necessary because when you throw a Molotov cocktail without any of the other stuff going on, you’re just allowing the media to propagandize another story about violent and insane leftists acting rashly in an out of touch manner with society. The violent and insane leftists theory is harder to propagandize when its clear that the rest of society agrees with the person throwing the Molotov cocktail. Stop worrying about what other leftists are doing, and join the resistance at whatever level your comfortable with. If you’re coming on the internet to argue about what leftists policies are the best or most effective, you are missing the point and damaging the cause. This is doubly so if you’ve only ever read theory and have never joined an in person organization. If you’d like to argue less and do more, get off of the internet and go volunteer with a leftist organization. We don’t have time to argue and in fight while capitalism is working like a popular, well oiled oppression machine.

            • PM_ME_FAT_ENBIES ( PM_ME_FAT_ENBIES@lib.lgbt ) English
              2·
              3 years ago

              Yeah, marxist-leninists. There was this guy called Joe who really liked Marx and Lenin, but he didn’t understand them. So he created this new ideology called Marxism-Leninism that he claimed was a synthesis of their two ideas, but was actually about establishing a one-party state and abandoning the goal of world communism. In the end, he never succeeded in creating a communist society, he just invented state capitalism.

              So now Joe Stalin’s fans run around calling themselves marxist-leninists and say we need to achieve a classless, stateless communist utopia by establishing a nondemocratic state ruled by an elite class called the “vanguard party”. They’re super cringe, but they think they’re to the left of anarchists because they use more violence against minorities or something

  • mycorrhiza they/them ( mycorrhiza@lemmy.ml ) 
    28·
    3 years ago

    what democracy?

    https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

    Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

    […]

    In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.

    something like 70% of Americans want universal healthcare and yet it remains politically impossible.

    • nicetomeetyouIMVEGAN ( nicetomeetyouIMVEGAN@lemmings.world ) 
      5·
      3 years ago

      Leftist who want to fix this are by far the largest group of leftist. And there have been multiple successful leftist political victories. You can not get these victories without a considerable amount of leftist and left leaning voting. And it’s your discourse that just wants to pretend that nothing can be done, it’s too late, Democracy isn’t real… That is undermining leftist progress in our current society. And this is the problem, tankies aren’t interested in protecting, fixings or saving current society. They want everybody to suffer the breakdown of society in order to hopefully get a revolutionary uprising that magically turns everything into a communist utopia. It’s poison and you’re injecting it.

      • mycorrhiza they/them ( mycorrhiza@lemmy.ml ) 
        5·
        3 years ago

        And there have been multiple successful leftist political victories. You can not get these victories without a considerable amount of leftist and left leaning voting.

        The entire conclusion of the study I linked is that this is not happening.

        There’s nothing wrong with voting, I vote every two years, but it’s dangerous to convince yourself that voting is enough. You need to also organize. You need to strike. You need to unionize your workplaces. If you really want to push the government into conceding real improvements in our lives, you need to apply direct pressure on a large scale. And when the crackdown comes, you need to collectively organize to help each other. Bail people out of jail. Help people pay rent when they’re fired for trying to unionize. Doing this on a large scale is how you get actual fucking change, and it will never happen if people lie to themselves that voting alone is sufficient.