The use of the word “tankie” these days is so over-used it has become synonymous with “left of the DNC.” I’ve even seen Anarchists described as “tankies,” it’s getting ridiculous. Still, the word “tankie” is most often used by liberals against Marxists, though they won’t admit to having an anti-Marxist bias, mostly because they think they agree with Marx generally but are unfamiliar with Marxist analysis.
Really, more people need to read theory before having an opinion on it to avoid speaking past each other. I wrote an introductory reading list for Marxism-Leninism if anyone wants to get a better understanding of Marxism.
It’s both overused in the way you describe and yet obscure enough that only terminally-online political people have even heard of it.
Yep, it’s a deeply unserious term. It’s only used unironically, in my experience, by people who haven’t read theory yet devote a huge chunk of time to debating online, which is largely a waste of time to begin with. That’s why I focus on just trying to correct misconceptions and provide my reading list when appropriate, debating is just an outlet for frustration for most people. It’s truly rare that debate convinces anyone.
thank you for that and the “what is socialism” post; but i’m encountering that theory is somehow still a HEAVY read for someone like who me has been inside the leftist sphere of influence for his entire life; there’s needs to be some sort of sound-bite-able way of sharing these messages and i wish that ml’s had the capitalists’ deep pockets that guarantees a deep bench of talent that could figure something like this out.
it reminds of my own own experience of going from technical support to software engineering by simply reading. your ignorance makes it daunting as first and you have to put in A LOT of effort to understand it when you don’t even know the basics and you’ll get there eventually if you stick with it; but most won’t stick with it and if you’re REALLY knowledgeable at it, it becomes difficult to understand why it’s difficult for other people.
It’s certainly difficult, but when in doubt I love sharing this person’s articles as more bite-sized bits of theory and soundbites from Michael Parenti speeches, haha.
even more material to “read”; now i’m wondering if i’ll ever be finished with any of it. lol
We’ll never be finished with bourgeois theory: it’s what we’ve been fed our entire lives, usually without even realizing it. It’s just common sense.
i’m convinced that if i had fewer vulnerable identities that i would never have been able to see through practice all the “common sense” bullshit levied against me all my life and i also think that’s the only reason why i try when others with identical backgrounds, like my family, don’t bother; i’ve learned the hard way that ignorance will hurt me long before it will hurt them.
That does help. After all it was black Americans who invented wokeness, before white liberal Americans co-opted it and perverted its meaning. The marginalized have always experienced the fascism that’s been baked into the American project since the beginning.
i suspect that facism is going to force me to move back into the country that my parents immigrated from if trump gets his way and in the same way that incidents like operation wetback deported millions of american citizens.
Haha, if you want the most bang for your buck I stand wholeheartedly behind my introductory reading list. I truly put a lot of effort into it and several comrades helped tremendously.
i’m starting there because i’ve learned that audio books are the best way to cheat at “reading” lol
Thanks! Feel free to ask questions 🫡
You could start with communist content on YouTube. That tends to be more easily digestible and eases you into reading theory later on.
I can recommend channels like Second Thought, Yugopnik, Hakim, revolutionaryth0t and Ian Neves/História Pública (you’ll need to use subtitles for this one if you don’t speak portuguese).
ha! i’m already subscribed to half of them, but thanks nonetheless for the two i didn’t know about.
As I said in another comment, Tankies are often in support of the modern Russian state and the modern CCP. These are not positions that are “left of the DNC”.
Supporting the PRC is absolutely a Leftist position, as a Socialist country and a rising superpower it’s the current best hope for Socialism, whether you agree with all of the CPC’s actions or only some.
Critical, reserved support for Russia’s temporary and strategic anti-US Hegemony stance does not mean Leftists critically supporting Russia agree with the Russian state or support it.
Support for Russia’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine in no way supports anti-US hegemony stances. They’re literally stealing children and indoctrinating them-the same thing the US did while committing genocide against the First Peoples.
Just opposing the US doesn’t make Russia the good guys.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t “genocidal,” what would be closer to genocidal is the West’s intention to fight Russia to the last Ukranian standing. Several times, Russia has tried to reach a peace deal, only for the UK and US to step in and tell Ukraine not to take it. The “stealing of children” is taking orphans from warzones and making sure they don’t die.
Russia’s goal isn’t to ethnically cleanse Ukraine, nor is it to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. Russia’s goal is to totally ruin Ukraine’s military capabilities as a means to prevent further extension of NATO encirclement around it’s borders. This is a consequence of the 2014 Euromaidan coup, and goes all the way back to the dissolution of the USSR. When the USSR was sliced up and sold to the West for profit, 7 million people died, and a Nationalist movement led to domestic Nationalist bourgeoisie reclaiming industry from the West, beginning a long series of NATO expansion and encirclement to force Russia to open themselves up again for the West to profit.
No, Russia are not the “good guys.” No Communist believes Russia has morally just intentions and is here to save everyone. Communists believe Russia is acting in its own material interests, and those interests happen to align against US-Hegemony, which Communists see as the primary block for progress.
Communists have as such advocated for both countries to negotiate a cease-fire since the beginning of the invasion. An ideal situation would be a cessation of NATO expansion and no bloodshed, but Communists have no real control over that.
Removed by mod
Staying ignorant is cool, you heard it here first folks.
This one isn’t just staying ignorant, they’re loudly proclaiming their ignorance as if they’re proud of it. Yikes.
I first read it in Warhammer 40000 lore, how nice for libs to be uncritically internalising over the top satirical nazism.
Cool 👍
Not believing in blatant right-wing propaganda is a leftist position. Parroting right-wing propaganda is a right-wing position. You are parroting right-wing propaganda. Please stop doing that, especially if you consider yourself on the left.
The biggest irony of our times is blood thirsty liberals who are cheering for as much war as possible running around calling people tankies.
Iraq war supporters calling anyone a tankie, should be immediately flattenned by a tank
It’s always funny to me how the go-to examples of like, “See, they just blindly support anything the regime does!” tend to be relatively minor events after the state in question has considerably chilled out. Like, Stalin and Mao did much worse things compared to Khrushchev/Hungary and Deng/Tienanmen. The problem being, communists are generally willing to criticize things like the Great Leap Forward, because, surprise surprise, we don’t just blindly support anything they do. The reason for this is that the word tankie isn’t meant to describe someone who blindly supports everything a communist country does, as it’s claimed to, but rather, someone who supports anything any communist country does.
The fear Western leftists had that led to the term being coined was that people who had previously been critical of Stalin and Mao would respond positively to the countries moving away from their approach, and so they had to create a label to discredit such people and associate them with the previous leaders. It’s one of the reasons Khrushchev’s approach was questionable, because no matter how much you try to distance yourself from someone like Stalin and paint yourself as “one of the good ones,” you’re still never going to appease the Western left that demands absolute perfection, let alone the West in general.
If you don’t have an opinion on it, you might when you learn the fascists were putting chalk marks on the doors of communists and jews
The first time I saw this word being used was here on Lemmy, when I arrived during the reddit exodus. I’m not a native English speaker though.
It was used on Reddit, but not widely. Mostly by insufferable ‘enlightened centrists’ who didn’t want to engage in good faith argument.
It’s now a blanket term for “anyone left l politically left of me” used by insufferable liberals who don’t want to admit that trying to curry votes from Republicans lost them the election.
For a time it was being used to describe actual Chinese and Soviet sympathisers, but given how quiet that particular group has been after the election, I suspect it was interchangable with state sponsored bot accounts.
Exactly this! I’ve never seen the term used by anyone but liberals to taunt, attack or divert a debate.
As somebody who isn’t much on social media, I often have to look up slang terms I don’t use. It’s actually kind of relatable when an explanation doesn’t convey the nuances people feel when these terms are just part of normal speech. Also tbh the general idea of mocking people for not knowing things doesn’t really seem that cool.
/acc in name
Worse than tankie tbh
i’ve only ever seen tankies complain about the word “tankie” being over used. i guess us non-tankies just don’t hear it very often.
there’s also this false dichotomy i’ve seen many tankies present where they try to argue that people are either liberals or tankies. it is possible to be a leftist and not support authoritarian governments.
I’ve seen Anarchists, Marxists, and progressive liberals all called “tankie” before, so either you aren’t looking or you consider them to be “tankies.” Secondly, I don’t know what you mean by “supporting authoritarian governments,” leftists don’t support the US Empire.
