this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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Honest question - what's a tankie? I feel like I've seen them mentioned a ton on Lemmy but I'd never heard the term prior to a few days ago. From the image it looks like a maga/skinhead combo?
They're communists, but not your every day "people should hold the power" communists. More like "tianenmen never happened, and if it did it wasn't that bad" type
Which makes them no different from the western imperialists they hate so much.
exactly
Tankie was first used for that kind of communist supporter who kept singing Russia's praises/defending Russia even when Russia was sent 5000 tanks to crush a popular uprising in Czechoslovakia (the "Prague Spring") on August 20, 1968. Some people just couldn't accept that a communist country could do something bad, so defended the action.
Nowadays, it's used to refer to those that are strongly supportive of Russia, completely ignoring the awful things they do. Often these days there's a lot of anti American bent to it. Like, anything anti America and American "imperialism" must be good - even blatant and awful Russian Imperialism.
These days they calmly explain how Ukraine just needs to come to the table and discuss peace (ignoring that Ukraine wouldn't exist if they did so) and blame America for the war in Ukraine for... well... they're America. The people who want war, or are causing the war, are those giving Ukraine weapons - not the country that is literally invading it.
Thanks for the explanation. I believe they are also called Rashists, at least Ukrainians call them that.
I think a better term is "Campist" which is the trend within revisionist marxists to side with one imperialist camp to oppose another. it's the same shit the SPD did during WW1
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
Basically, it's Communists who support authoritarianism.
what is "authoritarianism" to you?
heirarchy in any form
well that's just childish isn't it
do you consider that a rebuttal?
yes because it's not anything intelligent enough to be thoughtfully argued against. a 7 year old could see the holes in such an idea
I oppose one more system of authority than you do, in the interest of ideological consistency, intellectual honesty.
are you taking the position of a literal child?
is revolution not putting the authority of the people over those in power, and bringing those people low? that's "hierarchy"
that depends if you draw distinction between the people and the state (which is merely an abstraction of capital)
state capitalism, as defined by lenin, is not a classless society, and is indefensible as a liberatory philosophy.
just as liberalism abolished the monarchy only to replace it with a dictatorship of private capital, authoritarian socialism replaced monarchy with a beaurocratic ruling class and unilateral control of the means of production.
the neck cares not the color of the boot
Thanks for posting this.
how is a small group of people commanding a big mass better?
at least over time there will always be power hungry asshole or just an idiot in position of power.
no power for no one is the only concept that can really work over time. but you need self-responsible and educated people for that
edit: and yeah, it is a utopian idea, but one I believe it is worth working for
There's a lot of abstractions in that link but I think the following action is a meaningful distinction to call out:
Originally, it was used to describe communists who followed the party line and supported suppressing Hungarian workers with tanks.
Today it means ultra-authoritarian marxist-leninist.
I mean there is a word for that that's less derogatory: Stalinist
It's not entirely the same though. Some of the "tankies" in the West seem to be Maoists more than Stalinists, as far as I can tell. Besides, some (many?) Stalinists also consider the term "Stalinist" derogatory, and prefer to call themselves "Marxist-Leninists".
Ok but let's not pretend that either Marx or Lenin envisaged their form of communism as what Stalin was doing
It's no different to "free speech" suddenly meaning "free hate speech, but restricted speech on anything else"
We want to use the more derogatory term because Tankies don't just have bad takes, but are actively harmful and dangerous counterrevolutionaries.
For context, the image originally said kick nazis out of punk.
Oh okay, got it. Thanks!
genocide denier and hard authoritarian. fash dressed in red, basically.