this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2023
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Not the person who you replied to but isn't the name tankie referring to the people who support the use of tanks as a tool of political repression? Like specifically Stalin using tanks to commit mass murder and being ok with that because the massive amount of civilians killed by tanks "deserved it"?
Not super informed but that was my impression of the name. If that is the origin, I don't personally think it's derogatory. Political violence is a complex topic but uhhhh I think using tanks to murder civilians instead of political targets/active combatants doesn't make people the good guys. It's basically just a name to refer to people who are ok with use of mass violence to subjugate people as long as the end result is achievement of a political goal. Genocide isn't cool and people that glorify that aren't cool either and should feel ashamed (pretty sure it also ties into denying the Holodomor genocide so). It's basically just a name for people who think it's ok to enforce political will over other people with mass violence. Who tf thinks that Stalin was actually a good guy? Lol
I'm actually listening to the Revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan right now and I finally got to the Russian revolutions. I'm only up to 1906 after 39 episodes so I can't speak to Stalin yet. What's interesting is that the revolution of 1905 was actually pretty spontaneous with people all over coming into simultaneous revolt due to being pissed off at how their life was going. The socialist movements kind of joined/co-opted/spread information to people but it really was a mass organic grassroots movement that lead to (ultimately failed) reforms (due to the Czar being you know... A power hungry Czar). A general strike shut down the country. That's a people's movement... The tanks will come later to repress people who didn't want to do what Stalin wanted them to do.
What's sad is that it seems to me like the people who glorify the violence of Soviet Russia/China/etc are making the same mistake that happened after the The Great Terror of the French revolution of 1789. The fear of repeating the violence of the French revolution hampered revolutionary potential across Europe for like 100+ years. Russia was able to finally get a constitution in 1905, over 100+ years after the French because monarchs heavily suppressed revolutionary thought after seeing how Robespierre/etc went sicko mode. Will the violence of the soviets/China hamper revolutionary thought for another 100 years just like the fear of French violence did? Seems to me like the tankies are making the same mistake.
pretty close. it was originally used derogatorily to refer to communists who supported the crackdown of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, and has since become a broader label against perceived or actual authoritarian communists, especially those that support political violence and/or repression of democratic reform movements. (in even more recent times, like many political slurs, it's also been misused to refer to basically any socialist, authoritarian or no)
Ah, I see.
I personally don't think people have to put too much stock into whether tankie has been used to refer to all socialists or not - those are the kind of people who don't understand that there are more political dimensions than left/right. And even then, people will learn more about the terms and the meaning of the word will become more well known in common use.
Personally, I think it might be useful to keep the term around because it helps observers to understand that there are different kinds of leftist politics and not all leftist thought = Stalin's USSR. Putting a name to the specific brand of authoritarian violence helps people understand that it is something that is acknowledged, named, and disliked by different kinds of leftists. Probably good for recruiting from the general public who will feel more comfortable exploring leftist politics without having to feel like they are doing something bad if they can dip their toes into leftist spaces and think "well I should be safe because they say there are no tankies allowed here". Lemmygrad has a literal tank in the profile pic for the instance... I feel like as long as that kind of thing is around, we need words to describe it especially for newcomers to leftist politics. Particularly as people on the right love simplified labels and ingroups/outgroups, labels can create a sense of comfort before telling them to read literature from the 1800s to understand what they are seeing. Memes are incredibly powerful tools used in the right way! Personally, I can understand having interest in marxist-leninist ideology and whatnot but I really can't get behind genocide denial or use of indescriminate suppressive violence.
As I said I'm listening to the Revolutions podcast right now and the Bolsheviks have just become the communists... Lenin put into the constitution that states are free to secede from the USSR but then immediately have to not actually allow that because for example Ukraine is so resource essential... What's interesting to me learning about this stuff is that part of it is happening before the end of WWI so part of it is trying to figure all this out with imminent German imperialism on the table. And also that they all thought that other states would rise up in socialist revolution at the same time to make it all work out... It's actually very interesting to learn more about how people THOUGHT it would all go vs how it actually all went. Tbh I just think authoritarianism is just part of Russian culture because there were secret police and imperial strongmen with monarchy, then communism, and then oligarchical capitalism... Three different political systems but new boss is the same as the old boss. Russian military doctrine has also always been good defense and horrible offense and human wave attacks for every political system they've had. I really think that authoritarianism is just deeply baked into the actual culture of Russia (and China) and not so much the political system tbh. These are just some random thoughts but overall I think that most random people associate political violence and oppression with leftist politics so we need language to describe how to get into leftist politics without obligatory gulag jokes.