this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2024
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"Tankie" is a term referring to authoritarian communists, due to the tendency of authoritarian communist states to use tanks in crushing protesters - such as the Soviet Union crushing Hungarian workers in 1956, or China rolling tanks into Tienanmen Square against student protesters in 1989. "Tankie" is also used for apologists for these regimes.
Tankie is sometimes misused as "Someone to my left I don't like".
That's where the term comes from. Before that, it was common among the western left to support the Soviet Union and don't allow criticism. When they crushed the Hungarian workers, most western leftist redrew their support, except for tankies. That's where they got their name.
I’d say “often misused” these days. It’s become a common Reddit term to describe anyone left of Obama 🙄
That may be, I haven't been to Reddit in a while. On here, there's some misuse, but a lot of people who it actually does apply to, mostly from .ml anymore; formerly Grad and Hexbear when they were federated. Fuckin' playing apologist for Uyghur genocide, North Korean Juche, saying Hungarian workers were 'fascists' who had to be crushed. Weird stuff. Hate seeing them around.
Yeah I’m not too jazzed about uncritical support for China at this stage. If you do even a little bit of reading about China, you can learn that they are not perfect and deserve criticism for these things.
I have a feeling the ML’s who ban for this do it out of fatigue. It’s all anyone wants to talk about when there are other things to learn from China too.
I’m not a tankie, for what it’s worth, I just like to play devils advocate to try and understand where people are coming from and find common ground.
If anyone wants to learn more about China, I suggest reading David Daokui Li’s new book “China’s World View”. It gives an explanation for westerners from a Chinese economist perspective on its goals and culture.
There was also the 1953 East Germany workers strike
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_uprising_of_1953