this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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What is a tankie?
So if you know what the word "commie" meant during the cold war, "tankie" means the same thing, just said by people who don't want to seem like elderly boomers
Since we're counting to ten:
Classic tankies are the authoritarian leaning communists, that is communists willing to use (military) power to accomplish their goals and will voice those more aggressive sounding opinions.
No, that's not true. Authoritarians can't be communist, because communism is stateless. You mean authoritarian socialists.
Read On Authority by Engles.
Ah, thank you!
It used to be a word for people who defended Stalin sending tanks to Hungary in the 50s. It caught on in leftist discourse as a word for leftists who excuse illegitimate state violence, domestically and abroad. Though on Lemmy, like reddit before it, it's mostly thrown around at anyone who disagrees that the US used to a be radiant light in the world until 2016 or anyone left of Pelosi.
Stalin was dead by then!
For God sake, could people learn about things before giving their takes?
Is anything else wrong or are you just gonna be anal about something that doesn't even pertain to the point?
Westerners really are unbelievably arrogant; not spouting off about things you demonstrably don't know even the most basic facts about should be normal behaviour
Correct etymology of the word!
LMAO no much worse, it's "leftist I think is crazy", so who is and isn't a "tankie" depends on the person using the word; although it generally means someone who is pro hardcore Communism a la Stalin.
Only if you're too historically illiterate to think Stalin was still alive
Lol that makes a lot of sense. Thank you!
The nationalists hanging around in leftist spaces
Thank you!
Thats not correct, by the way
Radical centrists who want a form of socialism where everyone is oppressed by the state, thereby combining the ideas of the left and the right.
That sounds.... terrible.
Yes, which might be the give away that it's a strawman, and nobody actually believes in that or wants that.
They claim to be the only real leftists, because communism requires putting down revolutions with tanks and supporting genocidal dictators. They call it "the dictatorship of the proletariat", where proletariat means worker. They think a dictatorship can be leftist.
How many of them ate paint chips as children?
To me seems to be people that think that the evil imperialist actions of countries that claim(ed) to be Communist are excused by the evil imperialist actions of the USA.
Got it, thank you!
You're about to get 10 different answers, most would say
Any user from the Lemmygrad and Hexbear instances, and some from Lemmy.ml
Genocide deniers
Pro-Russia and pro-China users
I think it's just a derogatory term for anyone that's anti-imperialism/liberalism
I have never seen a tankie oppose liberalism. I've seen plenty of tankies say they oppose liberalism, but then they act like liberals. It's very confusing.
Nah we anti-imperialists don't fit in to that
See, I don't even know. The term is used so broadly. It's basically just "Lemmy users I don't like"
Got it, thank you!
People who support real communism. Think the USSR and Communist China. They're called tamkies because they used tanks to kill civilians.
How exactly do you define this?
Well obviously it's only real communism if being gay is illegal and the government sells lumber and steel to Nazi Germany to use in weapons.
Thank you!