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important rulepost (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/196@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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[–] 5 points 3 years ago (5 children)

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?

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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    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

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

    Basically, it's Communists who support authoritarianism.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago*

    There's a lot of abstractions in that link but I think the following action is a meaningful distinction to call out:

    The term is also used to describe people who endorse, defend, or deny the crimes committed by communist leaders such as Vladimir Lenin,[7][8] Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Kim il-Sung.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    what is "authoritarianism" to you?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    heirarchy in any form

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    well that's just childish isn't it

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    do you consider that a rebuttal?

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    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

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    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?

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    is revolution not putting the authority of the people over those in power, and bringing those people low? that's "hierarchy"

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago*

    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

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    I mean there is a word for that that's less derogatory: Stalinist

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    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".

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    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"

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