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important rulepost (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

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?

[-] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

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.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

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

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Which makes them no different from the western imperialists they hate so much.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago
[-] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

genocide denier and hard authoritarian. fash dressed in red, basically.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

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

Basically, it's Communists who support authoritarianism.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

what is "authoritarianism" to you?

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago
[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

well that's just childish isn't it

[-] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago

do you consider that a rebuttal?

[-] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago

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

[-] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

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?

[-] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago

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

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 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

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 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.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

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.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

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

[-] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

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".

[-] [email protected] 1 points 2 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"

this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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