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What does tankie really mean at this point? (hexbear.net)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I keep seeing "fuck tankies" everywhere, and seem to see people getting called "tankie" for any number of things--I used to feel like I knew what it meant (the formal definition, which I thought was the only application) but that's clearly not the case anymore. Saw someone get called one because they... Liked the idea of universal basic income and wanted walkable cities? And now the same sentiment is on a large number of Lemmy communities, lol.

I feel like I've been living under a rock.

Edit: Wow, I guess it's just as meaningless of a term now as it seemed. At least it's a nice, bright flag for ghouls not worth engaging with meaningfully, lol. I saw "fuck tankies" on a genderqueer community and got pretty confused on how the two ideas correlated in the slightest, so I guess that was the tipping point on me finally asking about it.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Eventually it drifted from it's original meaning to instead mean "Marxist-Leninist, or an adjacent Marxist ideology (anything from Trots to MLM or MTW, but mostly ML) which is an ideology I hate due to American propaganda," and I think it was basically used that way for a long time; then more recently it's become a term for "Anyone who doesn't unequivocally condemn designated enemies of the US state." This more recent drift means an anarchist or even a social democrat who doesn't support Azov Battalion, the IOF or Syrian "moderate rebels" can be labeled a tankie, making it essentially a meaningless term.

The nice thing is that if someone calls someone else a tankie you can basically immediately know that the first person is some disgusting globe emoji ghoul.

EDIT: Of course, you sound like you already know this, but for anyone who doesn't, the original meaning was "ML who didn't support the fascist counterrevolution in Hungary."