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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] 43 points 10 months ago

It's supposed to mean "authoritarian leftist" (the concept of authoritarianism as a distinct political trait / goal is a key part of horse-shit theory), but the assholes who say that also insist that "true leftism" is inherently libertarian and cannot be authoritarian, and so actually tankies are just red-fash masquerading as leftists -- they hate to even acknowledge a family resemblance.

So these people based their understanding on the political compass (which is trash), but then also decided that their own frame of understanding was shitty and broken because by having an authoritarian-left axis at all, it didn't condemn tankies enough.