Nah g I’m not a fan of anybody who makes excuses for genocide, oppression of LGBTQIA+ folks, “forced resettlement”, or authoritarianism in general.
Tankies are nowhere near as bad as the far right but they’re hardly allies. Historically, any time authoritarian leftists have taken control they’ve murdered all the anti-authoritarian leftists they could find in order to cement their power.
That fictional tankie in your head living rent-free would like you to defederate
Fun fact Cuba is currently the best for LGBT rights, and the reunification of Germany dragged east germany decades back in LGBT progress… just some food for thought
Never heard of “tankies” before a week ago. Is this just a Lemmy thing? I’m new here.
I’m an anarchist who gets called a tankie on Reddit for using the word “imperialism” and I approve this meme
Weird meme this one. I’m 100% against tankies, or at least the type of communist here who seems hellbent on defending regimes like the Chinese communist party or (especially weird) Putin’s Russia. There’s plenty of stuff wrong about western nations, but that is no excuse for defending dictators and authoritarian regimes. And I’m definitely not the angry pepe in the image, because by all classifications I would be part of the “woke left”.
I think communism is a fantastic idea but don’t think it’s truly workable in practice, regrettably. True democratic socialism seems more realistic, but also has problems. But being a communist and then just defending all communists regardless of what they’re doing is problematic.
Yeah exactly. I don’t mind people who read about communism and think it’s a good idea. I used to think communism was better than capitalism when I was younger as well, although I was not at all as well read up on it as some people here. But a subset of them (who I refer to as tankies) appear to support all kinds of horrible regimes because they used to be “communist” like China or sometimes even Russia.
What’s your opinion of Nelson Mandela? The man wrote a book(although a revision of another book) called “How to be a good communist” and the very first line of that book is:
A Communist is a member of the Communist Party who understands and accepts the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism as explained by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin , and who subjects himself to the discipline of the Party. (See notes 1, 2, 3 & 4)
I never said I was 100% against the idea of communism, nor against people who think it’s a good idea. I’m simply against the subset of commies that seems to blindly defend horrible regimes like the Chinese communist party. And sadly the latter seems well represented here, which is the group I’d refer to as tankies.
”Defending Putin’s Russia” is a strawman. I’ve never seen a single person you libs call ”tankies” defend Putin on here.
Maybe I could’ve phrased that better, since I’ve indeed only seen 1 or 2 of those and most of them don’t go that far. The rest were “only” defending countries like China, which still isn’t exactly great.
downvoting it doesn’t make it any less true :)
WFT is wrong with you?
I read books 😱😱
i’ve read marx. at precisely no point does he say anything justifying the various atrocities state capitalist countries have committed. i think he’s wrong about some stuff, but even if you accept that his word is gospel, tankies are still just people who took leftist principles as an excuse for the imposing the kind of brutal authoritarianism that leftists are supposed to be against.
If you’ve read Marx, then you’ve surely read Engels as well?
On Authority - Marxists Internet Archive https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm
yes i have, and his argument is fucking stupid. marx is all right, but i straight-up hate engels.
Are you saying they are the same, or that people think that they are the same? I’ve seen the meme used both ways
I believe the point is that they’re equally vague knee jerk reactions to seeing trigger phrases and relevant social signifiers, as opposed to legitimate and useful political categories
What would you call people in favor of even authoritarian communism? (Such as in the USSR and China?)
Communist, Socialist, on the right side of history, feel free to take you pick from the 3
Sounds like you struggle with nuance.
Tankies are a very specific subset of “the left”.
They support stalinist policies specifically.
Thats very narrow in comparison to a vague “the left”
ed. downvote me, idgaf. But maybe reply, discuss your position
nuance
But maybe reply, discuss your position
I’m going to take this point in good faith, even though I disagree with it. The people that scream “tankie” often use the word in exactly the same meaningless way that the people who scream “woke” do, then they claim it has a specific meaning but clearly apply it very very broadly to basically anyone who is a marxist and waves a red flag.
But, since you suggest you’re willing to get into nuance. I’m going to throw reel off a few groups, people and countries. Would you mind telling me which ones you consider tankie and evil, vs which ones you consider good?
The Black Panthers
Fred Hampton
Huey Newton
Albert Einstein
Nelson Mandela
Che Guevara
Fidel Castro
Thomas Sankara
Chavez
Cuba
Venezuela
Bolivia
Vietnam
Laos
Nepal
Nicaragua
Angola
Kerala district of India (governed by the Communist Party of India)
It’s ok to not know one way or another too btw, I’m just interested in a “tankie” “not tankie” “never heard of them” response on each of them.
People aren’t shouting “tankie” at you. You people are self identifying as tankies.
The shouting came before the self identifying.
Saying tankie is tongue-in-cheek, or simply to upset the people that scream it constantly. I’m a marxist-leninist, formerly an anarchist. I would still be an anarchist if climate change weren’t putting a time limit on the need to get something done too. I decided that I could not sit by knowing hundreds of millions of people were going to die in 30 years (closer now tbh but it was a few years ago that I moved to a leninist toolkit now) while also knowing that anarchism was not equipped to generate the needed revolutions required to save any of those lives. Marxism-leninism and dem-cent parties on the other hand have a proven track record of creating revolution within that kind of timeframe.
I will probably return to anarchism when such timelimits are not in effect. It’s just not morally justifiable for me to sit around using a toolkit that’s not equipped for the time limit when we know what we know.
Just a thought, maybe it came with the fawning over of Putin and the CCP?
God this is so boring mate. It didn’t. Nobody likes Russia. Russia is a capitalist shit hole. The only takes that the left has which is used to claim we support Russia is that the war was caused by nato and that pouring weapons into does nothing to save any lives, on the contrary it just enriches the billionaires to the military industrial complex and vastly increases the number of deaths on both sides.
China on the other hand we have some nuanced takes on but because you all know absolutely nothing about it and behave like they’re animals incapable of independent thought and self-governance discussing anything with you ends up a case of bashing our heads against a wall because you don’t have real conversations about it. You don’t listen and don’t learn anything. You don’t even say the name of the party correctly (it’s cpc not ccp). If I told you 95% of Chinese citizens are happy with and support their government you’d claim I’m wrong and when I provide evidence for that you’d claim it’s only because of propaganda/information control and when I provide evidence that it’s not because of that you’d find some new deflection or topic to divert to. So what’s the point?
On the offchance you actually want that nuanced discussion we can have it but you need to start behaving more academic and stop talking like a terminally online reddit teenager. Come on.
