I keep hearing the term in political discourse, and rather than googling it, I’m asking the people who know better than Google.
The word Tankie originates from 1950s British Communist circles. Specifically, it was used by British Communists to derisively describe their comrades who supported the 1956 invasion of Hungary by the Soviet Union.
Images of the Soviet invasion featured a lot of tanks, hence, “Tankie”.
After that died down, the term didn’t come back into use really, until the 2010s, when leftists on the internet started using it in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way. It was fun to bring back a stupid sounding, incredibly niche, British slang word.
At some point the word breached containment and started to be used by liberals, in a very cavilier sort of way. I’ve seen people use Tankie to describe anyone from Marxist-Leninists, to Marxists generally, to Leftists generally, weird right-wingers who converted to Russian Orthodoxy, pro-Palestine activists, mods of Lemmy instances someone doesn’t like.
Shit, I’ve seen literal Anarchist get called Tankies.
Basically, it’s a meaningless nothing word now, that’s a bit like your boomer grandpa who still thinks it’s the Red Scare, calling Joe Biden a Commie Pinko.
So don’t worry about it too much.
Anyone ideologically left of Richard Nixon according to our local blue conservatives.
Nixon was a tankie according to them. He’s responsible for the EPA and OSHA.
Left of Reagan.
You say this ironically, but there are several relatively recent U.S. presidents or people in their administration who have said things that would get them branded tankies today.
I’m thinking specifically of a speech Jimmy Carter gave where he said it’s no wonder North Korea ended up the way it had, considering we bombed every building over two stories into the ground.
Kissinger is also obviously evil but only because of his realpolitik - by modern ideological standards where any anti-Western power is treated as worse than Hitler by even social Democrats, his dispassionate readings would get him labeled a Marxist.
A cute water cistern.
A size of tank, smaller than normal tank, but bigger than tankette.
It’s what centrists call anyone to the left of netanyahu.
When a South Asian calls the British monarchy fascist or Churchill a genocider in my experience.
Isn’t monarchy already a bigger bad word in itself than fascism?
Not according to the Yakubians over at the miserable island.
I actually always wondered a bit about the line between fascism and monarchism. To the casual observer they might seem nearly identical, though I wonder if in historical materialist terms it’s a reactionary attempt to backslide to feudalism rather than progress capitalism to socialism.
Fascism doesn’t necessarily have the hereditary property of monarchism. Power can easily get transferred to other families, not related by blood.
A lot of these comments reminds me of people posting on conservative chats asking what a socialist is. About the same amount of mouth foaming.
I would like to remind people about vaccinations against rabies
Someone who believes people outside of the United States of America are also human beings.
It’s what Liberals call a person who opposes genocide
A slur mainly on the internet against those leftist (usually Marxists-leninist) who oppose western interventions, sanctions, coups and wars against countries and governments labeled as “authoritarian”.
originally used by UK communists party trotskyist wing in support of Hungarian -56 crushed uprising against those who opposed it, calling them tankies. Vaguely same as “stalinist”, but it pretty much has lost that meaning in modern use.
People fed up with the the (false) sin/cos dichotomy and want to get people to use tan more often.
the (false) sin/cos dichotomy
but… but… if sin/cos is false, that is literally tan ! (yes, I was frequently bullied in high school, why do you ask?)
Tan is the tao out of which the sin and cos arise
Removed by mod
It’s essentially just the modern day “commie”, used to carry out mccarthyite witch-hunting against anyone perceived to be “anti-white”.
It really is adult name calling, and it further polarizes the political spectrum by naming every single fucking mindset and ideology combination you can think of. It’s just not constructive at all.
We need to talk about ideas and issues and how we can understand and compromise for one another.
OP, what have you unleashed.
I just thought this was where you came to ask questions.
It is, I’m just kidding around. Your question was innocent enough, it’s just that the comments look like a battlefield.
you’re on the .ml instance, which is an incredibly political place, so you’re gonna get a lot of flack
I think every instance has pretty strong political views
If I wanted to make a high engagement post I would post something like this. Are there any other controversial, not clearly defined words to ask about?
Socialism and communism seem to be very misunderstood outside of places like Grad, Hexbear, Lemmy.ml, etc. Some thing social programs are socialism, others think the Marxist conception of communism is incompatible with administration, some think any form of market or private property has to be eradicated for socialism to exist, some think it’s about worker/employer relationships, etc. I think it would be a decent idea to form a better understanding.
For clarity, socialism is best described as a transitional status between capitalism and communism, by which public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy (controls the large firms and key industries at a minimum) and the working class is in control of the state. This fits cleanly with socialism in practice and with Marxist conceptions of socialism.
I honestly saw someone use the word, wondered what they actually meant by it, and came here to ask. TBF, I didn’t know much about what “here” was, at the time.
Lemmy is developed by communists, and Reddit banned a bunch of leftist subreddits like r/chapotraphouse, r/GenZedong, and r/TheDeprogram. As a consequence, a bunch of communists are on Lemmy by ratio compared to Reddit, though Lemmy.world is defederated and blocks 2/3rds of the major communist instances, so you can’t actually see them. They usually are on Lemmygrad.ml or Hexbear.net if you want to see the communist side of Lemmy.
Lemmy.ml is the dev’s testing instance, so that’s why a lot of communists are here but also why it’s not defederated by Lemmy.world.
Someone mentioned that, but I have yet to see why dot world blocked the commie instances. Care to share?
Here’s Lemmy.world explaining why. Essentially, for having stances common to communists (opposing western hegemony is a big one they took issue with). Lemmy.world is run by your standard DNC-style liberals, they generally oppose Marxism and communism, and uphold the DNC as good. Some are also zionists.
Now, that’s my perspective as a communist. I’m a Marxist-Leninist, my perspective is as someone who reads theory, does light org work, etc. I’m not a fan of the DNC, I support socialist states, etc. Others may give a different perspective, but it’s also worth noting that there are entire drama communities dedicated to taking comments out of context, witch-hunting communists, etc and this is made even worse by defederation because it creates this “boogeyman” that .world can’t actually see.
Hope that helps, honestly you can just scroll grad and hexbear yourself for a bit without making an account to see what’s up.
Thank you for the reasonable reply that didn’t attack my character for asking. Apparently, that’s too much to ask of some people.
No worries! A lot of people get emotionally invested in drama, which is why tons of the definitions you’ve been given for “tankie” are people that don’t actually exist. It’s like saying “communist but boogieman.” This creates the response from communists defending ourselves from slander, which is why this became a mess. Kinda like if you went into a random room and asked people what “woke” meant.
Lemmy has few conservatives (outside of instances like sh.itjust.works), so the biggest ideological conflict is communist vs liberal, with anarchists kinda doing their own thing and aligning more or less with the former or the latter.
From what I’ve seen, it appears a very vocal minority of .world users cannot tolerate any criticism or viewpoints opposing capitalism/liberialism or NATO.
Removed by mod
Lol
Shit, my comment got deleted, do you remember what it said? I can’t remember. Im sure it was probably something irritating for a communist…
Complaining about communists like you’re trapped in the 1950’s
Dont forget the past, lest youre doomed to repeat it.
In 1950s everyone learned the horrors of a communist system, and now 70ish years later, those with 1st hand experience are mostly dead.
I mean, yall confuse me. In your opinion, should we not have fought communism in the 50s?
Removed by mod
