What are tankies? What does sea-lioning mean?locked

No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 251 points – 12 months ago

I've run across these terms several times, but without enough context to figure out what they mean. Could someone help me out, please?

ETA All of you are amazing! A huge thank you to everyone who responded, and an extra thank you to those who have provided links or explanations to further and/or related information. I am learning so much by reading all of these comments!

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Sealioning is the constant bad faith, feigning ignorance, asking for evidence of everything under the guise of “just asking questions”. Then ignoring any evidence presented and moving on to the next demand. Used to shut down discourse entirely.

Tankies are leftists that defend or deny the atrocities committed by authoritarian communist regimes like the Soviet Union or the CCP. It was first used to describe communists in Great Britain that defended the Soviet Union for using tanks to crush anti-communist revolutions.

It doesn’t have to be leftists, anyone who does that is a tankie.

If you like the USSR and Communist China, you're probably a leftie.

Probably ≠ all
Nope, if you do (after Deng for China, after Stalin for USSR, for other time periods you could be a leftist) and have extensively learned about it you probably think you’re a leftist but you’re actually a rightist. Think about how exactly the sum of their policies align with left values more than right values.

Nope, if you do (after Deng for China, after Stalin for USSR, for other time periods you could be a leftist) and have extensively learned about it you probably think you’re a leftist but you’re actually a rightist.

So you think Jeremy Corbyn isn't left? Lmao. What about Lula? Every Cuban politician?

Think about how exactly the sum of their policies align with left values more than right values.

This is you trying to re-align left vs right as culture instead of economic. It's seriously america-brained bollocks and is not how anyone in the rest of the world views left vs right.

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May I introduce you to the Far Right in America? They are often keen to downplay any Russian acts of aggression. ETA: Not saying that they would fit the definition of tankies, just that you don't have to be a leftist to (overtly or tacitly) support Russia.

G.O.P.’s Far Right Seeks to Use Defense Bill to Defund Ukraine War Effort

The group’s proposals have no chance of passage, but they have further mired the military spending bill in a partisan fight and highlighted Republican divisions over the war.

https://archive.is/2023.07.13-123054/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/us/politics/defense-bill-republicans-ukraine-war.html

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Never heard the phrase sealioning before, but I have seen it everywhere.

Tankies are leftists that defend or deny the atrocities committed by authoritarian communist regimes like the Soviet Union or the CCP. It was first used to describe communists in Great Britain that defended the Soviet Union for using tanks to crush anti-communist revolutions.

Ironically history has proven that decision to have been the correct one and even the soft-left here in Britain today acknowledges that the people who were called "tankies" originally when that happened were all completely correct.

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