Remember kids, Tankies wants to undermine democracy - same as facists.
Just like fascists, tankies could theoretically hang out here without getting the boot. It's just that genocide denying authoritarians cannot be tolerated in a tolerant, democratic society. The reason tankies and fascists get the boot is because they can't resist trying to bully and intimidate those that find their views abhorrent. They simply can't resist being terrible.
They're cultists with views that can't stand up to scrutiny, so they need use other tactics to spread their shit and gain power. They use the real downsides and weaknesses of democracy to argue we need an even worse system. Then they argue you actually hold the worst views of their enemies, even though they usually support exactly the same things that make those enemies bad. Tankies claim you're a free-market liberal for opposing them, when the countries they support are state capitalists. Fascists claim you're against freedom of speech, while they are always trying to ban ideas they hate. Some of them are misguided and believe their own lies, but others are just awful people.
Tankies traditionally are associated with communists, but today's tankies (even those that call themselves communists) are really after authoritarianism than communism, and given the history of the name (that they supported using tracks on civilians). I don't think they're is much difference between current communists and current fascists, both groups seem to support authoritarianism and feels like term "tankies" fits both of them well.
I learned about a week ago why they are the way they are. See the soviet union was the closest in their mind the world has ever come to communism, so even though it's fallen into fascist oligarchy, they still hold hope that the anticommunist putin is going to rise up and reestablish global communism once more. The only problem with that is that... well Russia doesn't want communism. This is their playbook Yeah, that doesn't look socialist, that looks like "we tried communism it didn't work so lets do fascism this time" so they end up throwing their support towards red flavored fascism since it's the best chance (in their minds) at getting global communism. When the alternative is an american nazi world order, or tiny countries with no power, you don't really have much choice.
But here's something I want every single one of you to realize having read all of that: Even the most fascist redfash still would have killed the nazis. The same cannot be said for the average (in-power) liberal today. Anticommunism is always pro-fascism. Never let your critiques of the left turn into support for the right.
EDIT: Case in point, the person i'm responding to is never going to see this post because they're on a nazi bar instance that banned me.
Even the most fascist redfash still would have killed the nazis.
They'd kill who they define as nazis. I find that tankies' (especially Hexbear) definition of nazism doesn't entirely correspond to mine or that of most other people. So this is not something to be super optimistic about.
It is a bare minimum that the current world order can't even pass. They can't even go a week without funding a mass ethnic genocide.
Lol redfash killing nazis isn't worth praise. Redfash kill each other the first chance they get. They are so paranoid when they come to power they purge anyone and everyone they can.
The users are a mixed bag but the mods/admins absolutely are in the business of running a nazi bar. They're doing the classic strategy of passively protecting fascists while actively suppressing those calling out the fascists. They also ban people who are open communists.
Meanwhile, .ml keeps banning my accounts for just commenting on c/worldnews these days.
I'm not a troll. You can go look at my contributions. I made some hexbears look like idiots and now they've got me on a leash.
I've learned the fun way not to bother with hexbear users. They're only here to antagonize nazis so best not to get in the way of that.
I muted a couple dozen hexbear accounts when the whole instance was out seemingly trying to antagonize the entire fediverse.
Turns out that got the vast majority of annoying trolls from there.
It feels shitty until you see them do it to an especially crap person, then you can't help but sit back and distribute upvotes.
so even though it’s fallen into fascist oligarchy,
You know any left wing project after being overthrown by the US would also end up a fascist oligarchy right? As was the case with the illegal and undemocratic dissolution of the Soviet Union brought about by the US.
Even the most fascist redfash
A mainstream Jewish holocaust scholar on equating fascism and communism and why it is bad
I hate it when threads like this make me have to repeatedly post the mainstream Jewish holocaust historian "stop conflating fascism and communism" article
Wait but I'm a communist. As in communes first, no state, no hierarchy, collective ownership, and all that jazz. I'm not super well read on the theory. Its really easy to see the difference, we're not splitting hairs here.
That is why I use anarchist instead. It means all of that while also making it clear that authoritarianism is not ok.
Yes, when it comes to the axis from authoritarian to anarchist. Things all tend to narrow in to a single point at either end. In regards to authoritarians, it's all about the hierarchy and holding power for themselves. They don't give a shit what form of government sits under that. When it comes to anarchists and libertarians, no government other than a largely flat form of socialism is acceptable. Simply because they are focused on freedoms both individual and social. And large monolithic hierarchies tend to get in the way of that.
And when I use the term libertarian I of course mean actual libertarians. Not temporarily embarrassed Republicans, or teenage capitalists. The easiest test to find out whether someone might accidentally be a libertarian or not. Is to find out if they belong to the Libertarian party, or ever plan to vote for their candidates. No one who would ever do that could ever be a libertarian lol
those "libertarians" are just anarcho-capitalists who think the issue isn't the system itself but they couldn't get access to the pie soon enough and get a bigger piece than everyone else so they think we should do a reset do this time they can come out on top
it's enough to look at how Crypto works with it's deflationary system where first buyers are much stronger than late comers or the MOAS /ape crowd
I think we should consider the feelings of Hexbear users when posting or commenting.
If you think they'll dislike it, it's probably a good post.
Hexbear REALLY dislikes my compilation of their queerphobia at !dronerights@lemm.ee
I mentioned the time hexbear's admin called the (trans) admin of blahaj.zone (the trans instance) "transphobic" in another thread once. Some hexbear dipshit then "named and shamed" me as a transphobe.
They're loud, obnoxious idiots -- nothing more.
the user you are replying to was banned for transphobia, they were dismissing the existence of enbys as their own gender. They're an insane troll.
I wonder if it's the same hexbear admin who banned me from the entire site after I called them on being in support of crypto, then made a post-hoc justification for. You know, that sham right wing capitalism alternative that pedos use to buy illegal material with.
Regardless, I made a comment saying "Stop working, 'work will set you free' is a nazi phrase" and they removed it for "Godwins Law" so obviously I'm not missing out because I have literally never seen anyone outside of a nazi misuse Godwin's Law that egregiously.
These threads are odd to me, considering how many people call all communists tankies. The word seems to be used by anarchists, conservatives, communists, anti-communists, and more, and every person has a slightly different definition.
Half the people here could consider the other half to be the tankies everyone is mad at.
To be clear this isn't me saying "be nice to the tankies" this is me saying "the overuse of this word is confusing the shit out of me."
I'm an anarchist, we don't call anybody tankies.
Tankies is a term coming from the UK i think the 80s some eastern european nation was taken over by the USSR and some Brittish came out in support of it. So they were called tankies.
These political fighting words need to be layed to rest. Communists hate me as much as anybody else but I'd rather engage on the idea level instead of ad hominem attacks and name calling.
I suspect this whole tankie thing might be a coordinated propaganda campaign geared at discrediting communists and at the same time creating tension between them and other leftits. I suspect this as this whole infighting over small differences doesn't lead to a victory for the left but effectively disables and neutralizes it.
Maybe it's just the circles I run in, but I understand "tankie" to mean leftists who think Soviet/Maoist/vanguard-party styles of Communist revolution/rule were good, actually, to the point of denying any bad things they did/do as "Western propaganda".
Given the red scare in the US, our ability as a whole to use any sort of leftist political labels accurately across the population is basically non-existent, so I do understand the frustration by both tankies and non-tankie leftists about how the term gets used lately, especially in produce circles on social media.
But again maybe that's just me. I don't know if I would consider myself a communist, but I do consider myself as a yet undetermined variety of socialist, if that helps at all.
...because none of those groups are Tankies and they are all unified against Tankies.
Tankies aren't socialists or communists (not that those two things are the same either). They are the purist ideologues of communism, where compromise is defeat. Rampant in telling you why you're wrong, and why only the purest form of communism will bring nirvana. All without understanding the consequences of what they propose.
Even the Communists don't want them on their side.
I think you kinda missed my point. Sure, socialists and communists don't like tankies, but conservatives think the socialists and communists who don't like tankies are tankies. They aren't "unified against tankies", they don't agree who, what, and where "tankies" are.
Yes Nazis are also bad, we don't have Nazis pop up anywhere near as often as Tankies
We remove and ban Nazis too
We're aware of Lemmy's main code writers being ML's, and it's not great.
Please report any bigot bullshit, or fascist/tankie dogwhistles.
We’re aware of Lemmy’s main code writers being ML’s, and it’s not great.
I don't know why thats so bad? Why are MLs any different from other commies? Why are they being compared to fascists? whats going on?
Because MLs are inherently authoritarian, unlike a lot of other types of commies that are just accidentally so.
Marxist-Leninist ideology is a mirror image of classical fascism.
Buddy, isn't literally every fuckin thing? Like god the US invaded Iraq, isn't that authoritarian? Isn't everything political authoritarian? you really think you got something special?
Marxist-Leninist ideology is a mirror image of classical fascism.
uh but how though, fascism isn't just some weird image of authoritarian, its actually something with its own definition and exists outside of the name game you got going. Explain to me how commies are actually nazis.
Like god the US invaded Iraq, isn't that authoritarian? Isn't everything political authoritarian? you really think you got something special?
Isn't it neat how we can talk about the US invading Iraq? Isn't it neat that I live in the US and can openly criticize the Iraq War?
Now compare that to living in China and talking about Tiananmen.
What does capitalism being authoritarian have to do with this? Just because they stated the fact that ML is authoritarian doesn't mean that capitalism is not.
ya'll should be proud. Thank you for adding a little queer fun to my normal CIS life
The guy needs a speech bubble that says "Stalin did nothing wr-"
I mean when people give Stalin shit yet don't bat an eye at what Lenin did, I can safely assume they're going off cold war propaganda.
Lenin had some legitimately good takes, e.g. that Stalin should, under no circumstance, ever be allowed to come to power. His analysis was also usually spot-on, but his solutions to things either hare-brained or naive, leading to, well, history. Or, put differently, on a scale from tragic hero to villain he's at least in the middle while Stalin is a straight-up villain.
Lenin ordered the Red Terror. The main difference between him and Stalin when it comes to willingness to use state violence was the size of the state. His solution to political decent was mass executions. While it was announced as a class war on the bourgeoisie, it began with a massacreof sociallists. In addition to kulaks and white army afficers, it targeted the former bolshenik allies Left Socialists, anarchists, and striking workers. The Red Terror featured the creation of the gulags and concentration camps, hostage taking, and torture.
I mean, is "hang more kulaks or you'll be hanged for treason" really that bad of a plan?
Nooo, you don't understand. It was the material conditions that were forcing Lenin to order Trotsky to murder his way through the free territory of Ukraine.
I think most of you need to worry way less about sounding sufficiently the "right kind" of leftist and focus more on promoting leftism through action. More than half the "tankie" discourse is, at best, a needless distraction from actual progress. Lose your buzzwords and stop the ideological purity pissing contest and actually put in the work in your communities instead, goddamn.
Nah, it's critically important that we make it clear that we do not accept autocracy and campism simply because it stands against an army of strawmen. Authoritarian leftists are not well. They are the ones standing in opposition to progress which doesn't fit into the correct rhetorical box, which is why they are marginalized to the point where they can hardly even be said to stand for socialism, because they are too busy standing in reactionary defiance to "the west."
It has so blinded them to anything resembling reality that they've effectively exiled themselves from academic consideration. They trade in conspiracies and revel in violence while showing little interest in statecraft or politics. It's the incredible intersection of privilege and ignorance, and it needs to be condemned as fiercely as any fascist or robber Barron or it will continue to suck the oxygen out of every leftist space on the internet.
It's actually quite ironic that you'd talk about ideological purity, when you don't have to look far on Lemmy to find "leftists" calling social democrats rebranded fascists. Wake up and stop getting your politics from teenagers.
It’s actually quite ironic that you’d talk about ideological purity, when you don’t have to look far on Lemmy to find “leftists” calling social democrats rebranded fascists. Wake up and stop getting your politics from teenagers.
I have no idea why you mentioned this. What does this have to do with me?
But to your greater point: Are there going to be ideological differences that matter? Of course. I'm not saying not to debate or defend positions for the sake of refining and strengthening ideology, I'm saying don't do it for the sake of stroking yourself off to how ideologically pure you are, especially when you go about doing so in a way that doesn't actually help refine and strengthen the ideology but rather muddies it all up with a bunch of reductive and useless buzzwords and short-hands.
We should be saving our ire for the unsaveable so far past the ideological divide as to where no commonality can be found; if we actually give a shit about making any progress we should be approaching anyone winnable with nuance and confidence, and not reductivism and hand-waving.
If you truly aren't a tankie and believe that the path forward can be achieved as a peaceful people's revolution, then you have to remember that winning people over is an enormous component to that strategy
Or ban them, whatever. Just stop fucking stroking yourself off to how fucking elite commie leftist you are for it
No fuck that bullshit. The largest leftist majority is aligned with non-revolutionary socialist democracy... Tankies are actively undermining the largest leftist group by refusing to partake in democracy. And now WE need to stop complaining and work together and not be so pure.
Fuck off with this absolute disgrace of a discourse. The group that controls the purity of its members by refusal to partake in progress through democratic means are tankies. They want it all to go down in flames. Their idea of progress is revolutionary uprising.
I for one 100% believe in purity tests. For example, anyone who hates trans people isn't a real leftist, doesn't belong in the community, and needs to fuck off. Purging the community of reactionaries is the only way to protect our most vulnerable members and create a unity of people who truly believe in equality and justice. There are lots of marginalised peoples who feel disrespected by mainstream left movements and cannot afford to participate in direct action for their own safety. Liberty for one means liberty for all. We need to kick tankies out of the left so we can actually get some shit done
It's funny that everyone is up in arms about this post but the literal sticky post says no tankies
Tankies can't read.
i wonder why this post about tankies is suddenly popular
sees top posts criticising israel and fascism
ah there it is
I'm not against the hostility being shown towards tankies here... but it should be remembered that there are a lot of well-meaning and well-intentioned people who get caught up in the technocratic ideology tankies buy into. Let's face it... if you google anything about leftism you are more likely to end up reading about Marx and Engels than Bakunin or Goldman - and right-wing propaganda is as perfectly fine with conflating everything "leftist" with the technocratic (ie authoritarian) left as tankies themselves are.
If we are leaving some doors open for fascists and capitalists who turn against their programming, we should remember to do the same for tankies.
As someone who's read Marx and lenin, and Bakunin and Goldman... not to mention kroptikin(god damn that guy bullshat his way through conquest of bread)
The anarchists always decry practical steps that are needed for the transition, but they have a poverty of ideas when it comes to propose better alternative solutions to the problems faced by actual revolutions. And frankly, reading their literature I understand why. They're still hung up on ideas and values and not material analysis much more than MLs. They're still trapped within liberal hegemonic thought though they are against liberal capitalism.
Neither the anarchist revolutions in Ukraine nor Spain seemed to lack "practical steps"... what they did lack, however, was practical steps for turning into a reactionary elite as soon as they seized power - something the Bolsheviks and their ideological spawn seems to have no problems with.
They absolutely did, their inability to coordinate and make compromises during wartime absolutely led to their failures as revolutions.
Oh... being (respectively) stabbed in the back by Bolsheviks and being sabotaged by Stalin had absolutely nothing to do with it, eh?
No, tankie... I don't think you've read any anarchist literature at all.
Yes, the Spanish anarchists were unsuccessful because Stalin, and not because they refused to be integrated with the popular front(which even the fucking liberals joined), including militarily until the war was already well lost, which made coordinated actions against the fascists with the popular front impossible
The lessons of the Spanish civil war dont reflect well on the anarchist movement there.
Yes, the Spanish anarchists were unsuccessful because Stalin
Yes. That's why, tankie. And no... they didn't lose because they decided not to take orders from your outrageously incompetent and cynical two-faced realpolitking fetish object Stalin.
The stupid part is that the third-way labor parties and social democrats are doing a much better job at socialism than any Leninist or Maoist tradition. But every leftist space on the internet seems to hate these "fake socialists" as much as anything else. That's really all the evidence I need that these people are more interested in revolution fetish fan service than anything resembling actual statecraft.
The stupid part is that the third-way labor parties and social democrats are doing a much better job at socialism
Well... no, not really. It's not that leftists hate social democrats... every anarchist I've ever spoken to appreciates the effort of people like Bernie and AOC - it's just that we understand what they are allowed to do and what they aren't. The political establishment will allow them to protect capitalism from itself by restraining it's most obscene aspects it to a certain extent (and even such meagre self-protective measures are a bridge to far for the right-wing hivemind)... but that is all they could ever achieve.
Remember - no matter what the media hysterically screeches - the term socialism has a very hard and uncompromising meaning... a condition wherein the workers control the means of production. If it doesn't measure up to that or only pretends to measure up to that, we can't call it socialism with a straight face.
Eh this argues that we even have a democracy that is functional enough to undermine in the first place, and I reject that premise.
Better than a single oligarch for sure.
I’m not sure it’s that different. In place of a real personality, you get the country’s persona. With US foreign policy for example it matters little who leads because they are adhering to the persona. While the majority of Americans don’t want war, the US persona does. That results in the same thing (a population ruled by one idea set) just a hologram of person rather than an actual one.
Bro it's very different. You think America run by Chairman Musk is indistinguishable from president Biden?
I hate the death of nuance. Yes, the US and many others are very flawed democracies, but that doesn't mean they're the same as north korea...
Yeah I mean the DPRK has had much more local democracy, especially since the taean work system has increased worker self management
Many oligarchs is better than a single oligarch. In true capitalist fashion, they are sociopathically self interested and their undermining of each other can occasionally benefit the rest of us.
And one time they almost got into a ring to fight, which was pretty funny.
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
[...]
In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
something like 70% of Americans want universal healthcare and yet it remains politically impossible.
The people screeching about tankies constantly just learned the term in the last year and want everyone to know they know it
starting the timer to see how long it takes for this to be removed and for you to be labeled redfash or some such nonsense
Leftist who want to fix this are by far the largest group of leftist. And there have been multiple successful leftist political victories. You can not get these victories without a considerable amount of leftist and left leaning voting. And it's your discourse that just wants to pretend that nothing can be done, it's too late, Democracy isn't real... That is undermining leftist progress in our current society. And this is the problem, tankies aren't interested in protecting, fixings or saving current society. They want everybody to suffer the breakdown of society in order to hopefully get a revolutionary uprising that magically turns everything into a communist utopia. It's poison and you're injecting it.
And there have been multiple successful leftist political victories. You can not get these victories without a considerable amount of leftist and left leaning voting.
The entire conclusion of the study I linked is that this is not happening.
There's nothing wrong with voting, I vote every two years, but it's dangerous to convince yourself that voting is enough. You need to also organize. You need to strike. You need to unionize your workplaces. If you really want to push the government into conceding real improvements in our lives, you need to apply direct pressure on a large scale. And when the crackdown comes, you need to collectively organize to help each other. Bail people out of jail. Help people pay rent when they're fired for trying to unionize. Doing this on a large scale is how you get actual fucking change, and it will never happen if people lie to themselves that voting alone is sufficient.
Bro what, if we can stop leftist infighting for one fucking minute that would be great. We all have 90% of the same goals so how about we work on that and not build artificial walls to those to the left of us. Also being pro western „democracy“ is cringe.
Bro what, if we can stop leftist infighting for one fucking minute that would be great. We all have 90% of the same goals so how about we work on that and not build artificial walls to those to the left of us. Also being pro western „democracy“ is cringe.
"Let's stop leftist infighting"
"Also, fuck the democracy most of you support"
Least self-contradictory tankie.
Do you seriously think that for example the USAs democracy represents the will of the people? Democratic representation does not mean capitalistic multi party system that’s not how you measure democracy.
Tankie "try not to make any discussion about the United States" challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)
All tankies seem to want is a strongman dictator and to hate the US. I don't care about the US but I'm definitely opposed to having a strongman dictator. Like if there was a group that wanted 90% of what I did but also wants to form an ethnostate, I would not work with that group.
Don't put me in the same group as people who defend the Russian and Chinese state governments.
Artificial walls? You're literally implying that if you're pro democracy you aren't leftist. You yourself are putting up a wall.
When we ask tankies, in lieu of a communist state, to vote as left as possible, they start foaming at the mouth how cringe lefties voting are... I mean that's a pretty fucking high wall.. How else are we, the general non-revolutionary left, ever going to fucking 'work together'.
These people are mostly helping the people they rail against as much as they do the opposite lol. Overall just sowing division where there needs to be none.
Loving to see tankies come out of the woodwork to seethe and troll at this
Or liberal BS like we shouldn't make this post because of LeFtiSt UniTy when tankies are the ones who have crap, authoritarian, and genocidal views. All the concern trolling really shows why this post was made.
Apparently saying any country other than the US should take a turn at world leadership is a tankie opinion.
I've seen "Tankie" pulled out on Lemmy and Reddit over things like:
Suggesting a revolution is required to stop global capitalism, and that we cannot vote our way out of Capitalism
Countering common narratives that paint US Geopolitical Adversaries and Existing Socialist/Communist regimes as comically evil villains.
Criticizing the western perspective on the Russia/Ukraine conflict, and by extension criticism of Ukraine, or praise for Russia
Suggesting that violence against Nazis is ok
I mostly get the impression that people don't like violence, and dislike the idea that capitalism may need to be opposed through violence. Though I've also seen it thrown out at suggestions that capitalism should even be defeated at all. It feels like a poison tbh, we really should just be uniting against capitalism.
so tankie is just a nonsense word?
It can be misused, but it properly means supporting authoritarian 'communism'. I usually see it on hexbear, where they often say Russia China and North Korea are vastly better than western countries.
let's be honest, they should be removed from society
You are aware that the .ml doesn't stand for machine learning, right?
Some people made an account there right in the beginning of the Reddit fiasco before there were any viable alternative instances, like I did. Looking at the age of the account, I'm guessing that's what they did too.
This weird equivalence some people draw between liking/agreeing with a significant amount of ML work and defending everything the Soviet Union and CCP have ever done....it's really weird
Maybe they know something we don't.
EDIT: JSYK, it's CPC. CCP is the intentionally wrong abbreviation that nazi propagandists use and I don't think that's what you intended.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP),[3] officially the Communist Party of China (CPC),[4] is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). - Wikipedia
No, it's CCP. I don't call Nazis by what they choose to be called so i will also not do that for the CCP
Tankies as well as fascists are imperialistic scum.
I swear almost every American election cycle, some weird word will start popping up everywhere. like how all the trump supporters started saying cuck out of nowhere in 2015-2016
Tankie has been a thing for over half a century. The Soviets used tanks(from other countries) to invade and crush antisoviet revolutions/protests in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
This was considered shocking for some communists and other leftists while some communists supported those actions. Those who supported this "intervention" were called tankies, in order to differentiate them from the non tank invasion supporting communists.
In Greece(my country), which was in the "West", this event caused the split of the greek communist party(KKE) into 2 separate parties, KKE(Moscow controlled tankies) and KKE "interior"(weak ass soy communists who cant stomach the use of tanks in order to create a better tomorrow).
KKE "interior" kinda eventually became SYRIZA which surprisingly won the elections in 2015(breaking the 2 party status quo). Then the EU decided that the greek people decided poorly and punished them. So when the greek people decided correctly(elected a right wing government), the EU rewarded them. Carrots and sticks make the world go around. Thats how you make a majority leftist country, into a right wing one.
PS Greek debt is as high as it has ever been but Greece issued negative interest bonds. Tell me again how is the economy supposed to work? Noone talks about the greek debt anymore, it's a non issue, Greece has been accepted into the EU's infinite money glitch scheme.
Huh.
On my side of the Atlantic the US usually just chooses which right wing dictator they want to rule directly
This is more a lemmy thing. Tankie is an older word but like you dont usually run into stalinists in the wild too much. The Lemmy creators and one of the biggest instances when the site was still small was a communist one promoting not just like the ideal of communism but legit stalinism.
As a result there was a lot of weird very pro russia pro china pushback and whataboutisms on the platform in the early days before the number of non stalinist users drowned them out
Agree, but to me they're no different from any other genocide denying pieces of shit. If you are a NATO apologist that sees what happened to Iraq or what is currently happening to Gaza as any less abhorrent, you are just as bad as someone apologizing for Russia or the USSR.
Edit: From what I gathered, they're essentially authoritarian communists
The type of "communist" that supports authoritarian, usually state capitalist regimes like the USSR, China, and the DPRK.
The lack of meaningful worker enfranchisement in any of those regimes should tell you all you need to know, really - they're red-coded fascist lunatics.
Soo is it still okay to support good communism which doesn't spy on the people and is cool?
Star Trek Socialism
End scarcity, deconstruct currency, and put me in space 😎
Yes exactly. Is it acceptable to believe in a world where everyone can be happy and not have to worry about having enough money to afford a living? Would be super sick, but also quite the extremisticly positive imagination of the world.
@backhdlp the term was invented to describe those communists in the West who thought Rákosi (a Hungarian Stalinist) [edit: whoever it was, there's a communist historian correcting me downthread] did nothing wrong when he and Kruschev sent military tanks into Hungary to force them to stay in the Soviet Union. That was in the 1950s.
Unfortunately, the only way to kick tankies out of 196 is to get 196 out of Lemmy. Because Lemmy is being developed by two tankies themselves, with a third one about to join. And because despite being defederated from hexbear and lemmygrad, lemmy.ml is still a free roam place for tankies from those two cesspool places. So, either defederate yourselves from lemmy.ml (nobody would do that), or fork lemmy into a new clean place (not impossible, but difficult to perform), or do as beehaw will do soon.
So, either defederate yourselves from lemmy.ml (nobody would do that)
I mean, if push comes to shove why not? It’s not the “main instance” anymore, it’s only got twice the users of Hexbear. Around a third of .world. I don’t think defederating would be that bad of an idea if they get too oppressive.
I feel like wanting to defederate from .ml is showing your whole ass for all to see. I get wanting to defed from hexbear and grad because they genuinely have problems that even I've personally ran up against, but ml? You just hate anything left of hilter if you have an issue with them.
Lemmy.ml is NOT defederated with lemmygrad.ml or hexbear.net
In fact, the lemmy.ml admins/devs are admin on lemmygrad.ml
Choose an instance that defederated with hexbear and lemmygrad and you won't see many tankies. Even if they post on Lemmy.ml you won't see it because that is how federation works.
Beehaw is looking for a new place to be, mostly because of the lack of modding tools (I think there is a post on that instance). But if that migration allows them to avoid tankies and other kind of fascists, that's better. Can't blame them, I was harassed by tankies as well some weeks ago.
Theoretically, they're authoritarian leftists. In reality, leftism has little to do with it. They glorify former communist authoritatian countries and are anti-west no matter what the west does. There are pro-russia tankies (Lemmygrad.ml) and pro-china tankies (hexbear.net), with some overlap between them.
Calling them left at all is playing into their game of self-legitimacy at best or trying to delegitimize actually leftism at worst.
The types of leftists that will defend any regime that opposes the US/the west, and say any ethical/human rights violations done by them are either necessary in the moment to fight capitalism or is just fake news. You usually find them celebrating China's government.
Tankies are absolutely not leftists, they are right wing fascists that call themselves leftists. About as left as North Korea is a democracy.
“Tankie” is a term that was originally coined (ironically, by Marxist-Leninists themselves) to describe members of the CPGB (Communist Party of Great Britain) who justified the Soviet Union’s invasion of Hungary in 1956. It has since become a catch-all term used to describe (self-described) leftists that slavishly adhere to the propaganda of or justify the actions of authoritarian regimes that are (or are perceived to be) “socialist” such as China or (bizarrely enough) modern-day Russia.
It's a pejorative term to describe authoritarian Chinese government apologists. Historically it was used to describe communist members that defended the use of tanks against civilians during a Hungary uprising.
TIL. Thank you.
Authoritarian communists.
Authoritarian communists.
You can only have one or the other, not both, since they are inherently incompatible. People calling themselves communists, doesn't mean that's what they are.
I think theoretically communism requires a society with no state, but I think historically a vanguard party has come in and said "yeah we will do bureaucracy for a while and then dissolve the state" aaaaaand now you have a dictator and stazi and gestapo and thought crimes and a gulag. Oops 😋
So.. You're describing how they blatantly didn't practice communism to.. defend the continued use of the word to define them?
I don't think you're making the point you think you're making.. 🙄🤦♀️
(to be clear: trying to achieve communism, and actually doing it are very different things, and if you end up with an authoritarian regime, you've not achieved communism, no matter what you call it, it really isn't complicated)
Only if you're the kind who would argue that Hitler was a socialist, or that the CCP is communist.
Communism and socialism aren't vague nebulous concepts, they are very well defined, and those definitions are, as stated above, inherently incompatible with tankies' actions (or at least that actions they support and stand for), never mind that co-opting leftist language and ideas is a well known and documented tactic the right use to manipulate people in to supporting them, before they drop the mask to reveal their true authoritarian bigoted selves.
But sure, name an unrelated fallacy instead of thinking for yourself, that's sure to end well.. 🙄
Don't feel too bad, at least you got to fell like you "got me" there for a millisecond!
(pasting this here too, to be clear: trying to achieve communism, and actually doing it are very different things, and if you end up with an authoritarian regime, you've not achieved communism, no matter what you call it, it really isn't complicated)
I too believe that anarcho-monarchism is valid and not at all contradictory
How so? Communism ultimately describes a society where power is spread amongst the people, while authoritarianism describes a system where power is concentrated at the top. What could possibly be communist about an authoritarian regime?
Look at Indonesia in 1965–66 to see what happens to peaceful communists. Or Chile in 73. They’re rounded up and slaughtered by US-backed fascists. The reason ML theory prescribes a period of authoritarianism is to defend against this.
This kind of parsing is dangerous and its how bad actors are able to infiltrate and get into power. Yes totalitarian communists didnt practice it in their true form and were totalitarian dictatorships, but its dangerous to pretend like they didnt sprout organically from a communist movement, and didnt identify and define communism for decades.
Stalin wasnt a nazi no matter how much he fits the bill more and it's important to recognize them in your ranks clawing for power and waiting to take advantage of good will.
That's impossible, I shoved all those counter-revolutionaries into a ditch and ran them over with t-
Uh oh
"Tankie" is a term that was originally coined (ironically, by Marxist-Leninists themselves) to describe members of the CPGB (Communist Party of Great Britain) who justified the Soviet Union's invasion of Hungary in 1956. It has since become a catch-all term used to describe (self-described) leftists that slavishly adhere to the propaganda of or justify the actions of authoritarian regimes that are (or are perceived to be) "socialist" such as China or (bizarrely enough) modern-day Russia.
Uh but isn't a revolution an undermining of democracy? I don't know who these tankies are, but it seems like yall commies just making some big deal about your little beef with other commies. Its kinda silly.
It was a meme community on Reddit, but I don't know the origin. Seems to have a lot of non-binary folks in here, so I'm still wondering why reddit thought it applied to me, but they had some good memes over there.
Want to see the transphobia and homophobia that Lemmy tankies from Hexbear are getting up to? Check out !dronerights@lemm.ee (https://lemm.ee/c/DroneRights) to see their months long harassment of a single trans person for being nonbinary.
Just like fascists, tankies could theoretically hang out here without getting the boot. It's just that genocide denying authoritarians cannot be tolerated in a tolerant, democratic society. The reason tankies and fascists get the boot is because they can't resist trying to bully and intimidate those that find their views abhorrent. They simply can't resist being terrible.
They're cultists with views that can't stand up to scrutiny, so they need use other tactics to spread their shit and gain power. They use the real downsides and weaknesses of democracy to argue we need an even worse system. Then they argue you actually hold the worst views of their enemies, even though they usually support exactly the same things that make those enemies bad. Tankies claim you're a free-market liberal for opposing them, when the countries they support are state capitalists. Fascists claim you're against freedom of speech, while they are always trying to ban ideas they hate. Some of them are misguided and believe their own lies, but others are just awful people.
Tankies traditionally are associated with communists, but today's tankies (even those that call themselves communists) are really after authoritarianism than communism, and given the history of the name (that they supported using tracks on civilians). I don't think they're is much difference between current communists and current fascists, both groups seem to support authoritarianism and feels like term "tankies" fits both of them well.
I learned about a week ago why they are the way they are. See the soviet union was the closest in their mind the world has ever come to communism, so even though it's fallen into fascist oligarchy, they still hold hope that the anticommunist putin is going to rise up and reestablish global communism once more. The only problem with that is that... well Russia doesn't want communism. This is their playbook Yeah, that doesn't look socialist, that looks like "we tried communism it didn't work so lets do fascism this time" so they end up throwing their support towards red flavored fascism since it's the best chance (in their minds) at getting global communism. When the alternative is an american nazi world order, or tiny countries with no power, you don't really have much choice.
But here's something I want every single one of you to realize having read all of that: Even the most fascist redfash still would have killed the nazis. The same cannot be said for the average (in-power) liberal today. Anticommunism is always pro-fascism. Never let your critiques of the left turn into support for the right.
EDIT: Case in point, the person i'm responding to is never going to see this post because they're on a nazi bar instance that banned me.
They'd kill who they define as nazis. I find that tankies' (especially Hexbear) definition of nazism doesn't entirely correspond to mine or that of most other people. So this is not something to be super optimistic about.
It is a bare minimum that the current world order can't even pass. They can't even go a week without funding a mass ethnic genocide.
Lol redfash killing nazis isn't worth praise. Redfash kill each other the first chance they get. They are so paranoid when they come to power they purge anyone and everyone they can.
Lemmy world are nazis?
The users are a mixed bag but the mods/admins absolutely are in the business of running a nazi bar. They're doing the classic strategy of passively protecting fascists while actively suppressing those calling out the fascists. They also ban people who are open communists.
Meanwhile, .ml keeps banning my accounts for just commenting on c/worldnews these days.
I'm not a troll. You can go look at my contributions. I made some hexbears look like idiots and now they've got me on a leash.
I've learned the fun way not to bother with hexbear users. They're only here to antagonize nazis so best not to get in the way of that.
I muted a couple dozen hexbear accounts when the whole instance was out seemingly trying to antagonize the entire fediverse.
Turns out that got the vast majority of annoying trolls from there.
It feels shitty until you see them do it to an especially crap person, then you can't help but sit back and distribute upvotes.
You know any left wing project after being overthrown by the US would also end up a fascist oligarchy right? As was the case with the illegal and undemocratic dissolution of the Soviet Union brought about by the US.
A mainstream Jewish holocaust scholar on equating fascism and communism and why it is bad
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
I hate it when threads like this make me have to repeatedly post the mainstream Jewish holocaust historian "stop conflating fascism and communism" article
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-double-genocide-theory
Wait but I'm a communist. As in communes first, no state, no hierarchy, collective ownership, and all that jazz. I'm not super well read on the theory. Its really easy to see the difference, we're not splitting hairs here.
That is why I use anarchist instead. It means all of that while also making it clear that authoritarianism is not ok.
Yes, when it comes to the axis from authoritarian to anarchist. Things all tend to narrow in to a single point at either end. In regards to authoritarians, it's all about the hierarchy and holding power for themselves. They don't give a shit what form of government sits under that. When it comes to anarchists and libertarians, no government other than a largely flat form of socialism is acceptable. Simply because they are focused on freedoms both individual and social. And large monolithic hierarchies tend to get in the way of that.
And when I use the term libertarian I of course mean actual libertarians. Not temporarily embarrassed Republicans, or teenage capitalists. The easiest test to find out whether someone might accidentally be a libertarian or not. Is to find out if they belong to the Libertarian party, or ever plan to vote for their candidates. No one who would ever do that could ever be a libertarian lol
those "libertarians" are just anarcho-capitalists who think the issue isn't the system itself but they couldn't get access to the pie soon enough and get a bigger piece than everyone else so they think we should do a reset do this time they can come out on top
it's enough to look at how Crypto works with it's deflationary system where first buyers are much stronger than late comers or the MOAS /ape crowd
It's called campism and it's dumb teenager stuff.
🤔 There should be a fediverse-wide rule against genocidal rhetoric. Who cares what side it's from?
In that case i'm fucked, because I called for the genocide of mosquitoes about a month ago.
I think we should consider the feelings of Hexbear users when posting or commenting.
If you think they'll dislike it, it's probably a good post.
Hexbear REALLY dislikes my compilation of their queerphobia at !dronerights@lemm.ee
I mentioned the time hexbear's admin called the (trans) admin of blahaj.zone (the trans instance) "transphobic" in another thread once. Some hexbear dipshit then "named and shamed" me as a transphobe.
They're loud, obnoxious idiots -- nothing more.
the user you are replying to was banned for transphobia, they were dismissing the existence of enbys as their own gender. They're an insane troll.
I wonder if it's the same hexbear admin who banned me from the entire site after I called them on being in support of crypto, then made a post-hoc justification for. You know, that sham right wing capitalism alternative that pedos use to buy illegal material with.
Regardless, I made a comment saying "Stop working, 'work will set you free' is a nazi phrase" and they removed it for "Godwins Law" so obviously I'm not missing out because I have literally never seen anyone outside of a nazi misuse Godwin's Law that egregiously.
Good
they don't have the ability to dislike, they removed the downvotes (i think) lmao
These threads are odd to me, considering how many people call all communists tankies. The word seems to be used by anarchists, conservatives, communists, anti-communists, and more, and every person has a slightly different definition.
Half the people here could consider the other half to be the tankies everyone is mad at.
To be clear this isn't me saying "be nice to the tankies" this is me saying "the overuse of this word is confusing the shit out of me."
I'm an anarchist, we don't call anybody tankies. Tankies is a term coming from the UK i think the 80s some eastern european nation was taken over by the USSR and some Brittish came out in support of it. So they were called tankies.
These political fighting words need to be layed to rest. Communists hate me as much as anybody else but I'd rather engage on the idea level instead of ad hominem attacks and name calling.
I suspect this whole tankie thing might be a coordinated propaganda campaign geared at discrediting communists and at the same time creating tension between them and other leftits. I suspect this as this whole infighting over small differences doesn't lead to a victory for the left but effectively disables and neutralizes it.
Maybe it's just the circles I run in, but I understand "tankie" to mean leftists who think Soviet/Maoist/vanguard-party styles of Communist revolution/rule were good, actually, to the point of denying any bad things they did/do as "Western propaganda".
Given the red scare in the US, our ability as a whole to use any sort of leftist political labels accurately across the population is basically non-existent, so I do understand the frustration by both tankies and non-tankie leftists about how the term gets used lately, especially in produce circles on social media.
But again maybe that's just me. I don't know if I would consider myself a communist, but I do consider myself as a yet undetermined variety of socialist, if that helps at all.
...because none of those groups are Tankies and they are all unified against Tankies.
Tankies aren't socialists or communists (not that those two things are the same either). They are the purist ideologues of communism, where compromise is defeat. Rampant in telling you why you're wrong, and why only the purest form of communism will bring nirvana. All without understanding the consequences of what they propose.
Even the Communists don't want them on their side.
I think you kinda missed my point. Sure, socialists and communists don't like tankies, but conservatives think the socialists and communists who don't like tankies are tankies. They aren't "unified against tankies", they don't agree who, what, and where "tankies" are.
Then there's folks like me who have no idea what the term means, you're not alone in your confusion.
Edit: thanks for all the replies folks! TIL
Tankies are 'communists' ala Mao and Stalin, i.e. okay with the violent opression of democratic movements and minorities.
Based AF
Fuck tankies
Hey everyone, just a reminder:
I don't know why thats so bad? Why are MLs any different from other commies? Why are they being compared to fascists? whats going on?
Because MLs are inherently authoritarian, unlike a lot of other types of commies that are just accidentally so.
Marxist-Leninist ideology is a mirror image of classical fascism.
Buddy, isn't literally every fuckin thing? Like god the US invaded Iraq, isn't that authoritarian? Isn't everything political authoritarian? you really think you got something special?
uh but how though, fascism isn't just some weird image of authoritarian, its actually something with its own definition and exists outside of the name game you got going. Explain to me how commies are actually nazis.
Isn't it neat how we can talk about the US invading Iraq? Isn't it neat that I live in the US and can openly criticize the Iraq War?
Now compare that to living in China and talking about Tiananmen.
Capitalism is inherently authoritarian
What does capitalism being authoritarian have to do with this? Just because they stated the fact that ML is authoritarian doesn't mean that capitalism is not.
196 is one of the greatest
subscommunitiesya'll should be proud. Thank you for adding a little queer fun to my normal CIS life
The guy needs a speech bubble that says "Stalin did nothing wr-"
I mean when people give Stalin shit yet don't bat an eye at what Lenin did, I can safely assume they're going off cold war propaganda.
Lenin had some legitimately good takes, e.g. that Stalin should, under no circumstance, ever be allowed to come to power. His analysis was also usually spot-on, but his solutions to things either hare-brained or naive, leading to, well, history. Or, put differently, on a scale from tragic hero to villain he's at least in the middle while Stalin is a straight-up villain.
Lenin ordered the Red Terror. The main difference between him and Stalin when it comes to willingness to use state violence was the size of the state. His solution to political decent was mass executions. While it was announced as a class war on the bourgeoisie, it began with a massacreof sociallists. In addition to kulaks and white army afficers, it targeted the former bolshenik allies Left Socialists, anarchists, and striking workers. The Red Terror featured the creation of the gulags and concentration camps, hostage taking, and torture.
I mean, is "hang more kulaks or you'll be hanged for treason" really that bad of a plan?
Nooo, you don't understand. It was the material conditions that were forcing Lenin to order Trotsky to murder his way through the free territory of Ukraine.
I think most of you need to worry way less about sounding sufficiently the "right kind" of leftist and focus more on promoting leftism through action. More than half the "tankie" discourse is, at best, a needless distraction from actual progress. Lose your buzzwords and stop the ideological purity pissing contest and actually put in the work in your communities instead, goddamn.
Nah, it's critically important that we make it clear that we do not accept autocracy and campism simply because it stands against an army of strawmen. Authoritarian leftists are not well. They are the ones standing in opposition to progress which doesn't fit into the correct rhetorical box, which is why they are marginalized to the point where they can hardly even be said to stand for socialism, because they are too busy standing in reactionary defiance to "the west."
It has so blinded them to anything resembling reality that they've effectively exiled themselves from academic consideration. They trade in conspiracies and revel in violence while showing little interest in statecraft or politics. It's the incredible intersection of privilege and ignorance, and it needs to be condemned as fiercely as any fascist or robber Barron or it will continue to suck the oxygen out of every leftist space on the internet.
It's actually quite ironic that you'd talk about ideological purity, when you don't have to look far on Lemmy to find "leftists" calling social democrats rebranded fascists. Wake up and stop getting your politics from teenagers.
I have no idea why you mentioned this. What does this have to do with me?
But to your greater point: Are there going to be ideological differences that matter? Of course. I'm not saying not to debate or defend positions for the sake of refining and strengthening ideology, I'm saying don't do it for the sake of stroking yourself off to how ideologically pure you are, especially when you go about doing so in a way that doesn't actually help refine and strengthen the ideology but rather muddies it all up with a bunch of reductive and useless buzzwords and short-hands.
We should be saving our ire for the unsaveable so far past the ideological divide as to where no commonality can be found; if we actually give a shit about making any progress we should be approaching anyone winnable with nuance and confidence, and not reductivism and hand-waving.
If you truly aren't a tankie and believe that the path forward can be achieved as a peaceful people's revolution, then you have to remember that winning people over is an enormous component to that strategy
Or ban them, whatever. Just stop fucking stroking yourself off to how fucking elite commie leftist you are for it
No fuck that bullshit. The largest leftist majority is aligned with non-revolutionary socialist democracy... Tankies are actively undermining the largest leftist group by refusing to partake in democracy. And now WE need to stop complaining and work together and not be so pure. Fuck off with this absolute disgrace of a discourse. The group that controls the purity of its members by refusal to partake in progress through democratic means are tankies. They want it all to go down in flames. Their idea of progress is revolutionary uprising.
I for one 100% believe in purity tests. For example, anyone who hates trans people isn't a real leftist, doesn't belong in the community, and needs to fuck off. Purging the community of reactionaries is the only way to protect our most vulnerable members and create a unity of people who truly believe in equality and justice. There are lots of marginalised peoples who feel disrespected by mainstream left movements and cannot afford to participate in direct action for their own safety. Liberty for one means liberty for all. We need to kick tankies out of the left so we can actually get some shit done
What's this large leftist group you speak of?
Fuck tankies.
It's funny that everyone is up in arms about this post but the literal sticky post says no tankies
Tankies can't read.
i wonder why this post about tankies is suddenly popular
sees top posts criticising israel and fascism
ah there it is
I'm not against the hostility being shown towards tankies here... but it should be remembered that there are a lot of well-meaning and well-intentioned people who get caught up in the technocratic ideology tankies buy into. Let's face it... if you google anything about leftism you are more likely to end up reading about Marx and Engels than Bakunin or Goldman - and right-wing propaganda is as perfectly fine with conflating everything "leftist" with the technocratic (ie authoritarian) left as tankies themselves are.
If we are leaving some doors open for fascists and capitalists who turn against their programming, we should remember to do the same for tankies.
As someone who's read Marx and lenin, and Bakunin and Goldman... not to mention kroptikin(god damn that guy bullshat his way through conquest of bread)
The anarchists always decry practical steps that are needed for the transition, but they have a poverty of ideas when it comes to propose better alternative solutions to the problems faced by actual revolutions. And frankly, reading their literature I understand why. They're still hung up on ideas and values and not material analysis much more than MLs. They're still trapped within liberal hegemonic thought though they are against liberal capitalism.
Neither the anarchist revolutions in Ukraine nor Spain seemed to lack "practical steps"... what they did lack, however, was practical steps for turning into a reactionary elite as soon as they seized power - something the Bolsheviks and their ideological spawn seems to have no problems with.
They absolutely did, their inability to coordinate and make compromises during wartime absolutely led to their failures as revolutions.
Oh... being (respectively) stabbed in the back by Bolsheviks and being sabotaged by Stalin had absolutely nothing to do with it, eh?
No, tankie... I don't think you've read any anarchist literature at all.
Yes, the Spanish anarchists were unsuccessful because Stalin, and not because they refused to be integrated with the popular front(which even the fucking liberals joined), including militarily until the war was already well lost, which made coordinated actions against the fascists with the popular front impossible
The lessons of the Spanish civil war dont reflect well on the anarchist movement there.
Yes. That's why, tankie. And no... they didn't lose because they decided not to take orders from your outrageously incompetent and cynical two-faced realpolitking fetish object Stalin.
Okay?
The stupid part is that the third-way labor parties and social democrats are doing a much better job at socialism than any Leninist or Maoist tradition. But every leftist space on the internet seems to hate these "fake socialists" as much as anything else. That's really all the evidence I need that these people are more interested in revolution fetish fan service than anything resembling actual statecraft.
Well... no, not really. It's not that leftists hate social democrats... every anarchist I've ever spoken to appreciates the effort of people like Bernie and AOC - it's just that we understand what they are allowed to do and what they aren't. The political establishment will allow them to protect capitalism from itself by restraining it's most obscene aspects it to a certain extent (and even such meagre self-protective measures are a bridge to far for the right-wing hivemind)... but that is all they could ever achieve.
Remember - no matter what the media hysterically screeches - the term socialism has a very hard and uncompromising meaning... a condition wherein the workers control the means of production. If it doesn't measure up to that or only pretends to measure up to that, we can't call it socialism with a straight face.
Eh this argues that we even have a democracy that is functional enough to undermine in the first place, and I reject that premise.
Better than a single oligarch for sure.
I’m not sure it’s that different. In place of a real personality, you get the country’s persona. With US foreign policy for example it matters little who leads because they are adhering to the persona. While the majority of Americans don’t want war, the US persona does. That results in the same thing (a population ruled by one idea set) just a hologram of person rather than an actual one.
Bro it's very different. You think America run by Chairman Musk is indistinguishable from president Biden?
I hate the death of nuance. Yes, the US and many others are very flawed democracies, but that doesn't mean they're the same as north korea...
Yeah I mean the DPRK has had much more local democracy, especially since the taean work system has increased worker self management
Many oligarchs is better than a single oligarch. In true capitalist fashion, they are sociopathically self interested and their undermining of each other can occasionally benefit the rest of us.
And one time they almost got into a ring to fight, which was pretty funny.
what democracy?
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B
something like 70% of Americans want universal healthcare and yet it remains politically impossible.
The people screeching about tankies constantly just learned the term in the last year and want everyone to know they know it
starting the timer to see how long it takes for this to be removed and for you to be labeled redfash or some such nonsense
Leftist who want to fix this are by far the largest group of leftist. And there have been multiple successful leftist political victories. You can not get these victories without a considerable amount of leftist and left leaning voting. And it's your discourse that just wants to pretend that nothing can be done, it's too late, Democracy isn't real... That is undermining leftist progress in our current society. And this is the problem, tankies aren't interested in protecting, fixings or saving current society. They want everybody to suffer the breakdown of society in order to hopefully get a revolutionary uprising that magically turns everything into a communist utopia. It's poison and you're injecting it.
The entire conclusion of the study I linked is that this is not happening.
There's nothing wrong with voting, I vote every two years, but it's dangerous to convince yourself that voting is enough. You need to also organize. You need to strike. You need to unionize your workplaces. If you really want to push the government into conceding real improvements in our lives, you need to apply direct pressure on a large scale. And when the crackdown comes, you need to collectively organize to help each other. Bail people out of jail. Help people pay rent when they're fired for trying to unionize. Doing this on a large scale is how you get actual fucking change, and it will never happen if people lie to themselves that voting alone is sufficient.
Knowing what the "Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" is so basic it almost doesn't count as reading theory.
Bro what, if we can stop leftist infighting for one fucking minute that would be great. We all have 90% of the same goals so how about we work on that and not build artificial walls to those to the left of us. Also being pro western „democracy“ is cringe.
"Let's stop leftist infighting"
"Also, fuck the democracy most of you support"
Least self-contradictory tankie.
Do you seriously think that for example the USAs democracy represents the will of the people? Democratic representation does not mean capitalistic multi party system that’s not how you measure democracy.
Tankie "try not to make any discussion about the United States" challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)
Idk, tankies are pro-genocide. That doesn't mesh very well with most people's sensibilities.
All tankies seem to want is a strongman dictator and to hate the US. I don't care about the US but I'm definitely opposed to having a strongman dictator. Like if there was a group that wanted 90% of what I did but also wants to form an ethnostate, I would not work with that group.
Don't put me in the same group as people who defend the Russian and Chinese state governments.
Western democracy has its issues. Namely capitalism.
Oh, wait, China has that problem too.
Western democracy also has issues with authoritarians constantly trying to weasel their way into power.
OH WAIT CHINA ALREADY HAS THAT
The CPC is Communist in name only, and the Party controls the dissemination of all information and has encouraged a nationalist stance.
I'm open to communism, but China isn't the model we need to emulate.
You people are all about the lesser of two evils but China is definitely less evil than the USA.
The Uyghurs would disagree
Artificial walls? You're literally implying that if you're pro democracy you aren't leftist. You yourself are putting up a wall.
When we ask tankies, in lieu of a communist state, to vote as left as possible, they start foaming at the mouth how cringe lefties voting are... I mean that's a pretty fucking high wall.. How else are we, the general non-revolutionary left, ever going to fucking 'work together'.
These people are mostly helping the people they rail against as much as they do the opposite lol. Overall just sowing division where there needs to be none.
Op is a fed
Loving to see tankies come out of the woodwork to seethe and troll at this
Or liberal BS like we shouldn't make this post because of LeFtiSt UniTy when tankies are the ones who have crap, authoritarian, and genocidal views. All the concern trolling really shows why this post was made.
I'm not sure anyone knows what a tankie is.
Apparently saying any country other than the US should take a turn at world leadership is a tankie opinion.
I've seen "Tankie" pulled out on Lemmy and Reddit over things like:
Suggesting a revolution is required to stop global capitalism, and that we cannot vote our way out of Capitalism
Countering common narratives that paint US Geopolitical Adversaries and Existing Socialist/Communist regimes as comically evil villains.
Criticizing the western perspective on the Russia/Ukraine conflict, and by extension criticism of Ukraine, or praise for Russia
Suggesting that violence against Nazis is ok
I mostly get the impression that people don't like violence, and dislike the idea that capitalism may need to be opposed through violence. Though I've also seen it thrown out at suggestions that capitalism should even be defeated at all. It feels like a poison tbh, we really should just be uniting against capitalism.
so tankie is just a nonsense word?
It can be misused, but it properly means supporting authoritarian 'communism'. I usually see it on hexbear, where they often say Russia China and North Korea are vastly better than western countries.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
let's be honest, they should be removed from society
You are aware that the .ml doesn't stand for machine learning, right?
Some people made an account there right in the beginning of the Reddit fiasco before there were any viable alternative instances, like I did. Looking at the age of the account, I'm guessing that's what they did too.
Yeah it's the TLD for the country of Mali
This weird equivalence some people draw between liking/agreeing with a significant amount of ML work and defending everything the Soviet Union and CCP have ever done....it's really weird
Maybe they know something we don't.
EDIT: JSYK, it's CPC. CCP is the intentionally wrong abbreviation that nazi propagandists use and I don't think that's what you intended.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP),[3] officially the Communist Party of China (CPC),[4] is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). - Wikipedia
No, it's CCP. I don't call Nazis by what they choose to be called so i will also not do that for the CCP
Fuck tankies, but I'll start with the much more pressing problem with Nazis and alt right.
Why not both?
It’s been done before. There’s a documentary about it called The Act of Killing, and a book called The Jakarta Method.
very tankie of you
the only tankie with rights
Tankies as well as fascists are imperialistic scum.
I swear almost every American election cycle, some weird word will start popping up everywhere. like how all the trump supporters started saying cuck out of nowhere in 2015-2016
Tankie has been a thing for over half a century. The Soviets used tanks(from other countries) to invade and crush antisoviet revolutions/protests in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
This was considered shocking for some communists and other leftists while some communists supported those actions. Those who supported this "intervention" were called tankies, in order to differentiate them from the non tank invasion supporting communists.
In Greece(my country), which was in the "West", this event caused the split of the greek communist party(KKE) into 2 separate parties, KKE(Moscow controlled tankies) and KKE "interior"(weak ass soy communists who cant stomach the use of tanks in order to create a better tomorrow).
KKE "interior" kinda eventually became SYRIZA which surprisingly won the elections in 2015(breaking the 2 party status quo). Then the EU decided that the greek people decided poorly and punished them. So when the greek people decided correctly(elected a right wing government), the EU rewarded them. Carrots and sticks make the world go around. Thats how you make a majority leftist country, into a right wing one.
PS Greek debt is as high as it has ever been but Greece issued negative interest bonds. Tell me again how is the economy supposed to work? Noone talks about the greek debt anymore, it's a non issue, Greece has been accepted into the EU's infinite money glitch scheme.
Huh.
On my side of the Atlantic the US usually just chooses which right wing dictator they want to rule directly
This is more a lemmy thing. Tankie is an older word but like you dont usually run into stalinists in the wild too much. The Lemmy creators and one of the biggest instances when the site was still small was a communist one promoting not just like the ideal of communism but legit stalinism.
As a result there was a lot of weird very pro russia pro china pushback and whataboutisms on the platform in the early days before the number of non stalinist users drowned them out
Agree, but to me they're no different from any other genocide denying pieces of shit. If you are a NATO apologist that sees what happened to Iraq or what is currently happening to Gaza as any less abhorrent, you are just as bad as someone apologizing for Russia or the USSR.
Do you have nothing better to post?
I don't wanna be a tankie, but I want hot alt people to physically abuse me 😔
Have you tried therapy and/or a mosh pit
I still don't understand what a tankie is
Edit: From what I gathered, they're essentially authoritarian communists
The type of "communist" that supports authoritarian, usually state capitalist regimes like the USSR, China, and the DPRK.
The lack of meaningful worker enfranchisement in any of those regimes should tell you all you need to know, really - they're red-coded fascist lunatics.
Soo is it still okay to support good communism which doesn't spy on the people and is cool?
Star Trek Socialism
End scarcity, deconstruct currency, and put me in space 😎
Yeah, go for it.
You mean utopia?
Yes exactly. Is it acceptable to believe in a world where everyone can be happy and not have to worry about having enough money to afford a living? Would be super sick, but also quite the extremisticly positive imagination of the world.
@backhdlp the term was invented to describe those communists in the West who thought
Rákosi (a Hungarian Stalinist)[edit: whoever it was, there's a communist historian correcting me downthread] did nothing wrong when he and Kruschev sent military tanks into Hungary to force them to stay in the Soviet Union. That was in the 1950s.Wikipedia on Hungarian Revolution
Hakim has a good video about it https://youtu.be/LcJ5NrJtQ8g?si=Fgc2HTHJHd-pJvPC
It seems to be commies getting angry at other commies, which seems very counterproductive
Hell yeah!
Unfortunately, the only way to kick tankies out of 196 is to get 196 out of Lemmy. Because Lemmy is being developed by two tankies themselves, with a third one about to join. And because despite being defederated from hexbear and lemmygrad, lemmy.ml is still a free roam place for tankies from those two cesspool places. So, either defederate yourselves from lemmy.ml (nobody would do that), or fork lemmy into a new clean place (not impossible, but difficult to perform), or do as beehaw will do soon.
I mean, if push comes to shove why not? It’s not the “main instance” anymore, it’s only got twice the users of Hexbear. Around a third of .world. I don’t think defederating would be that bad of an idea if they get too oppressive.
I feel like wanting to defederate from .ml is showing your whole ass for all to see. I get wanting to defed from hexbear and grad because they genuinely have problems that even I've personally ran up against, but ml? You just hate anything left of hilter if you have an issue with them.
Lemmy.ml is NOT defederated with lemmygrad.ml or hexbear.net
In fact, the lemmy.ml admins/devs are admin on lemmygrad.ml
Choose an instance that defederated with hexbear and lemmygrad and you won't see many tankies. Even if they post on Lemmy.ml you won't see it because that is how federation works.
If you don't mind, what is beehaw doing?
Beehaw is looking for a new place to be, mostly because of the lack of modding tools (I think there is a post on that instance). But if that migration allows them to avoid tankies and other kind of fascists, that's better. Can't blame them, I was harassed by tankies as well some weeks ago.
Wtf are tankies?
Theoretically, they're authoritarian leftists. In reality, leftism has little to do with it. They glorify former communist authoritatian countries and are anti-west no matter what the west does. There are pro-russia tankies (Lemmygrad.ml) and pro-china tankies (hexbear.net), with some overlap between them.
Calling them left at all is playing into their game of self-legitimacy at best or trying to delegitimize actually leftism at worst.
The types of leftists that will defend any regime that opposes the US/the west, and say any ethical/human rights violations done by them are either necessary in the moment to fight capitalism or is just fake news. You usually find them celebrating China's government.
Tankies are absolutely not leftists, they are right wing fascists that call themselves leftists. About as left as North Korea is a democracy.
“Tankie” is a term that was originally coined (ironically, by Marxist-Leninists themselves) to describe members of the CPGB (Communist Party of Great Britain) who justified the Soviet Union’s invasion of Hungary in 1956. It has since become a catch-all term used to describe (self-described) leftists that slavishly adhere to the propaganda of or justify the actions of authoritarian regimes that are (or are perceived to be) “socialist” such as China or (bizarrely enough) modern-day Russia.
they're communist scum, wannabe terrorists
Tankies are not Communists, they're authoritarian fascists. About as communist as North Korea is democratic.
Arent they already gone?
If your instance has defecated from Hexbear, then you wouldn't see any of their posts or comments.
Defecated from Hexbear?
Does a Hexbear shit in the threads?
Tankies are found in almost all instances that end in .ml
What is a Tanky?
It's a pejorative term to describe authoritarian Chinese government apologists. Historically it was used to describe communist members that defended the use of tanks against civilians during a Hungary uprising.
TIL. Thank you.
Authoritarian communists.
You can only have one or the other, not both, since they are inherently incompatible. People calling themselves communists, doesn't mean that's what they are.
I think theoretically communism requires a society with no state, but I think historically a vanguard party has come in and said "yeah we will do bureaucracy for a while and then dissolve the state" aaaaaand now you have a dictator and stazi and gestapo and thought crimes and a gulag. Oops 😋
So.. You're describing how they blatantly didn't practice communism to.. defend the continued use of the word to define them?
I don't think you're making the point you think you're making.. 🙄🤦♀️
(to be clear: trying to achieve communism, and actually doing it are very different things, and if you end up with an authoritarian regime, you've not achieved communism, no matter what you call it, it really isn't complicated)
Bit of a no true scotsman discussion.
Only if you're the kind who would argue that Hitler was a socialist, or that the CCP is communist.
Communism and socialism aren't vague nebulous concepts, they are very well defined, and those definitions are, as stated above, inherently incompatible with tankies' actions (or at least that actions they support and stand for), never mind that co-opting leftist language and ideas is a well known and documented tactic the right use to manipulate people in to supporting them, before they drop the mask to reveal their true authoritarian bigoted selves.
But sure, name an unrelated fallacy instead of thinking for yourself, that's sure to end well.. 🙄
Don't feel too bad, at least you got to fell like you "got me" there for a millisecond!
(pasting this here too, to be clear: trying to achieve communism, and actually doing it are very different things, and if you end up with an authoritarian regime, you've not achieved communism, no matter what you call it, it really isn't complicated)
I too believe that anarcho-monarchism is valid and not at all contradictory
How so? Communism ultimately describes a society where power is spread amongst the people, while authoritarianism describes a system where power is concentrated at the top. What could possibly be communist about an authoritarian regime?
Look at Indonesia in 1965–66 to see what happens to peaceful communists. Or Chile in 73. They’re rounded up and slaughtered by US-backed fascists. The reason ML theory prescribes a period of authoritarianism is to defend against this.
This kind of parsing is dangerous and its how bad actors are able to infiltrate and get into power. Yes totalitarian communists didnt practice it in their true form and were totalitarian dictatorships, but its dangerous to pretend like they didnt sprout organically from a communist movement, and didnt identify and define communism for decades.
Stalin wasnt a nazi no matter how much he fits the bill more and it's important to recognize them in your ranks clawing for power and waiting to take advantage of good will.
Anyone to the left of you
That's impossible, I shoved all those counter-revolutionaries into a ditch and ran them over with t-
Uh oh
"Tankie" is a term that was originally coined (ironically, by Marxist-Leninists themselves) to describe members of the CPGB (Communist Party of Great Britain) who justified the Soviet Union's invasion of Hungary in 1956. It has since become a catch-all term used to describe (self-described) leftists that slavishly adhere to the propaganda of or justify the actions of authoritarian regimes that are (or are perceived to be) "socialist" such as China or (bizarrely enough) modern-day Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
they're communist scum, wannabe terrorists
Tankies are not Communists, they're authoritarian fascists. About as communist as North Korea is democratic.
upvote required
In practice, (representative) democracy is a sham, anyways
The actually imporant thing they undermine, as does capitalism, is autonomy.
Rule.
Uh but isn't a revolution an undermining of democracy? I don't know who these tankies are, but it seems like yall commies just making some big deal about your little beef with other commies. Its kinda silly.
Since when are screwdrivers tankie symbols?
The original says keep nazis out of punk. Skrewdriver is a neonazi band
I mean, yes, but also Phillips screwdrivers can die in a fire
Can't we all just get along?
No.
I refuse to get along with people who support genocide.
With genocidal twats? No.
What is “196”?
It was a meme community on Reddit, but I don't know the origin. Seems to have a lot of non-binary folks in here, so I'm still wondering why reddit thought it applied to me, but they had some good memes over there.
Based
Want to see the transphobia and homophobia that Lemmy tankies from Hexbear are getting up to? Check out !dronerights@lemm.ee (https://lemm.ee/c/DroneRights) to see their months long harassment of a single trans person for being nonbinary.
What’s with the chaser username?
what happened to your username https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/u/PM_ME_FAT_ENBIES ?