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!
In short, “tankie” is a thought-terminating phrase thrown into any conversations where people want to get others to terminate all thought coming from people to their left. It gets thrown at communists by other communists, it gets thrown at communists by anarchists, it gets thrown at all of the above by socdems, it gets thrown at all of the above by liberals, and it gets thrown at all of the above including liberals by fascists.
Its function in actual practice is that it moves discourse and spaces rightwards. Anyone using the phrase should be completely disregarded as a person that wants you to keep your brain closed.
EDIT: Downvoters literally downvoting actually published leftist internationalist author saying exactly what I just said here because they don’t want to stop using it as a thought-terminator and don’t consider the fact that all they’re doing is moving things rightwards when they use it.
Blue-haired white college kids from high-income families going through the commie phase that many go through due to academia’s fascination with at least the theory of it and the fact that such students start out spending most of what little free time they have online
The stereotypical basement-dwelling, probable-chomo neckbeards with BO who moderate large subreddits, unironically believe that work should be abolished and never socially matured past high school. Examples include Doreen Ford and awkwardtheturtle.
Edgy American 13-year-olds from high-income families who just discovered politics and chose (their idea of) communism over nazism and unironically stan Putin because they think he’s fighting something something gay/pronouns (which totally aren’t despised in Ukraine too)- as well as many other free and fair governments like North Korea and the Chinese Communist Party.
And sealioning is a type of internet trolling where you repeatedly make incessant, bad-faith attempts to “just have a debate” and then ignoring all responses unread.
One thing about sealioning that I haven’t seen mentioned yet is that it’s a tactic designed to utterly exhaust the other person by asking question after question with no willingness to listen to the answers. It’s there to waste time and grind down your opponent until they have had enough of your bullshit and tell you to fuck off. At that point you can feign offense and declare victory.
Of all the things Kruschev would do after Stalin’s death that Stalin should’ve shot him for - running tanks into Hungary was absolutely correct
The Communists who sided with tanks going into Hungary was how Communists earned the moniker “Tankie”
Yet 50 years later it’s revealed that MI6 were training the rebels
“Tankie” should unironically be worn with pride. In the fact “tankies” were absolutely correct in characterising the uprising as a semi-fascist counter-revolution (doors of jews and Communists were marked for extermination) that needed to be put down
Some of the weapons used were American, and others almost certainly British. Mr Smith says MI6 and the CIA had buried arms caches in the woods around Prague and Budapest for use by “stay-behind” parties or fifth columnists in case of war. Additional: The Truth About Hungary is a brilliant and quite short book worth reading. Published in 1957 it basically set out the character of the protests as semi-fascist and supported by the imperialist powers. Basically everything that was dismissed as Communist propaganda but has now been confirmed by the Western press. People seem to forget that Hungary only a 11 years previously was a fascist state allied with the Nazis and Left Anticommunists have continually tried to portray the uprising as a “socialist uprising but with a more human face”
Section from the book “The Truth about Hungary” by Herbert Aptheker; a prominent figure in U.S. scholarly discourse in the 1940’s, and Marxist Historian. Written in 1957 it outlined what later would be confirmed by the bourgeois Western press
"The special correspondent of the Yugoslav paper, Politika, (Nov. 13, 1956) describing the events of those days, said that the homes of Communists were marked with a white cross and those of Jews with a black cross, to serve as signs for the extermination squads. “There is no longer any room for doubt,” said the Yugoslav reporter, “it is an example of classic Hungarian fascism and of White Terror. The information,” continued this writer, “coming from the provinces tells how in certain places Communists were having their eyes put out, their ears cut off, and that they were being killed in the most terrible ways.”
“But the forces of reaction were rapidly consolidating their power and pushing forward on the top levels, while in the streets the blood of scores of massacred Communists, Jews, and progressives was flowing.”
“Some of the reports reaching Warsaw from Budapest today caused considerable concern. These reports told of massacres of Communists and Jews by what were described as ‘Fascist elements’ …” (N.Y. Times, Nov. 1. 1956)
“The evidence is conclusive that the entry of Soviet troops into Budapest stopped the execution of scores, perhaps thousands of Jews, for by the end of October and early November, anti-Semtic pogroms - hallmark of unbridled fascistic terror - were making their appearance, after an absence of some ten years, within Hungary.”
“A correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Maariv (Tel Aviv) reported:
During the uprising a number of former Nazis were released from prison and other former Nazis came to Hungary from Salzburg . . . I met them at the border . . . I saw anti-Semitic posters in Budapest . . . On the walls, street lights, streetcars, you saw inscriptions reading: “Down with Jew Gero!” “Down with Jew Rakosi!” or just simply “down with the Jews!”
Leading rabbinical circles in New York received a cable early in November from corresponding circles in Vienna that “Jewish blood is being shed by the rebels in Hungary.” Very much later-in February, 1957-the World Jewish Congress reported that “anti-Semitic excesses occurred in more than twenty villages and smaller provincial towns during the October-November revolt.” This occurred, according to this very conservative body, because “fascist and anti-Semitic groups had apparently seized the opportunity, presented by the absence of a central authority, to come to the surface.” Many among the Jewish refugees from Hungary, the report continued, had fled from this anti-Semitic pogrom-like atmosphere (N.Y. Times, Feb. 15, 1957). This confirmed the earlier report made by the British Rabbi, R. Pozner, who, after touring refugee camps, declared that “the majority of Jews who left Hungary did so for fear of the Hungarians and not the Russians.” The Paris Jewish newspaper, Naye Presse, asserted that Jewish refugees in France claimed quite generally that Soviet soldiers had saved their lives.”
Tankies are the cringe “communists”, authoritarians that beleave that no one but them (definitely not rich people) should have power. You can generally spot them because they often idolize the Soviet Union and CCP, despite the fact that both were/are authoritarian shitholes.
Sealioning is when you repeatedly ask someone basic questions in an attempt to annoy them or make it look like they don’t have any. Often sealioners pretend they just want to engage in debate, but in reality ignore or deny any evidence or arguments presented.
People complaining about “tankies” are exactly like the people that complain about the “woke”. The behaviour is two sides of the same coin, one performed by conservatives-only while the other is performed by both of them in unity against the only anti-capitalists.
Both are functionally meaningless, being undefined in any given situation so they can be thrown around in all places.
You got down voted but you’re right. Tankie is the new form of commie after that fell out of favor. Western “champaign socialists” (another term I hate but it kinda applies here) use it to criticize people from countries that actually have had socialist experiments. Most of the leftists globally are not western and would fit under the standard western definition of tankie. But if you’ve never come close to overthrowing your own government, are you positioned all that well to criticize someone elses revolution while you sit comfortably in the imperial core?
Poor countries face challenges that rich countries can’t imagine often from western interference and revolutions are an ugly business. No Castro was not Santa Claus but he was a marked improvement over Batista.
Did you notice the huge amount of downvotes on any post in here that isn’t outright insults the so called “tankies”?
You got down voted but you’re right. Tankie is the new form of commie after that fell out of favor.
During the Red Scare, calling someone a “communist” was itself a death threat. Red Scare is now over and you have people openly declaring themselves communist, that’s why they had to come up with a new term. Tankie was their first attempt but they messed up by making it too restrictive, now they’re pushing a new term
“Woke.”
Example sentences: “Free healthcare is wokeism”
The above is a natural evolution since “Free healthcare is communism” would have the opposite effect if you keep repeating it over and over. At some point people will declare themselves “woke” and the right will come up with yet another new term.
Per Wikipedia, “Tankie is a pejorative label for communists and those who align with Marxism–Leninism ideology.” That’s basically what you get when you ask people to define, “tankie.”
But, as with most perjoratives, its usage has expanded. It can still be used in its original meaning but it’s often used much more broadly. If you do a search on how people use the word “tankie” (like in comment threads) you’ll see it’s now commonly used to describe anyone who isn’t sufficiently critical of China and Russia and sometimes as a modern synonym for “un-American”.
Tankies are Red Fascists. They're essentially communism-flavored authoritarians. I would contend they do not qualify as "left", "leftists", etc but far-right. They support and defend Soviet Russia and the CCP, specifically defending their atrocities and oppression.
I don’t see why not since progressive leftist describes where their beliefs lie and authoritarianism describes how they go about enforcing their beliefs.
Really depends on how specific you want to be with the definition of leftist though.
Sure, I guess I equate a desire to be subject to an authoritarian, strongman type leader as something that appeals more to people on the right. We’re a diverse and messy species though so there’s likely someone, somewhere who will be the exception that proves the rule.
I suppose it's always possible to believe in a benevolent dictator who will use their authority to establish whatever system it is that you think is "best", even if it's not authoritarian. Lots of revolutions try that.
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy as a whole[1][2][3][4] or certain social hierarchies.[5]
According to emeritus professor of economics Barry Clark, supporters of left-wing politics "claim that human development flourishes when individuals engage in cooperative, mutually respectful relations that can thrive only when excessive differences in status, power, and wealth are eliminated."[6]
So maybe? If you had a truly benevolent dictator that promoted equality, freedom (limited to everything except changing nature of government) and prosperity for all then that might fit? But in the real world, not effectively.
I’ve seen plenty of people start off with good intentions and then they change when they get a taste of power.
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.” - Lord Acton.
Can there be such a thing as a progressive/leftist who is pro-authoritarianism?
Not really.
Progressivness is about freedom, authoritarianism about the lack of freedom.
But someone could hypothetically be an actual communist and an authoritarian. Because communism is just an economic system.
In practice the only way it would work is “mob rule”. Like what happened during the French revolution where people rose up, killed the ruling class, and then distributed their wealth.
But even that wasn’t the same because the mob didn’t attempt to distribute it equally. Everyone just grabbed shit.
I think it’s especially confusing to people with a two party political system, because economic and social policy start to get intertwined, when they’re two different things.
Which a cynic would say is intentional so that no matter who gets elected, the wealthy win.
A cynic or a realist? All political systems have to have some checks against human greed and avarice or things quickly turn to shit for the average person. If you can’t vote someone out, that’s an important check you’re giving up.
Sealioning is a type of online harassment or trolling tactic, where someone persistently requests empirical evidence from another user with the intent to exhaust them rather than engage in sincere debate. It's named after a webcomic in which a sea lion follows a character around, constantly demanding proof for a casual statement made in conversation. It's often seen as a form of bad faith argument, as the goal isn't really to get information, but to frustrate or tire out the person being targeted.
"Tankie" is a term originally used within the left-wing political sphere to describe those who supported the Soviet Union, including its use of military force to maintain its influence over its satellite states, particularly referring to the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and the Prague Spring in 1968 with tanks. Today, it's often used more broadly, sometimes pejoratively, to describe people who uncritically support or idealize authoritarian socialist or communist regimes, often ignoring or downplaying their human rights abuses.
Damn - the mental gymnastics that account performs to try and justify systematic oppression is worthy of Olympic Gold. 90% of their arguments are "China's not bad because the US is worse", followed by a full frontal attack on democracy and "wokeness" while claiming to be a leftist. A very shrill shill.
Someone once described Tankies (at least the ones that are behind the Lemmy codebase) as "conservative communists who think the Tiananmen Square Massacre was a hoax" and uh, I just find that fitting.
Sealioning originiates with this comic strip. Tankies is a perjorative term broadly applied to anyoneone with marxist-leninist beliefs, applied by centre left and liberals. It refers originally to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia with the implication being that “tankies” support the crushing of resistence to Soviet authority but used more generally just do dismiss anyone with militantly anti-capitalist ideals.
Tankies are generally not just anybody with communist perspectives, but a. certain extreme. A tankie is the type of person who will essentially argue that capitalism and western society are the roots of all evil, and deflect from any criticism of Russia, China, Iran, etc. by attacking the US instead of actually addressing the criticism.
If you genuinely accept critiques of Iran, China, and Russia as well as disliking the West's capitalism then you're just a communist, not a tankie. However if you just kinda accept critiques in a "No one's perfect" kinda way but still cheer when Russians shoot Ukrainians, you'd be a tankie who fell for Russian propaganda. I'd recommend looking into the firehose of falsehood, it informs a lot about certain righties' and lefties' perspectives.
You're not even necessarily a communist. I don't call myself a communist, but yeah, there are problems with capitalism, that's not a weird thing to say.
That's just regular old black and white thinking. Every time you've decided that an "ism" is the root of all the world's evils you've lost the game. Doesn't matter what it is. The "isms" are never the source of the trouble; that would be humanity itself.
Yeah I’m an anarchist. I have friends who are ML. If they were to say, support a theoretical Cuban invasion of Rojava (listen there aren’t many anti capitalist countries in 2023) because Rojava isn’t the right kind of anti capitalist that would be some tankie ass shit.
The Soviets weren’t saying “be communist or be destroyed” the rebels believed in communism they just wanted self rule.
Also tankie usually implies someone supports Russia and China no matter what they do. Often they use the argument of being anti imperialist even when defending imperialist expansion.
It's a term that originates with the left. Specifically, those who broke with the USSR over imperialist invasions, referring to those who did not. More broadly, it refers to the authoritarian left (as opposed to the anarchist left).
Thank you for responding. I have boiled down the aggregate of answers as basically a tankie supports authoritarianism, or use of violence to deal with opposition. If this take is incorrect, someone please correct where I have it wrong. Btw, I have deliberately ignored references to left/right as meaningless in my quest for information.
Add comment