Remember kids, Tankies wants to undermine democracy - same as facists.

  • Stoneykins [any]@mander.xyz
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    1 year ago

    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.”

    • BigBlackCockroach@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsqE9kEsDVY

    • masquenox@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It became confusing when liberals learnt of the word - now they hurl the word at anyone who dares to remind them that being pro-capitalist is still a right-wing thing to be.

    • vonbaronhans@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • wewbull@iusearchlinux.fyi
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      1 year ago

      …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.

      • Stoneykins [any]@mander.xyz
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        1 year ago

        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.

      • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        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.

        They literally support a transitionary period and a capture of the bourgeois state for the interests of the proletariat instead of its immediate dissolution, compromise is the thing ultralefts criticize them for.

      • masquenox@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Anyone who supports the idea of communism isn’t very intelligent to begin with.

        Good job projecting there… I award you ten out of ten PragerU coins for that one.

        dislike Isreal people because thier allegiances lay the opposite to the United States.

        Oh, it has nothing to do with the fact that Israel is a genocidal white supremacist settler-colonialist state?

        • Evilsmiley@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Hamas is not the palestinian people. Israel’s government is not the Israeli people.

          You should not support Hamas or The Israeli government regardless of whi h side did what.

          The comment you’re replying to was specific about the difference between the people and the organisations in control of their states so I think you should too.

          • masquenox@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            You should not support Hamas

            So who else is there to support? Who else is willing to fight back against the genocidal Israeli regime? Gi Joe, maybe? The starship Enterprise?

            How many of the Palestinians fighting for Hamas actually gives a damn what Hamas stands for? Half? A quarter? Ten percent, maybe? I don’t know… but I can tell you this - all of them know, far better than you ever could, what Israel stands for. They have seen it for themselves for the last half-a-century. It was no different than all the Vietnamese people who fought with the Viet Cong - and the liberal hand-wringing over the “evil” Viet Cong sounded exactly the same then as yours do now.

            This is what you “enlightened centrists” don’t seem to understand… when a genocidal enemy is giving you no other option but to resist using all means available, you don’t get to wait around for a political organisation that soothes all your moral hackles - you either join the people handing out AKs or you sit on the sidelines and wait for the mass-murder to claim you, too.

            You think your “both-side-ism” is new? It’s not… it’s been the exact same bullcrap that has been used to smear all anti-colonialist warfare since the start of colonialism.

            • Evilsmiley@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              The fact that a cause is just does not make all of its participants good.

              Hamas is a dictatorship, they have not allowed an election in near 20 years, and they do not hesitate to endanger the people of palestine intentionally to further their cause. You can condemn the Israeli government and their actions while also condemning hamas, it’s not a fucking sport where you pick sides and cheer for a team.

              But that’s a tangent. You did that to the person before me too, just picking out a small section of a comment and responding to that as though everything else said wasn’t there.

              I acknowledge the horrific things comitted by Israel towards palestine and palestinians. But i’m sorry, i find it a bit too hard a pill to swallow to cheer the other force intent on genocide launching rockets indiscriminately into civilians. Just as horrific a thought as cheering the IDF levelling another apartment building, no?

              Do you think that if Hamas were to win that you would feel good supporting the genocide that would follow?

              You’re jist buying into a political bandwagon. Support condemning the idfs actions and sanctions on israel for stolen land. But dont fucking cheer mindless violence. And its ok to acknowledge that everything isnt black and white. Somebody telling you not to support hamas isnt telling you that the people of palestine deserve death and misery.

              • masquenox@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                The fact that a cause is just does not make all of its participants good.

                Nobody said Hamas was any good. If there was anything good about them, Israel would not have funded them back in the late 80s.

                while also condemning hamas

                Again… who else is there that is willing to fight Israel? Superman? Captain Planet? You?

                Get this through your head, liberal - people undergoing brutal colonization does not have the luxury of adhering to your limp-wristed armchair pearl-clutching. If you are going to condemn them for resisting, you might just as well take off your mask and join the pro-colonialism side - you’re not all that far removed from them ideologically, anyway.

      • BigBlackCockroach@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Anyone who supports the idea of communism isn’t very intelligent

        This isn’t fair. Anybody who can read through “das Kapital” must not only be very persistent and have endurance, no they also have to be fairly intelligent. I am surprised by the number of people who claim to have read “das Kapital” it has 4 VOLUMES ! 4 you can die if your bookshelf doesn’t hold and these 4 volumes fall on you.

        Being a communist is just a function of your social class in society. If you are a laborer or poor you are naturally going to seek to pursue your interests for example you do not want to labor and have all the value you create go to the owners. You want to have a bigger share of the outcome of your labor. Communism is the consequence of this. Just like the royals and aristocrats and the captains of industry have the conservative ideology to further their interest so do the poor have communism. Neither conservatism nor communism make you smart or dumb. All it is is people pursuing their interest based on what position in society they hold. Both are ok. And none are dumb. It is inherently intelligent to pursue your own interest together with others who share that interest.

        Edit: I am not getting into the support of any regimes or factions of wars as that is a can of worms i have no appetite for. 😅

    • CaptKoala@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      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

    • CatradoraSomething@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Communists seem to be sad, pathetic people now. I thought ya’ll had something, but you’re all just a bunch of fractured apologists trying to get one over on each other.

      Sad, ya’ll actually had something going on at one point, now you’re just irrelevant