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Define “tankie” please
Tankies are people who are ostensibly communists or other leftists but believe in a vanguard and that it is acceptable for the vanguard to use violence to maintain a monopoly on political power and to maintain control over the Working Class. Tankies don’t believe that the Working Class can be trusted with self-determination or with control over the means of production.
Cyrillic name, questioning lemmy dogmatic pile-ons?
Clearly a perfidious Russki in the employ of the dark lord Putin hisself.
The war for the future is being fought in the comments of a link aggregator for weirdos. It’s like hackernews except somehow more pathetic.
Made my day, thank you LMAO
Товарищ, вы никогда не хвалили Сталина в ответе. Пожалуйста, свяжитесь с ближайшим комиссаром для идеологической оценки. Слава народу!
I love how this has 80 downvotes.
I don’t see why.
It’s not exactly a controversial question. It’s possible they’ve never seen the term used before.
So yeah. Pile on with the downvotes because someone is new! Fuck 'em! /s
Highly authoritarian leftists
There is actually technically no such thing as an authoritarian leftist. Leftism is defined as more egalitarian/less hierarchical. Tankies are right wingers that have been pushed into the same spaces as leftists because they are against Western nationalism.
Also, because setting up a “Left Wing” country or society doesn’t mean people with a Right Wing outlook on life cease to exist. They have to candy coat their beliefs in the language of Leftism but that doesn’t make it leftism.
You’ve fallen into the trap. Political stances aren’t on a spectrum, they’re multi dimensional
Some leftists believe in anarchy, in a lack of hard boundaries and a more organic cultural resistance to bad actors. Some believe in rigid structure, in the rules creating equity and equality.
Tankies believe in an authoritarian, top down force that will impress ideology onto the masses.
All lefties believe in equity and/or equality. That’s the common thread. Tankies are crazy high on the authoritarian vs anarchy spectrum, but they genuinely think that road will lead to an equitable society
Left and Right are specifically about how people view power and authority. Nothing else. Left is no kings, Right is kings. Over time that got fleshed out and more nuanced but the point remains. Anarchists are the farthest Left you can go and Absolute Monarchs are the farthest Right you can go.
That’s an insane paradigm. That’s putting so many things on one axis
You have to try to understand others from where they are. The right is generally bad, but they also believe in people… Which has merit. The left is generally good, except when their plans are bat shit insane
Personally, I believe anarcho-communism is the ideal situation. It’s also bat shit insane. I don’t know if I could live in such a society, I’m certain most people today couldn’t
You have to see the nuance and see where people agree and differ. Every successful political movement is evangelical. I refuse to believe most people don’t want to live in a better world, they’re just generally really fucking stupid
But they have values… Some are good and some are bad. Some are inherent and some are learned.
Good things are good, bad things are bad. We have enough food to overfeed everyone… People shouldn’t starve. You can believe in that fact, I think nearly everyone believes this, while also being a too dumb to understand how to solve that contradiction
There’s no objectively best system. The world is a messy place. The best system is the one that works best at the moment
That’s putting so many things on one axis
It puts very little on one axis. No kings or Kings. Originally that was literally a question of how people wanted the French revolution to go.
The French revolution wasn’t that simple. Read up on Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, and how he pushed the assignant and destroyed the French economy
It’s never that simple. Life, and how humanity organizes itself, is always far more complicated
Authoritarian anti-capitalist then
“Tankie” is just a pejorative for those who support socialism in the real world. It’s a caricature, the “tankie” is someone that believes everything levied against socialist states by the west is both true and good. In reality, many groups and figures like the Black Panther Party, Nelson Mandela, etc are supportive of socialist states, and are thus the same “tankies” demonized by anti-communists.
I don’t care what you call it, I’m not supporting fascist state capitalism.
Economies where public ownwership is the principle aspect of the economy and where the working classes are in control of the state are neither fascist nor capitalist.
where the working classes are in control of the state
If the working class were in control of the state they wouldn’t do Tankie shit or get called Tankies.
So you’re saying that the working class Chinese citizens have direct, official power over the means of production and can use that to further the political goals of the working class with no repercussions?
Yes, the CPC is a working class party with a hair over 100 million members, and the system of democracy in China is distributed into local, regional, and the central government.
“ackchually”
I’m giving my POV as a Marxist that disagrees with being labled “right wing” and having Marxism boiled down to “opposing western nationalism.”
I’d say Marxist-Leninists are the ones getting called Tankie way more than everyday Marxists.
You know… I am genuinely curious how many of the votes here are purely a response to cyrillic text.
You mean in my display name? Yeah, it’s a funny way of getting prejudiced responses LMAO
Interestingly, Voyager doesn’t seem to be respecting display names:
Yeah, Voyager just breaks peoples profiles/doesn’t even bother displaying them properly/at all…
One of the many reasons why I switched away from it to Summit
Yeah, considering the ‘downvote all .ml’ mentality that exists.
I’d say the mentality of .ml leads to the downvotes
I appreciate seeing responses from .ml users for the same reason Dunkey appreciates Armond White.
At least it’s not like reddit where there’s endless rows of [removed] for posting the most mid-takes ever lol
The word Tankie originates from 1950s British Communist circles. Specifically, it was used by British Communists to derisively describe their comrades who supported the 1956 invasion of Hungary by the Soviet Union.
Images of the Soviet invasion featured a lot of tanks, hence, “Tankie”.
After that died down, the term didn’t come back into use really, until the 2010s, when leftists on the internet started using it in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way. It was fun to bring back a stupid sounding, incredibly niche, British slang word.
At some point the word breached containment and started to be used by liberals, in a very cavilier sort of way. I’ve seen people use Tankie to describe anyone from Marxist-Leninists, to Marxists generally, to Leftists generally, weird right-wingers who converted to Russian Orthodoxy, pro-Palestine activists, mods of Lemmy instances someone doesn’t like.
Shit, I’ve seen literal Anarchist get called Tankies.
Basically, it’s a meaningless nothing word now, that’s a bit like your boomer grandpa who still thinks it’s the Red Scare, calling Joe Biden a Commie Pinko.
This reads like a Republican saying that racism has no meaning
Only if you have the most superficial, half-baked, reading comprehension skills on God’s green earth.
Racism is a deeply rooted set of systems and ideologies that arose to justify and reinforce institutions of chattel slavery, segregation, and police brutality.
Tankie is a goofy sounding British slang term from 60+ years ago, entirely divorced from its original context, used on a tiny collection of web forums
I mean if you have the reading comprehension of a magat
Of course the ml user wants to pretend they’re not a china/russia boot licker. Lol. It’s used for a very clear meaning in almost every single case.
I really appreciate the summary you provided. I’m sure the user that asked got downvoted for a reason. I’ve never felt comfortable asking myself. I’ve googled it, read other explanations, and have always decided I just don’t get it. A big part of that is I read comments that are all over the spectrum and have a response from somebody saying they are a tankie. I never even heard of the term until I got on here like two years ago and it just feels like it’s a “I disagree with you so I’m going to call you a niche name that’s popular only on this particular platform” vernacular.
I wish it would die out because it’s been so diluted of meaning in this community.
This was answered multiple times in the days prior. Why did you only respond to the explanation that defends tankies?
Did I sign up for some kind of course you’re instructing or do you just generally feel entitled to try grading engagement in an open community discussion?
Those on the left who support the state using force to keep the people controlled.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
Y’know rolling tanks into Hungary in 1956 when leftists first started using the word.
It’s a well known leftist term and is almost 100 years old now. I have a hard time believing you didn’t already know this.
Completely off topic, but I like your icon.
Uh oh!
“Tankie” was never about “using force to keep the people controlled,” it originated from a split in whether to support the Red Army putting down a fascist uprising in Hungary or not. You’re correct about the origin timeline, but are defending Nazis freed from prison after being jailed during World War II that went on to lynch communists and Jews, just because they were anti-communist.
“Tankie” was a pejorative for Marxists that support socialism in real life then as well as now. It originated in the Communist Party of Great Britain. The term was coined because of the British tendency towards silly-sounding insults, and because the Soviet Union sent in the Red Army to stop the western-backed fascist insurrection. This caused a split in the party (as it always does in western orgs).
The Hungarian revolt in 1956 was infested with anti-semitic pograms. MI6 funded, supplied, and trained the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries. These counter-revolutionaries were allied with fascists who were lynching Jewish people and Communists.
"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."
Further, the CIA also backed Hungarian resistance forces:
Prague in 1968 was a similar fascist uprising in both cases there were some elements of progressive protest, but these were greatly overshadowed by the fascist movements. Dubcek wanted to sell out to the IMF, and restore capitalism. The idea that any of this was about “democracy” or “freedom” is silly, it was always about Cold War tactics to destabilize socialism.
TL;DR imagine if the January 6th rioters were armed and trained by foreign governments, started lynching officials and Jewish people, and the US sent in the army to put down the insurrection. The MAGA chuds would claim that it was about “freedom” and “democracy,” but we all know that they just wanted Trump in office.
Nowadays, it’s used by any random anti-communist to refer to anyone that supports socialist states or doesn’t buy into the imperialist narrative about global south countries. It was the ones you call “tankies” that knew the stories of WMD and Saddam’s forces leaving babies outside of incubators were both bullshit to manufacture consent for war, but now that its decades later the anti-communists all suddenly have collective amnesia about their willing participation in spreading the lies of empire to murder hundreds of thousands of people.
Anti-communists, I might add, that you are the modern version of, “left” anti-communists that service empire by attacking the Empire’s enemies for them while not meaningfully opposing the Empire itself. The Zizeks, the Chomskys, the Eric Blairs.
I know quite well what the pejorative you love to hurl means, and its origins. In addition to the liberal viewpoint from wikipedia, I recommend the Prolewiki article on “Tankies,” as well as Nia Frome’s essay “Tankies.” That should give you a more well-rounded view.
It very clearly is about the historical event I have linked above via the acutal wiki not your weird grokopedia thing.
And you’re also arguing off of that random authors book, the one that didn’t actually back up the claims being made. We’ve already been over how factually incorrect that was.
Likewise it was not a fascist uprising simply because it was democratic, /anti-authoritarian and wanted to escape from Soviet imperialism. Everything you don’t like isn’t Hitler.
Likewise it was not a fascist uprising simply because it was democratic, /anti-authoritarian and wanted to escape from Soviet imperialism.
This. My grandparents were there when the authorities opened fire on the peacefully gathering crowd. They only escaped with their lives because they got lucky, they saw some others fall around them.
Translation of the Hungarian wikipedia article bc it doesn’t seem to exist in other languages: https://hu-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Sortűz_a_Parlamentnél_1956-ban?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-GB
I recommended reading the Wikipedia entry for the liberal POV, the Prolewiki entry for the Marxist point of view, and the Red Sails article by Nia Frome for a modern contextualization of how the term is used today from a Marxist POV. Prolewiki isn’t “grokopedia,” it has its sources listed clearly.
Secondly, the book I referenced, The Truth About Hungary by Herbert Aptheker, heavily relies on citing western sources like the New York Times (which you can see if you actually read my comment). Aptheker backs up his claims heavily.
It was a fascist uprising because the ones going through with the counter-revolution let Nazis captured during World War II out of jail, and were lynching Jewish people and communists. You can frame this as “pro-democracy” all you want, but this was factually documented. You’re correct about one thing, everything I don’t like isn’t Hitler, but the actual Nazis let out of jail were actual Nazis.
It’s a well known leftist term and is almost 100 years old now. I have a hard time believing you didn’t already know this.
There’s an ongoing campaign by the usual suspects to pretend the word doesn’t have a definition beyond “epithet for The Real Left used by ignorant libtards.” Usually followed by a wall of text containing circular references as citations.
Do you also have an evil gun word to refer to people defending socialdemocracy? Do you call them “bombies” for defending the socialdemocracy in EU states that helped bomb Libya and Yugoslavia and destroyed millions of lives in the process? Do you call them “dronies” for voting for the democrats that threw missiles with drones on brown children during the Obama administration?
Or is the usage of militaristic sounding bad words reserved for those who defend the revolution that saved Europe from Nazism, that industrialized Eastern Europe and saved it from extermination and colonization, saving a hundred million lives in the process from hunger, genocide, disease and exploitation?
Are your bad words reserved for those, and not for the leftists in Spain (my homeland) who refused to repress the fascists during the Spanish Second Republic and allowed a civil war that ended up millions of deaths and in 40 years of fascism? No evil military word for those?
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Libtard is used by the right wing, no communists I know will use anything ending “-tard” because there’s ableist meaning there. Lib is not a militaristic bad sounding word, it’s the shortening of “liberal” or “libertarian”.
Good job in calling out the ableism. I’ve reported it, so hopefully the mods clear it up quickly.
But we do have the more inclusive term of ‘shitlib’, which is a centrist analogue to ‘tankie’ especially so in being ardently uncritical supporters.
particularly i call people with shallow politics who spend more time virtue signaling than trying to engage on topics of critical analysis shitlibs
“Shitlib” is not a militaristic sounding word, though. We reserve those only for communists who oppose the western supremacy status quo
We know that the Hungarian “popular revolt” was recently proven to be a CIA color revolution, right? Like CIA documents were released proving they instigated and supported the whole thing to destabilize the USSR, right?
Not that the USSR of that time was all that great, but why are we using Cold War anti-communist operations and propaganda for our arguments…?
No, but they have declassified a paper about them being completely unprepared and unstaffed for this, and scrambling to get Hungarian speaking agents into Hungary after it started.
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/(est pub date) clandestin[15503634].pdf
all i can find is that the CIA used Radio Free Europe to communicate to the independence fighters that the NATO allies would support their uprising. then when Hungarians revolted, they found themselves wholly unsupported.
do you have any good articles showing this to be a color revolution? because this reads to me just about what happens when a fascist org (CIA) co-opts international solidarity in order to thwart real change from ever getting organized, something they were very fond of doing throughout the cold war leading to devastating effects in the global south
The biggest tell is that, whatever potentially well-meaning elements among the original movements, ultimately Nazi collaborators were let out of prison, and the counter-revolutionaries were lynching Jewish people and communists, as I elaborated on here. There’s also evidence of MI6 arming and training Hungarian insurgents.
JFK Files Reveal CIA Role in the 1956 Hungarian Uprising | The tankies were right.
This article contains a shitton of falsehoods and omissions. The tankies were wrong.
Király was not a fascist. He served in the Royal Hungarian Army as a career soldier, joining after his father before the rise of fascism.
He did indeed serve in the invasion army of the fascistic Horthy regime as a captain, and he was indeed put in command of Jewish slave labourers, for which he received the Righteous Among the Nations accolades, as he treated them as humanely as the situation allowed, defying his orders, risking execution.
He was kept on with the Hungarian People’s Army, promoted by the communist leadership multiple times. He married Gömbös’ niece under Communist rule, way after it would have been politically advatageous. Despite that, he was put in command of the Hungarian participation of Stalin’s planned invasion of Yugoslavia.
He fell out of favour after the invasion was cancelled and was caught up in one of Rákosi’s purges, and he spent the three years after in abysmal conditions until the 56 revolution. He got out a month before because of the buildup to the revolution had some political prisoners released. He spent the next month until the revolution in hospital.
The Nagy provisional government asked him to organise the defense against the Soviet invasion, which he tried and understandably failed. He then left for the US along with hundreds of thousands, and got a job as a CIA trainer for Cuban anti-communist insurgents, which got him in the JFK files.
Then the Putin government put those files out and started a coordinated propaganda campaign to whitewash the genocide and rape the USSR committed.
BTW I’m a leftist and think the CIA is the scum of the earth on par with the SS, but let’s stick to the facts.
Your ‘evidence’ is a random blog post?
A random blog post that upon five seconds of inspection is outright abusing the truth?
In 1996, journalist Michael Smith published a book where MI6 officers, a branch of British intelligence, admitted they trained and armed Király’s fighters.8
Hmm okay, so let’s actually read the source provided here:
according to the author of a new book on the history of the organisation.
So random author, advertising a book is the basis of this whole claim.
“There is no evidence that this was specifically sparked by MI6 because there was another series of events”.
So no evidence.
Unfortunately the Budapest students met in a coffee bar to discuss their activities and were swiftly rounded up. Mr Gorka was interrogated for several weeks, strung up from a beam and immersed in icy water. Under torture, he confessed, and was sent to prison for 15 years.
So the few they did try to recruit and train were caught.
Laszlo Regeczy-Nagy, the President of the Committee for Historical Justice, representing the interests of the veterans, said: “There were thousands of Hungarians living in Austria at the time and some were undoubtedly organised and trained by the British.” He believes that foreign intervention played a modest role, and “the vast majority of those taking part [in the revolt] were locally trained and led”. He added: “Even without training, they pretty quickly learned how to fire machine guns and hurl Molotov cocktails.”
So to re-iterate, the claim that they ‘trained and armed Király’s fighters’ was a complete fabrication by the author.
They, as one would expect of them, were trying to build up a network to maybe do so in the future but they actually had nothing to do with the 1956 uprising.
Why are tankies always so dishonest ?
Why are tankies always so dishonest ?
Because they usually, eventually, end up in a position or situation where they have to either justify or gloss over or invent apologia for or just deny the existence amd actions of Beria, who… is the kind of person with the kind of power and cruelty that is an inevitability of their worldview put into practice.
Its not dissimilar from American Extremeist Christians who just start frothing at the mouth when you point out obvious hypocrises and ‘justified’ horrors in their worldview.
Somewhat ironically, the ego of being a ‘correct’ collectivist overrides a basic sense of human decency, resulting in fanaticism, and fanatics, basically by definition, don’t care about ‘the’ truth, they use language as a weapon, not as a means of genuine communication, and they ultimately use it to affirm their own moral/intellectual superiority over others.
It would be funny if it wasn’t so deadly serious.
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That is by far not a universal definition anymore and not at all how it is used on the internet by a lot of people 😑
E.g.: Liberals often use it to refer to anyone revolutionary, from anarchists to Maoists…
It’s a loaded and really unclear term nowadays and could even be interpreted as whistleblowing
Edit: Hence my question, because this could have been a rule 1 deletion and/or a temp ban e.g.
Imma be real: If someone tries to tell me, that Stalin’s purges were totally justified, they’re a tankie. If someone tells me that only “bad people” have suffered under regimes trying to achieve communism, they’re a tankie. If someone tells me that I must support Iran or Russia because they are not the US, they might be a tankie.
I use tankie the same way. Authoritarians and genocide deniers. It’s a fairly common way to use the word by leftists. Libs and tankies muddying the definition sucks, but how else am I supposed to refer to tankies?
Edit: Also let’s be honest. Tankies call everyone who calls them out a liberal whether it’s warranted or not.
If you demonize previous (even if flawed) socialist experiments (e.g. for being successful and not perfect), then you are a revisionist, if not outright a liberal
I would interpret “demonizing” something as meaning misrepresenting it in a hyperbolically negative manner that may even involve completely constructed criticism.
I don’t think that highlighting authoritarianism in past social experiments constitutes demonising them. You’re right that there were significant successes in these projects, and also that they weren’t perfect. If we don’t properly acknowledge the ways in which they went wrong, can we really hope to do better in the future?
I don’t see any way in which the people you’re replying to are being at all revisionist.
What counts as demonization for you?
I have often seen people say this but I’ve never seen an actual example of someone misusing the term tankie.
Then I’m glad you got spared the headaches
Fair, fair.
I’ve used this definition many times on Lemmy/PieFed so far, it’s my genuine meaning of the word.
The people who support mowing down civilians with tanks in an effort to protect authoritarian regimes, just because they label themselves as communist.
Almost 100% overlap with “Murica bad!”, which while true in a vacuum, ignores that other countries can also be bad. This results in tankies unironically supporting the Kim family or doing some heavy revisionism around Stalin.
Any leftist and every sane person says “Amerikkka bad”
It’s the worst thing to happen to humanity in the second half of the 20th century and beyond
But the same people usually praise other regimes that also abuse human rights. It’s not about the humanity, it’s about not being the right brand of authoritarianism (the right brand is anti-west)
I suspect once Trump goes far enough up Putin’s ass and turns on its European allies, tankies will also start celebrating the USA and ignoring everything that the US is doing in… *gestures broadly everywhere*
What.
Where do you stand on the war in Palestine and where do you stand on the war in Ukraine?
What version of ‘tankie’ is the one that would praise the US for literally anything trump does?
Like if there’s one thing I thought I knew about tankies, it was that they fucking loathe the US and Trump
I’ve literally seen and heard German tankies praise Trump for trying to force the Ukrainians to capitulate to Russia in Ukraine. They like that he’s undermining NATO and wants to appease Russia, think it’ll bring us Peace in Our Time. Literally marching with a communist flag, and saying Trump has the right idea. Horse shoe theory applies.
Like many they’ve fallen down the rabbit hole. Became justifiably critical of traditional western media reporting on Iraq, Israel, Vietnam, Argentina, Guatamala, etc. … Turned to supposedly more critical media, which unfortunately are often operated by Russia, Iran, China, etc. Became indoctrinated, before they realised said media are even more biased, just in another direction.
It can happen to anyone.
e: I see someone downvoted me withing 5 seconds of me writing this comment, probably without even finishing reading it, so apparently I hit a nerve.
They tend to hate Western democracy as a whole. If Trump brings about complete Russian domination in Europe and ends elections in the US for good, of course they’d cheer for their comrade.
That’s my theory anyway. I don’t see modern tankies caring about socialism, that’s more of a guise for their authoritarianism fetish. After all, one of their most celebrated countries, Russia, is not at all socialist either.
Mind that I’m talking about tankies specifically. Plenty of leftists out there who are sensible. Asking about the two wars was kind of a litmus test. To me, if you approve of one offensive war, but not the other, you have some heavy geopolitical bias. Tankies are happy when Ukrainians die, but against the war in Palestine. Fascists are happy when Palestinians die, but have differing opinions on Ukraine. If you just don’t like people dying and think neither Israel nor Russia is in the right, then you’re not a tankie. Oversimplified, but very quick way to gauge whether someone is opposing some geopolitical bloc, or injustice and violence.
Spoken like a true lib who shares 99% of their perception of communist states with the CIA.
“Murica bad but also commie countries bad” is western capitalist propaganda to drive progressive people into apathy and inaction.
To quote Michael Parenti:
So, you compare a country from what it came from, with all its imperfections. And to those who demand instant perfection the day after the revolution, they go up and say: “Are there civil liberties for the fascists? Are they gonna be allowed their newspapers and their radio programs, are they gonna be able to keep all their farms?”
The passion that some of our liberals feel, the day after the revolution, the passion and concern that they feel for the fascists, the civil rights and the civil liberties of those fascists who were dumping and destroying and murdering people before. Now the revolution has got to be perfect, it has got to be flawless.
Well, that is not my criteria, my criteria is what happens to those who couldn’t read? What happens to those babies who couldn’t eat, who died of hunger? And that’s why I support revolution. The revolution that feeds the children gets my support.
I love Micheal Parenti but that quote doesn’t address the criticism. Parenti talks of revolution, OP talks of a government preserving the status quote.
Of course it addresses the criticism. The USSR securing a revolutionary sphere of influence against the USA is obviously about the “looking for perfection after the revolution”.
Establishing a hegemon can only be done after the revolution. Once you eat that pill there’s no perfection afterwards without some self-destruction.
Again, I’m not the one looking for perfection. I’m the one supporting “the revolution that feeds the children”. That was the Bolshevik revolution, so I support it.
It’s pretty obviously social imperialism and not relations on equal footing IMO
Not sure I get your comment, care to explain?
I am referring to the Maoist concept of social imperialism of the USSR, which I tend to agree with.
I am not talking about capitalist financial imperialism, this allegation being well refuted by Castro:
How could the Soviet Union be classified as imperialist? Where are its monopolist enterprises? What is its participation in multinational companies? What industries, what mines, what petroleum deposits does it own in the underdeveloped world? What worker is exploited in any country of Asia, Africa or Latin America by Soviet capital? The economic cooperation which the Soviet Union is offering Cuba and many other countries did not come from the sweat and the sacrifice of exploited workers of other peoples, but from the sweat and effort of Soviet workers
Edit: Castro’s refutation is also a great explanation, of why I would classify today’s PRC as regularly imperialist, even if not to the degree of the USA/EU etc.
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Excellent contribution
🍿
I’m stealing that gif.
You wouldn’t be the first.
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People who’s opinion tends to be “anything ‘the west’ does is bad and anything ‘the east’ does is good”, regardless of the specifics of what you are talking about.
You are not OP LOL
That’s not how Lemmy works. It’s for discussion. If you genuinely only wanted to speak to OP, DM them.
Guess what, moderation involves asking OPs for clarification in a thread so there is transparent reasoning in case of e.g. deletions 🤯🤯🤯
For some reason I didn’t see your M earlier.
Nevertheless, it now seems like you wanted to publicly have an argument with OP over the use of the term, but instead of directly calling them out on it, you phrased it as a request for information, perhaps in the hopes of trapping them into betraying their prejudices or something.
Now other people started trying to answer your question, which doesn’t meet the agenda you were trying to push and you’re acting like people were unreasonable or silly for answering your question, but you asked it openly on an open discussion forum and in a way that didn’t mention OP and just seemed to be phrased like a request for information.
Being a mod is about moderating discussion, not controlling or directing it. I don’t think it’s about blanket control over who speaks.
(By way of balance, some of the mod actions in this thread have been absolutely spot on, thank you.)
Hey, I was only rudely replying to the comment which was oversimplifying a lot of positions as a way to get back at them (and then kinda disingaged). I don’t really take issue with the other comments, since as you said, the question was worded abiguously on purpose.
TBH I’m just tired of the whole semantic circus around muddy words like “tankie”, hence my harsh reactions LOL (sowwy ~w~)Also I have a shitposting side that’s hard to turn off ^^’
Oh and thanks for the constructive feedback, positive and negative :)
I was only rudely replying to the comment which was oversimplifying a lot of positions as a way to get back at them.
I may be overly aspergic about this, I accept, but please try to say what you mean more.
Instead of “Please define tankie”, why not say “@OP, tankie is a muddy and overused word, please state what you mean by it, and if you don’t have a useful and valid meaning for the term, avoid it.”
Instead of “You’re not OP”, why not say “Wow, you’ve certainly oversimplified a lot of positions there!”.
I’m afraid I’m finding your hidden meanings constantly unsettling. I don’t mind you disagreeing with people and entering firmly into the debate, and I thoroughly approve of the bans you put in place, but I’m finding the indirectness harder to come to terms with.
TBH I’m just tired of the whole semantic circus around muddy words like “tankie”
This is the best thing you’ve said. I found it properly eye-opening because it communicates something about how the word is used that wasn’t as clear in my mind as it is now.
Hey,
:)
Btw, I liked this whole comment overall a lot because it was open and honest, showed me how you feel, made you human and very relatable, and clarified concepts for me. Quadruple win!
If the CIA was half as effective as tankie seem to think it is, there’s no way Russia or China would exist today.
Please don’t link to Google docs, they can be used for tracking and doxxing.
Another nice one is the pyramid scheme between left, right and liberals in europe.
The most liberal take of the meme: the need to trademark Far left:
🤦🏼
It’s trademarked because capital has the ability to subsume all criticisms into itself.
it’s uniquely cancerous in that regard, isn’t it? fascinating shit
Isn’t this just a dumber version of horseshoe theory?
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Horseshoe never made sense, so it’s impressive they made something even dumber than it
“The farther you are away from my opinion (the neoliberal center), the closer you are to me labeling you authoritarian” is absolutely what western liberals believe.
That’s the point of it. It’s satire of the horseshoe theory.
OP is posting it unironically, fully seriously, with no satire. OP has equated communists to Nazis and said “tankie fucks deserve to get their heads bashed in.” Extremely aggressive 100% of the time whenever they encounter a Marxist of any sort.
“tankie fucks deserve to get their heads bashed in.”
It’s so funny to see liberals whine about authoritarian communism and then come out with “my solution is to be even more authoritarian than the evil leftists that live in my head”.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the perfect idea of a liberal candidate is just this guy
Yep, it’s always a funny contradiction.
I thought as much but it’s still satire in the absract. Just coming from the anti-“tankie” left.
BTW, I think lemmy.ml would do well to stop deleting comments like the linked one or banning the people who write them. It ends up cleaning up their histories. Also it ends up throwing fewer counterarguments into normies’ eyes. People read and think. If one has heard all their life that Chinese people can’t wait to be liberated and they see the opinion poll you posted there, something cracks. Speaking from experience.
. Also it ends up throwing fewer counterarguments into normies’ eyes
Saying the quiet part out loud?
Sorry what’s the quiet part? I’m confused.
It’s supposed to be but see way to many using it as a serious thing, just like horseshoe
The funniest part is all the comments replying to this post claiming its liberal (exactly same talking points as far right)
Is it inconvenient for them to accept anarchism and libertarian socialism? Because it feels like there is often deliberate erasure.
If Anarchists share the same views on Actually Existing Socialism that liberals hold (i.e. CIA propaganda), what’s the problem with calling them libs in this instance?
There’s no deliberate erasure. This is a left-punching meme directly attacking Marxist-Leninists, and so Marxist-Leninists like me respond accordingly.
Tankies are so close to the far right when they defend the dictatorship of the totalitarian USSR.
Far right stuff like the defeat of Nazism in Europe which saved all 100+ million peoples between Berlin and the Urals from extermination.
Far right stuff like universal healthcare and education to the highest level for free, leading to an increase from 28 years of life expectancy in pre-revolutionary times to almost 70 years of age by 1960s.
Far right stuff like universal right to housing and to work, bringing the complete abolition of homelessness and unemployment.
Far right stuff like bringing about the lowest income inequality that the region has seen in its history by an incredible margin
Far right stuff like supporting anti-imperialist liberation movements all over the globe as early as 1936 (civil war in Spain, my homeland, was only given weapons by the Soviets to fight the fascists) and throughout its entire existence (Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, anti-colonial movements all over Africa, Latin America and Asia)
Far right stuff like having the highest female representation in institutions at the time and being the first country to give voting rights to women
Far right stuff like the policy of preservation of local cultures and languages (for comparison, look up the number of Occitan speakers in France between years 1900 and 2000)
Far right stuff like having a self-sustained economy that didn’t rely on the exploitation of billions in the global south and which had favorable trade terms with other countries in the COMECON and subsidy of third countries such as Cuba through e.g. the “programa petróleo por azúcar”
But yeah, the evil stalinists had prisons during WW2, a war that killed 25 million Soviet citizens!! What a bunch of evil right wing totalitarians!!!
Far right stuff like the defeat of Nazism
More like collaborated with the Nazis and then defended themselves when Germany invaded. But to be more blunt, tons of Right Wing people, nations, and leaders contributed to the defeat of Nazism. Political ideology played little role for most compared to National affiliation. Numerous right wing partisan groups fought the Nazis AND leftists.
Far right stuff like universal right to housing and to work
Serfs always had a right to housing and work and no one would argue that serfdom is Left Wing.
Far right stuff like supporting anti-imperialist liberation movements
Far right stuff like being an Empire
But lets dispense with the tit for tat. The Bolsheviks were far right because they believe that power should rest in the hands of the political elite and not the people. Workers were denied self-determination, denied political power, denied control over the means of production, and faced violence for not complying with the Ruling Class; all hallmarks of the Far Right.
Describing ethnicity based deportations and gulags as “”““prisons””“” is one hell of a stretch.
This also neglects the amount of emancipatory legislation that Stalin repealed during his reign. Like recriminalizing homosexuality, abolishing the local language initiatives and instead pushing for his russification of the country (compare the ethnic make up of the Soviet leadership in 1921 and 1939)
The Soviet Union had its successes and it had its abject failures. Acknowledging them doesnt make you a librul or a revisionist.
Describing ethnicity based deportations and gulags as “”““prisons””“” is one hell of a stretch
Ethnicity based deportations were in fact not prisons, and they were a deplorable and unjustified episode that I wholeheartedly condemn and must be never repeated again. The GULAG system was literally prisons though, it’s just the acronym of the prison system at the time.
As for the rest of your comment, yes, bad policy and mistakes were made during the hardest times of history. We could have a calm conversation and discussion about those, and honestly, I haven’t seen more honest criticism of failures of policy than that in Marxist-Leninist discussion, because people actually bother getting informed and reading about the topic instead of reproducing CIA propaganda. “Goolag hundred million deaths” is not good analysis.
The Soviet Union had its successes and it had its abject failures
Yes, and you’d be surprised how much debate there is about the problems of the USSR in actual Marxist-Leninist circles. The fact of the matter is that it still was the most emancipating socialist experiment up to its day, the first state in the world to achieve collectivization of lands, it empowered hundreds of millions of people to fight against western imperialism, and achieved all of this while living in a world dominated by western imperialism and under constant threat and the most refined and well-funded strategies to topple it.
I see them unironically supporting North Korea.
You’re totally right, they should join into the international bashing of the country that the USA bombed until 85% of THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF BUILDINGS IN THE COUNTRY were leveled, dropping more explosives than were used in the ENTIRE PACIFIC THEATER OF WW2. North Korea being completely leveled and bombed into the stone age and then economically sanctioned into oblivion (remember economic sanctions from USA and EU murder 560.000 people yearly since 1970) surely doesn’t affect them either does it?
No, let’s focus on the totally evil government of a country that has never invaded anyone and keep pushing them as the most evil thing on the planet with the Totally True™ Stories of intergenerational prisons, of government-sanctioned haircuts, and of big big totalitarianism and prison system (nevermind the US being the highest prison population country). Their government system may be weird and have some cult of personality, but nothing to do with the entire destruction of the country by the US and its later isolation from the global stage, right?
A country getting bombed into Rubble doesn’t justify it becoming a hereditary monarchy no matter how much whataboutism you toss around. Nor do the sins of other countries absolve the sins of the Kim family towards their own country.
I agree with you on a great many things. Learning about Laos via meeting some locals in Riviera Beach (not the nice one you’re thinking of) and some wiki hole after seeing the Anthony Bourdain episode. I’m not going to argue that the US is some bastion of moral righteousness. But just any dictatorship is << than whatever the fuck we got going on. Ffs Kim just murdered his own uncle in broad daylight not a fucking year ago.
There are levels of fucked uppedness, and North Korea’s current regime is just south of the Khmer rouge.
Edit: love that there is someone supportive of murdering people with glasses in this! Go on, tell how reeducation through labor is a good thing!
But just any dictatorship is << than whatever the fuck we got going on
By what metric? The USA is complicit in the genocide of >500k Palestinians over the past few years, what has North Korea done similar to that in the past 30?
Public execution for big one. Again homie, I’m not disagreeing with you that the US is fucked and has an outsized prison population(I did read your whole post and links). But North Korea is really fucked up. And it’s not all propaganda. But a closed society like that can easily manipulate numbers like the US is currently trying to do.
Why do you think trump likes Kim so much? They are the same, and they are not good people.
Edit: I love that I upset a few of you tankies. Keep the hate coming!
Ok, how many public executions have taken place in North Korea for the past 30 years? Give me metrics, please. Please, provide any qunagitative quantitative measures for the things you’re talking about. I’m a Spaniard and I could tell you about my democratic government literally dissolving the corpses of tortured and murdered political activists in chemicals so that there would be no evidence.
This argument started with me mentioning Kim murdering his uncle. So at least one. Which is, again, >>>than the US(who also suck btw). I’m really not trying to be combative with you homie. I don’t want this exchange to be adversarial, because I’ve seen your name around and again, I agree with you on a ton of shit. But dictatorships ain’t the hill to die on.
Yeah, like that ^
They use huge whataboutisms to excuse the extremely oppressive regime running the country currently, as though any criticism is unreasonable.
What’s the prison population in North Korea? Give me data on what metrics you’re using
Who said anything about ‘prison population?’
I said “extremely oppressive” which is objectively factual. They have a ‘supreme leader’ who legally controls the police, the military, the executive branch of govt and most facets of peoples lives. The ruling party is legally allowed to repress other parties, and so on… And so forth…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_North_Korea
Inb4 “Wikipedia is a CIA psyop”
They are clearly arguing in bad faith, I refuse to believe someone is this disconnected with reality. Good job on explaining stuff tho comrade.
“No, you see it’s very simple: tankies are bad because the west can’t be evil. I put my X on a paper therefore I live in a DemocracyTM and I can exploit and coup other countries because we need to teach these savages some culture.”
You gotta love all these brave downvoters with zero arguments.
Tankies literally can’t fathom being able to recognize two things as bad at the same time. Imperialism is bad whether or not it’s painted red.
I think you wrote Liberal wrong.
And I think you forgot how much libs completely minced our balls to dust with that blue bitch last year.
What is the point in recognising a bad thing if you then call it the “LeSs eVil” and support it anyway?
You’re right, better let Ukraine get annexed.
Tankies literally can’t fathom being able to recognize two things as bad at the same time.
The thought-terminating straw man that online Western “leftists” can’t stop embarrassing themselves with.
Stalin is a… polarizing figure for a lot of reasons. Not the least of which being his comic inability to extend revolutionary Marxism into Europe when it was at its most popular and most necessary.
Like, the liberals kicking and screaming about his successors - largely a bunch of socialist softies who were happy with detente and primarily interested in economic growth - are absolutely reactionary shits more invested in reinventing the 1950s through third world extraction than any kind of global standard for civil rights or ecological preservation. But Stalin’s paranoia, his intractability, and the toxic consequences of the cult of personality that kept him in office long past his expiration date did horrible things to 1930s Soviet Era domestic policy.
There’s a reason numbskull Russian fascists venerate Stalin far more than Lenin or Khrushchev. Its the same reason Americans put Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.
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Lemme guess, malding Pole/Baltic?
Please label your coordinate axes
It’s so funny that there’s a trademark on ‘the left’, is there some Z axis that makes that make sense?
Cis <–> Trans
updated, just needed to rotate it a little bit to account for the extra axis
Except the Far-Right bends back along the Z-axis to Cis again, I… think that’s right.
Center and far right are both on the cis side in my portrayal… at least I think I did that right, been a while since I did multivariable calc, and even then these plots mess with my head
A classic.
So true, thanks for the laughs!
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Fuck off.
Edit: Why did Cowbee downvote me for telling a literal antisemite to fuck off?
Edit2: Davel et al., more blind rage downvoting as well or antisemitism?
Force of habit, I removed your downvote. You’ve been posting Nazi apologia in this thread so I assumed, my bad here. This is a rare time I agree with you. Forgive me for assuming the worst from you when you’ve posted Nazi apologia and also told me you want to kill me.
Like we’ve been over, a democratic student led revolt from the USSR does not make them Nazis. But glad to see you’re not entirely terrible to go so far as to support antisemitism.
Over time, Russians came to see “Nazi” as anyone who opposes them.
I linked a book from a historian that referenced “tankie” sources like The New York Times proving that this “democratic, student-led revolt” let Nazi collaborators imprisoned during and after World War II out of jail. The most I can concede is that some of the elements of the counter-revolt were led by liberal students seeking the return of capitalism, but the overall counterrevolt was largely steered by Hungarian nationalists, who were documented as freeing Nazi collaborators and lynching Jewish people and communists. This is why the Red Army was sent in.
The 1956 counter-revolt was not unified, rarely are any counter-revolutions unified. What happens is the most millitant, most reactionary elements get aid from western sources like MI6, and in this case this also cascaded into freeing Nazi collaborators from prison. Hungary was already democratic, the “democracy” they were championing was the same Trump supporters were championing on January 6, what they really meant is that they wanted to be in power and were upset to not be.
I have never been antisemitic, and I do my best to separate anti-Zionism from antisemitic infiltrators and wreckers.
It’s not just tankies. Almost the entirety of human history can be boiled town to various more or less effective movements for liberation getting co-opted by selfish assholes and becoming the thing they swore to destroy.
liberation getting co-opted by selfish assholes and becoming the thing they swore to destroy
Totally, like the USSR. They started out with a good idea of redistributing and communalizing the means of production, but ended up creating a new ruling class of politicians that exploited people just as much. Just look at modern evidence of income inequality in the USSR compared to Tsarism (pre-1917) and capitalism (post-1990):
See? By looking at factual evidence… wait… hold up… Income inequality actually maintained itself at the historical lowest in the region during communism’s entire existence… Well, time to disregard my comment because I’m a tankie and a Ruzzian bot, amirite?
This is just for Stalin and what I could quickly pull off the internet
in Moscow area:
Kuntsevo Dacha (“Near Dacha”) Uspenskoye Dacha (Far Dacha, old) Semyonovskoye Dacha (Far Dacha, new) Zubalovo dacha, the first one; not preserved[1] Lipki dacha; not preserved[1] Elsewhere in Russia:
Sochi dacha (Matsesta dacha) Bolshiye Brody dacha, Valday, Novgorod Oblast[1]
There were 5 Stalin’s dachas in Abkhazia[2]
New Athos dacha Kholodnaya Rechka dacha Lake Ritsa dacha Sukhumi dacha, amid the Sukhumi arboretum (now part of the Sukhumi botanical garden) Miusera dacha
The hierarchies present in the USSR didn’t take the form of income inequality. You’re taking a metric that is very useful for analyzing capitalist countries and using it in a context where it doesn’t make much sense.
Anyway, the comparison with the west isn’t really relevant to the comparison I would make in that case, which would be between the initial revolutionary movement and where it ended up.
The hierarchies present in the USSR didn’t take the form of income inequality
Wonderful, do you have any numeric data to present?
Non-income sources of access to goods and services perhaps? Such as the universal access to jobs, and universal access to housing mostly through the work union? Universal access to education to the highest level for free? Widely available, high quality, dense, affordable, high frequency public transit? High quantity of public sport facilities, art centres and so-called “culture houses”? Which of those was, numerically and with data, less egalitarian in the USSR?
the comparison I would make in that case, which would be between the initial revolutionary movement and where it ended up
The graph goes from pre-revolution, to Bolshevism, and to capitalism. You can see that income inequality remained somewhat stable during Socialism, and was much lower than before or after.
What somebody formally owns and gets in income isn’t the same as the wealth they actually control in authoritarian systems.
Also, wealth equality through being poor isn’t that brilliant
What somebody formally owns and gets in income isn’t the same as the wealth they actually control in authoritarian systems
Great, why don’t you provide us with some numerical metrics of that in the Soviet Union vs. modern Russia or USA? Or are you possibly just making it up without evidence?
wealth equality through being poor isn’t that brilliant
I agree. So did the soviets, and that’s why they took a backwards feudal nation in Europe with 85% of the population composed of exploited peasants with an average life expectancy of 28 years, and industrialized the country until it was the second world power, the majority of the population were city dwellers with modern lives and amenities, and rose life expectancy to 70+ years.
https://wealthpol.web.ox.ac.uk/article/how-rich-are-dictators
That wasn’t hard was it
Ok and then they did what after industrialization? How come you’re leaving that part out?
There is no information about the Soviet Union whatsoever on the page you linked, though?
Ok and then they did what after industrialization?
Idk, what did the Soviet Union do in the 1970s-1980s?
Just wanted to say: keep up the goated work, like in this thread in general
Thanks comrade
fascism is the status quo recognizing that the people are waking up to the status quo not working for them, and the coopting the symbology of liberation to maintain itself
“The short-fingered vulgarian”
Trump’s hands are drawn way too big. Other than that, yeah, that’s about it.
“The short-fingered vulgarian”
Because of the current social political climate, I’m learning so much about things I never thought I would. This little comic just made it click why the Nazi Germany party was a national socialist party.
it’s also worth noting this pattern of ebb and flow, subjugation and liberation, is as old as civilization itself. political theorists didn’t invent any of this, they just wrote down what the dissidents of their age were doing. fascism wasn’t created in the 1920s, it was merely named. Karl Marx didn’t create communism, he just named what he saw people working towards. for as long as humans have lived in hierarchical societies, they have discussed and planned how to bring about an end to these hierarchies that they suffer under.
Mussolini was more honest about it (inasmuch as a fascist can be honest). Despite having practically invented the term, he admitted that fascism should really be called corporatism, as it was a merger of state and corporate power.
Of course he still called it fascism, though, because it was a (then) meaningless name with roots on the Roman empire which could be attractive to his supporters. If he’d called it by its proper name probably no one would have supported it, other than the oligarchs in charge.
worth noting: he named his party the catholic socialist party.
That’s a pretty broad statement for the amount of nuance history has on liberation movements. From what I can tell it’s usually more along the lines of 8 steps forward and 6 steps back over time. Voting rights for women are very unlikely to be removed for example.
Right now it’s a period of democratic backsliding and fascism but this is nothing compared to the imperial era where European powers would just massacre Africans and take their resources.
To sum up my point, we swore to destroy a lot of things, then we destroyed a bunch of them, reintroduced some back and ended up making progress.
Maybe I didn’t explain it very well. I wasn’t saying progress was impossible. But the individual organizations, nations, leaders, etc. often end up getting caught up in this trajectory. Once this happens, there will usually be a new movement to try to fight against the new dominant hegemony. Sometimes the old power wins, sometimes the new one does, but inevitably, whoever wins will keep regressing. But there can still be a big change as the old guard is replaced (or sometimes bullied into submission).
So, it’s probably not universally true, but it’s a pattern that I’ve started noticing again and again as I study history.
That makes sense and I agree with you, I got a bit confused by the the way it’s phrased since I felt like it implied “Good kicks out bad, good becomes the bad” infinite loop. But general enshittification of most things is a very strong trend in history.
I’ve read about a bunch of “Power consolidation - > one man controls all - > successor is unqualified - > people get upset - > regime change”. Have an upvote for intention :)
it’s why us lefties focus more on systems than on people. a marxist approach to history reveals that this has been happening and likely continue happening until we muster some fundamental change in how we organize. it’s like there’s an 80 year cyclical race where the “revolution” (not the revolution) happens, people accept that it’s not perfect, but it’s an improvement, they fail to educate their children about the problems with the old regime and the current regime, until eventually a time comes when no one remembers the last cycle anymore and the whole process gets repeated.
fwiw, i thought what you were saying was pretty clear hence posting the fascism definition comic that just takes what you said and puts doodles to it. but for some reason you got downvoted to hell and i got hella upvotes. i even looked at lemvotes and saw several people downvoting you and upvoting me, which i find confusing. it seems like lemmy is going through a weird moment
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I think you’re describing the horeseshoe theory:
This looks like something a centrists dreamed up. Or someone who had their view of the Left warped and poisoned by Bolsheviks
Not really, they dont say that when you go far left enough you wrap around to the right, they say that selfish or malicious people have ruined movements for liberation historically by twisting them
Enlightening liberal drivel. Truly the stuff of visionaries.
Thank you for bumping the post.
W response
