I forgot to set a reminder so I’m a little late getting to this, but here we are again:
Are you a “tankie”?
Respond “yes” or “no”, I’ll collate results later
This process is being undertaken to determine if so-called “tankies” are conspiring to make you (yes, you) have a bad time on the internet!
vague or informal answers will be interpreted by the central authority (me). Only top level comments will be counted. I will not be providing further instructions or clarifications.
🤯
Link to previous results (very serious) hexbear / lemmy,ml
Link to previous “are you a tankie?” thread
I’ll likely check back in a week, my old pc died so itll take a little bit of time to prettify the results and write a report
Ciao, and of course, imperialism must be destroyed.
Tankie is when a third worlder socialist shares the most Milquetoast leftist opinion.
I am in a superposition of being a tankie and not being a tankie at the same time.
Tankies consider me a lib because I dislike DPRK.
Libs consider me a tankie because I dislike “the west”.
Oh well
I’m a moderate and believe in supporting the lesser of two evils, which means critical support for enemies of US imperialism. I’m also something of a centrist because I believe anarchists and Marxist-Leninists and other left tendencies all have good ideas.
So yeah, I’m a moderate centrist.
I’m an anarchist though I do get called a tankie quite a lot as a pejorative.
I’m opposed to all states. That said as someone who lives in the west I don’t really care to spend a lot of energy being mad about what my governments state enemies are doing.
‘democracy’ in capitalist states is a cruel facsimile of actual democracy. If you don’t have money for rent you might as well be unpersoned, corporations are people and money is free speech.
The question is, do you want to murder people who disagree with you?
Obviously not. Not sure what you’re trying to get at here though.
no
I don’t know enough about what happened in Hungary to even form an opinion on it and it isn’t at all relevant to today. But I do have actual principles and oppose imperialism, so other instances will say so anyway.
In that “tankie” is just a pejorative for a communist, yes. I’m a Marxist-Leninist, and I uphold AES as legitimate.
Workers of the world, unite! ☭
For those who don’t know what a “tankie” is, it’s essentially a pejorative for “communist.” I recommend the Prolewiki article on “Tankies,” as well as Nia Frome’s essay “Tankies.”
For those that want an introduction to Marxism-Leninism, I made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list, check it out!
What is AES in this context? I’m pretty sure it’s not encryption or a corporation lol
Actually Existing Socialism, countries like the PRC, Cuba, DPRK, Vietnam, Laos, former USSR, etc.
I can see the difference between these and EU, but isn’t EU mostly socialist? Like France for example, isn’t it considered so? Assuming socialist ≠ Marxist.
No, the EU is all capitalist, in every economy (even the nordics) private ownership is the principle aspect and governs the large firms and key industries. Financial capital and by extension imperialism are the dominant forces in society.
In the countries I listed, it’s the opposite, public ownership is at minimum the principle aspect. Some are more heavily publicly owned, like the DPRK and Cuba, and others have more market forces at play, like Vietnam and the PRC, but in all cases public ownership is principle.
If I may ask: Does my country Algeria count as AES then ?
Algeria is more complicated. It has had a long history of communists and socialist revolutionaries such as Frantz Fanon, but is currently a capitalist country. It’s far better than imperialist countries like France, and has been very progressive in opposing imperialism and colonialism, but isn’t considered socialist.
Tankie is a pejorative for authoritarians that advocate violence to further their political aims. The particular ideology is just window dressing.
You’ve expanded the definition to include nearly everyone. All states are authoritarian, in that they are all instruments by which one class wields its authority over other classes. Revolution is the most authoritarian action there is, as was liberating the slaves in Haiti, the Statesian south, etc. You’ve erased any analysis of what these political aims are, essentially saying only pacifists have validity, and historically pacifists have been some of the least effective, or even damaging to their movements.
The communists that wish the working class to wield that authority wield it for progressive means, and in the interest of the people. Eventually, when class is abolished, even the state itself will be too.
I suggest you read the articles I linked, you can read both in the span of ~15 minutes and you’ll have a much better understanding of what “tankie” means.
Your theory has just one minor flaw: every violent revolution ever has resulted in one clique of repressive assholes being replaced with another. And every time they’ve betrayed every ideal they ever did it didn’t have in order to cling on to power. How is your revolution going to be different?
Your comment has one major flaw: it’s wrong.
Revolution in France, for example, ovethrew an oppressive monarchy. Napoleon took power, but it was still an improvement, and in the long run was even better. In Haiti, slavery was overthrown, in Algeria colonialism was overthrown. These are just for national liberation movements and general revolution.
Socialist revolution in Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, Korea, and more have all dramatically improved key metrics like life expectancy, dramatically democratized society, increased literacy rates, and lowered disparity while dramatically developing society. Socialism achieves far better metrics at similar levels of wealth and development, even in the face of brutal sanctions.
There is no “betrayal of ideals,” there’s the real process of existing in the world and facing real struggles. Socialism isn’t magic or perfect, it’s simply a much better economic system than capitalism. It isn’t immune to problems or struggles, and it doesn’t gift those running the economy with prophetic visions. Liberal anti-communists hold socialism to a higher standard than liberal systems, refusing it outright if it isn’t heaven on Earth, and call it a “betrayal” if it isn’t immediately a perfect wonderland while giving liberalism a pass, or mild critique.
I expect revolution in the US Empire to go a similar way, only that it won’t be at risk of being nuked or sanctioned to death by the US Empire.
I highly suggest doing more research on the topic at hand, I can make recommendations if you want.
So having all of Europe drenched in blood by Napoleon was an improvement? And you conveniently forgot the terror. Similar things could be said about your other examples. The rest is just assertions without evidence so I’ll have to pull Hitchens’ razor.
THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
-Mark Twain
In the end, moving beyond feudalism to capitalism was progressive, just as moving on beyond capitalism to socialism was and is progressive. This is rarely bloodless, but it pales in comparison to the daily violence of the present system.
Secondly, I did offer evidence upon request, I find when I just dump sources people tune out. If you have specific questions, I can back them up with answers and evidence, otherwise the lack of evidence applies just as much to you.
The rest is just assertions without evidence so I’ll have to pull Hitchens’ razor.
Neocon Iraq war supporting Christopher Hitchens? weems like a weird guy to quote if you’re opposed to the state murdering people but ok
The rest is just assertions without evidence
Literally all of your claims have been assertions without evidence
2·1 month agoGeorge Washington is a Tankie. Hitler is a Tankie. Makhno is a Tankie. Elon Musk is a Tankie. Etc.
Obviously, the term “tankie” is only applied to the left. My point was that in that respect there is not really any difference between the extremes of the political spectrum. You could even say they converge in some way.
No, horseshoe theory is just liberalism trying to distance itself from fascism, when historically liberalism abd fascism correspond to capitalism doing okay and capitalism in crisis respectively.
Further, liberalism has also been responsible for mass violence, both the progressive kind such as in the French revolution, and the horribly reactionary kind when it comes to slavery, colonialism, genocide of Palestine, etc.
Redefining words and whataboutism. Name a more iconic duo.
You literally just redefined the word ‘tankie’ when called out for your shitty definition of it.
Also George Washington was a leftist extremist to the British monarchy.
What words did I redefine? What “whataboutism” did I do? I explained very clearly why your definition is bad, and applies to everyone. Comparison is not “whataboutism” inherently.
Oh god oh fuck I’m the type of commie that isn’t obsessed with millitary equipment I didn’t study oh god oh fuck
No. But my anarchist friends consider me one. Also I don’t consider the term tankie to be synonymous with communist or socialist.
If there were no meddling from the imperialist special interest abroad, there would have been no need for the tanks. Unfortunately the siege is ever present and ubiquitous.
“Tankie” isn’t synonymous with communist in the same way “pinko” isn’t, both are just pejoratives for communists.
I’m a liberal. I know the power that democracy bestows: vote.
Fighting fascism? Vote hard.
Fighting genocide? Vote harder.
Fighting cancer? You guessed it, just vote.
Vote solves everything, vote is beautiful.
Not a fan of nation states. They divide the working class against themselves.
How do you propose we get rid of them? Because that is our end goal, which we make our plans toward reaching.
A big problem with most other leftists’ plans are their prefigurative politics. “Be the change you want to see in the world” doesn’t cut it while the world is significantly controlled by imperialist states. Until those capitalist states are dispensed with, socialist states don’t have the luxury of prefiguration, or they go the way of Allende’s Chile.
A (long) excerpt from Michael Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds: Anticommunism & Wonderland. Here’s a snippet:
The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.
The pure socialists had a vision of a new society that would create and be created by new people, a society so transformed in its fundaments as to leave little opportunity for wrongful acts, corruption, and criminal abuses of state power. There would be no bureaucracy or self-interested coteries, no ruthless conflicts or hurtful decisions. When the reality proves different and more difficult, some on the Left proceed to condemn the real thing and announce that they “feel betrayed” by this or that revolution.
The pure socialists see socialism as an ideal that was tarnished by communist venality, duplicity, and power cravings. The pure socialists oppose the Soviet model but offer little evidence to demonstrate that other paths could have been taken, that other models of socialism — not created from one’s imagination but developed through actual historical experience — could have taken hold and worked better. Was an open, pluralistic, democratic socialism actually possible at this historic juncture? The historical evidence would suggest it was not. As the political philosopher Carl Shames argued:
How do [the left critics] know that the fundamental problem was the “nature” of the ruling [revolutionary] parties rather than, say, the global concentration of capital that is destroying all independent economies and putting an end to national sovereignty everywhere? And to the extent that it was, where did this “nature” come from? Was this “nature” disembodied, disconnected from the fabric of the society itself, from the social relations impacting on it? … Thousands of examples could be found in which the centralization of power was a necessary choice in securing and protecting socialist relations. In my observation [of existing communist societies], the positive of “socialism” and the negative of “bureaucracy, authoritarianism and tyranny” interpenetrated in virtually every sphere of life.
The pure socialists regularly blame the Left itself for every defeat it suffers. Their second-guessing is endless. So we hear that revolutionary struggles fail because their leaders wait too long or act too soon, are too timid or too impulsive, too stubborn or too easily swayed. We hear that revolutionary leaders are compromising or adventuristic, bureaucratic or opportunistic, rigidly organized or insufficiently organized, undemocratic or failing to provide strong leadership. But always the leaders fail because they do not put their trust in the “direct actions” of the workers, who apparently would withstand and overcome every adversity if only given the kind of leadership available from the left critic’s own groupuscule. Unfortunately, the critics seem unable to apply their own leadership genius to producing a successful revolutionary movement in their own country.
Tony Febbo questioned this blame-the-leadership syndrome of the pure socialists:
It occurs to me that when people as smart, different, dedicated and heroic as Lenin, Mao, Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Ho Chi Minh and Robert Mugabe — and the millions of heroic people who followed and fought with them — all end up more or less in the same place, then something bigger is at work than who made what decision at what meeting. Or even what size houses they went home to after the meeting. …
These leaders weren’t in a vacuum. They were in a whirlwind. And the suction, the force, the power that was twirling them around has spun and left this globe mangled for more than 900 years. And to blame this or that theory or this or that leader is a simple-minded substitute for the kind of analysis that Marxists [should make].
To be sure, the pure socialists are not entirely without specific agendas for building the revolution. After the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, an ultra-left group in that country called for direct worker ownership of the factories. The armed workers would take control of production without benefit of managers, state planners, bureaucrats, or a formal military. While undeniably appealing, this worker syndicalism denies the necessities of state power. Under such an arrangement, the Nicaraguan revolution would not have lasted two months against the U.S.-sponsored counterrevolution that savaged the country. It would have been unable to mobilize enough resources to field an army, take security measures, or build and coordinate economic programs and human services on a national scale.
For a people’s revolution to survive, it must seize state power and use it to (a) break the stranglehold exercised by the owning class over the society’s institutions and resources, and (b) withstand the reactionary counterattack that is sure to come. The internal and external dangers a revolution faces necessitate a centralized state power that is not particularly to anyone’s liking, not in Soviet Russia in 1917, nor in Sandinista Nicaragua in 1980.
Engels offers an apposite account of an uprising in Spain in 1872 in which anarchists seized power in municipalities across the country. At first, the situation looked promising. The king had abdicated and the bourgeois government could muster but a few thousand ill-trained troops. Yet this ragtag force prevailed because it faced a thoroughly parochialized rebellion. “Each town proclaimed itself as a sovereign canton and set up a revolutionary committee (junta);” Engels writes. “[E]ach town acted on its own, declaring that the important thing was not cooperation with other towns but separation from them, thus precluding any possibility of a combined attack [against bourgeois forces].” It was “the fragmentation and isolation of the revolutionary forces which enabled the government troops to smash one revolt after the other.”
Decentralized parochial autonomy is the graveyard of insurgency — which may be one reason why there has never been a successful anarcho-syndicalist revolution. Ideally, it would be a fine thing to have only local, self-directed, worker participation, with minimal bureaucracy, police, and military. This probably would be the development of socialism, were socialism ever allowed to develop unhindered by counterrevolutionary subversion and attack.
One might recall how, in 1918-20, fourteen capitalist nations, including the United States, invaded Soviet Russia in a bloody but unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the revolutionary Bolshevik government. The years of foreign invasion and civil war did much to intensify the Bolsheviks’ siege psychology with its commitment to lockstep party unity and a repressive security apparatus.
BTW, the Soviet Union wasn’t a nation-state and neither is China, but rather multinational states.
Pretty big difference between a capitalist state that divides the working class and socialist states that unify the working class. The era of borders dissolving is only really possible when socialism has become by far the dominant mode of production globally.
Probably? At least in the sense that I’ve managed to gather from the very confused online arguments about the term. I’m a communist. While I’d love it if we could all peacefully vote our way into a better society, I recognize that it’s probably not going to happen and whatever nastiness we’d have to do to actually make the change is worth moving past the endless awfulness that is capitalism. And for the existing countries, while they’re not magical Christmas lands, I’ve learned they’re not quite as bad as the capitalists have fear- mongered.
And I get Anarchists thinking it’s states all the way down but…………. I don’t know what to tell you. What’s the alternative? Even if I want to get where you’re going, how do we get there? Where is the bus/train? I don’t see any running to get there.
Hey comrade, have you considered making an account on Lemmy.ml, Lemmygrad.ml, or Hexbear.net? Lemmy.world censors communist content, so you might at least prefer something like Lemmy.zip that can see the content communists are posting.
How does that work? I assumed one Lemmy account covered everything. Where do I go for each of these?
Lemmy instances are kinda like islands, but you can visit and see other islands that are on good terms, or “federated.” Federation can be one-way, ie you can see and comment on another instance’s posts but they can’t see yours, or it can be two-way, and you can comment back and forth. You are on Lemmy.world’s view of a Lemmy.ml post. There are comments from Hexbear and Lemmygrad users on this post that I can see, but you can’t, like this one.
Lemmy.world is defederated from Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml, the two biggest communist instances. In order to see their content and interact with their users, you need an account on an instance like those two, or Lemmy.ml, Lemmy.zip, etc. You don’t need one for each instance, just one federated with what you want to see.
Does that make sense?
So I just pick one of them and I’m good? Any suggestion which one to pick? Just the biggest?
EDIT: Also, am I able to just be logged into both so I can see both sides at the same time or do I have to swap back and forth if I want to check out world or the commy instances?
Well, what is it that you want? Do you want one account that can see almost everything? Lemmy.zip or Lemmy.ml would be better than Lemmy.world, and you can chat with Hexbear and Lemmygrad users as well as Lemmy.world users that way. Do you just want to talk with communists? Lemmygrad.ml or Hexbear.net might be a better fit, you won’t be able to interact with Lemmy.world that way. You can see Lemmy.world content and comment on it from Grad, but they can’t see your content. Hexbear defederated from .world so it doesn’t even show up.
Personally, I use all 3 depending on what I want to do.
I recommend checking out this guide by a good Lemmygrad comrade!
Thanks. Do only some of the instances have an old version? I see one for lemmy.zip but it doesn’t show up for ml or lemmygrad.
I think? Not actually sure, really!
A communist isn’t a tankie per sé. Tankies are people who blindly follow authoritarians of a communist regime and defend/deny the gruesome acts committed by said authoritarians. The idea behind communism is a valid one. In a perfect world, communism would lead to the star Trek utopia. Problem is, assholes will always take advantage and turn everything to shit. I still prefer communism over the heap of flaming shit most of the world lives in.
Yes but do note that most people who call themselves a Tankie do it ironically to make fun of those who do not know its meaning if it even has one nowadays, It’s commonly used by liberals and even leftists to simply refer to anyone to the left of their own politics, although not sure why I’m answering this since my instance and profile is practically wearing a red beret.
No in the sense of back when anarchists used it to mean ML/Stalinist/AES types. No idea right now where the word seems to have no meaning. I don’t think I’ve heard a definition of “tankie” that described my politics at least so probably still no. In general you should just say what you mean.
It’s just a pejorative for communist at this point, alongside “pinko” and “red.”
It was very bizarre seeing that change happen in real time. It was always a stupid word though, because even back when it was an anarchist term for a particular type of Marxist, the boundaries of what exact kinds of Marxists were encapsulated by it always changed from anarchist to anarchist. If you’re actually talking politics and not memeing then you should say what exactly you mean.
To be fair, it still means something different to everyone, the common denominator is generally anti-imperialism, pro-communism, Marxism, etc.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that “anti-imperialism” was one of the requirements when many of the western ML/Stalinist groups that would generally fall under any anarchist’s definition of “tankie” were very much chauvinist/nationalistic. Like that describes basically nearly every “communist party” in the west.
Obviously the modern anarchist usage of the term was fairly different to the origin of the term anyway, which meant a self-proclaimed communist who supported Soviet imperialism in Hungary, which Stalinists were/are opposed to. But I guess they re-used the term now that Khrushchevites are not really a thing anymore.
I don’t really agree with classifying putting down the 1956 color revolution where fascists were let out of jail to lynch Jewish people and communist officials as “Soviet imperialism,” but putting that all aside anti-imperialism still gets you labeled a “tankie.” Opposing the west these days and its plunder of the world is sufficient to be called a “tankie” even if you reject Marxism-Leninism.
Sure, some people use it that way, but you listed it as a requirement. Chauvinists get called “tankies” too so clearly it’s not a requirement.
I listed it as an option, not a requirement.
I don’t think so, I like USSR as a response to imperialism, current China is quite cool in many ways, but I don’t automatically support whatever governments agrees on just cuz they’re better than their competition.
Also Karl Marx was kinda genius, but not sure how he uses violence in his theory, of course a political theory must contain a corner for violence, but it is hard for me to trace what exactly was Marx’s exact plan.Yes
(Or at least I hope so lol)
So you’re cool with what happened at tiananmen square? Or maybe you deny anything bad happened there? Because that’s what being a tankie is all about. Tankie != Communist.
Ok so Tiananmen square had two main elements in the protest:
- Liberals who wanted to go down the US Road entirely instead of just the Dengist approach.
- Maoists who wanted to revert the Dengist reforms entirely.
I have way more sympathy for the second group than I do the first. A more ideal path would have been a re-education of the first group and an integration of the second group into the CPC more directly, but unfortunately this did not occur as protestors became militant.
This is not to excuse the CPC response of course; even in the face of political violence, even reactionary political violence from the first group, the military should have as light of a hand as possible in response, and I don’t think this was abided by in the events of 1989. However, I do think it was correct to suppress this movement in the first place in some capacity. The alternative would probably be colour revolution. Look at places like Venezuela and Nepal and Bolivia; they haven’t purged their reactionary elements upon socialists reaching power and capitalist coups/regime change become inevitable.
No
😔
I don’t mind people calling themselves tankies but I don’t think using a “slur” as an identifier is in any way helpful. Nor does anyone who uses it demeaningly really know what happened in Hungary. I barely know anything about it.
For the sake of the poll, it’s really asking “are you a communist?” I generally don’t refer to myself as a “tankie” for similar reasons as you said, but clarified my position to expressly include that as far as this poll is about support for communism/leftism/etc, it applies to me. Just hoping the final numbers show a good amount of “yes” answers simply due to wanting a strong showing of leftists.
I really think the wording should be changed. Liberals will gladly rip everything out of context. The word Tankie is infinitely more loaded than Communist. Most Liberals even think it’s about Tiannenmen square and the tank man and you already know how much propaganda they consumed about Tiannenmen square.
I align most with Nia Frome’s viewpoint in Marketing Socialism. Essentially, we can’t shy away from loaded terms, liberals will accuse us regardless, so it’s more important to correctly demystify rather than taking the “easy” path of distancing ourselves from “tankies,” as though “tankie” means anything other than “communist/leftist/anti-imperialist/etc.”
We should correctly call out “tankie” as something to not be afraid of, it just means “commie” or “red” or “pinko,” and not let the word have power over discourse when discussing leftist politics.
But ‘Tankie’ is not the ideology at all. There is no reason to defend anything which is not the ideology itself. The word Tankie is so meaningless and vague that the only reason to ever use it is if people are actually trying to push on it. In which case you’d first have to ask them what they even mean by the word Tankie because they probably don’t know what it means to begin with (nobody really does at this point).
Using it as a self-identifier is self-defeating.
Using “tankie” as a self-identifier has the same effect as calling oneself a “commie,” it signals that being accused of being a communist isn’t anything to take offense to. If I am going to be called a “commie, pinko, red, tankie, etc” then it is best to call it out for what it is: Accurate insofar as it describes me as a communist. I’m not going to deny those who call me by such pejoratives, rather I’m just going to explain why I’m a communist. Using it as a self-identifier blunts the pejorative and makes it less effective in public discourse to shut down communist speech.
