• Justice@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    Anti-communism has always been a reaction to communism (leftist movements broadly).

    Anyone who unironically uses the word tankie… ever… is immediately written off in my book. They’re terminally online and have never read anything, never thought about anything seriously, they’re useful idiots for fascists at best and, a lot of times, just fascists.

    I feel like they think I’m being hyperbolic or forcing a false dichotomy, but, no, if you self-label as anti-communist that’s basically the same as modern day “all lives matter” people which was a right wing, reactionary, movement against the movement for justice for black people in the US. There is a movement which is objectively on the side of people, justice, etc. and there is a reaction to that movement. Just how it goes. If you identify on the reactionary side… well, there you go. Not sure why this is so complicated for the “bBUT TANKIES” dipshits.

    • taiphlosion@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      Meh, I’ve embraced the term tankie I don’t think it’s that bad. Only terminally online people really care about a meaningless term.

      • Justice@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        If they use it to mean “person who doesn’t get bogged down in stupid details over the USSR (or China) just for the sake of hating a communist country” then fine. I don’t care. It just gets old seeing it used as “person left of me, which means they’re bad” by the most historically illiterate motherfuckers on the planet. The kind of fuckers who say they want socialism and then cry every time someone protests in a street. Do you see what I mean? It’s not the word, I don’t care in the end. I get like a death threat per day from random Nazis who (ironically) call me antisemitic for criticizing Israel. I’ll take tankie over that, given the choice. But it’s worth acknowledging the people calling me or us or whoever “tankie” are absolutely just the dumbest fuckers online. That’s all.

      • kot [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        “Tankie” is used by liberals and left anti-communists to defame & differentiate themselves from principled communists, and really from anyone who defends AES states. That use is cringe and outs the person saying it as an absolute tool who shouldn’t be taken seriously.

        I have no problem calling myself a tankie though. Sending tanks to kill fascists is good. Every tankie should be awarded their own tank.

      • casskaydee [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Same. I think we need to expropriate the term from the lib/fash.

        …socialist revolution is neither easy (as the Trotskyists and ultraleftists would have it) nor impossible (as the liberals and conservatives would have it), but hard. It will require dedication and sacrifice and it won’t be won in a day. Tankies are those people who think the millions of communists who fought and died for socialism in the twentieth century weren’t evil, dupes, or wasting their time, but people to whom we owe a great deal and who can still teach us a lot.

        Or, to put it another way: socialism has powerful enemies. Those enemies don’t care how you feel about Marx or Makhno or Deleuze or communism in the abstract, they care about your feelings towards FARC, the Naxals, Cuba, North Korea, etc. They care about your position with respect to states and contenders-for-statehood, and how likely you are to try and emulate them. They are not worried about the molecular and the rhizomatic because they know that those things can be brought back into line by the application of force. It’s their monopoly on force that they are primarily concerned to protect. When you desert real socialism in favor of ideal socialism, the kind that never took up arms against anybody, you’re doing them a favor.

    • Something Burger 🍔@jlai.lu
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      1 year ago

      They’re terminally online and have never read anything, never thought about anything seriously, they’re useful idiots for fascists at best and, a lot of times, just fascists.

      Most self aware tankie.

      , if you self-label as anti-communist

      Anti-tankie ≠ anti-communist

      Tankies aren’t communists, that’s why I’m against them.

      EDIT: I didn’t realise this was a Lemmygrad community. No wonder y’all fascists are calling me a liberal despite me being a communist, I was confused for a second.

      • Justice@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        Bro, wtf is a tankie if not a communist? You’re just out here making up bullshit. I want a definition!

        I’ve been led to believe “tankie” was referring to fans of the USSR, which, I suppose if you wanna be annoying, one could argue “weren’t communists.” But you didn’t do that. You didn’t say “Stalin betrayed Marxist Leninism” or whatever. I could assume that’s what you meant, but I’d rather read it from you.

        It’s starting to feel like, to me, that tankie just means “someone more left than me, and that makes me angry!” Because I can say who isn’t calling people tankies. That would be Marxists of whatever variety. I can also say who does seem to be using that word all the time… socdems, liberals, sometimes outright fascists. It definitely seems to be the bludgeon of liberals who fancy themselves to be socialists though. I’m going to include most leftist anarchists under the umbrella of liberal because that’s just how I roll. Like a big ol’ tank.

        • Something Burger 🍔@jlai.lu
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          1 year ago

          I’m going to include most leftist anarchists under the umbrella of liberal

          Most politically literate tankie.

          Tankies aren’t communists. They simp for capitalist dictatorships.

          to me, that tankie just means “someone more left than me, and that makes me angry!”

          Funny, because that’s how I feel about “liberal” whenever a tankie (i.e. a fascist) calls me one despite me being a communist.

          • Justice@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            You still haven’t given an example of wtf you’re talking about.

            Who the fuck are these mysterious (assumedly) pro-Stalin, pro-USSR, etc. “tankies” who ALSO are pro-USA/pro-capitalism?

            Just give a name! Find a person in history or today and type their name into your text box and hit send. Is this asking a lot?

      • taiphlosion@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        Lmao this is exactly how libs argue, a bunch of quotes with snappy responses but nothing of substance to make a valid argument.

        • Something Burger 🍔@jlai.lu
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          1 year ago

          Why would I waste time making complex responses to someone who thinks communists are liberals if they don’t praise capitalist dictatorships? Tankies completely lack political culture, like all right wingers. It’s a miracle they can read at all.