I keep hearing the term in political discourse, and rather than googling it, I’m asking the people who know better than Google.
People fed up with the the (false) sin/cos dichotomy and want to get people to use tan more often.
the (false) sin/cos dichotomy
but… but… if sin/cos is false, that is literally tan ! (yes, I was frequently bullied in high school, why do you ask?)
Tan is the tao out of which the sin and cos arise
I don’t mind those people, I just wish they wouldn’t go off on tangentially related subjects.
Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support or defend acts of repression by such regimes, their allies, or deny the occurrence of the events thereof. More specifically, the term has been applied to those who express support for one-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republics, whether contemporary or historical. It is commonly used by anti-authoritarian leftists, anarchists, libertarian socialists, left communists, social democrats, democratic socialists, and reformists to criticise Leninism, although the term has seen increasing use by liberal and right‐wing factions as well.
While someone’s political beliefs are highly multi-dimensional, there are two axes that are commonly used to define where someone sits:
- Economy - Left is favouring social responsibility for people receiving economic support (supporting people to meet their basic needs is everyone’s collective responsibility), while right is favouring individual responsibility (meeting your basic needs is your responsibility, and if you die because you can’t, even if it is due to something outside of your control, tough luck).
- Social liberties - Social Libertarian is favouring individual decisions on anything not related to the economy / rights of others, while Social Authoritarianism supports government restrictions on social liberties.
Since there are independent axes, there are four quadrants:
- Socially liberal, Economic left - e.g. Left Communism, Social Democrat, most Green parties, etc…
- Socially authoritarian, Economic left - e.g. Stalin, Mao. Tankie is a slang term for people in this quadrant.
- Socially liberal, Economic right - Sometimes called libertarian. Some people with this belief set call themselves Liberal in some countries.
- Socially authoritarian, Economic right - e.g. Trump. Sometimes called conservatives.
That said, some people use tankie as cover for supporting socially authoritarian, economic right but formerly economic left countries(e.g. people who support Putin, who is not economically left in any sense).
TIL that axes is the plural of axis and axe.
This isn’t accurate.
For starters, the “libertarian/authoritarian” axis makes no sense. All states uphold one class while oppressing others. If we took a look at the Soviet Union, for the broad majority of society, social liberty increased dramatically. The economy was democratized for the first time, healthcare and education were free and high quality, working hours lowered while real wages rose, housing was free or low-cost, employment was full, women began to take serious administrative roles. This was all accomplished by the working class taking control from the capitalists and Tsar.
The state will always be a tool for control, but the question isn’t if it controls, but who? And for whose benefit? There isn’t a sliding scale of more or less control, but which class a society serves. Socialist states aren’t especially exerting authority, they just use it against capitalists, fascists, and reactionaries, instead of against the working class.
Finally, communists only support the Russian Federation to the extent that they oppose western imperialism, are a valuable trading partner for socialist countries, and have rising socialist sympathies. No communist wishes to adopt the Russian Federation’s economic model, we understand full well that the USSR fell 3 decades ago.
The opposite of authoritarianism would be libertarianism, the ideology that worships money, sees scamming as virtuous, and is mostly known for child predators and towns being overrun by bears.
Someone who believes people outside of the United States of America are also human beings.
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.
So don’t worry about it too much.
Typically it refers to leftists who strongly defend/advocate for authoritarian statist approaches to socialism/communism.
It’s what Liberals call a person who opposes genocide
A leftist. Someone with political beliefs, empathy, and conviction.
Not all leftists are tankies the same way not all right wingers are fascists. A tankie is an authoritarian leftist
All states are authoritarian in that they uphold one class and oppress others. It’s a good thing when the class in charge is the working class, throughout history socialist states have resulted in dramatic improvements in living standards for the vast majority of society. These socialist states, and the ones who support them, are labeled “authoritarian” whenever these states practice land reform, nationalize industries, etc, and are met with mountains of hostility and slander from the west.
Even an anarchist revolution is “authoritarian,” as it involves violently taking control. In practice, “authoritarianism” is more of a vibe than an actual thing we can measure or a policy to be implemented. It’s used as a club against socialist states by those who’ve lost property to land reform or nationalization.
It’s a spectrum and a person who supports the government having more control of their citizens is considering authoritarian. A person who wants to limit government control over their citizens is more libertarian.
It’s a very valid belief that someone might want leftist policies with limited government control over individual citizens so calling them all tankies is inaccurate and confusing
When you utterly erase class analysis, and just group everyone under “citizens,” you run into utter contradictions. Socialist states have been far more liberating for their populace overall, even if they’ve been oppressive towards fascists, capitalists, etc, meaning they would technically belong in the “libertarian” quadrant if we define it the way you claim we should. The entire idea of a “libertarian-authoritarian” spectrum, or even a left-right spectrum and not just various right and left ideologies that cannot be abstracted into a graph-based system, is actively harmful to our understanding of political ideology.
Anarchists want communalism, whereas Marxists want collectivization. Neither is more or less “authoritarian” or “libertarian,” in that even horizontalist systems actually erase the democratic reach of communities to within their communities and immediate surroundings, while collectivization spreads power more evenly globally. This isn’t something that can be represented on the graph in any way, yet results in fundamentally different approaches and outcomes.
This is an intentional strawman right? Like there is no way you are truly misunderstanding this much?
Auth governement dictates what individual citizens can/ can not do
Lib government limits what power the government has over individual citizens
You can’t say we are actually lib because we only are targeting the “bad people”
Show your conviction and don’t dance around your point if you want a government that has more power over its citizens that’s fine, that’s your belief and you are fully entitled to it but if you can’t acknowledge your own beliefs that’s its own problem
Again, you need to look at things from a class analysis. There is no such thing as “libertarian capitalism,” capitalism requires the state, and freedoms for citizens are restricted because they don’t have as much access to necessities and democracy doesn’t extend to the economy.
Socialist countries that provide better access to necessities have more freedom for the average person than capitalist countries. They don’t have the same privledged class of capitalists with unlimited political power, but the people have more power.
This is a false-binary. It isn’t a strawman, the political compass is entirely bogus and cannot accurately depict ideology or structure as they exist in the real world. It does more harm than helps.
I’m not dancing, I’ve said it firm: I want the working class to use the state in their own interests, against capitalists and fascists, to meet the needs of the people and liberate society.
not all right wingers are fascists
I don’t follow.
On the political compass there are 4 directions. Left, right, libertarian, authoritarian.
A tankie is auth left a fascist is auth right
Saying everyone on the left is a tankie ignores the lib left it’s the same as saying that everyone on the right is a fascist which is also not accurate
The political compass was quite literally made by a right-winger that wished to perpetuate liberalism as the moderate, standard option. You can’t actually put ideologies on a graph like that, it results in absurdities and contradictions.
You quite easily can, the contradictions that happen are due to humans having complex views and not everything being black and white.
Liberalism isn’t the moderate option on the political compass but is just one of the axis that has an extreme…
Yes, nothing is black and white, correct. That doesn’t mean you can try to force quantitative measuring of higjly qualitative and contextual policy. Further, I did not say libertarianism, I said liberalism, which is the dominant ideology of capitalism. Left vs right is broadly okay if framed as collectivized ownership as principle vs privatized ownership as principle, but economies in the real world aren’t “pure,” and trying to gauge how left or right a country is by proportion of the economy that is public vs private can be misleading.
The next part, “libertarian vs authoritarian,” is a false binary. The state is thoroughly linked to the mode of production, you don’t just pick something on a board and create it in real life. There’s no such thing as “libertarian capitalism,” as an example. Centralization vs decentralization may make more sense, but that can also be misleading, as centralized systems can be more democratic than decentralized systems.
This is a pretty good, if long, video on the subject. The creator of the compass is, as I said, politically biased towards liberalism.
As a fun little side-note, I can answer the standard political compass quiz and get right around the bottom-left while being a Marxist-Leninist that approves of full collevtivization of production and central planning. Yet, at the same time, the quiz will put socialist states in the top left, seemingly based on how the creator wants to represent things. It’s deeply flawed. Add on the fact that it’s more of an idealist interpretation of political economy than a materialist one, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
Removed by mod
You would accuse your grandmother defending herself from an attacker as a tankie.
Anyone ideologically left of Richard Nixon according to our local blue conservatives.
You say this ironically, but there are several relatively recent U.S. presidents or people in their administration who have said things that would get them branded tankies today.
I’m thinking specifically of a speech Jimmy Carter gave where he said it’s no wonder North Korea ended up the way it had, considering we bombed every building over two stories into the ground.
Kissinger is also obviously evil but only because of his realpolitik - by modern ideological standards where any anti-Western power is treated as worse than Hitler by even social Democrats, his dispassionate readings would get him labeled a Marxist.
Nixon was a tankie according to them. He’s responsible for the EPA and OSHA.
Left of Reagan.
When a South Asian calls the British monarchy fascist or Churchill a genocider in my experience.
Isn’t monarchy already a bigger bad word in itself than fascism?
Not according to the Yakubians over at the miserable island.
I actually always wondered a bit about the line between fascism and monarchism. To the casual observer they might seem nearly identical, though I wonder if in historical materialist terms it’s a reactionary attempt to backslide to feudalism rather than progress capitalism to socialism.
OP, what have you unleashed.
I just thought this was where you came to ask questions.
It is, I’m just kidding around. Your question was innocent enough, it’s just that the comments look like a battlefield.
you’re on the .ml instance, which is an incredibly political place, so you’re gonna get a lot of flack
I think every instance has pretty strong political views
A size of tank, smaller than normal tank, but bigger than tankette.
Like most words it can mean different things depending on context. I’ll do my best to cover a few without spoiling it with my own opinions.
The most common usage is as a blanket pejorative aimed at anyone who identifies as leftist but also openly endorses authoritarian means or ends.
There are also those who embrace the term and they are also not all the same. There are Marxist-Leninists who believe the only path to a stateless egalitarian society is through a revolutionary vanguard party. There are also those who argue that egalitarian society can only be achieved and maintained through benevolent authoritarianism.
In any case, the term carries an implication of authoritarianism and/or revolutionary violence, hence “tanks.”
OP I am glad you asked this because I don’t know. Also based on the horseshit answers you have gotten in this post it seems like no one else does either.
worth checking the modlog, seems there were answers that have since disappeared for mysterious reasons.
Come on lib send me the Tiananmen Square video of tanks doing the things you claim they do. @Williama:Genzedong
Some answers haven’t “disappeared for mysterious reasons”, it’s for spreading misinformation. If you disagree then come on, send me a video of the “horrendous crimes committed by China in Tiananmen Square”. I fully consent. @Williama:Genzedong. Surely at least one of the “victims of the massacre” would have recorded something the “ruthless military regime” and their oh so very “despicable acts of massacre”.
If you and other libs are annoyed that the devs are “tankies”, then go back to reddit.
@Williama:Genzedong
I’m not sure what this means, is this a reference i’m supposed to know?
Come on lib send me the Tiananmen Square video of tanks doing the things you claim they do. @Williama:Genzedong
Not sure if this is aimed at me, but i haven’t claimed anything to do with tanks, at any point, ever.
Some answers haven’t “disappeared for mysterious reasons”,
That’s fair , i meant “mysterious reasons” in a less factual and more sarcasm way, but i can see how that might have not come across.
it’s for spreading misinformation.
That’s subjective, which is what that whole thread is about no?
I wasn’t really emphasizing the subjectivity of the claims, as much as just pointing out that answers had been removed and they might be found in the modlog.
You seem to have a strong opinion on this, i do not.
If you disagree then come on, send me a video of the “horrendous crimes committed by China in Tiananmen Square”
I’m sure you can search for whatever videos you need, i haven’t made any claims i would need to provide video evidence for.
I won’t be providing evidence of positions i haven’t taken or claims i haven’t made, that would be silly.
I fully consent. @Williama:Genzedong.
Still not sure what this reference is.
Surely at least one of the “victims of the massacre” would have recorded something the “ruthless military regime” and their oh so very “despicable acts of massacre”.
See the above section about there being no claims or positions taken.
If you want to imagine i’ve sent you proof of this imaginary claim i’ve made so you can be upset in your imagination , feel free.
If you and other libs are annoyed that the devs are “tankies”, then go back to reddit.
See above re: claims that never happened
You really chopped up that comment into tiny pieces just to respond line by line and say absolutely nothing worth reading.
What a giant eyesore waste of time
@mods The rest of this chain was offensive, but this comment consisting solely of a personal attack is not ?
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
Removed by mod
That is my matrix username
I respond to a someone probably exploring communism asking about a term with an emphasis on the deleting of certain posts spreading misinformation, which might miss guide the person asking the question into some kind of vaushist “leftism” or turn them off from exploring marxism. The specific posts spreading misinformation are claiming a very accusatory claim used by western imperialists to make a government look bad, which in a less fortunate country that is just developing, could be the result of support for a coup to put in a puppet government. Whether you support that claim which is objectively false (https://tankie.tube/w/p/kFZ2joQah4kmt2KSpzPHtb?playlistPosition=6&resume=true <-- is an entertaining starter with sources) is irrelevant when people think these people spreading such disinformation are some kind of heroes.
That is my matrix username
Ah, makes sense.
I respond to a someone probably exploring communism asking about a term with an emphasis on the deleting of certain posts spreading misinformation, which might miss guide the person asking the question into some kind of vaushist “leftism” or turn them off from exploring marxism. The specific posts spreading misinformation are claiming a very accusatory claim used by western imperialists to make a government look bad, which in a less fortunate country that is just developing, could be the result of support for a coup to put in a puppet government. Whether you support that claim which is objectively false (https://tankie.tube/w/p/kFZ2joQah4kmt2KSpzPHtb?playlistPosition=6&resume=true <-- is an entertaining starter with sources) is irrelevant when people think these people spreading such disinformation are some kind of heroes.
That also makes sense, mostly, i disagree with some of it on a logical principle level, but i really don’t have a personal horse in any of the political parts i also don’t know/care enough to get one.
All the things you said might be true, they all might be false, though i suspect they’re all subjective enough to be context dependent, i also suspect we aren’t going to agree on the difference between subjective and objective, which is my main disagreement with the statement as a whole.
My main point was, there were answers that are now deleted, that is provably true.
The subjective accuracy of those answers isn’t really the point and no claim was made on that aspect.
Also, the implied /s for “mysterious” didn’t land and that’s on me.
“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains”
-Rosa Luxemborg
edit: damn, that’s a high percentage of sodium for pointing at a thing that provably exists in the modlog.
A cute water cistern.
That is an adorable tankie
