this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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What is tankie?
:dracula: Just anyone that is to the left of you on foreign policy.
I'm gonna try and give an actual brief history. The word "Tankie" originated from a split in the Communist party of Great Britain in the 1950s, over the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Those who supported the invasion were called "Tankies" by those who opposed it.
That would've been it, and it would have faded into history as an obscure piece of British leftist slang, if it weren't for the word's rediscovery decades later, where more modern leftists used the term in a half joking way among each other.
At some point over... Really just the past couple of years or so, tankie breached containment, and has been worming its way into non-leftist people's vocabularies, where it's lost any and all connection to its original meaning.
So when, say, OP of this thread uses it, it's unclear what they mean. Do they mean communists in general? Leftists in general? Supporters of China? What does it mean for a white, Western, leftist to 'support' China anyway? Is it just a general term for someone they deem Authoritarian? Or do they mean a specific kind of "Patriotic Socialist" who LARPs as a communist but actually holds deeply reactionary ideas?
It's all very unclear. So I wouldn't take "Tankie discourse" too seriously tbh. It's just a thought terminating cliche at this point. If you want to talk about any of those groups mentioned above... Just be specific and dunk on who you want to dunk on. There's legitimate, good faith, critiques to be made of all of them. Just make them, and be thoughtful about it.
But running around and calling anyone you don't like a Tankie doesn't foster good discussion. Especially when I have to sit down and decipher which one of 6 different possible definitions of "Tankie" someone might be referring to.
A welder who works on metal storage vessels, sometimes called tanks.
It's the liberal equivalent of "woke"
What is a Tankie?
:abbie-cocktail:
A miserable little pile of secrets.
But enough talk ...
Have at you!
:xi-reactionary-spotted:
Those who support authoritative regime. I think it's the new commies. Tend to be used on those who are sympathetic to Russia and China.
Russia is as not a communist state. No one on the left is supporting Puttin lead Russia.
Ambivalent KPRF noises
No, I am a tankie but I don't support any authoritarian regime. I don't support America or the EU for example. I like Cuba. They have laws mandating queer rights, women's right, health care, strong democratic participation.
How do you identify as a tankie?
I only see the word used on other people, but never see some one use it on themselves
Around here it is pretty common. Easily. Most of the people who actually ever worked to improve society have been labeled tankies so it is a badge of honor.
What if I am fully sympathetic towards China out of those two?
I am sympathetic towards Russian fear of nato expansion but believe Vlad bungled so fucking bad he made things worse then ever at breakneck speeds.
Am I a tankie.
Theoriticaly yes. I mean ignoring the russian thing completely. China still has some serious large scale privacy and human rights violations. Alghtough arguably as with 'woke' in reality tankie is a meaningless term used to divide pepole between us and them instead of actually just discussing the actual issues.
And what are you doing with privacy? We have none here in the US and our lives are not really any worse for it is there? If anything the only time we see any privacy rights is when some one wants to hide how they are hurting us. Corrupt politicians and the like.
There is definietly more privacy than in china( Not that the issue doesnt exist in Us ,Europe or the rest of the world,but its not as bad ,you can get vpns or messaging apps that will tell the goverment to f* off or simply beacuse they dont collect any relevant data like signal ). Also you still left out massive human rights violations, arguably much more important thing .
Yes there's no privacy in the US, and the US has numerous human rights violations, but China is obvioudly worse cus no freedom, inscrutable asiatics, tank man. Checkmate tankie
Something like half of Chinese people use a VPN and the state censoring western sites Facebook and Twitter is a good thing
What rights? To my knowledge all of those claims are made up by our state department to cover our genocide in the middle east and our funding and training far right extremeists.