I keep hearing the term in political discourse, and rather than googling it, I’m asking the people who know better than Google.
Wassa tankie?
Feryerhealth
A size of tank, smaller than normal tank, but bigger than tankette.
Someone who believes people outside of the United States of America are also human beings.
When a South Asian calls the British monarchy fascist or Churchill a war criminal 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.
no
Please expand upon that thought.
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.
Fascism doesn’t necessarily have the hereditary property of monarchism. Power can easily get transferred to other families, not related by blood.
A lot of these comments reminds me of people posting on conservative chats asking what a socialist is. About the same amount of mouth foaming.
I would like to remind people about vaccinations against rabies
A slur mainly on the internet against those leftist (usually Marxists-leninist) who oppose western interventions, sanctions, coups and wars against countries and governments labeled as “authoritarian”.
originally used by UK communists party trotskyist wing in support of Hungarian -56 crushed uprising against those who opposed it, calling them tankies. Vaguely same as “stalinist”, but it pretty much has lost that meaning in modern use.
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.
I need my Tankie siblings to look at these comments and tell me it’s worth conversing with any of these people lmao, let them play in their own shit. If they’ll ever be convinced, the material failures of their worldview will do it for us, if not- the future’s ash and fertilizer welcome them.
you sound bitter as fuck about it
Yes.
try to genuinely understand where your siblings are coming from. you might not change your mind but you will at least be more chill about it.
So you had this outburst just to make them look better?
… what outburst?
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).
There is a single axis of geopolitics. Pro CIA/Zionazi demonic supremacist corrupt/rigged/controlled democracy evil vs resistors. Tankies are just an insult to the resistors. Speech is controlled by establishment everywhere, and just as money is speech, money/CIA is terrorism that will destabilize and diminish any country that supremacist speech is not exterminated.
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.
Economy and social liberties are not independent axes. The mode of production of a society influences it’s social life and the liberties afforded.
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).
Unless “you” are a corporation and then a taxpayer-funded bailout is almost sure to arrive.
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.
A cute water cistern.
That is an adorable tankie
Typically it refers to leftists who strongly defend/advocate for authoritarian statist approaches to socialism/communism.
“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.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
Asking on this instance though, the Basecamp for them essentially, you’re going to get a lot of answers ranging from “it’s a meaningless term” to “Just something liberals slap on everything anti Communist!”
No communist calls the ROK an “occupier,” it’s the US Empire that is occupying Korea, with the ROK’s government set up directly by them. This whole comment is really bad, to be honest.
that is occupying Korea
Yes exactly, the government of SK is called an occupier by tankies, despite being democratically elected by the people of SK
Tankies does not automatically mean communists, that’s just a tactic you guys use to conflate the term
No, the government of the southern half of Korea, the Republic of Korea, is not an “occupier.” The democratically elected state was the People’s Republic of Korea (PRK), which spanned the entire peninsula before the US Empire came in, declared it illegal, and split the country in two, against the will of Koreans, and installed the dictator Rhee Syngman in place.
Again, “tankie” in practice is just a pejorative for communists, akin to “pinko” or “commie.” The fact that you’re getting very basic communist stances on Korea completely wrong here betrays any sense of legitimacy you have on the subject.
Again, “tankie” in practice is just a pejorative for communists
It isn’t, though. Tankies want the term to be a pejorative term for communists because it hides the criticism for the term. Calling someone a tankie is a criticism that their values don’t match what they support politically. After all, the term comes from supporters of the Soviet Union using tanks to crush a local revolution that didn’t comply with Soviet power politics.
“Tankie” isn’t a political ideology, it’s a McCarthyite strawman with ready-made characteristics designed to make it so that you don’t have to respond to the points communists make. The origin of the term being in putting down the 1956 CIA supported and MI6 armed fascist counter-revolution in Hungary where the fascists let Nazis out of prison to lynch Jews and communists doesn’t make any difference on today’s usage.
That was almost 70 years ago, it’s irrelevant, words change their meaning all the time. It’s how human language works.
The current widely accepted definition is the one defined by the previously linked Wikipedia article. Oh sorry, do you guys call it “NATOpedia” now? Or was it “Libopedia”?
The current usage is as an anticommunist pejorative and McCarthyite strawman.
Tankie isn’t a political ideology, it is a commentary on the practice of policy in comparison to stated beliefs.
how dare those damn tankies improve material conditions.
No, it’s a pejorative and McCarthyite strawman.
0·2 months agoYour image is really bad quality, you should get a better one, https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2025/0318/104-10110-10525.pdf
Thank you!
No, the government of the southern half of Korea, the Republic of Korea, is not an “occupier.” The democratically elected state was the People’s Republic of Korea (PRK), which spanned the entire peninsula before the US Empire came in, declared it illegal, and split the country in two, against the will of Koreans, and installed the dictator Rhee Syngman in place.
Cool, that happened decades ago though, who is currently running the SK government? A democratically elected body?
Again, “tankie” in practice is just a pejorative for communists, akin to “pinko” or “commie.”
No not really, I’m sure there are people around who throw the term around loosely, but the majority associate it with authoritarian communists
The fact that you’re getting very basic communist stances on Korea completely wrong here betrays any sense of legitimacy you have on the subject.
There was just a meme by one of you the other day where you declared the SK government as being illegitimate along with the government of Taiwan and Israel
If you say the Government of SK is illegitimate then it’s an occupying government is it not?
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The ROK has a liberal democracy, but it was forced on the people of southern Korea without their consent. The US Empire staffed it with prior compradors that were in power during Japanese colonialism. The ROK is currently a dictatorship of capital under a special class of people referred to as “chaebol,” under the occupation of the US Empire.
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All states are “authoritarian,” in that all states are means by which one class exerts its authority over the others. Communists support the working class being in charge of that authority, all communists (unless you count anarchists) support the use of the state against capitalists and fascists, and the majority of practicing communists support socialist states.
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I don’t like being referred to like “one of you.” I don’t care what they posted, I am explaining directly to you.
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The ROK essentially being a comprador government set up by a colonizer does not mean it’s occupying itself. The US Empire is occupying Korea, not the comprador government.
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There are far too many comments that just got removed by the moderator! I asked the question, and while I might not agree with all the replies, I was glad that people felt like it was okay to do so.
We removed many comments, since its a blanket term used to demonize leftists, like “commie”, and carry out anti-communist witch-hunts (the instance you’re currently on blocks the major leftist lemmy servers, so we’re seeing a lot of witch-hunters).
Its kinda similar to going to a non-theist forum, and asking, “hey everyone, what’s a heathen?” And a lot of the answers then demonize these supposed “heathens”.
You asked the equivalent of “What’s a limey bastard?” at a British pub. It’s quite funny, but basically everything you kicked off answers your question.
Notice how all that is left are comments that support authoritarian communism and defend totalitarian states they identify with¹ including crimes against humanity and historical revisionism. That is a prime example of what other leftists call tankies. Censorship, brigading and other bad behaviours because only their reality tunnel is acceptable. Even reasonable and nuanced comments explaining a different point of view have been downvoted and removed.
¹ interestingly a lot of them support Russia today despite it’s a prime capitalist oligarchy since the fall of CCCP over thirty years ago and China that too has strayed closer to a corrupt capitalist kleptocracy than communism in anything than name. Obviously they support North Korea too, adopting the state ideology that no criticism is allowed. Hence the common assumption is that the tankie hive is a mix of ideological hardliners, paid trolls of said states and random contrarians that are in it for the ego.
So much arrogant, condescending chauvinism in this comment.
The problem here is that “tankie” is just a strawman with ready-made characteristics. In the minds of viewers, a tankie is exactly what McCarthy described, yet also someone who believes that the McCarthyian version of a communist is a good thing. The problem is that this doesn’t describe real people. Communists disagree with common western, liberal viewpoints on existing socialist states, and believe them to be unfairly represented in western media. Communists aren’t paid trolls, we aren’t in it for ego. Many of us are members of communist parties, volunteer in our communities, etc.
You say these supposed “tankies” identify with crimes against humanity, but that’s demonstrably false. I can say that, for example, the idea of the 1930s famine in the USSR being intentional is utter mythology. That doesn’t mean I support the famine, it means based on evidence from the opening of the soviet archives, we know that it was a tragedy caused by adverse weather conditions made worse by kulaks destroying grain and livestock as resistance to collectivization, and that food output grew with collectivization. None of that “identifies with” the idea that the famine was intentional and is somehow good.
Even your points on the Russian Federation are wrong. Nobody thinks they are still socialist, critical support for the Russian Federation lies in the fact that it’s forced into trade with socialist countries, resists western imperialism, and has a rising socialist public that wishes to reimplement socialism. The DPRK isn’t the dystopian nightmare the west pitches it to be, and we know this by measuring up defector testimonies and comparing them to reporting both internally and externally. China is socialist, public ownership is the principle aspect of its economy.
All of this is to say, yourself and others are getting downvoted because you’re treating the McCarthyite strawman as if it’s a real thing.
If you want to know about any subject, ask a person that is a proponent of said subject first and then get the harshest criticism second and see how the first holds up. You will find an answer eventually in this hegelian dialectic. E.g. You don’t want an anti-feminists explaining feminism to you, without hearing from a feminist first.
you asked what a “tankie” is in one of the very few places on the internet that is a tankie space/instance. Let them explain to you first. The removed comments are “dronies” (politically confused people that hold the same views as western imperialists and are subject to their hegemony) are outsiders that come from other parts of the fediverse repeating the same talking points you read about everywhere else on the (western) internet. (To stay with the analogy: similar to an anti-feminist saying that feminists hate men, when its not true). Comments get removed here when they are factually wrong
“Factually wrong” might be a bit slippery when it comes to this issue. I get the impression that the term is going through some changes in use (as words tend to do) and some groups might legitimately disagree with each other on the definition. Some of the comments that got removed were not in any way helpful to the conversation, but others seemed to have their own definitions. Now they are deleted, who can say? The last definition standing wins?
You asked with a .world account, meaning you’re defederated from 2/3 biggest communist spaces on Lemmy, on Lemmy.ml, the last third. As such, it became quite a mess, because communists are outnumbered by anti-communists if you cut out 2/3s of communists.
The ones that had their comments removed were picking a definition that does not correspond to reality.
You’ll hear a lot of shit, but I’ll humanise the tankies. OK. So you’re a human being and you see an imperialist power doing horrendous things in the name of capitalism, patriarchy, and racial dominance. That’s bad. So bad that you begin to think that anyone against that must inherently be good. You’re so committed to that ideal that you will justify, defend, or dismiss every evil that they commit in turn.
You do see horrible shit happen in America, or in the world in America’s name. But oftentimes international conflict is just a few bad bitches racing to the bottom, and you have to be willing to stand by principles, not just “America bad.”
This is what happens when you refuse to actually engage with Marxism, or the points we make, then try to come up with your own reasoning for why we support who we do. I encourage you to actually try to understand communists in our own words.
I do engage with Marxism. I’m a Marxist. What I don’t do is dickride Lenin. Why don’t you go back to calling yourself your old made-up term, Marxist-Leninist. Funny how you drop the l in ml as soon as it conflicts with your ego.
Nice bit of homophobia there. I do call myself a Marxist-Leninist, in matters where I believe it’s more generally applicable to Marxism and not Marxism-Leninism I identify as such. Like, I’m not going to describe the law of value as a Marxist-Leninist thing, that’s something general to Marxists. I also have no idea what you mean by Marxism-Leninism being “made-up,” it’s by far the most historically and currently relevant branch of Marxism with by far the largest number of practicing communists worldwide.
Hey I don’t know your gender. Dickriding in my experience is a gender-neutral sport.
I display that I use he/they pronouns, and further using dickriding as an insult purely has roots in homophobia and misogny. It focuses on sexual shame in submission to someone with a dick.
Idk I don’t feel submissive on top but you do you ig
Are you allergic to making a coherent point? You’re narrowing in on the fact that I called out your homophobia, and are now doubling and tripling down on it, rather than returning to the other points I made. This is just shit-flinging.
A leftist. Someone with political beliefs, empathy, and conviction.
So much empathy that tanks are the prefered means of achieving their goals
You would accuse your grandmother defending herself from an attacker as a tankie.
Not all leftists are tankies the same way not all right wingers are fascists. A tankie is an authoritarian leftist
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.
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.
You are the one making it binary when it isn’t and when I say it isn’t you bring it back to being binary. You can have libertarian beliefs without wanting a complete dissolution of the government the same way you can have authoritarian beliefs while still wanting people to have individual freedoms. So yes you can have libertarian capitalism which is simply a less regulated form vs authoritarian capitalism. We can see this in the UK vs EU where the UK is requiring people to submit official IDs to see porn (auth) vs the EU passing data privacy laws (lib)
You are inventing all these other arguments that I am not making. I have never said socialist countries have less freedoms and don’t even remotely believe that so if you are not making a strawman then try rereading what I am saying because you are arguing against an argument I am not making which is the literal definition of a strawman
That’s called being authoritarian, there is nothing wrong with that and as long as the state is using that power fairly that can create a great society but you must realize that on a 1-10 scale of government authority with a 1 being full on anarchy and 10 being the state has full control to make all decisions that you are closer to a 10 then a 1
As soon as you give the state power to go after people with different beliefs (even if those beliefs are deplorable) you are being authoritarian
What makes them authoritarian?
They believe in an authoritarian government systems. Where the state has extra power that they can use to enforce their goals. That is in contrast to anarcho communists where the state is dissolved.
Logically most leftists fall somewhere in the middle as not wanting full on authoritarian government but also not wanting a complete lack of government
In theory if the state has the best interests of the people, then by giving the state extra power all you are doing is reducing bureaucracy and increasing efficiency. That however also makes it easier for the state to abuse that power so I am not saying one is better or worse than the other
This is not how any communist views authority or the state. All communists are in favor of abolishing the state. This requires erasing the basis of the state, which is class society, and that requires collectivizing production and distribution. With production and distribution collectivized, class doesn’t exist, and as such the state withers as it loses its reason to function.
It isn’t about “giving the state power.” It’s about taking state power from the capitalist class, and creating a working class state. This socialist state does not have “more power” than a capitalist state, the class it serves is what’s distinct.
Leftists usually fall into the Marxist umbrella or anarchist umbrella. Marxists are for collectivization, while anarchists are for communalization.
When I say “communalization,” I mean anarchists propose horizontalist, decentralized cells, similar to early humanity’s cooperative production but with more interconnection and modern tech. When I say collectivization, I mean the unification of all of humanity into one system, where production and distribution is planned collectively to satisfy the needs of everyone as best as possible.
For anarchists, collectivized society still seems to retain the state, as some anarchists conflate administration with the state as it represents a hierarchy. For Marxists, this focus on communalism creates inter-cell class distinctions, as each cell only truly owns their own means of production, giving rise to class distinctions and thus states in the future.
For Marxists, socialism must have a state, a state can only wither with respect to how far along it has come in collectivizing production and therefore eliminating class. All states are authoritarian, but we cannot get rid of the state without erasing the foundations of the state: class society, and to do so we must collectivize production and distribution globally. Socialist states, where the working class wields its authority against capitalists and fascists, are the means by which this collectivization can actually happen, and are fully in-line with Marx’s beliefs. Communism as a stateless, classless, moneyless society is only possible post-socialism.
Anarchists obviously disagree with this, and see the state more as independent of class society and thus itself must be abolished outright.
This is not at all about being more “authoritarian” or “libertarian.” It’s a fundamentally different understanding of class and power dynamics, and both seek a liberated society. The political compass cannot depict this, even if the liberal view of anarchism and Marxism wants to point them as two extremes on a tidy graph with most people in the middle of them. What’s important is that politics is not a bell curve, Marxism and anarchism are consistent ideologies with specific tendencies under them that fundamentally contradict. People don’t just pick what they like from each (usually), because then they cease to be internally consistent.
Where the state has extra power that they can use to enforce their goals
Extra power in comparison to what? What is the normal amount of state power?
That’s a debate since authoritarianism to libertarianism is a spectrum so there is no official “normal” and its generally used qualitatively on individual polices
Regulated and censoring speech - auth Absolute freedom of speech - lib Limiting speech to prohibit only speech that can cause harm to others - somewhere in the middle
Requiring the state to dispense all drugs - auth No drug regulations, no dea, no fda- lib Some drug regulations including requiring “generally recognized as safe and effective”- somewhere in the middle
No country is full auth or full lib
That’s a debate since authoritarianism to libertarianism is a spectrum so there is no official “normal” and its generally used qualitatively on individual polices
So, essentially, it’s subjective?
