I keep hearing the term in political discourse, and rather than googling it, I’m asking the people who know better than Google.
I keep hearing the term in political discourse, and rather than googling it, I’m asking the people who know better than Google.
@the_mighty_kracken the term Tankie comes from members of the British Communist Party that continued to support the U.S.S.R. after they sent tanks to Communist Hungary. Supporting the authoritarian State in the name of leftism even when they aren’t acting very communally. Now a days it pretty much refers to ultra-authoritarian leftists. After years I still am not sure if lemmygrad.ml is actually made up mostly of tankies, or if it’s mostly normies pretending to be acting how tankies stereotypically act. You probably have seen it more on the 'verse because Lemmy was originally just one website lemmy.ml written by Marxist-Leninist who were banned from reddit. Even after adding ActivityPub support and federating across many instances the Lemmy community still, in general, has Marxists leanings. If there is one thing, we leftists love even more than talking about overthrowing capitalism, it’s calling other leftists names and claiming their version of socialism is went the capitalists are still in charge.
The term was coined because of the British tendency towards silly-sounding insults, and because the Soviet Union sent in the Red Army to stop the western-backed fascist insurrection. This caused a split in the party (as it always does in western orgs).
The Hungarian revolt in 1956 was infested with anti-semitic pograms. MI6 funded, supplied, and trained the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries. These counter-revolutionaries were allied with fascists who were lynching Jewish people and Communists.
Further, the CIA also backed Hungarian resistance forces:
Prague in 1968 was a similar fascist uprising in both cases there were some elements of progressive protest, but these were greatly overshadowed by the fascist movements. Dubcek wanted to sell out to the IMF, and restore capitalism. The idea that any of this was about “democracy” or “freedom” is silly, it was always about Cold War tactics to destabilize socialism.
TL;DR imagine if the January 6th rioters were armed and trained by foreign governments, started lynching officials and Jewish people, and the US sent in the army to put down the insurrection. The MAGA chuds would claim that it was about “freedom” and “democracy,” but we all know that they just wanted Trump in office.
As for Lemmygrad.ml , it’s entirely serious, and their positions are in line with other Marxist-Leninist orgs around the world. As for the USSR, the capitalists were deposed and the working class was in charge. I have no idea what you’re referring to there, nor to “ultra-authoritarianism.”