196

Just like fascists, tankies could theoretically hang out here without getting the boot. It's just that genocide denying authoritarians cannot be tolerated in a tolerant, democratic society. The reason tankies and fascists get the boot is because they can't resist trying to bully and intimidate those that find their views abhorrent. They simply can't resist being terrible.

They're cultists with views that can't stand up to scrutiny, so they need use other tactics to spread their shit and gain power. They use the real downsides and weaknesses of democracy to argue we need an even worse system. Then they argue you actually hold the worst views of their enemies, even though they usually support exactly the same things that make those enemies bad. Tankies claim you're a free-market liberal for opposing them, when the countries they support are state capitalists. Fascists claim you're against freedom of speech, while they are always trying to ban ideas they hate. Some of them are misguided and believe their own lies, but others are just awful people.

Hexbear disliked that

These threads are odd to me, considering how many people call all communists tankies. The word seems to be used by anarchists, conservatives, communists, anti-communists, and more, and every person has a slightly different definition.

Half the people here could consider the other half to be the tankies everyone is mad at.

To be clear this isn't me saying "be nice to the tankies" this is me saying "the overuse of this word is confusing the shit out of me."

Based AF

Fuck tankies

The "tankie" thing is such a Reddit holdover, both the word and the people it describes. Nobody outside of those hyper-online teenage ideology spaces like Twitter or Reddit cares about those made-up political categories that are only based on aesthetics.

Always remember that both the pro-Hamas pro-Assad "socialist" shitposter and the pro-Israeli pagan plural trans anarchist are some American high schoolers who are too anxious to go out to a store, let alone participate in a mass movement or join an organization. Nobody in the real world cares about those basement dwellers.

If the people you want to criticize have terrible political standings, and they just LARP as socialists while supporting inane reactionary actors like Russia, the Hamas, China or the DPRK, then make an actual argument against them and fight them on their standpoints in the actual class warfare out there, instead of making a dumb-ass childish meme. Go join a party, go agitate, go organize your workplace, go read something. Analyze the class politics they espouse, criticize them on that point, not on some moral failing.

Both "tankies" and "anti-tankies" only exist on Reddit. Nobody cares in real life.

Edit: To clarify, I mean "tankie" as it is used now on the internet for anyone who's not an anarchist or social democrat, not its original meaning dating back half a century.

Hey everyone, just a reminder:

• Yes Nazis are also bad, we don't have Nazis pop up anywhere near as often as Tankies
• We remove and ban Nazis too
• We're aware of Lemmy's main code writers being ML's, and it's not great.
• Please report any bigot bullshit, or fascist/tankie dogwhistles.

196 is one of the greatest ~~subs~~ communities

ya'll should be proud. Thank you for adding a little queer fun to my normal CIS life

The guy needs a speech bubble that says "Stalin did nothing wr-"

Fuck tankies.

I think most of you need to worry way less about sounding sufficiently the "right kind" of leftist and focus more on promoting leftism through action. More than half the "tankie" discourse is, at best, a needless distraction from actual progress. Lose your buzzwords and stop the ideological purity pissing contest and actually put in the work in your communities instead, goddamn.

When all you so-called "democracy" fans decide to stop defending Nazis' right to "free speech" while they're actively trying to use it to kill you, lemme know and I'll maybe start paying attention to what you're saying.

It's funny that everyone is up in arms about this post but the literal sticky post says no tankies

I'm not against the hostility being shown towards tankies here... but it should be remembered that there are a lot of well-meaning and well-intentioned people who get caught up in the technocratic ideology tankies buy into. Let's face it... if you google anything about leftism you are more likely to end up reading about Marx and Engels than Bakunin or Goldman - and right-wing propaganda is as perfectly fine with conflating everything "leftist" with the technocratic (ie authoritarian) left as tankies themselves are.

If we are leaving some doors open for fascists and capitalists who turn against their programming, we should remember to do the same for tankies.

Eh this argues that we even have a democracy that is functional enough to undermine in the first place, and I reject that premise.

i wonder why this post about tankies is suddenly popular

sees top posts criticising israel and fascism

ah there it is

what democracy?

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

[...]

In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.

something like 70% of Americans want universal healthcare and yet it remains politically impossible.

Bro what, if we can stop leftist infighting for one fucking minute that would be great. We all have 90% of the same goals so how about we work on that and not build artificial walls to those to the left of us. Also being pro western „democracy“ is cringe.

Loving to see tankies come out of the woodwork to seethe and troll at this

I swear almost every American election cycle, some weird word will start popping up everywhere. like how all the trump supporters started saying cuck out of nowhere in 2015-2016

let's be honest, they should be removed from society

I'm not sure anyone knows what a tankie is.

Apparently saying any country other than the US should take a turn at world leadership is a tankie opinion.