this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Okay, I’m clearly ignorant. What’s a “tankie”?

[–] [email protected] 71 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Short answer: folk who are so pro-Communist that they think the Tiananmen Square massacre was a good thing. The massacre in which the CCP bulldozed protestors with tanks.

Hence, "tankie"

Edit: apparently I'm wrong on the origin of the term, and it predates Tiananmen Square. See the reply below.

I will add that given the current projection of power currently, China is a far more powerful authoritarian communiststate than Russia, so most tankie propaganda is China-centric these days.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That's a wrong answer.

It's in relation to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia during the Prague spring, where they were doing evil things like giving people more freedoms and not having everything under centralised authoritarian state control so the soviets sent over some tanks to kill people and enforce their imperialistic control over the country.

Ironically enough doing more to encourage actual communism than the larpers in Russia ever did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

In your defence, it's confusing trying to keep track of who these authies murdered with tanks.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Wow thanks! TIL :)

Yeah honestly I'm pretty socialist but not authoritarian in the slightest. Hearts and minds first.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Oh wow. So like, extreme right wing and the fucking Republicans. Fuck all those people.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, extreme left wing basically. Think that capitalism should be overthrown by force. Same as jan6-ers but pro Communist

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago

Nah tankies specifically are those that support Maxist-Leninism to a fault. Thats why they sypport the tanks rolling over student protestors. They'll fight for single party state socialism that winds up not as a vanguard, but as corrupt state capitalism. Other leftists despise them because revolution doesn't necessarily mean becoming the USSR, nor should it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Extreme left-wing/communists.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I’ve learned not to lean into labels - the right seems to be as dangerous to democracy as the far left, as they seem to now embrace the tactics of what we used to consider “leftie” or communism. They want to maintain control and don’t care how they get it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't disagree, so long as we're talking about similar distances from center when we say 'far'. At least in the US, people talk about the far right and the far left, except they're really talking about people who are slightly left. US doesn't have far left. Far left is the USSR and other authoritarian communist states (I'm unsure if any of these still exist).

Though honestly I think it just makes more sense to push back against anyone who's too far on the authoritarian scale as I feel like that's mostly what people have a problem. Governments (in my opinion) need to be at least a bit authoritarian in order to enforce laws at all, but a lot of the modern political sphere is pushing hard on overly authoritarian policies in nearly every space and country.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Libertarian vs autoritarian. Left vs right.

You're comparing apples to oranges. Both the left and the right can be good. The problem is that people are hungry for power and money. Any system crumbles when the foundations are based on greed and corruption.

I really hate the left vs right fight, it is pointless. Both systems can be good, both systems have flaws, both systems can be exploited, both systems have been exploited in the past... A system isn't going to save you from a corrupted government and corrupted private interests

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Wrong spectrum. Both Republicans and Tankies are authoritarian, which is why they feel similar (especially because current republicans are barely even conservative and have mostly gone all in on the authoritarian part).

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Well, the tanks in question are actually those sent by the USSR to crush the Hungarian Revolution and Prague uprising.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I haven't seen this yet outside of pro China forums.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Didn't lemmygrad pop up on your feed yet? It makes me want to puke

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If they keep it to themselves, it shouldn’t be a problem.

If they ban and censor users because of those views though…

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

it's kinda funny to see in real time.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Certainly not “ha-ha” funny

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Of you think lemmy.ml is tankie you are not ready for lemmygrad lmao .

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Some hard truths

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Can I go now?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

So are there any real downsides to having an account on this instance? I chose it randomly when I signed up and don't know enough about the situation.

Should I be concerned enough to go make another account or is it essentially meaningless at the end of the day?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

You may lose out on some content as instances have defederated from it. Although most of the hardcore tankies moved to lemmygrad.ml, leaving lemmy.ml as the clean PRC PR face so it'll probably not see as much defederation.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I think most of us are very new to this, we are learning about instances, server, communities, federation etc and how are they different, as reddit user it will take us time to grasp the general idea. But one thing great about lemmy is the freedom to choose instance , so if you don't like something hop to another instance where it resonates with your like, take a look at community which you follow and instance associated with it.

I feel these few months most of the user will be instance hopping 🤣, and slowly as time goes most of us will settle down to our new home. And I am sure you will find your answer too by then.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Cackling. So accurate. It's just kind of complicated around here!

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