I know for a lot of people a tankie is just something that they know it when they see it, however I think that it is important to think about the reason that you define something as being tankie vs just a leftist.
I know for a lot of people a tankie is just something that they know it when they see it, however I think that it is important to think about the reason that you define something as being tankie vs just a leftist.
For me, a tankie is someone who plays apologist for fundamentally authoritarian regimes just because those regimes are painted red.
I would say there’s a larger Chomskyite-style group of useful idiots who often get lumped in with tankies, but who are not, themselves, actual supporters of authoritarian-style socialism. They just eagerly eat up and regurgitate agitprop from actual tankies. Campist brainrot often runs rampant here, but they aren’t actual tankies. I sometimes mock them with similar lines, though, under the old “Nine Nazis at a table” logic - when you’re working for fascists, whether you agree, strictly speaking, with their ideology is of less importance.
Basically every leftist who doesn’t believe that the path to socialism is by a vanguard party detached from actual democratic processes taking control of the entirety of society and enforcing its will on the populace is not an actual tankie.
They’re not even painted red. There is nothing whatsoever communist about Russia and Putin would never claim that Russia was a communist country. But they oppose America and Europe, so that doesn’t matter to Tankies.
All that matters is that the strongman is against the West.
That’s part of the campism. If you nail them down on the topic of Russia, specifically, they will disavow modern Russia precisely because it isn’t painted red. But for every action on the international stage, they will unfailingly support Russia, because Russia is against the West’s ‘camp’. Same with Iran.
On the other hand, if you nail them down on the USSR and the PRC, actual tankies will almost always outright speak in support of both, if not necessarily unconditionally. Though the conditions they apply are… party-approved. In the spirit of “MAYBE there were SOME excesses and bad choices, but also you have to understand that the bourgeois FORCED us to take most of these measures!” that dedicated Communists who got swept up into the GULAG still parroted to their fellow inmates during the Stalin years.
Regimes with a very thin coat of red paint, like Assad’s Syria, still often receive this bootlicking treatment from actual tankies.
I don’t disagree. I especially enjoy it when they start talking about how Stalin was a great leader. I’ve also seen “everyone sent to the Gulags deserved it” being bandied about lately.
The best one was definitely that time that a hexbear user joined in to lemm.ee’s “do we defederate from hexbear?” thread to tell the admin that “your kulak great grandparents deserved it” apparently on the basis that he’s Estonian and doesn’t like the Soviet Union
I got a better one than that one. I was told by one of them that Stalin put thousands of Jews in the gulags for the same reason Nazis put them in concentration camps (apparently deservedly both times)- “they were radical Marxists.”
Like, WTF? Isn’t that a good thing to you?
Is the distinction being drawn between Marxist and Marxist-Leninist, or is “radical Marxism” referring to radicalism as in Jeremy Bentham? Or is there some third thing going on?
I decided not to delve into the topic because I can only stomach so much bigotry.
That was probably a sensible decision
I mean… they are painted red from the blood that they have spilled.
Chomsky wasn’t an authoritarian… and most anarchists are led there from Chomsky. I’m one of those people who started with manufactured consent and ended up in anarchist land.
But yeah, I’d agree that tankies are all authoritarians and support for authoritarianism (even as a means to an end) is the dividing line between tankies and non tankies.
As I said, “who are not, themselves, actual supporters of authoritarian-style socialism. They just eagerly eat up and regurgitate agitprop from actual tankies. Campist brainrot often runs rampant here, but they aren’t actual tankies.”