I think that it’s interesting that tankies call themselves tankies in memes, and yet will get all bent out of shape if non-tankies refer to them as tankies. Like, I understand coopting hurtful terms as a sort of reclamation of the power of language… but really? Tankies is the term you want to reclaim? You want to associate yourself with authoritarian regimes using tanks to crush protestors? Alright, then.
Welcome to reality as a team sport. Words don’t mean things. It’s all just signalling - ingroup always good, outgroup always bad.
It’s the same as any extremist. When someone they deem lesser calls them what they are, they become offended, but when it’s themselves, it’s fine.
like a slur
Sure, lib.
the tanks ran over communist protesters. they were prostesting the slave corpo jobs invading their nation lmao but sure go ahead keep misunderstanding our culture
The term tankie dates back to 1956, when the soviets sent in tanks to crush a communist movement in Hungary. They wanted self-governance (while still being a communist nation) the soviets wanted a soviet puppet state to protect Moscow from the west.
Tankies were the subset of western communists who supported the soviets, named such by the western communists who were not authoritarian worshiping fucks.
As a Hungarian, I felt obliged to do some reading. Lo and behold, you are correct. And so, I would like to take this opportunity and say
Fuck '56 tankies, and fuck modern tankies. The paradox of tolerance holds true: if you tolerate these people’s deluded takes as ‘alernative viewpoints’, you move towards intolerance, whether you like it or not.
Listening to the Overture to Egmont as I write this.
our culture
You don’t have a culture, you have a eclectic group of dregs that can’t handle your reality.
Are you talking about the Tiananmen Square Massacre?
That would explain why there is a video of the protesters singing “L’internacional”…but it’s still authoritarian repression.
LOL wut? Fuckin’ Tankies and making shit up. Can anybody name a more iconic duo? The protestors were pro-democracy and were shot / squished by the CCP. It wasn’t even that long ago, either. Only, what, 34 years? Amazing how much people can twist shit in such a short period of time.
Tankies will also happily defend Russia, so sometimes they prefer fascists to liberals.
From my experience it’s every time
Ah yes, tankies have never turned on liberals the moment they’ve taken power, no sir. Poor innocent tankies.
i wonder what country it was that wanted to share the invasion of poland. hm
Do they actually consider themselves a significant enough population to even bother courting? “People further left from the democrats” is a fairly small group already, tankies are a thankfully small subset of that.
They aren’t really far left though when they support fascist regimes.
Tankies are still lefft wing, communism is left wing.
Fascism seems to appear everywhere on the spectrum.
Fascism is distinctly right wing. Tankies are totalitarian, fascists are also totalitarian.
Communism isn’t totalitarian. However, every communist that’s gained power becomes a totalitarian or supports totalitarianism.
Also, if every communist regime is totalitarian, at what point does it become part of communism? In any case, I think there needs to be a disctinction between “communism the theory” and “communism the practice”
Let me rephrase, fascism as the word is currently used is found everywhere in the economic spectrum.
We aren’t talking about 1930s Italy.
But what about my bundle of sticks?
That’s how they want to be viewed, but that game is as thin as Vin diesels hair (in fast&furious 2 I mean)
Tankies are not left.
Far right. Full stop.
Anyone can be authoritarian
Amen
a little unrelated, but I don’t use left-right, mainly because of how my country handles democracy
Oh hey, next time they call anarchists liberals for not trusting them boy do I have a meme for them
Aren’t they just saying that liberals and fascist both defend capitalism and are therefore both against them? Similar but not the same?
No, the comment section makes it much clearer that they think Bernie Sanders is as likely to round them all up and throw them in prison as Trump. There’s no nuance to their statements, they think anyone who isn’t explicitly a communist or all our socialist will eventually murder communists and socialists.
They’ve flattened out literally every other ideology except their own as “evil” basically.
According to their wiki, which is blocked in China, funnily enough–Democracies are actually fascist states!
Kind of. The meme follows the way the USA’s capitalists co-opted the term liberalism. It’s a bit of a mess and supports capitalist lingo
This is one of the cases which implies that the instance registration isn’t fool-proof and there’re some pro capitalist users messing with them
A liberal economy is a capitalist economy. A capitalist economy allows individuals to freely trade goods and services between each other.
Political commentators in the US try to change the meaning to be any left wing movement. Despite liberal being an appropriate label to groups within both conservative and progressive politicians.
A capitalist economy is inherently authoritarian and conservative, stifling liberties and freedoms for most
What do you mean by inherently authoritarian?
The hierarchy of capitalism where holding more money and wealth is authority and power over those who have less.
That’s in every country though, regardless of its economic system. For Communism, it’s just the state that has the authority and power
Isn’t communism stateless though? And vanguard party totalitarian states aren’t it.
Anyway, there’s an infinite amount of options which aren’t capitalist to move on with
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The meme is saying liberals will work with fascists to stamp out communism, which is true. It’s not saying they are literally the same thing. Do we need a basic literacy class for memes now?
And Communists, such as the Soviet Union, did work along with Fascism until Germany didn’t want to share Poland.
also like how you ignored progressives
well yea both kill communists just for existing
Where? When?
There are a bunch of examples of “liberals” siding with right-wingers against communism and the actual left in general, all in the name of maintaining the status quo.
There are zero examples of progressives doing the same.
Coincidentally, there are a bunch of examples of tankies suppressing (or outright killing) communists and the left in general, all in the name of maintaining power.
So liberals aren’t killing communists just for existing?
Yup, the dude who you replied to was smoking something strong.
At no point have “liberals” done the actual killing, they’ve always been the enablers. The ones who want open debate with the murderers, in the name of maintaining some twisted form of civility.
There are a bunch of fascinating write-ups about it all. Usually in the context of the build up to Nazi Germany.
Feel free to link them over then! Politics building up to WW2 is always so fascinating.
This is a great write-up from the only Robert Evans legally allowed that name.
Lol
