I keep hearing the term in political discourse, and rather than googling it, I’m asking the people who know better than Google.
Anyone ideologically left of Richard Nixon according to our local blue conservatives.
This term goes back to the 1968 Prague spring.
It was an uprising, an attempt by the Czechoslovak communist party at reformation towards more democracy and freedom of the press. Then troops from other members of the Warsaw pact marched in and subdued it.
From then on, communists who supported more democracy and freedom called the pro-quelling communists “tankies” as they marched in with tanks.
OP I am glad you asked this because I don’t know. Also based on the horseshit answers you have gotten in this post it seems like no one else does either.
worth checking the modlog, seems there were answers that have since disappeared for mysterious reasons.
When a South Asian calls the British monarchy fascist or Churchill a genocider in my experience.
Something funny about posting the question to .ml and seeing the renoved comments at the top hah
Yeah, I really stepped in it. I honestly didn’t know.
It’s funny but also if nothing else at least you get different sort of perspective here than in other places
OP, what have you unleashed.
I just thought this was where you came to ask questions.
It is, I’m just kidding around. Your question was innocent enough, it’s just that the comments look like a battlefield.
A size of tank, smaller than normal tank, but bigger than tankette.
Like most words it can mean different things depending on context. I’ll do my best to cover a few without spoiling it with my own opinions.
The most common usage is as a blanket pejorative aimed at anyone who identifies as leftist but also openly endorses authoritarian means or ends.
There are also those who embrace the term and they are also not all the same. There are Marxist-Leninists who believe the only path to a stateless egalitarian society is through a revolutionary vanguard party. There are also those who argue that egalitarian society can only be achieved and maintained through benevolent authoritarianism.
In any case, the term carries an implication of authoritarianism and/or revolutionary violence, hence “tanks.”
Wassa tankie?
Feryerhealth
A slur mainly on the internet against those leftist (usually Marxists-leninist) who oppose western interventions, sanctions, coups and wars against countries and governments labeled as “authoritarian”.
originally used by UK communists party trotskyist wing in support of Hungarian -56 crushed uprising against those who opposed it, calling them tankies. Vaguely same as “stalinist”, but it pretty much has lost that meaning in modern use.
I need my Tankie siblings to look at these comments and tell me it’s worth conversing with any of these people lmao, let them play in their own shit. If they’ll ever be convinced, the material failures of their worldview will do it for us, if not- the future’s ash and fertilizer welcome them.
you sound bitter as fuck about it
Yes.
try to genuinely understand where your siblings are coming from. you might not change your mind but you will at least be more chill about it.
A cute water cistern.
That is an adorable tankie
There are far too many comments that just got removed by the moderator! I asked the question, and while I might not agree with all the replies, I was glad that people felt like it was okay to do so.
If you want to know about any subject, ask a person that is a proponent of said subject first and then get the harshest criticism second and see how the first holds up. You will find an answer eventually in this hegelian dialectic. E.g. You don’t want an anti-feminists explaining feminism to you, without hearing from a feminist first.
you asked what a “tankie” is in one of the very few places on the internet that is a tankie space/instance. Let them explain to you first. The removed comments are “dronies” (politically confused people that hold the same views as western imperialists and are subject to their hegemony) are outsiders that come from other parts of the fediverse repeating the same talking points you read about everywhere else on the (western) internet. (To stay with the analogy: similar to an anti-feminist saying that feminists hate men, when its not true). Comments get removed here when they are factually wrong
“Factually wrong” might be a bit slippery when it comes to this issue. I get the impression that the term is going through some changes in use (as words tend to do) and some groups might legitimately disagree with each other on the definition. Some of the comments that got removed were not in any way helpful to the conversation, but others seemed to have their own definitions. Now they are deleted, who can say? The last definition standing wins?
You asked with a .world account, meaning you’re defederated from 2/3 biggest communist spaces on Lemmy, on Lemmy.ml, the last third. As such, it became quite a mess, because communists are outnumbered by anti-communists if you cut out 2/3s of communists.
The ones that had their comments removed were picking a definition that does not correspond to reality.
It’s kinda like asking what the word “woke” means. MAGA people are going to give you this elaborate strawman, and others are going to tell you that it’s just a pejorative strawman.
Notice how all that is left are comments that support authoritarian communism and defend totalitarian states they identify with¹ including crimes against humanity and historical revisionism. That is a prime example of what other leftists call tankies. Censorship, brigading and other bad behaviours because only their reality tunnel is acceptable. Even reasonable and nuanced comments explaining a different point of view have been downvoted and removed.
¹ interestingly a lot of them support Russia today despite it’s a prime capitalist oligarchy since the fall of CCCP over thirty years ago and China that too has strayed closer to a corrupt capitalist kleptocracy than communism in anything than name. Obviously they support North Korea too, adopting the state ideology that no criticism is allowed. Hence the common assumption is that the tankie hive is a mix of ideological hardliners, paid trolls of said states and random contrarians that are in it for the ego.
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No communist calls the ROK an “occupier,” it’s the US Empire that is occupying Korea, with the ROK’s government set up directly by them. This whole comment is really bad, to be honest. In practice, “tankie” is essentially a pejorative for “communist.” I recommend the Prolewiki article on “Tankies,” as well as Nia Frome’s essay “Tankies.”
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No, the government of the southern half of Korea, the Republic of Korea, is not an “occupier.” The democratically elected state was the People’s Republic of Korea (PRK), which spanned the entire peninsula before the US Empire came in, declared it illegal, and split the country in two, against the will of Koreans, and installed the dictator Rhee Syngman in place. The PRK was a quasi-socialist state that predated both the DPRK and ROK’s governments.
Again, “tankie” in practice is just a pejorative for communists, akin to “pinko” or “commie.” The fact that you’re getting very basic communist stances on Korea completely wrong here betrays any sense of legitimacy you have on the subject.
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“Tankie” isn’t a political ideology, it’s a McCarthyite strawman with ready-made characteristics designed to make it so that you don’t have to respond to the points communists make. The origin of the term being in putting down the 1956 CIA supported and MI6 armed fascist counter-revolution in Hungary where the fascists let Nazis out of prison to lynch Jews and communists doesn’t make any difference on today’s usage.
11·12 hours agoYour image is really bad quality, you should get a better one, https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2025/0318/104-10110-10525.pdf
Thank you!
Tankie isn’t a political ideology, it is a commentary on the practice of policy in comparison to stated beliefs.
how dare those damn tankies improve material conditions.
No, it’s a pejorative and McCarthyite strawman.
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The current usage is as an anticommunist pejorative and McCarthyite strawman.
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The ROK has a liberal democracy, but it was forced on the people of southern Korea without their consent. The US Empire staffed it with prior compradors that were in power during Japanese colonialism. The ROK is currently a dictatorship of capital under a special class of people referred to as “chaebol,” under the occupation of the US Empire.
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All states are “authoritarian,” in that all states are means by which one class exerts its authority over the others. Communists support the working class being in charge of that authority, all communists (unless you count anarchists) support the use of the state against capitalists and fascists, and the majority of practicing communists support socialist states.
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I don’t like being referred to like “one of you.” I don’t care what they posted, I am explaining directly to you.
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The ROK essentially being a comprador government set up by a colonizer does not mean it’s occupying itself. The US Empire is occupying Korea, not the comprador government.
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