Remember kids, Tankies wants to undermine democracy - same as facists.
@LtLiana puzzled by this comment. “Tankies” have been around since long before most people on reddit were even born.
pro-Israeli pagan plural trans anarchist
I was going to say that this sounds made up cause I never once saw one, much less in Lemmy, and point out the big contradiction . Then I noticed I haven’t met any actual tankies in both here and IRL either so point taken.
I’m from Germany too and that is news to me. Maybe region dependant? I live in Bremen.
@LtLiana No I think it was coined to describe communists in the west who were down with the Stalinist government led by Rákosi [edit, whoever the old hardliners were in Hungary and whoever it was in the USSR under Kruschev] sending tanks to subdue Hungary. Wikipedia on Hungarian uprising for those who want to know more.
Tankies generally are still Stalinism apologists, among other things. I don’t think it has changed that much.
These days they just have a whole lot more egregious totalitarianism to be apologists for.
I mean, I tend to interpret ‘tankie’ to be people who support Lenin’s dictatorship of the proletariat or similar ideas. Basically, the idea that in order to institute communism you should aim to take power and force everyone to comply with your new state through violence against dissenting parts of the populace.
Personally, my reading of Marx and Engels is a descriptive one rather than a proscriptive one. If the forces of workers haven’t spontaneously risen to throw off their chains and seize the means of production, I don’t think you can force it. The victory of communism is one of human autonomy that comes as a natural result of capitalism’s unsustainability. That’s not the same thing as systematic reform, but it’s not the same thing as attempting to impose the change on the populace either.
I don’t think it can happen until the workers are sufficiently pushed into a corner and decide to do it themselves.
I’ve read the State and Revolution, I’m well aware of what the dictatorship of the proletariat is. Lenin endorses the use of state violence to coerce members of the proletariat who don’t support his cause. I guess i can go dig out my copy and find a supporting quote or two if you really need it. I had a couple of Marxist professors who made sure we covered that and Das Kapital pretty extensively. It’s been a minute, but I remember it standing out because of the sheer contrast between Lenin’s perspective and Engels’.
I tend to interpret ‘tankie’ to be people who support Lenin’s dictatorship of the proletariat or similar ideas
That’s just Marxism. That idea started with Marx, not Lenin. He even talks about it in the Communist Manifesto, saying:
Not even mentioning his Critique of the Gotha Programme where he talks about the dictatorship of the proletariat and the transition from capitalism to communism extensively. It’s okay to not be a Marxist, but it’s just factually incorrect to claim that the dictatorship of the proletariat isn’t integral to Marx’s understanding of the transition to communism.
Marx and Engels made the fundamental mistake of conflating violence with authority. They were correct to say that revolution must be violent, and from their mistake assumed it must also establish authority. In the last 150 years, we have seen many examples of anarchic violence across the world. Marx’s assumption is no longer relevant except as an item of historical interest. It is not core to those parts of Marxian theory which are worth bringing into the analyses of the 21st century.
Also note how similar to a Nazi they sound (mind you i am not calling this person one). Nazis always argue we should debate their ideas but we know that shit doesn’t work and is a way to legitimize their genocidal rhetoric.
Then there’s the whataboutism and concern trolling. We should think about UnItY when tankies have the fascistic ideals and cause this divisiveness. This hit all and people got pissed.
