Saw a comrade post this as a response in the Mousolini dunk thread, that become a dunk thread on an annoying lib calling us tankies lol.
Thought this was really insightful, and from a different angle than what i usually see as the rascist connotations of “tankie” and of western left anti-communism, and thought it deserved its own thread. Particularly, since the influx of western anti-cummunist takes we’ve been dealing with recently.
I saw you reported this with the reason: Hexbear. Do you know where you are or who you are reporting this to?.
The internet equivalent of Karens calling the cops on black people having a BBQ in the park.
This is a good fucking take and plays into the point I keep making of the nationalist/internationalist issue surrounding this mess. It definitely has a nationalist component I’m completely with @axont@hexbear.net on this.
Yeah I’ve been trying to see the term “tankie” as an obfuscated way of saying “traitor” recently. It’s not a word that applies to people actually from socialist countries most of the time, it’s what someone from the imperial core gets called if they express admiration for the scary foreign places.
Also hello everyone! Sorry I’m not used to attention like this thread lol
Tankie is just the new authoritarian, redfash or Stalinist. I think being called a patsoc is probably going to replace it sooner rather than later.
Tankie itself is decades old. It was initially used by British Trotskyites to refer to other British communists who were in favor of the USSR using tanks to quell the 1956 Hungarian uprising.
Personally I think tankie will just get replaced with being called a communist/commie/pinko again. I think we only have a few more years until western liberals realize they’re not actually socialists and begin outright identifying as willing capitalist subjects on the side of imperialism.
Being called a communist will carry with it the implication that you’re a traitor to western civilization or whatever. The nationalist brainwork will become explicit rather than hidden under layers.
Derogatory political terms don’t like having nuance. Tankie is currently too nuanced. It’s used to mean “I’m a socialist but not like those scary, other socialists who like bad countries like China.” Derogatory political terms just want to mean “bad thing”
This is a better elaboration on that post I made on that 196 thread that got removed and I presume kicked off this whole discussion.
I wear tankie as a badge of honor honestly. If someone calls me a tankie it’s usually because they’re already owned and they’ve run out of steam. They call me a tankie because they’ve already lost. It’s at that moment that they think they’ve taken back the upper hand but it’s all a ruse. They fell for it. They left themselves open. And that’s when you hit em with the
no more half measures walter
Tankie is when you feed homeless people vegan food and throw Christmas ornaments filled with sand, paint, and paint thinner at pigs. Not-tankie is when you watch a Twitch stream of a pedo and vote every two years.
Is it evolving?
I don’t think it’s evolved much if at all. They started using it to refer to MLs to do anticommunism and then they muddied the water of its anticommunist intentions by using it on anyone that says anything left of liberal. It is still strictly an anticommunist tool deployed to harm MLs though.
Its deployment is solely focused on anything that transcends the nationalist barrier. You can be anticapitalist as long as you’re a nationalist because your nationalism will result in your opposition to China and to all countries labelled as “authoritarian”. In essence, the nationalism people hold results in these people conforming to the propaganda of western states. Anyone who is an internationalist though? They’re a tankie. Because once they cross that line from nationalism to internationalism they become far harder for the western state propaganda to reach.
The goal is to make the new wave of anticapitalist baby-leftists into national chauvinists, maintaining the state’s grip on them through media propaganda and thus the west’s foreign policy remains protected. They don’t give a fuck about their anticapitalist intentions if they’re solely nationalist because they can control them due to the bourgeoise-state.
What they’re afraid of is a mass awakening in terms of internationalism.
