edit: this is now closed future comments won’t be counted

I keep seeing this instance is overrun with tankies so hey, lets do an informal survey like I’ve seen on hexbear

respond with YES or NO in the first line of your comment and i’ll tally everything in a couple of days, lets say I’ll try and collect everything on the sunday the 9th (10+gmt sorry)

not sure thisll work, be nice, have fun

  • davel@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    Tankie is a floating signifier. If you ask twenty liberals what a tankie is you’ll get

    1. Twenty different answers, and
    2. Several people upset at being called a liberal because they don’t have even a Wikipedia-level understanding of liberalism or socialism.
    • EchoCT@lemmy.ml
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      6 months ago

      100 percent agreed. They’ll group anything too far left of them under the same name. Don’t care anymore. If they want to whine then fuck it, I’ll wear the term.

  • Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml
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    6 months ago

    Yes

    Love how all of the tankies on this thread are open about their views while all of the non-tankies are wondering what the term even means, or think that people won’t self identify as a tankie. Reminds of that quote from the manifesto

    The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.

  • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    YES

    They would have burned me as a heretic in the middle ages.

    • Carl Jung

    Just like calling someone a “witch” or heretic in the middle ages, a “barbarian”, or “savage”, or “commie” or “pinko” in the 20th century, these terms are less about the actual meaning, and more about a demonization, scapegoating, or a power relation between the dominant class, and a group they seek to malign and rally their people around.

    Creating a useful enemy promotes group bonding, unity, a sense of strengthened identity, and self worth.

    “Tankie” had a meaning that generally referred to non-pacifist leftists (or those that agreed with using violence to defend socialist projects), but now it just means, “any leftist I don’t like”.

    It functions in the exact same way that “commie” did in the the McCarthy era, as a xenophobic and western-supremacist scapegoating of socialist countries, and an internal purging of the working-class communist movement.

    It’s additionally useful because it deters people from reading or engaging with the worldwide communist / socialist movement.

    If someone uses this term, this is what they’re doing without realizing it:

    • Kabe@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      now it just means, “any leftist I don’t like”.

      With respect, there’s a bit more to it than that.

      The way political discussions are often policed on ML instances (This one, Lemmygrad, and Hexbear) is not conducive to helping new people see your point of view. If a, let’s say, social democrat says something critical of the CCP and then is immediately censured or banned, they are going to be left with a very negative impression that feeds into the stereotypes that already exist about these instances.

      Creating a useful enemy promotes group bonding, unity, a sense of strengthened identity, and self worth.

      Aren’t people on ML instances also doing the exact same thing when they shout down and decry the wretched “liberals” (which seems to refer to anyone left-of-centre who doesn’t support communist party rule)? Whether it’s “tankie” or “liberal”, it only further entrenches the us vs them mindset.

      It’s a shame that leftist infighting exists to such a degree when we often share about 95% of the same views, compared to the general public.

      • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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        6 months ago

        The way political discussions are often policed on ML instances (This one, Lemmygrad, and Hexbear) is not conducive to helping new people see your point of view.

        If you ask in earnest, you’ll get good responses. A good number of people ask questions not to learn a different point of view, but to reinforce their own existing biases, which naturally becomes exhausting. Kind of like how POC get tired of justifying their existence to white supremacists, communists often for good reason get tired of trying to justify the existence of countries who choose to follow their own path, outside of the model of bourgeois democracy.

        Aren’t people on ML instances also doing the exact same thing when they shout down and decry the wretched “liberals” (which seems to refer to anyone left-of-centre who doesn’t support communist party rule)? Whether it’s “tankie” or “liberal”, it only further entrenches the us vs them mindset.

        Liberal, unlike tankie, has a fairly precise meaning in political discourse. It can be used too loosely IMO, but it generally means pro-capitalism, pro-individual freedom (including to exploit labor power to earn surplus value), pro free-market, pro-free speech (for all including reactionaries), pro wage-slavery, as well as specific limitations imposed on those considered outside of the “community of the free”. Its important to realize that even the US mis-definition of liberal (as vaguely socially progressive) includes all of the above, and the internationally accepted definition of liberal, is right wing (for example, the right wing party in Australia is the liberal party). The best book I can recommend here, is Losurdo’s Liberalism - A counter-history.

        Not only that, but liberals rule most of the world, and especially most of the economies and governments of anglo-speaking countries, extracting a surplus from the sale of their labor power (who are mostly extremely poorly paid proletarians in the global south), and are responsible for most of the suffering of working-class people worldwide.

        • Kabe@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          If you ask in earnest, you’ll get good responses. A good number of people ask questions not to learn a different point of view, but to reinforce their own existing biases, which naturally becomes exhausting.

          That is understandable, however I was more talking about good-faith attempts to express views that are contrary to ML orthodoxy being dogpiled, removed, and banned. I have personal direct experience with this, as do many others who have attempted to engage in political discussions in ML communities. Perhaps users of the ML persuasion are used to being attacked and this why contrarian views are so heavily moderated on ML instances, but quite often this defensive response only leads to alienating other leftists who could be sympathetic to your point of view.

          Also, I already understand quite well the differences between classical, social, and neo-liberalism, and how the term is used in the US; I have a degree in political science. My point was that users on ML instances weaponize the term in the same way that other users utilize the term “tankie” in order to dismiss people who disagree with them, ad hominem.

      • Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml
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        6 months ago

        Aren’t people on ML instances also doing the exact same thing when they shout down and decry the wretched “liberals” (which seems to refer to anyone left-of-centre who doesn’t support communist party rule)?

        Liberal is a well defined category though. Liberalism as a self-described ideology opposed to both communism and monarchy has been around for centuries at this point. Most people being decried as liberals would themselves identify as liberals.

  • Sleepless One@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    Yes.

    The last time I smiled was on August 19th, 1991. I wear a dirty ushanka at all times, do not shave, and only take cold sponge baths because hot running water is bourgeoisie decadence. Every day at exactly noon I have the same meal of an expired Maoist MRE I store in a pit covered in old issues of a revolutionary newspaper. I sleep in a bed made of flags from every failed revolution so that they are never forgotten. In the evenings I stare at a picture of vodka by candlelight, but I do not allow myself to drink because there is nothing to celebrate. Every local org has banned me after I attempted to split it by assassinating the leadership. There is no plumbing in my house I shit in a brass bucket with a picture of Gonzalo and Deng french kissing in the bottom of it. My house is actually an overturned T34 in an abandoned junkyard in Wisconsin. I have a single friend in this world and it is a tapeworm named Bordiga that I met after ingesting spoiled borscht on 9/11 in the ruins of building 7 (I blew it up after finding that a nominally leftist NGO inside of it wasn’t sufficiently anti-imperialist, the attacks on the world trade center were a perfect revolutionary moment for me to enact direct praxis against liberalism). My source of income is various MLM schemes in the former soviet bloc that have been running for so long no one remembers who I am, they just keep sending money. I have not paid taxes since McGovern lost the Democratic nomination for president and my faith in electoralism died more brutally than my childhood dog after it got into an entire jar of tylenol. I own 29 fully automatic rusted kalashnikovs and three crates of ammunition entirely incompatible with them or any other firearms I own. My double PHD in marxist economics and 18th century Swiss philosophy (required to understand Engels) sits over the fireplace of my home, my fireplace is a salvaged drum from a 1950s washing machine that was recalled for locking children inside of it. I chose that washing machine model on purpose because I am anti-natalist. During the latest BLM protests I firebombed a Nikes outlet in the middle of a peaceful candlelit vigil. William F Buckley and I wrote hatemail to one another for 47 years until my final letter gave him an aneurysm. The only water I drink is from puddles. George Lucas and I dropped acid together during an MKULTRA southern baptist summer camp and he went on to write the movie Willow about our time together. The best way to test whether an electrical wire is live is to drool on it and shrimp salad is racist. You can make an IED out of potassium and the instructions are online thanks to Timothy McVey, who was actually a committed antifascist communist slandered by the deep state as part of operation condor. Every time a liberal files a restraining order against me, I carve a mark into the wall. I am running out of walls. When Amerika finally collapses I will be ready to lead the revolution. I am very smart and people like being around me.

  • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    Maybe?

    What the heck is a tankie, anyways? Every person I have asked has had a different answer, and the vast majority of these definitions don’t really fit any major communities on Lemmy, not even Hexbear or Lemmygrad.

    I have been called a tankie for numerous reasons, like saying that people should read Marx, to saying the US is a net negative on global stability.

    Is being a Marxist sufficient for being a tankie? What about a Marxist-Leninist? Are only Dengists tankies? Is Anarchism the only non-tankie leftist position? I’ve even seen Anarchists be called tankies over on Lemmy.world, which is currently undergoing Red Scare-era anti-leftist witch hunts (like return2ozma’s recent ban for “bad-faith spam”).

    I think this question needs a definition first. If you ask 10 different people what a “tankie” is, you’ll get 11 different answers.

  • frippa@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    YES

    Everybody to the left of biden is considered a tankie nowdays, and I’m proud of being to the left of (and opposed to) genocide enablers.

    • Kabe@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Not so. There are many progressives who stand with Marxists on issues like social justice, LGBTQ issues, and Palestine but who do not feel welcome on instances like Hexbear because they also criticize the CCP.

      • frippa@lemmy.ml
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        6 months ago

        And they sometimes get called “tankies” too by people to the right of them. That’s why I both think it’s a useless term (if everybody is a tankie, then nobody is) and why I think I fall in the definition (as most leftists do, I’ve seen pretty mild social democrats being called “tankies” by liberals)

        Plus ultimately these blanket descriptions are pretty useless IMO, you’ll find extremely heated debates between “tankies” themselves on many topics, there’s no consensus, and there are many different ideologies “tankies” subscribe to. It would be like saying that Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians and Greens are all the same thing. We could call them “dronies” maybe.

        • Kabe@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Oh, I agree - calling people Tankies/Liberals/Dronies, especially ad hominem, is reductive and generally unhelpful.

            • Kabe@lemmy.world
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              6 months ago

              ML people often tend not to apply ‘liberal’ correctly either, so it goes both ways.

              • davel@lemmy.ml
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                6 months ago

                Actually we do tend to apply “liberal” correctly.

                It is liberals themselves who tend to not have even a Wikipedia-level understanding of liberalismtheir own ideology!—or of socialism. And that’s how a centrist liberal like Bernie Sanders can get away with calling himself a socialist despite never calling for the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, because Burgerlanders don’t know their asses from their elbows politically thanks to over a century of red scares and cold wars, which are still ongoing[1][2].

                • Kabe@lemmy.world
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                  6 months ago

                  Hang on, so you’re telling me you guys lump social liberals in with classical liberals and neoliberals? That’s definitely not common, but then I suppose if you’re a communist then it kinda makes sense.

                  Also, while I wouldn’t call Sanders a socialist either, he is not a centrist by any standard measure. I presume you don’t consider anyone a leftist if they don’t advocate for collective ownership and a centrally planned economy?

    • Fidel_Cashflow@lemmy.ml
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      6 months ago

      Anti-Semitism

      January 12, 1931

      Reply to an Inquiry of the Jewish News Agency in the United States

      In answer to your inquiry :

      National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.

      Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-semitism is dangerous for the working people as being a false path that leads them off the right road and lands them in the jungle. Hence Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable, sworn enemies of anti-semitism.

      In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.

      J. Stalin January 12, 1931

      First published in the newspaper Pravda, No. 329, November 30, 1936

      Source: Works, Vol. 13, 1930 - January 1934 Publisher: Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1954

      ERMM WTF, BASED???