When you don’t have a coherent worldview it’s very uncomfortable to think about the questions people on the left ask you, so refusing to think about it is the easiest solution. Calling people commies and reds and pinkos used to work but the bozos who came up with those are all obviously buffoons and liberals know it, so they stole “tankie” from leftist infighting and slap it onto anybody whose questions make their brain feel weird.

I think it’s a lot simpler than most people here believe: people in Lemmy love the West and they see tankies as people who hate the West. It’s nothing more complicated than that. They do not hate fascists in the same way because fascists do not hate the West. Not even Hindutva freaks hate the West if we go by how much they suck off white nationalists on ecks dot com.

Notice how they would lump some Chinese or Russian ultranationalist as tankies even though neither would be a communist, a socialist, or even a progressive. On the flip, you would never see them call a Hindutvist or Turkish Grey Wolves supporter tankies even though they’re about as reactionary as those Chinese/Russian ultranationalists.

If you gather a Marxist-Leninist, a Han supremacist, a Russian ultranationalist, a Hindutvist, and a Turkish Grey Wolves supporter all in one room, people in Lemmy would lump the Marxist-Leninist, the Han supremacist, and the Russian ultranationalist as tankies. The one commonality between the three is that they all hate the West.

This has even extended to the Axis of Resistance. They haven’t called Hamas or Hezbollah tankies yet, but notice how they use “Assadist” in the same way they would use “tankie.” You see them still crying about Assadists even though Assad is just living his life in Moscow.

Whenever someone says an opinion that hurts the national pride of an american Liberal; They will proceed to call that person a tankie.

And then the same libs will complain about republicans and their thought terminating Clichés. ™

It is the intersection of two factors. First, Lemmy is a niche social media platform. The only people who know about it, let alone use it, are extremely online to begin with. Second, most Liberals are genuine idealists who believe rhetoric is the primary arena of struggle. They believe that the reason Liberal Democracy is crumbling all around the world because people are being misinformed (not because of the underlying economic failures).

Combine these two factors and you end up with the type of radlib fundamentalists we see on Lemmy, who believe rhetoric on social media is the primary arena of struggle, and that people like us are either a social contagion spreading among ignorant dupes, or malicious foreign state operatives.

They want to have their cake and eat it too - they want to be seen as revolutionary leftists fighting the good fight, but they also want to maintain imperialism and their western chauvinist worldview. “Tankies” undermine their conception of themselves as good people by confronting them with the part of themselves that still wants to believe they’re the master race.

Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle.

Lenin

Anyone working in counter-propaganda can testify to a curious experience: we’ll put in hours of careful research collecting an impeccable set of resources that undermines some warmongering narrative, and we’ll eagerly share it with someone who claims to despise racism in all its forms — say, an outspoken opponent of the West’s so-called “War on Terror.” Unexpectedly, we are met with a response that is somewhere between chilly reticence and downright hostility. What’s going on?

From our perspective, we’re offering water to a person who’s self-identified as thirsty, and yet they react as if we were trying to poison them! They turn on a dime to defend the same institutions whose lies they were denouncing just moments before. At this point the sense of pride and accomplishment that comes from seeing through propaganda and putting puzzle pieces together into a satisfying historical account gets brutally transformed into its exact opposite: a sense of crushing defeat. In response to this bitter experience, many researchers — serious people, with plenty of experience reading and writing, and sometimes even of being published! — lash out. They decide that people have been “brainwashed” beyond the point where they can be reached by words or rational appeal. They “realize” that the masters of propaganda have been far more successful than we first imagined: it turns out we’re not David fighting Goliath, we’re more like an ant facing an asteroid.

Masses, Elites, and Rebels

Man I just don’t understand the hate hexbears got at all. When world defederated or whatever I switched to an instance that had both so I could see what they were talking about and I didn’t see any hexbears “trolling tankies” bullshit they were talking about. Libs are fucking stupid.

Life under capitalism leaves a socialism-shaped hole in one’s imagination. We are trained from birth to stay away from this hole. It is the abode of spectres, and nothing makes it go away. If the lemmitors didn’t conduct in vain their spectre-banishing rituals, they wouldn’t be liberals.

tankie tankie go rob bankie
find the boss and use your shankie

To add to the excellent points here: they are incredibly propagandised and treat-brained. While they recognise the social evils of fascism and some of the micro oppressions of capitalism, any position or person that asks them to admit that current systems are fundamentally, structurally broken (or worse, to do something about it) provokes a wave of anxiety about losing what they know and guilt about benefiting from the system/not coming across as leftist as they wish to appear. “Tankie” is simply a deflection, a manifestation of their avoidant behaviour so that they don’t have to feel those difficult, shameful, but ultimately growth-provoking feelings.

Also, by co-opting a term from leftist infighting, they can signal that they consider themselves lefties, without needing to actually engage in any of the critical thought required.

They don’t like knowing they’re morally bankrupt and should have higher standards for their politics and the world around them, we’re the kid in class that reminds teacher of the homework that’s due, but it’s human rights and decency

Since “liberals” are inherently reactionary even the most “progressive” among them, like their conservative fellow travelers, believe in the idea of a “radical left.”

Communists and socialists are becoming less taboo as words so they use the euphemism of “tankie” to denote the left they deem radical.

The problem is those “radical” positions are like unwavering anti-racism so they can’t condemn that because the alternative is being “pro racism” (note, the chuds squared this circle by being “anti-antifa” the lib solution is a bit more overwrought) so instead they just condemn a nebulous “tankie” occupying the end of a political spectrum only they believe in.

communism is re surging and the ruling class is terrified

commie is not a word people use anymore so they use tankie instead

Wtf is going on.

The Western mind is forever programmed into fascism by the last cold war.

A tank broke up their parent’s marriage.