I keep hearing the term in political discourse, and rather than googling it, I’m asking the people who know better than Google.
Use DuckDuckgo?
While someone’s political beliefs are highly multi-dimensional, there are two axes that are commonly used to define where someone sits:
- Economy - Left is favouring social responsibility for people receiving economic support (supporting people to meet their basic needs is everyone’s collective responsibility), while right is favouring individual responsibility (meeting your basic needs is your responsibility, and if you die because you can’t, even if it is due to something outside of your control, tough luck).
- Social liberties - Social Libertarian is favouring individual decisions on anything not related to the economy / rights of others, while Social Authoritarianism supports government restrictions on social liberties.
Since there are independent axes, there are four quadrants:
- Socially liberal, Economic left - e.g. Left Communism, Social Democrat, most Green parties, etc…
- Socially authoritarian, Economic left - e.g. Stalin, Mao. Tankie is a slang term for people in this quadrant.
- Socially liberal, Economic right - Sometimes called libertarian. Some people with this belief set call themselves Liberal in some countries.
- Socially authoritarian, Economic right - e.g. Trump. Sometimes called conservatives.
That said, some people use tankie as cover for supporting socially authoritarian, economic right but formerly economic left countries(e.g. people who support Putin, who is not economically left in any sense).
TIL that axes is the plural of axis and axe.
This isn’t accurate.
For starters, the “libertarian/authoritarian” axis makes no sense. All states uphold one class while oppressing others. If we took a look at the Soviet Union, for the broad majority of society, social liberty increased dramatically. The economy was democratized for the first time, healthcare and education were free and high quality, working hours lowered while real wages rose, housing was free or low-cost, employment was full, women began to take serious administrative roles. This was all accomplished by the working class taking control from the capitalists and Tsar.
The state will always be a tool for control, but the question isn’t if it controls, but who? And for whose benefit? There isn’t a sliding scale of more or less control, but which class a society serves. Socialist states aren’t especially exerting authority, they just use it against capitalists, fascists, and reactionaries, instead of against the working class.
Finally, communists only support the Russian Federation to the extent that they oppose western imperialism, are a valuable trading partner for socialist countries, and have rising socialist sympathies. No communist wishes to adopt the Russian Federation’s economic model, we understand full well that the USSR fell 3 decades ago.
People fed up with the the (false) sin/cos dichotomy and want to get people to use tan more often.
the (false) sin/cos dichotomy
but… but… if sin/cos is false, that is literally tan ! (yes, I was frequently bullied in high school, why do you ask?)
Tan is the tao out of which the sin and cos arise
I don’t mind those people, I just wish they wouldn’t go off on tangentially related subjects.
Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support or defend acts of repression by such regimes, their allies, or deny the occurrence of the events thereof. More specifically, the term has been applied to those who express support for one-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republics, whether contemporary or historical. It is commonly used by anti-authoritarian leftists, anarchists, libertarian socialists, left communists, social democrats, democratic socialists, and reformists to criticise Leninism, although the term has seen increasing use by liberal and right‐wing factions as well.
Someone who believes people outside of the United States of America are also human beings.
A leftist. Someone with political beliefs, empathy, and conviction.
Not all leftists are tankies the same way not all right wingers are fascists. A tankie is an authoritarian leftist
What makes them authoritarian?
All states are authoritarian in that they uphold one class and oppress others. It’s a good thing when the class in charge is the working class, throughout history socialist states have resulted in dramatic improvements in living standards for the vast majority of society. These socialist states, and the ones who support them, are labeled “authoritarian” whenever these states practice land reform, nationalize industries, etc, and are met with mountains of hostility and slander from the west.
Even an anarchist revolution is “authoritarian,” as it involves violently taking control. In practice, “authoritarianism” is more of a vibe than an actual thing we can measure or a policy to be implemented. It’s used as a club against socialist states by those who’ve lost property to land reform or nationalization.
It’s a spectrum and a person who supports the government having more control of their citizens is considering authoritarian. A person who wants to limit government control over their citizens is more libertarian.
It’s a very valid belief that someone might want leftist policies with limited government control over individual citizens so calling them all tankies is inaccurate and confusing
When you utterly erase class analysis, and just group everyone under “citizens,” you run into utter contradictions. Socialist states have been far more liberating for their populace overall, even if they’ve been oppressive towards fascists, capitalists, etc, meaning they would technically belong in the “libertarian” quadrant if we define it the way you claim we should. The entire idea of a “libertarian-authoritarian” spectrum, or even a left-right spectrum and not just various right and left ideologies that cannot be abstracted into a graph-based system, is actively harmful to our understanding of political ideology.
Anarchists want communalism, whereas Marxists want collectivization. Neither is more or less “authoritarian” or “libertarian,” in that even horizontalist systems actually erase the democratic reach of communities to within their communities and immediate surroundings, while collectivization spreads power more evenly globally. This isn’t something that can be represented on the graph in any way, yet results in fundamentally different approaches and outcomes.
This is an intentional strawman right? Like there is no way you are truly misunderstanding this much?
Auth governement dictates what individual citizens can/ can not do
Lib government limits what power the government has over individual citizens
You can’t say we are actually lib because we only are targeting the “bad people”
Show your conviction and don’t dance around your point if you want a government that has more power over its citizens that’s fine, that’s your belief and you are fully entitled to it but if you can’t acknowledge your own beliefs that’s its own problem
Again, you need to look at things from a class analysis. There is no such thing as “libertarian capitalism,” capitalism requires the state, and freedoms for citizens are restricted because they don’t have as much access to necessities and democracy doesn’t extend to the economy.
Socialist countries that provide better access to necessities have more freedom for the average person than capitalist countries. They don’t have the same privledged class of capitalists with unlimited political power, but the people have more power.
This is a false-binary. It isn’t a strawman, the political compass is entirely bogus and cannot accurately depict ideology or structure as they exist in the real world. It does more harm than helps.
I’m not dancing, I’ve said it firm: I want the working class to use the state in their own interests, against capitalists and fascists, to meet the needs of the people and liberate society.
not all right wingers are fascists
I don’t follow.
On the political compass there are 4 directions. Left, right, libertarian, authoritarian.
A tankie is auth left a fascist is auth right
Saying everyone on the left is a tankie ignores the lib left it’s the same as saying that everyone on the right is a fascist which is also not accurate
The political compass was quite literally made by a right-winger that wished to perpetuate liberalism as the moderate, standard option. You can’t actually put ideologies on a graph like that, it results in absurdities and contradictions.
You quite easily can, the contradictions that happen are due to humans having complex views and not everything being black and white.
Liberalism isn’t the moderate option on the political compass but is just one of the axis that has an extreme…
Yes, nothing is black and white, correct. That doesn’t mean you can try to force quantitative measuring of higjly qualitative and contextual policy. Further, I did not say libertarianism, I said liberalism, which is the dominant ideology of capitalism. Left vs right is broadly okay if framed as collectivized ownership as principle vs privatized ownership as principle, but economies in the real world aren’t “pure,” and trying to gauge how left or right a country is by proportion of the economy that is public vs private can be misleading.
The next part, “libertarian vs authoritarian,” is a false binary. The state is thoroughly linked to the mode of production, you don’t just pick something on a board and create it in real life. There’s no such thing as “libertarian capitalism,” as an example. Centralization vs decentralization may make more sense, but that can also be misleading, as centralized systems can be more democratic than decentralized systems.
This is a pretty good, if long, video on the subject. The creator of the compass is, as I said, politically biased towards liberalism.
As a fun little side-note, I can answer the standard political compass quiz and get right around the bottom-left while being a Marxist-Leninist that approves of full collevtivization of production and central planning. Yet, at the same time, the quiz will put socialist states in the top left, seemingly based on how the creator wants to represent things. It’s deeply flawed. Add on the fact that it’s more of an idealist interpretation of political economy than a materialist one, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
Removed by mod
You would accuse your grandmothers defending herself from an attacker as a tankie.
The word Tankie originates from 1950s British Communist circles. Specifically, it was used by British Communists to derisively describe their comrades who supported the 1956 invasion of Hungary by the Soviet Union.
Images of the Soviet invasion featured a lot of tanks, hence, “Tankie”.
After that died down, the term didn’t come back into use really, until the 2010s, when leftists on the internet started using it in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way. It was fun to bring back a stupid sounding, incredibly niche, British slang word.
At some point the word breached containment and started to be used by liberals, in a very cavilier sort of way. I’ve seen people use Tankie to describe anyone from Marxist-Leninists, to Marxists generally, to Leftists generally, weird right-wingers who converted to Russian Orthodoxy, pro-Palestine activists, mods of Lemmy instances someone doesn’t like.
Shit, I’ve seen literal Anarchist get called Tankies.
Basically, it’s a meaningless nothing word now, that’s a bit like your boomer grandpa who still thinks it’s the Red Scare, calling Joe Biden a Commie Pinko.
So don’t worry about it too much.
Typically it refers to leftists who strongly defend/advocate for authoritarian statist approaches to socialism/communism.
It’s what Liberals call a person who opposes genocide
A leftist who believes any means necessary is justified to create a state ran society.
Even if that society isn’t fair, even if innocent people get hurt in the process, even if the society is a dictatorship.
Nobody fits that definition, though.
We actually do see this in America too, with Trump. Who wouldnt say he is very authoritarian?
You seem to have a strong opinion on the subject, but your definition also feels a little tilted.
Anyone ideologically left of Richard Nixon according to our local blue conservatives.
Nixon was a tankie according to them. He’s responsible for the EPA and OSHA.
Left of Reagan.
I’ve always felt the best way to define them as someone so against westernism that they support authoritarian governments like China and Russia while ignoring the hypocrisy of said governments. They’re not really communists, and they would violently oppose actual communism.
I don’t know what you mean by “hypocrisy,” communists support China as a socialist state and critically support Russia to the extent that they trade with socialist countries, oppose western imperialism, and have a populace increasingly sympathetic to socialism. Nobody supports Russia the same way communists actually support China, the USSR fell 3 decades ago. I also don’t know what you mean by saying “tankies” aren’t communists, “tankie” is just a pejorative for communist, nor do I know what you mean by the so called “actual communism” these supposed “tankies” would violently oppose.
Chinese citizens are, by all polls, much happier with their government and feel more represented by it than westerners. Being able to choose every 4 years the colour of the party applying austerity policy isn’t democracy. Germany ignored a referendum in Berlin to establish rent caps because an old fart with a wig said it was “un institutional”. The EU forced Greece to act against the state-wide referendum to revise sovereign debt. China is much more of a democracy than western countries.
When a South Asian calls the British monarchy fascist or Churchill a genocider in my experience.
Isn’t monarchy already a bigger bad word in itself than fascism?
Not according to the Yakubians over at the miserable island.
I actually always wondered a bit about the line between fascism and monarchism. To the casual observer they might seem nearly identical, though I wonder if in historical materialist terms it’s a reactionary attempt to backslide to feudalism rather than progress capitalism to socialism.
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.
It was actually the 1956 fascist counter-revolution in Hungary, not the 1968 fascist counter-revolution in Prague, where “tankie” originated in the Communist Party of Great Britain. The term was coined because of the British tendency towards silly-sounding insults, and because the Soviet Union sent in the Red Army to stop the western-backed fascist insurrection. This caused a split in the party (as it always does in western orgs).
The Hungarian revolt in 1956 was infested with anti-semitic pograms. MI6 funded, supplied, and trained the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries. These counter-revolutionaries were allied with fascists who were lynching Jewish people and Communists.
"The special correspondent of the Yugoslav paper, Politika, (Nov. 13, 1956) describing the events of those days, said that the homes of Communists were marked with a white cross and those of Jews with a black cross, to serve as signs for the extermination squads. “There is no longer any room for doubt,” said the Yugoslav reporter, “it is an example of classic Hungarian fascism and of White Terror. The information,” continued this writer, “coming from the provinces tells how in certain places Communists were having their eyes put out, their ears cut off, and that they were being killed in the most terrible ways.”
“But the forces of reaction were rapidly consolidating their power and pushing forward on the top levels, while in the streets the blood of scores of massacred Communists, Jews, and progressives was flowing.”
“Some of the reports reaching Warsaw from Budapest today caused considerable concern. These reports told of massacres of Communists and Jews by what were described as 'Fascist elements’ …” (N.Y. Times, Nov. 1. 1956)
“The evidence is conclusive that the entry of Soviet troops into Budapest stopped the execution of scores, perhaps thousands of Jews, for by the end of October and early November, anti-Semtic pogroms - hallmark of unbridled fascistic terror - were making their appearance, after an absence of some ten years, within Hungary.”
"A correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Maariv (Tel Aviv) reported:
During the uprising a number of former Nazis were released from prison and other former Nazis came to Hungary from Salzburg . . . I met them at the border . . . I saw anti-Semitic posters in Budapest . . . On the walls, street lights, streetcars, you saw inscriptions reading: “Down with Jew Gero!” “Down with Jew Rakosi!” or just simply “down with the Jews!”
Leading rabbinical circles in New York received a cable early in November from corresponding circles in Vienna that “Jewish blood is being shed by the rebels in Hungary.” Very much later-in February, 1957-the World Jewish Congress reported that “anti-Semitic excesses occurred in more than twenty villages and smaller provincial towns during the October-November revolt.” This occurred, according to this very conservative body, because “fascist and anti-Semitic groups had apparently seized the opportunity, presented by the absence of a central authority, to come to the surface.” Many among the Jewish refugees from Hungary, the report continued, had fled from this anti-Semitic pogrom-like atmosphere (N.Y. Times, Feb. 15, 1957). This confirmed the earlier report made by the British Rabbi, R. Pozner, who, after touring refugee camps, declared that “the majority of Jews who left Hungary did so for fear of the Hungarians and not the Russians.” The Paris Jewish newspaper, Naye Presse, asserted that Jewish refugees in France claimed quite generally that Soviet soldiers had saved their lives."
Further, the CIA also backed Hungarian resistance forces:
Prague in 1968 was a similar fascist uprising in both cases there were some elements of progressive protest, but these were greatly overshadowed by the fascist movements. Dubcek wanted to sell out to the IMF, and restore capitalism. The idea that any of this was about “democracy” or “freedom” is silly, it was always about Cold War tactics to destabilize socialism.
TL;DR imagine if the January 6th rioters were armed and trained by foreign governments, started lynching officials and Jewish people, and the US sent in the army to put down the insurrection. The MAGA chuds would claim that it was about “freedom” and “democracy,” but we all know that they just wanted Trump in office.
Hungary Freedom Fighters Federated Inc isn’t the same thing as Hungary Freedom fighters. The inc was established after they escaped to the USA. It doesn’t prove that they had ties before or during the revolution.
The Hungarian counter-revolutionaries were armed and trained by MI6, this was already confirmed (as linked earlier). It’s highly unlikely that the UK was just doing its own thing and then some of the terrorists established ties with the CIA after the fact.
I’m definitely not saying anything else was wrong. Just seeing that one specific letter floating around. It’s 100% likely that the CIA has something to do with it, as it’s definitely in their playbook, but that letter isn’t the smoking gun people say it is.
It made waves a bit ago because it was another piece of information building up the case, it’s not a smoking gun but instead is, when combined with what else we know, more evidence to support that not only was the UK involved, but so was the US.
You can at least see the way you presented it in your comment wasn’t the full picture.
Never tried to claim it, it’s just a short Lemmy comment. Entire books have been written on the subject.
sure
Yes.
Wasn’t it recently declassified that the ~velvet revolution~ was indeed a CIA plot?
Edit: oof wrong one, I was talking about 1956 not 1989
Velvet was '89, as far as I know it was the CIA’s involvement with nationalist groups in Hungary that was revealed.
Oof mb, I was talking about 68 but got mixed up.
No worries! Either way it was '56 though, lol.
Yup, I’m mixing up my counter revolutions lol
Not that it matters much, we’re just a few years away from declassification for those anyway
We’ll see!
OP, what have you unleashed.
I just thought this was where you came to ask questions.
you’re on the .ml instance, which is an incredibly political place, so you’re gonna get a lot of flack
I think every instance has pretty strong political views
It is, I’m just kidding around. Your question was innocent enough, it’s just that the comments look like a battlefield.
