• lath@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    9
    ·
    12 days ago

    I thought tankies were the far left? Or are they… further left than that?

    • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      23
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      12 days ago

      Tankies don’t even really fit most definitions for leftism that try to use something more concrete than vibes. They just think they’re far left because they like the aesthetics of governments that tried to be or at least called themselves communist.

    • SuperNovaStar@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      11 days ago

      If we’re using the original definition of left and right, they’d technically be on the right.

      The original meaning was whether or not you supported the monarchy. I’d say that a dictatorship is close enough that it applies.

      Of course, politics isn’t one dimensional. Even the “political compass” isn’t really enough, here, there’s probably an axis of the political graph for each major axiom of governance.

      Honestly the best descriptor for tankies is just “authoritarian communists.” That tells you where they stand better than any attempt at a spectrum or graph.

      • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        11 days ago

        The original meaning was whether or not you supported the monarchy

        So then AnCaps are leftist because by nature of anarchism they don’t support any “-archy?”

        In fact, that would make any democrat (as in believer in democracy, not Democrat™) or republican (as in believer in a republic, not Republican™) leftists as well, since they believe in democracies or republics instead of a monarchy.

        Maybe it’s just me, but it seems everyone has strayed from the French revolution’s definitions in the late 16th century by now, except those intentionally seeking to sow confusion and discord. Language evolves ‘n’ such.

        • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          11 days ago

          In fact, that would make any democrat (as in believer in democracy, not Democrat™) or republican (as in believer in a republic, not Republican™) leftists as well, since they believe in democracies or republics instead of a monarchy.

          Or that’s what you’d think, but the guy who created conservatism was a monarchist trying to figure out a way for the aristocracy to exist within democracy. The right is stanning for monarchy under a different name, as proudly admitted by their ideological leader. For details look up Edmund Burke.

      • belastend@slrpnk.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        11 days ago

        I dont call people tankies for thinking that communism is cool. Or that the west sucks.

        I call people tankies, when they defend the ethnic cleansings and the great purge of Stalin by saying “we just had to defend ourselves” or portraying them as an integral part of the struggle better peoples lives.

        Because i personally dont think that deporting entire ethnic groups from their homelands is needed to better peoples lives. I dont think the paranoid xenophobia of Stalin helped anyone and at worst crippled the ability of the Red Army to withstand the initial invasion of the Wehrmacht. I think his usage of the word “counterrevolutionary” completely devalued the word because calling Zinoviev, Kamenev and Trotzky counterrevolutionaries for calling for collectivization, only to turn around and calling Bukharin counterrevolutionary for opposing collectivization is a sign for devolving into a byzantine power struggle.