The comments are what you expect. All agree that we’re psychopaths who support genocide and just want authority as a goal in itself. All agree we do no leftist praxis, I guess just based on vibes. One user wrote:
let’s be honest, they should be removed from society
which is cool. One-on-one, online or in person, I’m pretty patient with people like this, but when I see a whole thread like this with hundreds of upvotes and no pushback it makes me feel tired.
lemmy.ml link in case any of you have alts and want to wade in: https://lemmy.ml/post/6930975
The democracy thread she commented in right before posting this: https://lemmy.ml/comment/5160468
I have a soft spot for 196. I used to frequent it pretty heavily and a lot of the people there are so fucking sweet but unfortunately so misguided. Their anti-tankie rhetoric often comes from a place genuine concern, they truly believe in democracy under capitalism and radically changing the system from capitalism means removing democracy in their heads. Some of them can be depropagandized, I am living proof of that and I hope one day they’ll come to understand.
I don’t see how someone who lived though the 2020 BLM protests and covid and still thinks they live in a democracy can be radicalized.
If watching every city’s police respond to protests against police brutality with more brutality while every dem increased their funding and republican begged for the blood of children, while a million Americans are sacrificed at the alter of capital didn’t wake them up, I can’t conceive of a scenario that would.
The military using live ammo? Famine?
Kinda weird that they hate “red fash” more than regular fash
They’ll claim it is because there arent very many fascists in their space
Hey what do you know, some of them can think for themselves:
@BigBlackCockroach@lemmy.world
I’m an anarchist, we don’t call anybody tankies. Tankies is a term coming from the UK i think the 80s some eastern european nation was taken over by the USSR and some Brittish came out in support of it. So they were called tankies.
These political fighting words need to be layed to rest. Communists hate me as much as anybody else but I’d rather engage on the idea level instead of ad hominem attacks and name calling.
I suspect this whole tankie thing might be a coordinated propaganda campaign geared at discrediting communists and at the same time creating tension between them and other leftits. I suspect this as this whole infighting over small differences doesn’t lead to a victory for the left but effectively disables and neutralizes it.
they should come to hexbear, the only anarchist instance on the lemmyverse!
they never get tired of this meme. you’d think they’d have got all the tankies by now, but somehow they keep popping up to call them libs!
i know HornyOnMain was calling out the most obvious nazis there. Props to her but I wouldn’t make a second account for an instance I liked, let alone one that sucks bad.
The modlog sure is a treat
fucking lmao
Yeah
when you see a ban reason and it’s just “Tankie,” and you look at the comments and it’s just upvoted factual information.
Even as an anarchist that place frequently makes me cringe
Because real, serious anarchists rarely bother with this annoying mindgame shit. (When they do it always fatally fucks them over)
It’s not ideologically anarchist, it’s aesthetically anarchist. Which is why they latch on to a century old conflict between anarchists and Marxist leninists in Spain instead of actually applying any sort of critical rigor to their interactions with the world.
Sometimes the more well read ones’ll bring up Makhnovshchina, but typically don’t know much more than they fought against the Soviets in the aftermath of the revolution.
I never see “kick Nazis out of 196”. Interesting
i never see ‘kick chasers out of 196’. interesting
Thar be
in that community.These people are a hair’s breadth from posting that Patton “we fought the wrong enemy” quote
Communism is the only political ideology where for some reason it’s acceptable to claim its proponents don’t believe in the things they say and actually secretely believe the opposite. No one is ever “just pretending” to be a liberal, a conservative, a monarchist, a fascist, a social democrat or a libertarian, it’s just communists. They never explain what one gets out of this “pretending” either.
And the worst part is these people are themselves leftists, so they have surely heard the same “you’re just bitter and jealous of rich people
” bullshit from conservatives, but they turn around and repeat it at us.I sometimes peek my head into chud communities and they actually do this too, sometimes with weird funny parallels to what we get. It’s why the term RINO exist. They will frequently accuse conservative figures of secretly being too liberal or too socialist. It was actually frequently mentioned by some who were critical of Trump before he got elected, he was called a New York liberal, etc. Chuds also absolutely accuse liberals of lying and actually being Marxists (don’t laugh!)
Libertarians do this too, frequently accusing their own of being statists or socialists for the smallest violation of ideological purity.
Liberals and conservatives have to accuse us of lying about what we want because we often have political demands that align with theirs, especially if they’re working class, and that causes cognitive dissonance. So the only mental strategy they have is to accuse us of trickery. They’ll make childish analogies like saying socialists want everyone to have a pony, or they’ll say our demands are so extreme there must an equal price to pay. As in, for every gain in rights for the working and poor, there must be an equal loss in rights.
That’s an interesting point I hadn’t considered, but I still think this is different from the ideological purity fights that are common to every ideology.
Like, when we say AOC is a liberal or whatever it’s an expression of disappointment that she’s not as leftist as we’d like. But we’re talking about positions she holds openly, we’re not claiming she secretly doesn’t care about free healthcare, or that it’s a smokescreen for some nefarious purpose. The conservatives fuming about RINOs and the libertarians that booed Gary Johnson for being pro drivers’ licenses (lmao) are operating on a similar principle I think.
The conspiratorial “they’re saying they want good things but it’s a trick to gain power and become evil tyrants” brainworms are very specific to communism I think. The closest thing on our side is when we accuse the reactionary right of knowingly trying to divide the working class by blaming everything wrong with capitalism on X minority, but even then I don’t think they’re “faking” it, necessarily. They really are bigoted and will do bigoted things if given power. It’s not a trick.
Chuds do call everyone a Marxist though, that’s true
i remember exact same meme was posted on r/196 but instead of “tankies” there were “neoliberals”. Ironic
I read through most of that thread and christ it is tiring, I agree. Historically illiterate bastards equating China to Nazi Germany left and right with only a couple voices of reason.
Their idea of MLs is completely incoherent. What, do I want to be a dictator? I am actively averse to personally having authority, that shit is too much of a hassle, I get a headache just imagining it for the sake of counterargument.
So what do I actually want? Since these people seem to think being ML is just pure “authoritarianism” with no true beliefs of any kind.
I want people to be fed, clothed, housed, educated, and so on [in short: their needs provided for] and I want the entity doing that to defend itself from the capitalists seeking to undermine that process. It’s a very simple desire and something that, for all the valid criticism you can make of the CPC, something it does, as does the DPRK.
You really described it the best, it’s just tiring.
Edit: I wonder how many overt neoliberals are there chanting hand-in-hand with those so-called “anarchists”
They think you’re either lying about wanting liberation for marginalized people, or that you’d entrust the task of liberation to a bunch of liars who would instead simply recreate capitalism but worse. They also believe you secretly harbor a suite of bigotries like transphobia or Islamophobia and you’d gladly endorse genocide against such groups so long as you had some vague aesthetic of socialist revolution. You’re right that it’s incoherent. None of what they’re saying makes sense.
That’s really the entire accusation. You’re both brainwashed and insidious, you’re dishonest, and you praise countries that are designated as “capitalism but worse somehow.”
There’s also a really serious element of nationalism that can’t be ignored in the word “tankie.” It means a westerner who is regarded as a traitor. You’re praising foreign countries who are enemies of the west and that violates every other western political framework. Principled anarchists and communists get called tankies because we’re the only westerners who wholly reject western hegemony.
Reminder that anti-communism is a prerequisite of fascism
The white children posted a butthurt meme, we shall not repost it nor reply to it
(David Attenborough voice) In the period following its birth, the Cracker enters what is known as the Childhood phase. For Crackers of the Great Lakes variety, this stage may last anywhere from 18 to 40 years. Progress is often sluggish, frequently delayed by the outside threat posed by prey - an invasive population of Tankies, native to Siberia
undermine democracy
oh no, if that happens… then even if 80% of Americans want universal healthcare we wouldn’t get it!
