In general, Russia tends to be the country that tankies make excuses for.

I doubt one in ten leftists (much less westerners) could tell you about the 1956 Hungarian Revolution in any kind of detail. So I’m skeptical of the claim that you’ve got a bunch of rock-ribbed old school Stalin-Shouldn’t-Have-Stopped-At-Berlin Soviets running around.

Some of the fiercest leftist criticism I’ve seen has been aimed squarely at Gorbachev and Yeltsin, for selling the Soviet States down the river during Perestroika. I’ve gotten an earful of criticism over the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, I’ve seen all sorts of complaints about their poor environmental record, and plenty of leftists bemoaning the vestigial state of the modern Russian Communist Party in the face of United Russia.

If there’s a bunch of DSA folks or Brooklyn comedians or LA Nurses Union members or Corbynite / Trudeauite Labor Organizers insisting “Russia Good Aktuly!”, I’m not seeing it.

But I do see a lot of folks going to the old Parenti quote:

“During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.”

I see leftists dismissing the cynical attacks on civil rights leaders, anti-colonial organizers, and opponents of western financialization/privatization as “useful idiots” of some evil foreign hand. And I see them labeled as “tankies” because they refuse to correlate BLM or climate activism or anti-war protests or anti-surveillance libertarians as “pawns Russia”.

If you disagree with that thinking, then good. You aren’t a Tankie.

The term is bullshit. If you look at the folks who advocate driving tanks across Europe, you’ll find them in Anthony Blinken’s State Department and Olaf Scholz’s Defense Ministry as quickly as Rupert Murdoch’s news department. The only question is which direction those tanks should be driving.

I don’t see any kind of shortage of pro-war advocates. I don’t see any shortage of military spending. I don’t see any shortage of tanks.

What I see a vast deficit in is anti-war advocates at any level of power. And anyone who voices an objection to Ukrainian forced conscription or the next $50B spent on new tank shells or another year trading artillery fire over a mile of mud in the Donbas… these people are called Tankies. The folks paying for the tanks and cheering the tanks and egging on another year of tanks firing on one another, these… aren’t.

In Ukraine war, Tankies suggest Russia is just defending itself

Are you referencing anyone in particular, or are you just describing Cable News Republicans as “Tankies”? I’m hard pressed to name anyone outside Elon Musk or Tucker Carlson who was “Pro-Russia”

All I see are a bunch of people with heads in their hands, who see the decade of civil war in Ukraine and the next three years of war with Russia as a phenomenal and catastrophic lose for the region. I see people watching the death figures roll in - 10,000 new dead Russians + 8,000 new dead Ukrainians + another 100,000 new refugees fleeing their respective borders - and wailing “STOP! Sue for peace! End this madness!”

And these people get called “Tankies”, too. They’re pro-Russia because they don’t see an inevitable Ukrainian victory. They’re pro-Russian because they don’t see thousands of dead infantrymen as some kind of Win For The West. They’re pro-Russian because they don’t want to chime in and cheer when some comedian says “Putin Is A Big Gay Who Is Definitely Going To Die Soon of Stupid Person Disease”.

Moderates are eager to paint leftists as Tankies when that isn’t the case, I agree with you there. That doesn’t mean the term has no meaning nor utility however.

There’s only one tankie I recognize, and its

That seems like a very unrelated tangent you’ve gone on here?

Don’t worry about it, my ADHD-ass brain always has trouble explaining these intuitive leaps.

Unless you’re trying to argue that the people who push for and actively want those oppressive regimes are not the enemy? Which is so utterly ridiculous that I don’t think that’s your point.

Actually, that’s precisely it.

They might not be innocent, being complicit or even active participants in the oppression, but they are also victims of the regime as well. Those people are not the enemy, but the enemy’s base of support.

Fascism builds its base with false promises of prosperity and blames its own ills on outsiders. Fighting them directly risks validating the regime’s propaganda and making martyrs to their cause, but subverting that base erodes the regime’s support and builds your own at the same time. It’s easy because fascists love to broadcast their crimes and any prospefity that can be found never falls far from the top of the hierarchy.