this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2025
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Because the bots/trolls/feds have shifted over to driving a wedge between leftists to keep solidarity from occurring. Thus "tankie" is being thrown around heavily, people constantly bring up early Soviet support of the nazis as a reason to say "tankie=nazi" while ignoring that tankies (sue me, it's a real term that has uses) is a broad term for all "authoritarian fascists," many of whom came after the nazis, were very anti-nazi, and like all historical figures often had a mix of good and bad qualities.
Certainly its funny to harp on tankies while America falls to literal fascism. Who ever could benefit from scape goating and demonizing communists? Who historically, poetically even, is the famous first victim of fascism due to the strong threat they represent?
Tankie=Authoritarian Leftists.
Many of us have no problems with socialism or the theory of communism. But all current examples, such as China or Russia, are of Authoritarian regimes with a history of human rights violations from genocide to suppression of free press and free speech and deserving of criticism as such
I for one would love to see the fall of capitalism in my lifetime, but not at the sacrifice of the rights of privacy, freedom of speech and many others
Authoritarians are by definition not part of the left. Tankies are fascists with a red coat of paint.
That doesn’t change though, that those tankies usually identify themselves as some flavour of leftist while praising/apologizing stalin, mao, kim jong, putin, xi jinping, etc. in the same sentence. While you might say they’re no true leftists, they would very much disagree.
Red fascist ideology is about building a hierarchy, specifically an ideological hierarchy, which is mutually exclusive from the leftist position of deconstructing hierarchies.
The Nazis described themselves as national socialists. They were lying. So are tankies.
I think that's maybe Noam Chomsky's POV? He talked about Leninism being a right wing deviation in a video. Interesting stuff.
There cant be driven a wedge where there is no connection. Tankies aren't leftist.
Tankies are to leftist as the right are to law and order. They may each claim they are these things but are clearly not from an outside perspective. They each attempting to redefine the meanings and deride all others for not fitting their definition.