this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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Sorry to ask. I guess I'm one of the lucky 10,000 today, but what is a Tankie?
Generally someone who makes justifications and/or excuses for totalitarian communist regimes and their atrocities.
It came from still supporting Stalin after he sent tanks into a rebelling territory.
Stalin didn't send the tanks, he died in 1953, while the hungarian revolution happened in 1956, the prague spring uprising even later in 1968, and as far as I know the term was created in connection with these events.
I don't get how the USSR and CCP are actually "communist." Are they as "communist" as North Korea is a "Democratic Republic?"
To my knowledge, neither the USSR nor the PRC ever claimed to actually have achieved communism (hence why the USSR has "socialist" in its name, not "communist"), but they were governed by "communist" parties in the sense that they were following in the tradition of Marx and Lenin and at least claimed to want to achieve communism at some point. Of course, the USSR no longer exists, and the PRC has undergone a series of economic reforms since the 1970s, after the death of Mao. They now claim to follow something they call "Socialism with Chinese characteristics", but as far as I can tell it seems very similar to something I would call "capitalism in an authoritarian one-party state and a bunch of blabla about how it technically doesn't contradict Marx", but ymmv. So imo the CCP is now only called "communist" for historical reasons, and in that sense I see it as similar to the case of North Korea, but they might still have some theorists who would disagree with that assessment. And in the West in particular many people just mix up terms like "socialist" and "communist" anyway, and also often don't realize that the economic systems of Russia and China have changed a lot since the end of the cold war (or Mao's death).
They are Stalinists and Maoists who refuse to admit any wrongdoing by communist leaders. They are pretty prevalent on lemmy. For some reason they are typically pro Russia regarding Ukraine. Nostalgia maybe? lol
Tankie here, basically most of us are pro russia not because we like russia, but because a multi-polar world with many different types of influence is better than a singular polar world because wedon't want one bloc or alliace to have too much influence over the world, brics alliance makes one pole, and the nato/allies make another. Another thing is I personally believe even if Ukraine won the war, they a culturally, economically, and politcally fucked because of the war, not to mention the azov battalion. As for the refusing the wrong doings of authoritarians, i actually believe we acknowledge what is proven, but most of us don't trust a lot of u.s. media. I am fairly new to the community so i probably don't speak for all of them but we acknowledge some of the bad things that was done, for example Stalin's role in zionism and the creation of isnotreal. But we also acknowledge the u.s. has done far worse in a lot of cases, for example weaponizing the dollar.
Because you are against one side the violence of the other side becomes excusable? The pain and missery of minoritys in bric country's is ok because you like other the other side less?
I get the anti-western sentiment, but it isn't an excuse to do bad things
As an anarchist I don't get the bootlicking of authoritarians, tankies and nazis are the same people, just with different flags, you can criticise the west and the bric states at the same time, one misdeed does never excuse another misdeed from the other side
You say you are new to the community, so I hope one day you maybe realise that you don't have to be a tankie to be a communist and that the priority should be human and human rights.
Read things on this tankie instance to learn lemmygrad.ml
Auth left fascists. Stalin/mauist sympathizers. Think of the polar extreme opposite of authoritarian right.