The term Tankie has a clear definition that Cowbee likes to ignore:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those > who support or defend acts of repression by such regimes, their allies, or deny the > occurrence of the events thereof.
Join the lemmy.ml boycott today and help foster a better Lemmy-verse! No more posts, comments (except to counter their propaganda ofc!) or upvotes on any comms on the > Lemmy.ml instance! To make this easy you can do an instance block at Settings > Block Tab > Scroll to bottom > Input “lemmy.ml” and apply
And consider donating to individual instances instead.
Check the megathread for more!
Love coming back to Lemmy after a few days and seeing drama immediately, lmao. Nothing new though.
In case anyone wants my response, I am fully aware that there is an attempt by anti-communists to draw a hard line between communism in theory and communism in historical practice. “Tankies” support existing socialism, “non-tankies” do not. By creating a strawman of a communist, with all of the sins of the Red Scare piled onto it but somehow agreeing with them, those who oppose socialism in practice get to distance themselves from opposing socialism in theory.
Pointing this out is important for growing socialism as a movement. If we let the western lie persist, endlessly used a as cudgel to smear existing socialism and those who support it while simultaneously claiming to be “true” socialists, then the movement is dead in the water. You cannot build a socialism divorced from actual practice.
Cowbee really is the spectre of communism haunting the liberals. It’s amusing just how bothered these people are, I think it’s because Cowbee is so nice about it. They’re just there to educate.
“Tankie”, originally a Khrushchevite. Then, anyone of support or stanning of established red states. Now, anything that challenges western chauvinism in even the mildest manner
That thread in .world is literally the most pathetic thread i ever read in entire fediverse, i recognise half of posters there from them being rabid anticommunists who get throughly humiliated every time they write anything outside of their safe spaces. Losers converge!
Join the lemmy.ml [http://lemmy.ml/] boycott today and help foster a better Lemmy-verse! No more posts, comments (except to counter their propaganda ofc!) or upvotes on any comms on the Lemmy.ml [http://lemmy.ml/] instance!
Uh… If you really want to boycott lemmy.ml, then why not defederate entirely? Didn’t lemmy.world at least already do that? I take it other instances aren’t going to defederate at a server level and now lemmy.world wants individual users to instance block?
Lemmy.world is still federated with Lemmy.ml.
I thought they had “last resort, pre-emptively” defederated with lemmy.ml. Maybe that was just with us tankies on lemmygrad.ml.
It was actually just Hexbear.net that got that honor, Grad lasted longer than Hex, and Lemmy.ml is still federated. That’s why I do all of my Lemmy agitating on Lemmy.ml.
As someone who is not from the US, I’ve always seen ‘Tankie’ as liberal slang for a progressive that is a traitor to the empire. Not aligned with the idea that you can be both a progressive in america and a reactionary to the rest of the world, if not an outright nazi.
@Cowbee@hexbear.net if I were in your shoes I would be walking on sunshine. You’ve really managed a ‘Loved by Your Friends, Feared By Your Foes’ thing going. These weirdos are losing it over you for giving calm and we’ll sourced replies consistently. These folks have really put you on a pedestal or they dug so deep it has the same effect, to mix metaphors.
So yeah, congratulations on becoming the Grendel to the lemmy libs. That would put a spring in my step.
Yea, I wear it with pride! Paradoxically their absolutely overblown hatred of me tends to draw more people over to socialism and away from anti-communism. Because they are so nakedly irrational, only those already hating me take it seriously, while alienating most people from their side.
Really funny seeing the most patient person in the lemmyverse being so villainized
I’m so much meaner and I’ve never seen myself on there, I swear they go after him because he’s so patient.
I think that’s genuinely it, it’s enormously frustrating for them when I don’t return what they give.
It gets under their skin to not be able to easilt dismiss someone. Us mean people provide suppressing fire. Its a combined effort.
For real. If that’s your nemesis, maybe look st yourself and those you’re with
Yeah, a lot of these guys are probably losing sleep because they’re so mad about someone who they aren’t able to just hurl slurs at until they go away.
I actually love the imagery of that mixed metaphor, and it’s very fitting.
Thanks, I came up with it while writing it and noticed it was weird but also thought it eas pretty good
I feel like it must be exhausting. Maybe I have less capacity for being perceived than the average but it’s an tonne of emotional labour to reply the way they do.
That’s why I take breaks! And why I only saw this days later, lol. I’m doing well, actually, this kind of stuff just reinforces that what I’m doing is correct.
On another note. You can always tell the actual decency of a community on what is allowed and what isn’t. I ended up here cause I got sick and tired of the casual bigotry elsewhere. Normally a good way to make me leave. Hexbear isn’t perfect but its hell of a lot better then others.
Basically if you are not putting Black and other marginalized people first, your politics are probably going to suffer. If you do put them first, you’ll end up in the right place eventually.
The .world thread has an Adolf Hitler user and another with lots of upvotes using the R-slur. Who knew anti-communists would turn out to be racist and ableist?
You ain’t done nothin’ if you ain’t been called a
redtankieMy irl anarchists suck and use the term sincerely irl. I asked one what they meant by that and suddenly it wasnt an Open and Free Meeting of Minds or what fucking ever.
Don’t you understand?! We have to suppress dissenting voices to stop their echo chamber bullshit! And we need to use our authority to brutalise and crush people who disagree with us to stop their authoritarianism!
By creating an echochamber.
No!!! It’s those damn tankies who have an echo chamber, not us! That’s why we need to defederate from them and block them all so we never have to hear any opinions that disagree with ours!
And we need to use our authority to brutalise and crush people who disagree with us to stop their authoritarianism!
Name one instance of this. Go on.
Asking for evidence?! What are you, some sort of authoritarian tankie?! Mods! Ban this person for being authoritarian!
Alright, that’s funny. I admit I chuckled.
Yeah, I was just doing a bit.
The term Tankie has a clear definition
“how can i be a tankie if i didn’t take part in the literal suppression of the hungarian uprising?
”i’m not old enough to have been a tankie
In the rare occasion both someone makes the Nazi’s are members of the NSDAP comment and call me a tankie in the same argument in that order, I know what I must do.
They aren’t wrong. The clear definition is “anyone I don’t like”. I don’t know what’s so hard about that
I’d say it more precisely means anyone who doesn’t want to bomb Russia or China
A reply quoting the meriam Webster definition was posted. It didnt invalidate cowbee at all
No mention of the CIA backed 1954 Hungarian uprising, only vibes
Wait. It was Wikipedia. Not even a dictionary.
“Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support or defend acts of repression by such regimes, their allies, or deny the occurrence of the events thereof.”
So, as a pejorative the support or defense of Acts of Repression is so in the opinion of the person using the pejorative. It doesnt say who is being repessed, I want some stuff repressed. This is a piss poor definition because it’s far from definite.
I mean it’s a good definition because it accurately reflects how the word is used. It’s the word itself that is silly and indicates the person using it sucks.
The definition should point that out, gives a false impression otherwise. The word perceived should be in their
That’s implicit in all definitions
Tankie does have a very concrete definition. A tankie is anyone who tries to defend communist parties which have actually accomplished something. But what about all the communists who only support communist who never accomplish anything and only argue about ideals? /s
Don’t you know that you’re only a real communist if you oppose all communist countries and anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist forces in the world?! Communism isn’t about reality or results, it’s about jerking yourself off over being morally superior to others despite doing nothing to actually make the world a better place!
Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those > who support or defend acts of repression by such regimes, their allies, or deny the > occurrence of the events thereof.
So, tankie is a term used to describe communists that push back against any liberal propaganda, because obviously liberals never say anything wrong or disparaging about communism, they are only ever truthful and correct.
The communists that don’t push back against liberal propaganda? They’re good not-tankies.
This is basically “anyone that disagrees with liberals is a tankie”. It’s a non-falsifiable thought-terminating cliche intended to prevent people from listening to anyone to their left other than the people that claim to be leftists but ultimately only reinforce liberal propaganda.
“Communist” that supports liberal narratives = good
Communist that performs any struggle against liberals = tankie.
It’s painfully obvious why Cowbee just defaults to “Tankie just means communist”. It’s true and correct. Liberals consider any communist that disagrees with them a tankie, and any communist that does not disagree with liberals is obviously still a liberal, that’s kinda how ideology works.
Yep, and to be clear, I normally default to “tankie just means someone who supports existing socialism.” They don’t even need to be ideologically socialist to be labeled a tankie. In that specific interaction I was trying to lead it in that direction, to see where they thought the divide actually was and then bring it to what I believe it actually is, a pejorative for someone that supports existing socialism, not just theoretical.
Yeah that’s another good way to put it but I don’t think it’s a requirement. I’ve seen anarchists that don’t support any existing socialism get hit with it because they oppose liberals or liberal policy in some way. A lot of them really do just use it for anyone to their left. Like, “do you support hamas?” “yes” “you’re a tankie then” has been an interaction I have seen anarchists experience.
Yep, that’s fair too! I tried to broaden it beyond dedicated socialists because even liberals that oppose imperialism get hit with the label, but it’s even more nebulous than that.
Liberals believe in a hypothetical good communist that would not qualify as a tankie. This imaginary communist was cooked up by liberals out of first principles for how they believe a communist should act and behave, because the core instinct of the liberal is to accuse their enemies of being secret right-wingers who are lying about their intentions. The hypothetical good communist would have ideals that we would say are similar to an ultra-leftist, or the completely fictional “patriotic communist” thing. As in:
- rejection of association with any current socialist state
- rejection of militant organizing
- rejection of any intermediary stage in the progression towards communism. Immediately abolish the commodity form
- complete agreement with the western world order
So under their metric for a non-tankie leftist, Che Guevara would be a bad communist because he seized state power and used violent means. Whereas a good communist would be someone like Vaush, an internet streamer who advocates for the election of Democrats to public office.
Right and Vaush is just Destiny dressed up in red and black. Not a leftist but a liberal claiming to be a leftist but everything they advocate people do is just liberalism.
Their non-tankie is just a liberal pretending to be a communist. Every communist that actually poses any argument to liberals and opposes action that reinforces liberalism is a tankie.
Therefore every communist is a tankie. Therefore tankie just means, communist.
That’s not even getting into the fact that the very definition itself applies to all communists. Let’s go through each group:
MLs: Support all AES. Tankies
Trots: Support Cuba. Authoritarian state. Tankies
Maoists: Don’t support China. Support USSR. Tankies.
DemSocs: Support Cuba. Some support USSR (jeremy corbyn and all Euro DemSocs for example). Tankies
This effectively amounts to 95% of all people that call themselves communists. Going into increasingly more niche sects of communist is pointless.
They’re hypothetical non-tankie communist is Bernie Sanders
So, a liberal…
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
It’s a really piss poor definition, coming from Wikipedia that’s not a surprise. As a pejorative it is a communist who is PERCIEVED to support non specific repression. These atrocious acts of repression are such a truism that I guess no examples are needed.
These atrocious acts of repression are such a truism that I guess no examples are needed.
“No investigation, no right to speak” are words I take very seriously as a Tankie who loves the ontologically evil Mao. I hage no fucking patience for people who spout bullshit on important issues, like how the world should work om a fundamental basis. If you don’t care enough to have some rigor and discipline then be fucking humble about it. Not all voices are equal cause a lot of voices are talking out their asses. I despise how unqualified and unsubstantiated rhetoric just slides. There’s a lot of shit I know next to nothing about, i’m not gonna argue with someone who clesrly knows what they’re talking about and I wouldn’t hold onto any pre conceived conceptions with any tenacity either…if you dont wanna learn stuff. Dont express opinions on the topic.
I had to go to a funeral recently and I forget ehat brought it on, but my dad was about to repeat his thing about ‘modern art’ meaning non representational art (we’re talking paintings here). Heard it a million times and im pretty sure its not even a real thing, where he went to an art museum (this is why I think its a bs story that over the years became his memory) amd apparently amongst all the good art of men on horses or boats or whatever, there was a piece lit up and specially displayed of a single line going across the top of the frame and a single line going down the left side and I guess he’s still upset. I have pointed out before that it’s the only piece he remembers from this supposed exhibit and it clearly has had a long lasting effect because he brings it up often. He thinks artistic ability is a genetic trait and not a skill you learn, my family is amazed I can draw and play music cause non of them can. They dont get that most people dont start out good at this stuff, so he would even admit he doesnt know art well. Anyway, I cut him off and pointed out thst Modern Art isn’t weird at all and it’s shit like Van Gough cause the modern was a long ass time ago. And went on to explain art history from the turn of the century to his supposed painting of lines and how the person who made the piece would most likely be delighted that he’s been mad about it for like 50 years. So many people think their tiny little bit of osmotic trivia on a topic means their opinion means a fucking thing. Being that arrogant all the time must be tiring.
Isn’t most of that stuff building on former stuff too? So like, maybe to someone who isn’t deep into art can’t understand it but someone who knows what’s led up to a certain piece being made, what artists it’s influenced by and why, what it’s saying, what it’s critiquing, who it’s speaking to, all these things are important aspects.
It’s like… Most advanced science is completely nonsense if you don’t have the basic science to understand it? I think that’s what I’m getting at.
More or less
I hate that asinine shit when it comes to modern art. Not the art itself but the ridiculous blubbering over whether or not it’s real. You have to ask what qualifies as art to these people. Is it the finished product? Is it just skill that it takes to create it? Is it the feeling one gets while creating it? Or is it the feeling one gets when consuming it? Perhaps it is a combination of all these things. If any of these are true, then certainly the line painting he saw qualifies.
Even before I consider myself more mix and more anarchist I was often called a tankie by neo liberals. Was some pretty basic shit to normally
I got called a tankie by one of the worst people, formerly of world now feddit online, and when asked why they just said I don’t need to prove anything and called me and others more names.
It’s entirely meaningless which those who still worship Biden and Obama use because they think it’s the dirtiest word out there as everyone just laughs at those who earnestly use it as a slur
I wouldn’t remember this idiot if he didn’t register and use accounts on every fucking instance making it a huge pain in the ass to block him.
just look at this nonsense. I had to zoom out to take this screenshot of my block list
It is really weird and annoying. Thankfully the admin of my instance now bans them all.
The only thing positive I have to say about the dev of piefed is at least they put in a default feature to filter out cm because of that exact thing
Join the lemmy.ml boycott today and help foster a better Lemmy-verse! No more posts, comments (except to counter their propaganda ofc!) or upvotes on any comms on the Lemmy.ml instance!
What fucking nerds lol
If you wanna block an instance you don’t like, that’s fine! But for the love of god don’t try to make it sound like some sort of heroic deed: You’re clicking buttons
Also: The specter of Cowbee remains strong
this is such redditor behaviour. i think they’re lost
.world is basically reddit tbh
I wish they’d just defed from .ml so I could stop running into them on .ml communities.
But then I wouldn’t be able to make myself extremely mad by fruitlessly arguing with them.
