this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2024
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The use of the word "tankie" these days is so over-used it has become synonymous with "left of the DNC." I've even seen Anarchists described as "tankies," it's getting ridiculous. Still, the word "tankie" is most often used by liberals against Marxists, though they won't admit to having an anti-Marxist bias, mostly because they think they agree with Marx generally but are unfamiliar with Marxist analysis.
Really, more people need to read theory before having an opinion on it to avoid speaking past each other. I wrote an introductory reading list for Marxism-Leninism if anyone wants to get a better understanding of Marxism.
Back when I used reddit it seemed like everyone threw around Fascist in a similar way. Lemmy seems to prefer Tankie. For a lot of people the thinking doesn't go any farther than "I disagree with you, therefore you are ________ist" or whatever.
It is what it is.
It varies from instance to instance. The main users of the word "tankie" are blahaj.zone, lemmy.world, and sh.itjust.works from what I've seen, most other instances generally aren't as bad about it IMO.
The devs are tankies and there are some notorious tankie instances, like Hexbear and Lemmygrad, so they're a lot more visible here than on reddit.
Probably because there are a lot of tankies here. 🙃
but I- oh wait I do have an opinion on Soviet use of tanks to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring uprising. My bad, continue.
I do love tanks.
Yep, and unfortunately a lot of fascists on Reddit.
I do like how whenever a conservative Lemmy pops up, it has more trolls than users and the mods abandon it within a few weeks.
It's both overused in the way you describe and yet obscure enough that only terminally-online political people have even heard of it.
Yep, it's a deeply unserious term. It's only used unironically, in my experience, by people who haven't read theory yet devote a huge chunk of time to debating online, which is largely a waste of time to begin with. That's why I focus on just trying to correct misconceptions and provide my reading list when appropriate, debating is just an outlet for frustration for most people. It's truly rare that debate convinces anyone.
thank you for that and the "what is socialism" post; but i'm encountering that theory is somehow still a HEAVY read for someone like who me has been inside the leftist sphere of influence for his entire life; there's needs to be some sort of sound-bite-able way of sharing these messages and i wish that ml's had the capitalists' deep pockets that guarantees a deep bench of talent that could figure something like this out.
it reminds of my own own experience of going from technical support to software engineering by simply reading. your ignorance makes it daunting as first and you have to put in A LOT of effort to understand it when you don't even know the basics and you'll get there eventually if you stick with it; but most won't stick with it and if you're REALLY knowledgeable at it, it becomes difficult to understand why it's difficult for other people.
We need to make more parentiwave tbh, we've been slacking on that
i've never heard of parentiwave, but it sounds perfect if it's anything like vaporwave
Vaporwave but with Parenti speeches 😎
https://youtu.be/OOUQ28oTsVY
Of the few tracks, this one's my favorite
it looks like vaporwave; i subscribed.
You could start with communist content on YouTube. That tends to be more easily digestible and eases you into reading theory later on.
I can recommend channels like Second Thought, Yugopnik, Hakim, revolutionaryth0t and Ian Neves/História Pública (you'll need to use subtitles for this one if you don't speak portuguese).
It's certainly difficult, but when in doubt I love sharing this person's articles as more bite-sized bits of theory and soundbites from Michael Parenti speeches, haha.
As I said in another comment, Tankies are often in support of the modern Russian state and the modern CCP. These are not positions that are "left of the DNC".
Supporting the PRC is absolutely a Leftist position, as a Socialist country and a rising superpower it's the current best hope for Socialism, whether you agree with all of the CPC's actions or only some.
Critical, reserved support for Russia's temporary and strategic anti-US Hegemony stance does not mean Leftists critically supporting Russia agree with the Russian state or support it.