Much the Scots ruining Scotland, liberals seem to delight in ruining liberalism. As time passes, I see liberals more worried about some other liberal's little slot in life. And less and less concerned with getting things done. The Big Picture is eschewed in favor of fighting over minutia.
We get what we are asking for.
And then there is me who keeps getting called both tankie and liberal.
This is the part where I would normally state my opinion in geopolitics but since both sides have their sources and "fact checks" I won't. I'm tired of this information war. The only geopolitical thing both sides (yes even the great majority of liberals) can actually agree on is the Palestinian genocide. The rest is split between Western and Anti-Western reporting with both sides having blind spots for sources favouring their side whilst denouncing the sources that do not fit their world views.
And whilst we - the economic left - are fighting an unwinnable war over geopolitics the economic right is making the economy less social whilst radicalising in nationalism and conservativism with every election.
It's always funny to me how the go-to examples of like, "See, they just blindly support anything the regime does!" tend to be relatively minor events after the state in question has considerably chilled out. Like, Stalin and Mao did much worse things compared to Khrushchev/Hungary and Deng/Tienanmen. The problem being, communists are generally willing to criticize things like the Great Leap Forward, because, surprise surprise, we don't just blindly support anything they do. The reason for this is that the word tankie isn't meant to describe someone who blindly supports everything a communist country does, as it's claimed to, but rather, someone who supports anything any communist country does.
The fear Western leftists had that led to the term being coined was that people who had previously been critical of Stalin and Mao would respond positively to the countries moving away from their approach, and so they had to create a label to discredit such people and associate them with the previous leaders. It's one of the reasons Khrushchev's approach was questionable, because no matter how much you try to distance yourself from someone like Stalin and paint yourself as "one of the good ones," you're still never going to appease the Western left that demands absolute perfection, let alone the West in general.
nowadays tankie just means someone who shills for china/russia with a communist background
That's in theory. In practice it's only used by liberals to insult leftist when they criticise the US or liberalism.
Communists support the PRC as a Socialist state run by Marxist-Leninists, yes. No Communist supports the Russian Federation outright, however, only reserved, temporary, and highly critical support for Russia's anti-US Hegemony stance, which it only adopts for its own survival and not out of any moral superiority. No Communist "shills" for the Russian Federation.
If China is a socialist state worth supporting then I'm a donkey with a laser dick :P But I'm more anarchistically inclined so different perspective.
I see your point though. What I'm saying is not that communist = tankie, on the contrary. I'm saying that tankies claim to be communists but spend all day parroting their favorite Russian or Chinese state propaganda because they believe everything else is clearly controlled by Obamna™ himself. They rarely actually talk about communism, they just roam Lemmy all day calling everybody who disagrees with them a liberal :D
It’s not shilling, it’s nuance. American main stream thinking is full of lies about both China and Russia. And both conservatives and liberals HATE when people don’t fall in line.
Your second and third sentence are true. I have definitely seen plenty of shills though.
In my experience I've only seen the word tankie be used by leftists. Libs and conservatives don't even know what a tankie is.
Or someone who slightly disagrees with a republican
Or even a democrat. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been called a tankie, by liberals, for simply not adhering to status-quo ideology.
Yet again begging liberals to understand what the word "shill" means.
Define liberal please because I don't like being called one.
In the same way that some people will shill for billionaires or for some billionaire-owned company, aka a corporate shill. People who fail to see that (capitalist) companies are just a way to extract profit. In the same vein, some people fail to see that nation states are just instruments of power. Some are better than others in different ways of course, but I get real itchy when people jump to defend a nation at the first smidgeon of criticism. I hate nationalism.
The first time I saw this word being used was here on Lemmy, when I arrived during the reddit exodus. I'm not a native English speaker though.
It was used on Reddit, but not widely. Mostly by insufferable 'enlightened centrists' who didn't want to engage in good faith argument.
It's now a blanket term for "anyone left l politically left of me" used by insufferable liberals who don't want to admit that trying to curry votes from Republicans lost them the election.
For a time it was being used to describe actual Chinese and Soviet sympathisers, but given how quiet that particular group has been after the election, I suspect it was interchangable with state sponsored bot accounts.
Exactly this! I've never seen the term used by anyone but liberals to taunt, attack or divert a debate.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I, for one, haven't seen people over-using the word "tankie", I haven't seen people getting called tankies for the reason alone that they are leftists or even communists.
However, I've seen many tankies insisting that the word is meaningless or that it just means anybody on the left.
People I've seen using the word tankie have been surprisingly consistent about who they call a tankie: supporters of authoritarianism, especially Putin and the CCP.
The only Communists that don't support the PRC are Maoists, generally, Marxists and Marxist-Leninists consistently support the CPC. None of them support Putin, only critical, reserved support for the Russian Federation's temporary and strategic opposition to US Hegemony, which Communists see as the primary obstacle in the way of Socialism across the world.
They're using the same playbook as the fascists, insisting the word is overused and meaningless while painting themselves as victims. It's actually fascinating how similar hexbear snd the_donald feel.
Marxism and Marxism-Leninism are not the same, and should not be treated as the same. One is an economic theory/philosophy, one is an ideology. I'll leave it to you to figure out which is which.
Marxism is broken up into 3 major components:
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Dialectical and Historical Materialism
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Critique of Capitalism via the Law of Value
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Advocacy for Revolutionary and Scientific Socialism.
Marxism-Leninism carries these 3 foundations forward, and analyzes Capitalism as it reaches Imperialism, as well as numerous expansions on the foundations of revolutionary theory and practice.
They are not "the same," but the vast majority of Marxists are Marxist-Leninists, because Lenin's application of Marxism to higher stages of Capitalism are invaluable to Marxism.
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As somebody who isn't much on social media, I often have to look up slang terms I don't use. It's actually kind of relatable when an explanation doesn't convey the nuances people feel when these terms are just part of normal speech. Also tbh the general idea of mocking people for not knowing things doesn't really seem that cool.
If you don't have an opinion on it, you might when you learn the fascists were putting chalk marks on the doors of communists and jews
/acc in name
Worse than tankie tbh
i’ve only ever seen tankies complain about the word “tankie” being over used. i guess us non-tankies just don’t hear it very often.
there’s also this false dichotomy i’ve seen many tankies present where they try to argue that people are either liberals or tankies. it is possible to be a leftist and not support authoritarian governments.
I've seen Anarchists, Marxists, and progressive liberals all called "tankie" before, so either you aren't looking or you consider them to be "tankies." Secondly, I don't know what you mean by "supporting authoritarian governments," leftists don't support the US Empire.
