this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2025
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The tankies?
It originally was an insult used by communists against other communists to refer to people who supported the Soviet intervention into Hungary when the Hungarian government was collapsing. The Soviets intervened militarily to not only stabilize it but obviously make sure "their guy" would be in charge of the new government.
The communists who disagreed with this argued that Hungary should just be allowed to sort out their own government and the USSR shouldn't be making those decisions for them, and they called people who disagreed "tankies" in reference to visible tanks in the streets when the Soviets showed up.
The word was then adopted by anarchists as an insult against Marxists, because Marxists believe in using state force to build socialism/communism while anarchists think the state is inherently a force for bad. This meant that "tankie" no longer referred to just the Soviet usage of tanks in Hungary specifically, but began to be used by anarchists to criticize every time a state ran by a Marxist party used state violence ("tanks").
Liberals later discovered the word "tankie" and adopted it as just a synonym for "communist," and the word has pretty much devolved in its usage in recent years to largely just be a stand-in for "communist" but more derogatory.
I find that when people use this term I get suspicious. It could be used to describe authoritarian Stalinists, Maoists, Marxist-Leninists, or just communists/socialists in general. I wish that posters would be more specific, because everyone and their mother has a different definition of "tanky". It often comes across as a thought-terminator. I'm not up to speed on the Lemmy beef, so I have no idea who's right, but I've seen like 10 posts about tankies and none of them really defined the term, which is very frustrating.
Here's what the sum of all human knowledge has to say about it.
I read the first paragraph and it was pretty much exactly what I said. I'm not confused by the meaning of the term, if that's why you shared it.
Tankie would be ml or militant left
See?
This dude's embarrassingly wrong.
It’s a pejorative used for anti-leftist authoritarians who unironically insist their extreme-rightist ideals are somehow leftist.
Those who literally deny the existence of the massacre in the Tiananmen Square, claiming that "nobody was killed" (or far more rarely, unapologetically stating that if they were, then they deserved it). Basically far-left extremists that exist in a world of "alternative facts" just like conservatives, the common denominator being that and simping for authoritarian regimes.
Words like "consent" tend not to matter to those holding that ideology.
Tiananmen denial is hardly the only qualification for the term. That's an example of typical behavior, not the definition.
It's also far from the worst thing red fascists have done so it's just so weird how hard people focus on it. At least talk about gulags and kulaks sometimes, damn
"Tankie" does not come from Tiananmen Square, that is a common misconception. The term "tankie" is 33 years older than the Tiananmen Square massacre.
It originated to describe people who supported the 1956 Soviet Union military intervention in Hungary. Stalin sent in a bunch of T-35 tanks to crush the Hungarian Revolution. He was successful, and thousands of people died in the process.
Ever since then, "tankie" has been used as a derogatory term against Stalinists, Marxist-Leninists, communists, and leftists in general.
I don't think it is a common misconception, I think it's pretty common knowledge (at least among the terminally online) that it started with the Hungarian Revolution.
The term mostly had been invoked by anti-authoritarian leftists derisively toward anyone who still supported the Soviet Union. In time, the usage generalized to apply broadly to authoritarian leftists, such as Marxist-Lenininsts (or Stalinists).
Now is it largely misused by liberals to designate anyone strongly critical of Western imperialism, which includes everyone from anarchists to campists.
To be fair, tanks seem to be a favored tool of these oppressive regimes. I'm personally not against communism, they have some good ideas like universal child care, guaranteed jobs, and housing (even though the latter may be considered sub-par by some). The problem comes when these fucking authoritarian cheerleaders come out and say communist governments were never oppressive.
Tankies never seem to get that that part is not being critized, but the subversive of the movement by authoritarians.
Except you'd not get that healthcare and the rest if you didn't pay people off.
In theory it might seem fine, but in reality it was just a dictatorship, and quite a brutal one too.
eh docs and nurses are pretty fucking cool but don't work for free. of course you're going to pay people off, they need wages ffs
Communism = no currency. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of knowledge regarding communism in here. A bit of an echo chamber. It's funny how so many can hate something so much without actually knowing what it is they're hating. Ha.
Extremists like to use "alternative facts" or whatever other tactics achieve their goals. The means does not matter to them, only the ends, which they feel self-righteously justifies anything to achieve.
And then separately from that, gullible people also exist too. It is a bias that we all could fall prey to, though some of us seem more on guard against it than others.
(Tbf, many of those claiming those alternative facts are quite aware of just how nonfactual they actually are - they simply do not care as power, rather than correctness, is all that there is to them.)
Thats a really interesting bit of history, thank you for the additional context
Their name references a genocide, I doubt in good faith
Krono? Or are you referring to someone else in this thread?
No, the one with Tatar in their name defending the USSR. The Crimean Tatars were one of the genocides carried out by that nation
Ohhh. I think you may have gotten confused about where you're replying to. I hadn't even seen them, as they weren't in the direct chain of comments I was replying in. I was thanking Krono for explaining that tankie came from violence carried out in the Soviet Union long before the tianamen square massacre, and so the name predated that particular act of violence
Anyway, I hope you have a lovely day :)
Thank you.
I have so many questions. I guess I never viewed as "tankie" as left.
Hell, I consider myself far-left to the point of being a progressive, almost to the point of being an anarchist.
But my reality is rooted in actual facts.
I know you made that up and you have no idea of what you are talking about because you included Russia there.
!meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works
To them anarchists are Tankies for not saying Gaza is filled with rapists. Check goat's ban log from his .zip alt. He legitimately said Gaza is filled with rapists.
MoG is a fascist utopia. They have had actual Nazi dogwhistles upvoted.
we need a better topological geometry for these concepts, especially for these wacky edgecase fuckers like tankies. yeah, far left, like, you stand here, I'm going to move to your left until I've come around on the other side of the planet far far far far away left.
imho the vast majority of them are ccp click patriots waiting for the taiwan invasion to kick off.
Hehe, somebody was way ahead of you there...
The framing of separating the "authoritarian left" from the actual left is basically accurate.
Why is "Far Left" marked as a trademark?
Because of intellectual propriety.
Did you intend "intellectual property"?
Regardless, I understand the meaning of the symbol, but not its applicability to the context.
haha this is fascinating
It seems to work so well 😁
https://lemmy.world/post/29072279