Asklemmy

i'm tankie and gay and covered in feces (some of which is my own)

I think it's just mostly teen drama from Lemmy.world users. :)

Yes

I think people would probably call me a tankie

Yes.

Just go ask the 196 mods.

NO

I like having no boots on my neck, not just changing out what demographic is wearing it

I'm not just a tank, I'm the entire armored division

No, I think?

I don't actually know what a "Tankie" is. I tend to try to steer away from labels; I consider them a form of intellectual laziness. People will use them to either try to gain a feeling of belonging by adopting a line of thinking shared by their peers, or they will use them to smear those who they have defined as "others" without consideration of why these "others" might hold opinions that they don't. Labels and label-based thinking lead to tribalism and division.

If you want to know what I think about something, ask with specifics. If you want to convince me of something, present an argument with reason and evidence, and be prepared for me to pick it apart and look for flaws. There is nothing I respect more than somebody who takes a comment I make and considers it, researches it and then comes back to me with a response, or presents me with a perspective that compels me to do the same. I find both depressingly rare.

The .world libs just couldn't help themselves but ruin our circlejerk.

Sure fuck it. I'll Tankie. Castro is a hero. Western news knows nothing of glorious DPRK Juche, and comrade Stalin did nothing wrong.

Yes.

Tankie is an empty signifier

That is to say, it's a label that can be used to describe an array of different and conflicting ideas, values, and identities. Because of this it serves as an obfuscatory device rather than a communicative one. The sub-logic becomes tankie = bad, so if someone I don't like = tankie, then person I don't like = bad.

Almost none of us were alive when Khrushchev rolled tanks into Hungary. Most MLs aren't particularly fond of Khrushchev.

It's made a resurgence in this new, weird context because most of the terms used during the previous red scares lost their power through similar misuse. It's become unfashionable to hate on leftism in progressive spaces, doing so using old terminology makes you sound like a fox news conservative. But you can do the same thing by calling it this instead.

No.

This isn't my standard instance but I do take a look at it sometimes. I'm definitely very far left leaning, I don't have a label that clearly fits me but I'm probably close enough to anarcho-communism or syndicalism. I live in the UK so it's pretty common for my views to fall further left of the USA.

I'm not particularly good at actually adhering to my own views, infact I don't think I've ever done e anything substantial to bringing my ideals into reality. My dream would be for small federated housing / workers co-ops and unions to get a good handle in my area, and then have the stability to grow.

The crucial reason I'm not a tankie is that I actively oppose top down leadership structures, and I'm actually more against authoritarianism than I am against the right, but I feel that in my country, conservatism and authoritarianism are deeply linked, and a bottom up power structure would do more to actively oppose facism and power consolidation than a far left authoritarian regime.

In short, No. My principles may make me a commie, but I'm an anarchist first.

No.

Maybe I'm way off the mark here but... I think the reaction to tankies seems very overblown. No one you could describe as a "tankie" is currently in charge of any of the countries/companies/organizations that are busy destroying the world right now, so I don't super understand why everyone's talking about them like they're at all a priority? The authoritarians that tankies are obsessed with are all either long dead, or totally unaware of their existence.

Maybe some people on the left are just trying to look at future dangers here, like tankies are gonna be "Bolsheviks Part 2", somehow come into power, and then purge all the anarchists or something. But didn't Bolsheviks actually have a lot of power and influence prior to the revolution? Tankies don't seem to.

no i like watching tanks get blown up

NO

When the current government is not doing a very good job at maximizing the happiness of its citizens, it's a natural reaction to look for answers from a different type of government. America has some enormous problems with capitalism as it currently operates, and communism offers solutions to many of those problems. The issue is the top-down power structure. Democracy keeps the most power in the hands of the general population, and i will always oppose giving that up. Beyond that, I'm open to any solutions for modern problems, public or private.

I havent figured out yet what a tankie is.

Seriously speaking, YES.

“The modern revisionists and reactionaries call us Tankies, thinking that they insult us and, in fact, that is their aim. On the contrary, however, they glorify us with this epithet: it is an honour for us to be Tankies, because, since we were Tankies, the enemy could not conquer us, and never will conquer us as long as we remain Tankies.”

--Enver Hoxha, paraphrased.

(As far as Hungary is concerned, I don't advocate for anything that Khrushchev did)

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Tankies get spankies.

NO

I've never even been called one erroneously.

I wear tankies when it is hot out.

NO

Tankie has been shifting way beyond its original meaning to just be a vague leftward stab, but being an anarchist and everything I don't think it applies to me just yet