this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2025
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The Democratic People's Republic of Tankiejerk

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Dunking on Tankies from a leftist, anti-capitalist perspective.

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  1. No bigotry of any kind.
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  3. No genocide denial

We allow posts about tankie behavior even off fedi, shitposts, and rational, leftist discussion.

Curious about non-tankie leftism? If you've got a little patience for 19th century academic style, let a little Marx and Kropotkin be your primer!

Marx's Communist Manifesto, short and accessible! Highly recommended if you haven't read it

Kropotkin's Conquest Of Bread

Selected works of Marx

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[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 9 points 5 days ago

Explanation: In 1956, socialist revolutionaries performed an uprising across Hungary, demanding workers' control of production and a return to genuine democratic elections. The Soviet Union, unwilling to let go of a vassal state, and certainly not a dangerous one trying to show that actual democracy and socialism were compatible, invaded, rolling tanks into the major cities of Hungary and suppressing and executing dissidents as they saw fit.

From this ugly incident we get the word 'tankie', coined by Western Communists who were previously largely content, even during the Stalinist years, to accept the argument that much of the bad press was capitalist propaganda. Apparently, seeing an independent socialist state created by workers' agitation crushed by Soviet tanks was enough to finally shake that saintly sheen off the Soviet project.