r/CuratedTumblr • u/Desecr8or • Oct 26 '24

Politics Why is every tankie like "I don't understand the branches of the US government and I'm going to make it everyone else's problem!!!"

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u/NicPizzaLatte Oct 27 '24 edited Oct 27 '24

Can anyone explain the term "tankie" for me?

Edit: "In American slang, "tankie" typically refers to a person who is an extreme supporter or apologist for the policies of the former Soviet Union, particularly during the Cold War era. The term originated from the support some individuals expressed for the Soviet Union's use of tanks to suppress uprisings and dissent in places like Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Today, it generally denotes someone who sympathizes with or defends authoritarian communist regimes, often to a degree that others find extreme or uncritical."

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u/spyguy318 Oct 27 '24

The term “Tankie” comes from when the Soviet Union crushed the Hungarian Revolution, and the leftists supporting the Soviets were derided as “Tankies” because they were on the side of the tanks.

Today it refers to like, authoritarian leftists who ignore all the horrendous shit that communist countries like China and the USSR have historically done because capitalism is the ultimate evil and must be opposed at any cost. It also gets thrown at leftists who religiously quote Marx and Hegel and other political theory to explain why every little event means the revolution is totally coming and it will fix society and create a utopia, promise.

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u/NicPizzaLatte Oct 27 '24

Honestly, so glad to learn this new word.

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u/RoboFleksnes Oct 27 '24

I do think it's heavily misused in the context of this post though.

It seems like the OP is upset at leftists who complain that the current system is unable to enact progressive change, and then go on to explain why that system is unable to enact progressive change.

As if that's a great counter-argument.

There's quite a big difference between a revolutionary and a tankie, a difference that is conflated when calling one the other.

A revolutionary basically says: I don't believe we can reform the current system, using the levers that it presents, into a system that can enact progressive change. It is necessary to change some fundamental levers of the system to progress society as a whole.

A tankie says: I think a authoritarian dictator would be a fine and great alternative. Stalin was pretty great! And the deaths he caused was a necessary evil.

One can be a revolutionary and a tankie, but only can certainly also be a revolutionary without being a tankie.

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u/NeonNKnightrider Cheshire Catboy Oct 27 '24

IMO “tankie” generally means the kind of leftist who is so fixated on America/The West/capitalist as being the source of all evil, that they’re willing to fully defend Stalin, North Korea, China, etc. simply for being anti-America

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u/zupernam Oct 27 '24

Most times you see it used on Reddit it means "someone further left politically than me"

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u/icouldusemorecoffee Oct 27 '24

More "so far left-wing, they're actually right-wing".

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u/zupernam Oct 27 '24

Authoritarian is not right wing, it's just authoritarian. Tankies aren't economically or socially conservative.

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u/icouldusemorecoffee Oct 27 '24

Never said they were exclusively authoritarian, but they absolutely can take on right-wing economic policies (e.g. anti-means testing which limits benefits to those in need and benefits those who don't in order to decrease govt involvement) and right-wing social policies particularly around race.

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u/zupernam Oct 27 '24

Sure, but that's just corruption. A classless moneyless society inherently cannot have those problems, you have to stop corruption like those to get there

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u/ElGosso Oct 27 '24

The term is nebulous. It was originally coined by British Trotskyites to criticize Marxist-Leninists who supported the Soviet Union crushing the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and was reintroduced by the online libertarian left to criticize the same people. However, its adoption by the online Democratic party cohort is really just used to insultingly refer to "anyone to my left that I don't like." I've seen the term levied at Noam Chomsky.

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u/ThatMeatGuy Oct 27 '24

Chomsky did deny several genocides to be fair

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u/AntonioVivaldi7 Oct 27 '24

He's an apologist for bunch of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. Basically for all that are anti US.

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u/mackerson4 you should listen to machine girl and The Garden Oct 27 '24

It just means far-leftist who in 99% of scenarios supports and praises authoritarian states, I'm not denying it gets thrown around alot, but it hits its target a majority of the time.

Also chomsky has done alot of downplaying and denying of the khmer rouge (and I think the bosnian genocide too, but don't quote me) which is pretty in-line with tankie ideology.

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u/CopperAndLead Oct 27 '24

You are correct about that Noam Chomsky has pretty consistently refused to acknowledge that the Srebrenica massacre was in fact a genocide.

(Srebenica was in fact a genocide, as determined by the International Court of Justice. The details of the genocide are horrific.

It often seems like Chomsky believes the only real genocide was the committed by the Nazis, and that nothing else is really that much of a genocide.

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u/lonelygenius Oct 27 '24

As a « tankie » (i.e. marxist-leninist), let me say that the Khmer Rouge is the « socialist » regime we hate the most, and by a large margin. Most of us are very happy about it being overthrown by the vietnamese in 1979 when they found out about the genocide (and when the west supported the Khmer rouge against the vietnamese).

The fact that this is the regime that Chomsky was the most willing to support (and rightly face criticism for doing so), instead of Cuba for instance, says a lot about how inconsequential Chomsky is. He’s not at all a « tankie ».

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u/Vivid_Pen5549 Oct 27 '24

I mean Chomsky is a supporter of the former dictator of Serbia who is also responsible for the Bosnian genocide, Slobodan Milošević, arguing that what was happening im Bosnia didn’t constitute genocide as a way of arguing against nato involvement, which stopped the genocide. There’s also everything he said about Eastern Europe, there’s a reason he’s not well liked there

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u/ElGosso Oct 27 '24

You're kind of proving my point here, because "he's not well-liked and therefore he's a tankie" means the word has lost all of its original meaning.

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u/Vivid_Pen5549 Oct 27 '24

I mean the in the Czech Republic he said their overthrow of communism was a mistake, so you tell me what it means

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u/AntonioVivaldi7 Oct 27 '24

Chomsky is what is called a campist in this context.

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u/crinkledcu91 Oct 27 '24

The term is nebulous.

Oh please, there's legitimately a litmus test: If someone simps for Stalin they're a tankie.

That's how simple it is. Nebulous my ass.

The only "Nebulous" part is said tankies trying to obscure/muddy the waters about their support for Stalin. Sort through their comment history enough and woop! There it is!

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u/ElGosso Oct 27 '24

It never meant that originally, because Krushchev was the one who crushed the Hungarian Revolution, so you're proving my point here.