Remember kids, Tankies wants to undermine democracy - same as facists.

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[–] 247 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Just like fascists, tankies could theoretically hang out here without getting the boot. It's just that genocide denying authoritarians cannot be tolerated in a tolerant, democratic society. The reason tankies and fascists get the boot is because they can't resist trying to bully and intimidate those that find their views abhorrent. They simply can't resist being terrible.

They're cultists with views that can't stand up to scrutiny, so they need use other tactics to spread their shit and gain power. They use the real downsides and weaknesses of democracy to argue we need an even worse system. Then they argue you actually hold the worst views of their enemies, even though they usually support exactly the same things that make those enemies bad. Tankies claim you're a free-market liberal for opposing them, when the countries they support are state capitalists. Fascists claim you're against freedom of speech, while they are always trying to ban ideas they hate. Some of them are misguided and believe their own lies, but others are just awful people.

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  • [–] 93 points 2 years ago (49 children)

    Tankies traditionally are associated with communists, but today's tankies (even those that call themselves communists) are really after authoritarianism than communism, and given the history of the name (that they supported using tracks on civilians). I don't think they're is much difference between current communists and current fascists, both groups seem to support authoritarianism and feels like term "tankies" fits both of them well.

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  • [+] 117 points 2 years ago (15 children)
  • [+] 139 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (17 children)
  • [–] 78 points 2 years ago

    Yeah, we ignored the Tea Party as silly folks in 2008 and 2012, but by 2016 they had rebranded as MAGA and now they run the GOP.

    Any delusional, hateful ideology -- be it tankies, Nazis, or whatever -- will fester if you let it.

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  • [–] 97 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Sure, nazis are a bigger problem than tankies, but no one here needs to be told to look out for nazis. That's kinda self explanatory.

    But tankies are a lot less well known, but still have a very destructive ideology. Just look at the comments here — there are multiple people who asked what tankies even are.

    Saying "Kick nazis out of 196" would be redundant, which can't be said for "Kick tankies out of 196".

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  • [–] 70 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Nazis are literally just less common here. There's not much reason to constantly talk about them in a meta sub fashion when they are already so rare I haven't seen one in weeks and are routinely and swiftly banned.

    Tankies on the other hand, are not.

    Your protest just looks silly and obviously ridiculous. Not talking about the problem of Nazis in online discourse 24/7 isn't an endorsement of them, different spaces have different problems.

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  • [–] 45 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    I've seen this reposted on the original 196 on Reddit multiple times so saying this is the worst 196 on the basis of this meme being posted makes no sense.

    Also nazis are very unlikely to be participating in this community anyway, and if they are then they are either hiding to the point of indistinguishably or getting the ban-hammer really quickly. In the latter case, the problem is solved by the mods and in the former case, with the internet's anonymity, someone fully to be a member of a digital community is just a regular member of the community.

    Tankies on the other hand share many more values with the core demographic of this community so they might be less inclined to fully hide their views and their views simmering through might not immediately get them a ban (depending on what they let shine through, of course).

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  • [–] 36 points 2 years ago*

    Right, I hate tankies on the internet and Republicans in real life (and also on the internet). It's not my fault that tankies are more marginalized. But I assure you I have no shortage of contempt to go around.

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    [–] 116 points 2 years ago (5 children)
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    [–] 90 points 2 years ago (78 children)

    These threads are odd to me, considering how many people call all communists tankies. The word seems to be used by anarchists, conservatives, communists, anti-communists, and more, and every person has a slightly different definition.

    Half the people here could consider the other half to be the tankies everyone is mad at.

    To be clear this isn't me saying "be nice to the tankies" this is me saying "the overuse of this word is confusing the shit out of me."

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  • [–] 42 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (16 children)

    I'm an anarchist, we don't call anybody tankies. Tankies is a term coming from the UK i think the 80s some eastern european nation was taken over by the USSR and some Brittish came out in support of it. So they were called tankies.

    These political fighting words need to be layed to rest. Communists hate me as much as anybody else but I'd rather engage on the idea level instead of ad hominem attacks and name calling.

    I suspect this whole tankie thing might be a coordinated propaganda campaign geared at discrediting communists and at the same time creating tension between them and other leftits. I suspect this as this whole infighting over small differences doesn't lead to a victory for the left but effectively disables and neutralizes it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsqE9kEsDVY

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    [–] 77 points 2 years ago

    Based AF

    Fuck tankies

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  • [–] 69 points 2 years ago (26 children)

    Hey everyone, just a reminder:

    • Yes Nazis are also bad, we don't have Nazis pop up anywhere near as often as Tankies
    • We remove and ban Nazis too
    • We're aware of Lemmy's main code writers being ML's, and it's not great.
    • Please report any bigot bullshit, or fascist/tankie dogwhistles.
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    [+] 68 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (40 children)
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    [–] 65 points 2 years ago (12 children)

    The guy needs a speech bubble that says "Stalin did nothing wr-"

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    [–] 65 points 2 years ago*

    196 is one of the greatest subs communities

    ya'll should be proud. Thank you for adding a little queer fun to my normal CIS life

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  • [+] 64 points 2 years ago (26 children)
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    [–] 57 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    I think most of you need to worry way less about sounding sufficiently the "right kind" of leftist and focus more on promoting leftism through action. More than half the "tankie" discourse is, at best, a needless distraction from actual progress. Lose your buzzwords and stop the ideological purity pissing contest and actually put in the work in your communities instead, goddamn.

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    [–] 57 points 2 years ago (1 child)
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    [+] 52 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)
  • [–] 50 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It's funny that everyone is up in arms about this post but the literal sticky post says no tankies

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    [+] 50 points 2 years ago (22 children)
  • [–] 54 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    The Soviet Union did not kill all those nazis out of the goodness of their hearts, but rather because they were in active warfare with Nazi Germany and thus needed to kill a large number of nazis to win the war. Throughout history, authoritarian "socialists" have backstabbed, betrayed, and otherwise killed anarchists and democratic socialists. I absolutely do not trust tankies to fight against fascism in the United States or Europe in any effective manner. Russia and China are not friendly countries to queer rights, though being gay is legal in both countries they do not have any anti-discrimination laws that apply to queer people and the reason there are fewer hate crimes is simply because they don't count them. Russia and China are also not socialist, Russia is an explicitly oligarchical capitalist Presidential republic and China has a mixed economy that heavily relies on markets with private owners. This is honestly a good part of the reason I'm suspicious of tankies, the United States sucks but that doesn't mean that every nation that opposes the United States is automatically good.

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    [–] 47 points 2 years ago (30 children)

    I'm not against the hostility being shown towards tankies here... but it should be remembered that there are a lot of well-meaning and well-intentioned people who get caught up in the technocratic ideology tankies buy into. Let's face it... if you google anything about leftism you are more likely to end up reading about Marx and Engels than Bakunin or Goldman - and right-wing propaganda is as perfectly fine with conflating everything "leftist" with the technocratic (ie authoritarian) left as tankies themselves are.

    If we are leaving some doors open for fascists and capitalists who turn against their programming, we should remember to do the same for tankies.

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    [–] 46 points 2 years ago (14 children)

    Eh this argues that we even have a democracy that is functional enough to undermine in the first place, and I reject that premise.

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    [–] 46 points 2 years ago

    i wonder why this post about tankies is suddenly popular

    sees top posts criticising israel and fascism

    ah there it is

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  • [–] 42 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    what democracy?

    https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

    Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

    [...]

    In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.

    something like 70% of Americans want universal healthcare and yet it remains politically impossible.

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    [–] 41 points 2 years ago (40 children)

    Bro what, if we can stop leftist infighting for one fucking minute that would be great. We all have 90% of the same goals so how about we work on that and not build artificial walls to those to the left of us. Also being pro western „democracy“ is cringe.

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    [–] 39 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    Loving to see tankies come out of the woodwork to seethe and troll at this

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    [–] 38 points 2 years ago (9 children)

    I swear almost every American election cycle, some weird word will start popping up everywhere. like how all the trump supporters started saying cuck out of nowhere in 2015-2016

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  • [–] 48 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

    Tankie has been a thing for over half a century. The Soviets used tanks(from other countries) to invade and crush antisoviet revolutions/protests in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

    This was considered shocking for some communists and other leftists while some communists supported those actions. Those who supported this "intervention" were called tankies, in order to differentiate them from the non tank invasion supporting communists.

    In Greece(my country), which was in the "West", this event caused the split of the greek communist party(KKE) into 2 separate parties, KKE(Moscow controlled tankies) and KKE "interior"(weak ass soy communists who cant stomach the use of tanks in order to create a better tomorrow).

    KKE "interior" kinda eventually became SYRIZA which surprisingly won the elections in 2015(breaking the 2 party status quo). Then the EU decided that the greek people decided poorly and punished them. So when the greek people decided correctly(elected a right wing government), the EU rewarded them. Carrots and sticks make the world go around. Thats how you make a majority leftist country, into a right wing one.

    PS Greek debt is as high as it has ever been but Greece issued negative interest bonds. Tell me again how is the economy supposed to work? Noone talks about the greek debt anymore, it's a non issue, Greece has been accepted into the EU's infinite money glitch scheme.

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    [+] 36 points 2 years ago (51 children)
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    [–] 35 points 2 years ago* (15 children)

    I'm not sure anyone knows what a tankie is.

    Apparently saying any country other than the US should take a turn at world leadership is a tankie opinion.

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