Dunking on Tankies from a leftist perspective. A tankie is someone who
defends/supports authoritarian or even totalitarian regimes who call themselves
“socialist”. The term originated from people supporting the 1956 invasion of
Hungary by the Soviet Union. Nowadays they are just terminally online, denying
genocides, and falling for totalitarian propaganda and calling such regimes
“true democracies”.
the funniest thing about the term "tankie" to me is that it comes from trots and stalinists arguing with each other in the COMMUNIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN in the 1950s over whether khruschev was based or cringe for rolling tanks into Hungary. The Stalinists argued that Khruschev (the man who denounced Stalin) was based because he was putting down a crypto-fascist pseudo-revolution that was funded by the west, while the Trots argued that this was just Red Fash Tankie Soviet Imperialism. Someone on this site once made an effortpost about it.
So liberals have basically appropriated a term that different communists used to fling at each other back in the 1950s, and turned it into a totally bastardized "anyone who is in favor of using violence to end capitalism, including anarchists, are LE RED FASH TANKIES." This is especially ironic considering how much violence is used to preserve capitalism. Were the Americans not "tankies" when they rolled Abrams into Iraq? No. Clearly not. That was defending democracy from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein breaking with US interests by trying to nationalize the Iraqi oil industry building weapons of mass destruction.
the funniest thing about the term "tankie" to me is that it comes from trots and stalinists arguing with each other in the COMMUNIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN in the 1950s over whether khruschev was based or cringe for rolling tanks into Hungary. The Stalinists argued that Khruschev (the man who denounced Stalin) was based because he was putting down a crypto-fascist pseudo-revolution that was funded by the west, while the Trots argued that this was just Red Fash Tankie Soviet Imperialism. Someone on this site once made an effortpost about it.
So liberals have basically appropriated a term that different communists used to fling at each other back in the 1950s, and turned it into a totally bastardized "anyone who is in favor of using violence to end capitalism, including anarchists, are LE RED FASH TANKIES." This is especially ironic considering how much violence is used to preserve capitalism. Were the Americans not "tankies" when they rolled Abrams into Iraq? No. Clearly not. That was defending democracy from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein
breaking with US interests by trying to nationalize the Iraqi oil industrybuilding weapons of mass destruction.