I used to be a tankie. I mean I believed everything China said, I unironically thought Stalin was good, I mean I was a full blown tankie. The main reason I became a tankie wasn't because it was my actual beliefs as much as it was because of peer pressure. Most communist subs are controlled by tankies who are mad with power, so you feel pressured to force yourself to have the same ideology as them. Eventually you start lying to yourself by calling everything that conflicts with your world view CIA propaganda because that "peer pressurs" has started seeping into your actual real life self. It is manifesting. For the longest time I thought Stalin was a good person, that China was going to be socialist by 2050, that authoritarianism, totalitarianism, technocracy, and mass surveillance are good because "what happens in public stays in public" or some shit.
I knew that I was lying to myself, but I wanted to be naive. My naive mind thought another country that was ideologically communist couldn't be evil — but yet Pol Pot and the prick that took power in Romania and created a dictatorship where everyone that isn't Romanian will be seen as second class citizens — proves otherwise.
When I started becoming a communist I dropped all nuance. I always believed one side— my side. No other sides. I believed everyone was wrong but me. I even started making up bullshit that sounds proper, like how China gives away houses and utilities to workers without rent to compensate for the low wages. Obviously it is utter bullshit that I barely believed, but I was lying to myself because I couldn't admit China was bad.
My point is this — tankies are crazy people. They always want to believe all currently existing socialist states are all paradise. Well, they aren't. China isn't the hell that the west depicts it as, but it is still shit. China is capitalist. Combine Capitalism and Socialism, you still have Capitalism.
This is from an alt account. I won't disclose my true identity. This is to protect my balls.
I used to be a tankie. Still am, but I used to be one too.
I used to be a tankie. Then I joined a party. Now I'm a card-carrying tankie.
I'm not even a tankie but anti-tankies annoy the shit out of me. There are a lot of 'anarchists' out there that think that anarchy is leftism but nicer and less extreme. It's annoying because anarchy is not non-violent (direct action gets the goods)
I feel like a lot of libs are infecting anarchy circles and are turning them against MLs. Trying to turn anarchy into the less extreme version of leftism when we are supposed to be burning shit and removing the unjust hierarchy that is capitalism by force. We need to realise we have more in common with MLs than we like to admit and ignore the radlibs that are trying to fuck with left unity by making us behave.
In other words: :left-unity-4:
Yeah, thats true (I was talking strictly about online) that's why it's annoying when online radlibs get into ancom spaces and start calling anyone who wants to do anything outside of voting and peaceful protest a tankie. It's got the double effect of defanging potential anarchists and driving away the real ones.
We need more like you, and we need revolutionary anarchist spaces over on reddit that explicitly ban anarcho-liberals and maintain the space as revolutionary anarchism.
I honestly think the package is just that "revolutionary anarchism", labelling current contemporary anarchists as reformists and fakes. As soon as you demand people actually be revolutionaries you easily get rid of all of the fakes and it is extremely easy to make the argument "fighting against tankies doesn't bring us closer to revolution it takes us further away" when you are demanding revolutionary attitudes. Anyone continuing to do such infighting in a space like that are easily banned as wreckers.
They're not "history familiar". If they were they'd know that the anarchists created that situation and essentially decided to fight with communists rather than just comfortably existing.
If they were "history familiar" they'd know about things like the KPAF who MLs helped set up their anarchist nation and existed perfectly fine alongside nearby MLs for ages until the liberals assassinated them.
The fact of the matter is that they're NOT history familiar and they're caught up in a cycle of infighting about something that deserves nuanced analysis but instead reduce it to "MLs murdered us waaaah" which is just completely reductive and not at all "history familiar".
peer pressure
Come ooon, all the cool kids uphold the immortal science!
Lemme tell you, once I started supporting Xi Jinping, all the boys were all over me!
please this is insulting, at least Pol Pot actually managed to eliminate the value form, all Ceausescu ever did is try to synthesize Juche with Romanian characteristics and get shot for it
this guy just has a weak brain. i've been here for months and i still think y'all are corny for waiting for the dengists to bring about world communism.
edit: lol v*ush "deradicalized" him, absolute NPC
y’all are corny for waiting for the dengists to bring about world communism.
Waddya mean "y'all" some of us are in parties and organizations doing stuff. :top-use-words:
Everyone to the left of Bernie is a tankie nowadays. Might as well become one.
That wasn’t secretarian nor was it horseshoe theory. It’s calling out a stupid post of being stupid. I will clap you in the game of your choosing to prove my stance is the correct one.
Lmao. Your comment got rightfully deleted for sectarianism. You are literally doing what I was saying. People will call anyone to the left of Bernie tankies.
"If this was a nazi saying this to a libertarian in /c/the_dunk_tank you all would rip them apart. Uncritical support of all policies of a socialist state is the defining trait of tankies and that’s just nationalism with a red aesthetic." How do you unironically type this out?
Now that I reread your comment, you should be banned for comparing tankies to Nazis/libertarians.
lmao. Stop trying to act like a martyr for getting your comments deleted for being sectarian. Go outside and touch some grass.
I’ll defend my posts to the death. It’s a serious fight on an obscure Reddit clone of a niche subreddit.
Seriously though do people think that a socialist country just smashes the communism button and all the latent nationalists from either old Russia or KMT converts just goes away.
Uncritical support of all policies of a socialist state is the defining trait of tankies and that’s just nationalism with a red aesthetic.
Seems to check off both with just a sentence
You can be a supporter of the USSR while acknowledging it had conditions in its fundamental structure which caused it to have the fate it did. Taking that knowledge we can improve and make new better states. There is a reason China is doing better than the USSR did, but even China has contradictions inside of it because socialism isn’t about simping for countries but trying to manifest the social question into a set of social infrastructure which has a habit of causing contradictions inside of it. When you blindly simp for the abstraction instead of cheering the abstraction for advancing socialist causes it’s just nationalism.
Lmao, you think tankies don’t criticize the ussr?
When I started becoming a communist I dropped all nuance. I always believed one side— my side. No other sides. I believed everyone was wrong but me. I even started making up bullshit that sounds proper,
Sounds like this person is a big dumdum who wasn't communisming right.
Apparently being around tankies forces you to become one. Lmao.
It’s true! Us tankies emit pheromones that force people to adopt the immortal science
protect my balls.
And now I'm thinking of that South Park anime episode.
I agree with you sweatie. But why did you have to bring your toxic masculinity into this in the last sentence?
