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.

  • pppp1000 [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Everyone to the left of Bernie is a tankie nowadays. Might as well become one.

      • Express [any,none/use name]
        ·
        3 years ago

        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.

        • pppp1000 [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          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.

            • pppp1000 [he/him]
              ·
              3 years ago

              lmao. Stop trying to act like a martyr for getting your comments deleted for being sectarian. Go outside and touch some grass.

              • Express [any,none/use name]
                ·
                edit-2
                3 years ago

                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.

        • richietozier4 [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          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

          • Express [any,none/use name]
            ·
            3 years ago

            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.