I keep seeing "fuck tankies" everywhere, and seem to see people getting called "tankie" for any number of things--I used to feel like I knew what it meant (the formal definition, which I thought was the only application) but that's clearly not the case anymore. Saw someone get called one because they... Liked the idea of universal basic income and wanted walkable cities? And now the same sentiment is on a large number of Lemmy communities, lol.

I feel like I've been living under a rock.

Edit: Wow, I guess it's just as meaningless of a term now as it seemed. At least it's a nice, bright flag for ghouls not worth engaging with meaningfully, lol. I saw "fuck tankies" on a genderqueer community and got pretty confused on how the two ideas correlated in the slightest, so I guess that was the tipping point on me finally asking about it.

  • SorosFootSoldier [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    6 months ago

    It's become a catch all insult for anyone to the left of Biden, pretty much. It's totally divorced from it's original meaning and used as a thought terminating cliche at this point.

    • pixelghost [any]
      hexagon
      ·
      6 months ago

      Ah, that explains a lot. The current state of political discourse is... Very good and productive. dean-smile

      • footfaults [none/use name]
        ·
        6 months ago

        because there are some Stalinists or just dumb people who are proud of their country or a country they didn't even live in.

        The Soviet Union won World War 2 and saved the world from fascism. Millions of Red Army soldiers and Russian civilians died at the hands of fascists and we are in their debt

        • spacesweedkid27 [he/him, they/them]
          ·
          6 months ago

          I don't get how doing what is so obviously good makes you a good leader, that just makes the west bad because they basically helped hitler. Also this "we are in their dept thinking isn't really a productive argument.

          Why can people just admit that there are some truths and not everything was good.

          Communism is not an ideology that can be done by just reading a basic rulebook and blindly believing historic anecdotes that are hard to verify or just straight up wrong.

          I also want to believe that there were good and powerful communist leaderships, I can understand that.

          How does wanting to understand make me a lib? Isn't this kind of flagging people what left ideologies criticise?

          Just give me some real facts or evidence and I am happy, if you can't show me these you are reactionistic and conter-revolutionary.

          • TreadOnMe [none/use name]
            ·
            edit-2
            6 months ago

            Why? You haven't provided shit outside your opinions, which are clearly just ahistorical propogandistic horseshit. If you think Lenin was 'less harsh' than Stalin I have some bad fucking news for you, according to everybody but Khrushchev, that was very much not the case. Molotov famously discussed this in his memoirs.

            We have no obligation to educate you, you are not a known party member in an organization, you are on an anonymous leftist shit posting forum. Go be a liberal debate pervert elsewhere.

            • invo_rt [he/him]
              ·
              6 months ago

              If you think Lenin was 'less harsh' than Stalin I have some bad fucking news for you

              kind-vladimir-ilyich

          • Dolores [love/loves]
            ·
            6 months ago

            I don't get how doing what is so obviously good makes you a good leader

            doing good is not the mark of good leadership? what, pray tell, makes a good leader then?

      • TheLepidopterists [he/him]
        ·
        6 months ago

        Stalin was a bad dictator, Lenin I think was not, Mao tried to be good but also made some mistakes and turned evil in his last years.

        jesse-wtf

          • TheLepidopterists [he/him]
            ·
            edit-2
            6 months ago

            Stalin was a "bad" "dictator?"

            You "think" that Lenin wasn't a "bad" "dictator?"

            Mao "turned evil in his last years?"

            Do you not understand why these liberal nerd opinions are not well received on a communist forum?

            EDIT: Also "Stalinists?" How about fuck off.

              • spacesweedkid27 [he/him, they/them]
                ·
                6 months ago

                huh? I am literally just trying to understand and see your points but ok, if you want to make fun of me, then you're not even really trying to show me what my mistake is.

                • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
                  ·
                  6 months ago

                  We don't believe Stalin, Lenin, or Mao were dictators. We believe they were elected party officials who did not exercise ultimate authority. Stalin for instance attempted to resign 4 times and was overruled. We also believe Stalin exercised authority in much of the same way that Lenin would have.

                  In terms of Mao we tend to go with the 70/30 split of good/bad. We also don't tend to say he was evil in his later years, but rather, more like he became a little inefficient and China was going through a rough spot that had a course correction with Deng.

                  I hope that helps. I think some people here are seeing you as some kind of troll talking to us in bad faith. I try to assume the best.

                  • GarbageShoot [he/him]
                    ·
                    6 months ago

                    Deng was a right-deviationist at least as much as Mao was a left-deviationist, and he is given too much credit for "solving" an economic problem that was essentially invented by liberal accountants who didn't understand the economy under Mao. It is also true that he protected China's national sovereignty and that much of the damage he did was able to be undone in subsequent decades while the useful elements were preserved.

                    • Yllych [any]
                      ·
                      edit-2
                      6 months ago

                      For anyone interested in this I am finding Gao Mobo's The Battle for China's Past a good accounting of the attitudes in China towards the Cultural Revolution and Mao in general. I feel like I'm missing a general background on some of the communist members he refers to, but otherwise so far I recommend it. Does a good job of debunking the more egregious caricatures of Mao

                  • spacesweedkid27 [he/him, they/them]
                    ·
                    6 months ago

                    Thanks this is literally the first answer that helps. I actually did know from a leaked CIA document that there even were democratic processes in Stalin's time.

                    What I don't like that much about Mao is this propaganda reducation camps or something like that.

                    • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]
                      ·
                      edit-2
                      6 months ago

                      Look around at America, at the hate churches, nazi militias, qanon cults, and endless mass shootings. We are incredibly fucked up here, and any communist movement that might come to power is gonna need to put a whole lot of people in re-education. The alternatives are worse.

                      • Hohsia [he/him]
                        ·
                        edit-2
                        6 months ago

                        I think that’s the thing, honestly. Chuds and libs fear the potential of needing to learn something new or challenging to their existing beliefs

                        Reeducation wouldn’t be needed if the US wasn’t inherently anti-intellectual

                    • GarbageShoot [he/him]
                      ·
                      edit-2
                      6 months ago

                      What I don't like that much about Mao is this propaganda reducation camps or something like that.

                      Would you prefer prisoners simply be tortured or left to rot like they are in nearly every other prison system around the world?

                    • Yllych [any]
                      ·
                      6 months ago

                      Which reeducation camps would those be

                    • idkmybffjoeysteel [he/him]
                      ·
                      6 months ago

                      It is amazing that you still do not believe in mandatory re-education camps after seeing all the shit takes libs drop.

                      • spacesweedkid27 [he/him, they/them]
                        ·
                        6 months ago

                        I don't belive that reeducation camps are something bad. I mean we do it all the time with people that are too dangerous for society like mass murderes or rapists.

                        I just think that there is no reason for violence in this.

                        We can just do it like school does: In my 12 years of primary education I have been taught that you should behave as capitalistic as you can be: We even had a lecture called "economy and politics" where we mostly talked about how to inverst or on how to start your own buissness. The only "politics" we had were west-centric post WW2 propaganda in which they told us how good the west has been for my country: Germany.

                        And the dumb thing is that in every country there is you can study this lecture basically at the university. Here it's called "Betriebswirtschaftslehre" which would more or less be "Buissness administration" . This is a lecture that talkes about economy with the following premises: The human is evil, won't share, aka Communism bad Captalism good.

                        And this really is the go to education for most people here that either suck at learning (because it's easy) or don't know what to study.

      • AlkaliMarxist
        ·
        edit-2
        6 months ago

        Even in Stalin's time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist power structure.

        - Declassified CIA report from the 1950's

        Even the CIA knew that calling Stalin a dictator was bullshit.

        Also Mao "turned evil"? Come on.

        Clearly you have totally internalized the "pop-history" view of socialism in the 20th century, surely you realize such a simplified narrative cannot help but hide ideological bias.

      • BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        6 months ago

        Stalin was a bad dictator, Lenin I think was not, Mao tried to be good but also made some mistakes and turned evil in his last years.

        stalin-shining mao-shining lenin-shining excuse me? Do you know where you are?