Shot:
they are a legitimate threat to freedom and to anti-authoritarian leftists,
Chaser:
we shouldn't allow these people to exist in the internet free
https://old.reddit.com/r/tankiejerk/comments/197l9ik/tankie_is_not_offensive_anymore/
If tankies can will the term to no longer be shameful then why can't we insist that it still is? Do the tankies have a +1 rhetoric buff that we don't or something?
Do the tankies have a +1 rhetoric buff that we don't or something?
Yeah it's called theory
Yea turns out not giving a shit what a bunch of liberals with so little political knowledge they call Bernie a communist think is basically a secret weapon.
Liberals use Tankie. Chuds use Woke. Horseshoe theory confirmed ?!?!
Why would tankie be shameful ? If someone gets called a tankie I can assume that person is cool and groovy. Even people who are low on the tankie scale are usually much better than the average lib. If anything getting called a tankie is a seal of approval.
To put it simple if you dont want to destroy the west and neoliberal hegemony what are you even doing ?
The OG tankies were correct, so that's not even an insult in the first place.
Rhetoric was the voice of communist ideology in Disco Elysium, so there's a pattern emerging
Yeah but empathy is the voice of moralism, even though moralists believe in nothing. Endurance is the voice of fascism though, which is clever because the game presents fascist ideology as self-harm.
spoilers
Harry is an amnesiac cop who was a moralist before the amnesia. His moralism is also psychologically tied up with stuff like his ex-wife. It's what his brain defaults to when he considers questions of how society should operate and how to treat people. Kim's the same way. It's what Harry has been conditioned into, so his empathy is the same thing as his default political outlook.
Rhetoric is communist because Harry has to be talked into it. It doesn't quite appeal to his conditions or interests. His first step to becoming a communist is talking himself through it. He goes through a period of basically making stuff up in his head, or adopting a persona. Yeah, that's how I'd describe it. His communism is a persona he's trying to adopt, because he hasn't spent much time with actual communists or engaged with the literature.
Like there's a quote when Harry is talking to the deserter. "I'm a communist too. I have communist thoughts in my head." And that's all it's been for Harry at this point, it's a bunch of thoughts swirling in his head, changing his default outlook. To a good outlook I should say. The communist quest is the only one where he seems like a more optimistic person at the end. Harry's able to cope with pain in a more healthy way.
Also ultraliberalism's skill is Savoir faire because that entire ideology is about being a smarmy smug asshole.
What makes you say Harry was a moralist? I don't recall anything that indicates that
He's a cop, seems to have believed in being a cop since he handled three times as many cases as his coworkers. All the other cops you meet, including Kim, have moralist beliefs. Like the church. Kim does a quick prayer and Harry has a dim feeling of religious ecstasy when he first enters the church. It's stuff like that. I don't think it's outright stated anywhere, you're right.
Kim is vaguely a moralist but it's not important to him. The Revachol Citizen's Militia has its roots in the old commune. The end of the game shows the leader of the precinct planning another Communist revolution. I don't think these particular cops care about moralism one way or the other, it's just the prevailing system that they work under
Yeah, that's how I interpret moralism in general. No one actually cares that much about it, it's just dominant and has trickled down into people's brains. The people who do care about it are like religious acolytes.
Also Harry's memories of the church have to do with his involvement in a massacre there
I've been workshopping the idea "I'm a commie and not the nice kind"
Oh look, libs, the great deadening force of liberalism that steamrolls all political distinction into shapeless paste, has you suddenly concerned that your false equivalence bullshit has cheapened a term that, while already meaningless to you, relied on other people giving a shit to give it meaning and purchase while you smugged your way through life.
You got what you want and you hate it. Not my problem. Eat up, libs. You spineless stand-for-nothing cowards. I'll put the slop bowl on the floor so you can reach it
lmao these people talk as if they're actually doing anything on the ground. At least anarchists fight proud boys.
For real, and even among anarchists on the ground I've only met like 3 who used the word tankie. All three were weird though. One guy said the library next to where we hand out food is a "tankie library" because there were Marx and Lenin books in the socialism section. Another guy used the term tankie but I don't think he knew what it meant, since he'd refer to the cops as tankies. The other person would say tankie as shorthand for militant atheists.
But in all those three cases those people still hand out food and help people so they're light-years ahead of the bozos on r*ddit
Another guy used the term tankie but I don't think he knew what it meant, since he'd refer to the cops as tankies
Using "tankie" to mean "someone who has tanks" kinda rules. I like this guy's energy.
i saw some lib calling sherman a tankie and someone else saying julius caesar was a tankie once. tankie is when youre a famous historical person and use violence to do things
I'm going to have to remember this very true fact about Julius Caesar because that will for sure rustle some crank's jimmies
"cops are tankies" is an incredible take that acts as a potent distillation of radlib vibes based analysis
Another guy used the term tankie but I don’t think he knew what it meant, since he’d refer to the cops as tankies
I mean, working backwards through a gamer lens I could see someone calling the Cops "tankie", as in, they can tank a lot of damage, lol.
Wrong. I care about being a tankie. Mostly because when a lib calls me a tankie that's how I know I'm doing something right
It's a great term because like "woke" you can immediately figure out where they stand politically, and it also tells you that their opinions are completely worthless and can be ignored.
"We anti-authoritarian leftists should not allow these people to exist."
That is a hell of a way to close your post unbidden.
Especially after suggestion a whole ass group shouldn't exist and waxing poetic about using red-fash, which is in and of itself, a fascist fucking dog whistle.
E: dog whistle might not be the right word?
E: dog whistle might not be the right word?
A fascist version of
This is an Anti-Tankie reddit. The message you sent is either tankie/authoritarian "socialist" apologia or can be easily seen as such. Please, refrain from posting stuff like this in the future.
When your brand of anti-left leftism is so coherent and robust that you need an automod to delete posts that might disrupt the circlejerk
Sounds authoritarian [Where's that damn emote of the person in a well? lol]
Nice try Tankie, but touching grass is exactly what the Red Fash Winnie the Pooh CEE CEE PEE wants us to do!
I was literally just now saying to @emizeko@hexbear.net that this is why we need to formalise the tactic rather than just breaking down individual uses of the tactic like "tankie".
This tactic is in use in so many ways. It's being popularly referred to as "thought-terminating cliche", which might end up the name of the tactic when it's formalised. Things like calling everyone a "terrorist" to stop any thought about what they're doing or why. "Tankie". "Woke". "SJW". Etc etc. This tactic is in significant usage and any time you break down the usage of an individual word they create a new one, so you're always going to fight this battle that way.
To fight this properly we need to go one step higher, don't attack just the individual usage but attacking the tactic itself too.
In order to do this we need to formalise this tactic in language and popularise it in order to drastically undercut its ability to be used. By formalising it as a bad thing (like fallacy shit) the libs and debatebros start calling it out when they see it. This way we could weaken its ability to be used considerably.
We need the technique to be picked up and talked of by orgs and academically. We need some people to write about the phenomenon/tactic itself so that those articles can then be pointed to as sources for its existence, and then wiki and other shit can get made for it to further cement it as a recognised formal language thing. From that point onwards it's just a matter of repeatedly pointing to the articles and shit to spread it more and more and more. It'll take on a life of its own and considerably wreck the tactic.
I think this is actually really worthwhile doing as it's one of the most common tactics of the US information and thought control system.
There is a very clear process of steps we can take.
As someone with a background in writing (like every other commie), I'd be happy to contribute in some way to this. However, I don't really know what actionable step could be taken.
I also worry that the technique would be pretty quickly coopted, and the terms "fascist" and "racist" would be defined as thought terminating cliches. It's already started with the "not everyone you disagree with is a fascist" line
Actionable steps here are more concretely achieved by orgs or people with current access to existing various published things (blogs, newspapers, etc etc). But I think something like Prolewiki might be able to be a spark point for something like this, depending on whether Prolewiki participants/management are willing to be the creation point of something rather than just a documenting and citing site.
I see some things pop up on Medium that successfully spread but I'm not sure how often those do that. Could be that's a handful of things among tens of thousands that just waste their time. Likely depends on whether big networks reshare content and that momentum keeps going.
Generally the point here is to write something that's clear enough for people to link to it frequently, and also potentially inspiring enough for others to also write about the phenomenon. If something can be written that also gets others to write about it then you get momentum.
Really the most meaningful thing here is to get a few places to write about something like this and then put it on natopedia, where it is then going to gain the automatic credibility of being on natopedia in the eyes of libs and debatebros, those people will then take part in opposing the tactic whenever they recognise it. Once you get those people on board with opposing it because they're rules-perverts and will consider it against the "rules" the whole tactic may effectively collapse, in the online space at least.
So really the limitation here is access to a resource, that resource being article publishing online.
It would have more credibility if we could find and reuse a similar concept/name from an earlier and more "objective" source. Not sure where to start digging, but this has to be something that someone has named previously. Then we're just popularizing instead of inventing something new.
Maybe. I'd start with the labelling of everything as "terrorist" first. That's probably got the most. After that is probably like "authoritarian" or some shit.
The tactic is pervasive.
I mean, the "thought terminating cliche" is a really old thing. You know the "Our noble government, their perfidious regime" cartoon? It's exactly that. Hell, Lenin's snark about "changing the name of things not changing the thing itself" is a part of it. You can probably find ancient Roman authors commenting on this practice if you look.
Right but does it have a name? If it doesn't have a name, it hasn't been formalised. Naming it gives you something to attack, it gives you a way to communicate that it's bad.
The goal here, in essence, is to use the practice against itself. I want to thought-terminating cliche the tactic of thought-terminating cliches. Give it a name so people can debatebro it as a bad thing that you absolutely should not do every time they see it.
The thing is, if we believe we are on the side of reason, the nature of such an argument should only be considered a nuisance to us rather than catastrophic. If I want to prove that Israel is fascist and someone hits me with the "not everyone you disagree with is a fascist" line, then I can simply ask them to give me a set of criteria and either argue the criteria being incorrect or argue that Israel meets it (depending on the criteria, context, etc.) What our comrade is proposing is a way of opening discussion so that preconceived notions can be challenged more thoroughly.
Socialism is the ruthless criticism of all that exists; if a socialist can't produce a justification for their ideology, this isn't an argument they should be getting into (they should be studying, whether through reading or investigating the world).
Ironically, the person who coined the term "thought terminating cliché" was describing the language used by the CCP.
Since the point of this technic is to convince themselves and other to not look at idea that threaten the status quo by convincing them that if they do that they will become part of some nebulous threat to "fundamental values of our society", it should be given a name according to that.
Something like "Status quo leashing" or "Overton leashing".
This is a good plan. Other than Hexbear I do have access to some small commie publications. Its also a topic I've thought about a lot.
I can probably write a thousand or more words on it. Maybe if other people can do the same, explore the topics and come up with names, etc., we can bring it back here to discuss in more detail.
Idk you've really inspired me so I'm going to run with it. Maybe you or @RedQuestionAsker2@hexbear.net or other HBs can get busy with it and start some discussions.
Is this actually a new thing because to me this is just a basic ad hominem'ing?
It sort of is, but I think it is also distinct from your average ad hominem and widespread enough to deserve it's own name. You don't call someone "tankie", "woke", "SJW" and the likes the same way nor for the same reasons you would call someone an idiot or a pig nor does it have the same kind of implications. It's not just any kind of common name calling, it imply the target is an active part of some nebulous group that is inherently assumed to be a threat to some "fundamental value of our society", it is specificaly reserved for peoples who are a threat (or at least perceved threat) to the status quo.
Ad hom is in a Venn diagram here, because the two are often used together but are not the same. An ad hom is specifically when you say something that boils down to "You're a scoundrel [or otherwise undesirable], so your argument is incorrect". The labeling strategy that Awoo is discussing is closer to equivocation (insinuating things are the same that are different) as a means of obfuscation, such as the "terrorist" example. See how so many people complaining about the Hot Houthi Winter interview with Hasan were calling the interviewee a "terrorist" in order to get people to not actually think about what he is, which is decidedly not a terrorist. What specifically the dude is saying or even the truth of it hasn't even come into play yet.
So I spent a minute there trying really hard to figure out the difference as I typed because it's honestly a good question on your part, and I think the answer is that this thought-terminating cliche bit is used to conclude that the person is a scoundrel, while ad homs are predicated on the person being seen as a scoundrel to falsely prove some other point (Biden being an imperialist does not make the time of day change when he comments that it's morning). The reason these are so hard to pin down, aside from the fact that they are informal fallacies, is that common communication and even argumentation is filled with implied premises, inferences, and conclusions, so mapping them out formally enough to be able to compare the structure is a genuinely difficult task.
What do you think, @Awoo@hexbear.net?
I think you're onto something with looking at previous historical examples of it being discussed for sources of potential names, and for strengthening the argument for its existence.
The difference between ad hom and this would be be declaration vs conclusion? Declaring "you're an asshole" vs concluding "this is an asshole", the former being the individual's opinion while the latter is intended to be an objective statement of fact with the implication that it discredits the person wholly? I'm not really sure.
That's the thing, in a proper sense (as far as informal fallacies go), an ad hom is not the same thing as an insult. There is a term for that, it's "insult." An "argumentum ad hominem," an "argument to the person," is the false refutation of the other person's argument on the basis of that person's own attributes when those attributes are not relevant. This gets flanderized to "insulting who you are arguing with" because of dumb debatebros trying to do gotchas ("You insulted me, I win!") along with the issue I expressed before about how it can be very complex to formalize a prose argument because of the sheer volume of things that could be left to implication, e.g. if I call you an asshole and say nothing more, what does that mean as a response to your argument? That it's wrong and you're an asshole for saying it? That what you say can be dismissed because you are an asshole? etc.
The case that I am making is that the thought-terminating label is done as the scaffolding for an ad hominem. If someone wants to feed the poor and I, as a reactionary, know little else about them, then to an American audience something like "That would be communism" pragmatically functions as multiple implied arguments, first the arguments for why I would call it communism and secondly the arguments for why it is bad to feed the poor. Because of context, we can supply premises and conclusions that in this case are around 5 times longer and collectively much more complicated than the literal assertion, some cartoon version being: "Handouts are communism, feeding the poor is handouts, feeding the poor is communism; communism is bad, therefore feeding the poor is bad; we should not do bad things, we should not feed to poor. QED"
Without exaggeration, the pragmatics of such a situation suggest that that little four-word sentence functions as the presentation of that entire argument. Incidentally, the argument I just produced is a version of the phenomenon you're talking about, just directed to be about a policy proposal. A slight change in the framing could make it involve an ad hom.
I agree with all of this but I'm not quite sure what to do with it. I suppose it complicates naming and describing it. Perhaps description of it needs to be broken down into a simplified version and then fully-explored in detail afterwards? I'm not sure as I'm quite tired now.
I think your main point seems to be that they're preying on pre-loaded information in a way that compacts several different pre-loaded pieces of information that a person has already accepted into a larger thing that then becomes larger than the sum of parts. For example a "tankie" could be broken down into several pieces (authoritarian + marxist-leninist + supports bad country + Etc) where the person falling for the "tankie" thought-terminator is expected to have already fallen for each individual component of the overall sum that makes up "tankie". When someone has fallen for all the components already you can then combine them together along with ML and associate them to take your existing propaganda and elevate it to a level that is greater than the various parts.
Another factor here is that by giving someone a name, you define a group. If tankies are bad then there also must be an opposing good. The person joins the group of opposing good and all the values of the opposing "good" then become soaked up. You don't even have to name the opposing side, simply naming the "tankie" is enough for everyone defining themselves as not-tankie to fall into the opposition group. If this opposition group includes nazis, the values of nazis get soaked up by members of the group in small ways.
Yeah, I'm with you on all of this and think your application of what I tried to communicate is much more useful information
I don't really know what I'm doing when it comes to actioning this though it's a pretty new idea for me. Orgs that created new language for other things would have better ideas/experience. Lgbt orgs invented tonnes of new language for example.
I was thinking about this and it occurred to me that, besides "buzzword", a term that people use that seems to specifically line up with what you've talked about is "scare word", a term that is annoying to research for obvious reasons, but we can find an attestation of its use to describe political rhetoric here and there.
A few more:
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/24/716728643/socialism-isn-t-the-scare-word-it-once-was
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/truman-socialism-scare-word/
Hope this helps. I also saw "scare term" and "devil word" referenced in a pop-linguistics article.
I am almost certain that there is some extremely niche writing about this but that it uses terminology we're not aware of so finding it is fucking impossible.
These are good leads though. Gonna spend a couple weeks churning this over and digging around. Something is gonna pop out.
Ad hom isn't intended to specifically thought-terminate people. It's just a thing you sling at people.
The use of "tankie" or "terrorist" is to define [person speaking or being spoken about] as a "baddy person" and therefore absolutely anything and everything they say can and should be disregarded, otherwise you are also a baddy person and thus not a good person. It's intended to reinforce group-think. The reactionary right use "woke" with the intent of preventing their members from listening to something a "woke" person might say, to make sure that they thought-terminate and do not think about whatever is said. The purpose is to function as a shield against anything that might change their views. It's to shut down their brains to anything people might say to them.
It has the appearance of ad hom, but it has a specific higher function.
For real though, the most these people could ever accomplish is to be modern Rosa-killers.
"Guantanamo landlord"
Oh yea rhats deffinitly something that would piss off socialists, criticizing guantanamo bay.
Doesn't Cuba also refuse to accept rent payments for Guantanamo?
Payments have been sent annually, but only one lease payment has been accepted since the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro claimed that this check was deposited due to confusion in 1959. The Cuban government has not deposited any other lease check since that time.
This person has never once called someone any of these things to their face or even online without being anonymous. They've never stood up to or for anything. I would put money on the fact they nevee discuss politics offline, fearing any kind of conflict. They likely take their bosses abuse and kiss their ass for it in return, then go home to their keyboard to play act owning an imaginary boogeyman with a bunch of other cowardly online weirdos.
I had an old friend come into town and he had made transphobia his personality. He hit me with some shit about manipulating children and I hit him with my old reliable "what the fuck are you talking about?" and he folded. It's like three steps to be offended by that shit. You'd need to recognize what they're talking about, recognize it as an insult, and choose to react to the insult. It's literally easier to steamroll past it than to engage on inane insult. The alternative is to ask them about the name and get a history lesson from someone you don't like. This shit is not how people talk outside of a work by Aaron Sorkin.
This person will never confront a "tankie" in real life. These people are cowards, afraid that they might be outclassed by someone who has read theory and history. Their own words would strike hollow against someone who believes in something.
i think it comes from some
cw meat
slaughterhouse cube of condensed frozen meat that was photographed outside of a factory in ukraine and redditors immediately started saying it was a bunch of dead soldiers from the Russo-Ukrainian war.
Is this person 12? I didn't make it very far into his school yard insults but I def hope it's the stupidest shit I read all day.
I'm this close to going on reddit and tagging his name with RES flair just so I know not to even bother engaging with this absolute child ass human.
The only thing any of these terms would get me to feel is disdain
and unsurprisingly most of these terms are also racist
and unsurprisingly most of these terms are also racist
That's because the person is, but if you told them that they'd lose it.
If you live in a country dominated 99.98% by the rightwing and you spend all your time online crusading against “tankies” and punching left you are just an anti-communist chud
I feel like it's a decent bet that neither the OP of that post nor the majority of people replying have ever even given food or money to a homeless person.
I haven't but that's because I live in authoritarian tankie land without any homelessness
smdh authoritarian tankies denying the human right to die in a gutter
shidding and pissing liberals: they aren't offended by the name we're calling them, what should we do?!
meanwhile, tankies
Langley worshippers growing increasingly uncomfortable with the implications of their astroturfed ideology
legitimate threat to freedom
Whomever you think the "tankies" are pose no threat to anyone or anything you absolute dweeb, they're nerds posting on the internet just like you are
Tankies (and Palestinians) are the only people actually organization around Palestine in the US right now
