My personal definition would be "authoritarian communist (or """communist""") regime supporters/apologists". I think a good litmus test is, if the topic of the Tiananmen Square massacre comes up, and their first input is "Ok, but, how many zeroes did the number of dead civilians really have", they're probably too far gone to bother engaging much with
Too many anarchist/commune types consider the authoritarians to be their allies because they also hate the capitalists, right up until the point they're next on the list of undesirables destined for the wall
Ok so a tankie is anyone who questions the baseless assertions of western regimes, the truth isn't actaully important to you, what matters is whether someone upholds obvious falsehoods and reinforces state propaganda but from the west
I didn't call anyone a tankie, a whole bunch of people from hexbear sure did show up feeling incredibly offended by my description of tankies though, if they want to out themselves like that, that's on them
You talk about having reading comprehension like it's the ultimate skill in understanding yet you're talking about re-education camps as if they're an existing thing for that matter. You should get some media literacy skills before you go around acting smug about knowing how the world works
You realize that even in the wildest fantasies of Xi Jinping's biggest fans, every single Western capitalist country is generations away from revolution? We can do left unity because 0.000% of communism or anarchism have been built, and the early stages of building either involve the same goals: getting workers to stand in solidarity with each other instead of fighting over petty trivial nonsense like "tankies" online. There is literally 0 harm that so called "authoritarians" pose to other leftists, in fact the same leftists who clutch their pearls over "tankies" tend to be the ones defending imperialism and the imposition of western economic hegemony on the imperial periphery (as long as they get healthcare!). What is more authoritarian and useful-idiot-esque than that?
Because that will tell you the answer is 1. One zero. Because the number of dead civilians in the Tiananmen Square Massacre is zero. No civilian deaths there. Nada. Read the wiki page, it will tell you no deaths. This information brought to you by such Commies as:
the US Government,
the Washington Post correspondent (who was there all night),
the CBS correspondent (same),
and more!
Were there a limited number of deaths in protests elsewhere that wasn't Tiananmen? Yep, about 2-3 hundred across a few hundred cities. And that's bad! But is also pretty dang small relative to the protest size, and happens in all major protests in all countries everywhere.
This is and has always been a red herring. It's irrelevant if people were killed in the square or in the streets around the square. People were killed in Beijing by the Chinese military in order to suppress the protests. End of story.
Well, A massive, purposeful, misinformation campaign by the western governments and news sites that had claimed that there were no deaths in the square in the past and then changed their narrative all of a sudden, would, to me, suggest that these entities might also be misreprenting or lying about the other events. The story obviously does not end there.
Yes, Western media can definitely not be trusted. Better to get the real story from the secretive, authoritarian government that heavily suppresses speech and directly controls its major media outlets.
Dang I hate secretive governments, can you direct me to a western government that exposes all of its internal communications and doesn't have a huge amount of "former" state agents in major media publications?
edit: folks, I have had my weekend water on a Monday
You're right, there isn't a single Western country that has a freer press than China. In fact, China may be the world's last bastion of open information and free speech.
Except China doesn't squeal about how free their press is all the time- that's America and the west at large, all of whose media is owned by wealthy people.
There were some Western news outlets that lied about the events and propagated false information, and there were some that that did not.
The fact that Western media outlets cannot be blindly trusted does not mean that the Chinese state controlled media can. The Chinese state has a lot more incentive to lie about the events than independent news orgs do.
I have and I think that there is validity to the propoganda model.
But the propoganda model does not say that all reporting by Western media is false, only that Western media has a hidden bias. But while Western media has an underlying bias to shape a narrative that fits the interests of the wealthy, Chinese state media has an overt and explicit bias to push the narrative in a direction that fits the interests of the state.
So why would I be more skeptical of western reporting on the incident?
But while Western media has an underlying bias to shape a narrative that fits the interests of the wealthy, Chinese state media has an overt and explicit bias to push the narrative in a direction that fits the interests of the state.
Wild, when I read or watch literally any popular western media I find the bias overwhelmingly explicit and overt. It's almost like you're too deep in the propaganda to claim any perspective outside of it.
Sorry I forgot to add "Ok but, were they really inside the square, or just near it?"
Spending the first 7/8ths of your comment dancing around the main issue (at a minimum hundreds, thankfully you at least have to admit to that since those are the official Chinese numbers, potentially thousands, of civilian protestors being killed by the Chinese military), laser focusing on some minor detail like it's a great big gotcha, then brushing the whole thing off at the end with "Yep it's bad, but it happens shrug" is exactly what I'm talking about
I guess I should at least thank you for so deftly illustrating my point though
A few hundred cities across the country is not "near it"
Something like half of the dead were cops or military. You should do some reading about where the weapons that killed them came from. Interesting stuff!
My personal definition would be "authoritarian communist (or """communist""") regime supporters/apologists".
What does this actually mean? Is Nelson Mandela a "tankie" to you? You might think I'm being facetious, but I'm serious. I'll link some photographs and quotes from Mandela that a lot of the capitalists in charge want you to forget:
Show
Show
Show
"I read works by and about Che Guevara, Mao Tse-tung, Fidel Castro. In Edgar Snow’s brilliant Red Star Over China I saw that it was Mao’s determination and non-traditional thinking that had led him to victory."
“The revolution in China was a masterpiece, a real masterpiece. If you read how they fought that revolution, you believe in the impossible. It’s just miraculous.”
"From its earliest days, the Cuban Revolution has also been a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people. We admire the sacrifices of the Cuban people in maintaining their independence and sovereignty in the face of the vicious imperialist-orchestrated campaign to destroy the impressive gain made in the Cuban Revolution."
"Within that international support for our struggle the Soviet Union and other socialist countries stood out. The governments and peoples of the socialist bloc gave material, moral and political support to our struggle in a manner and on a scale that we will never be able to repay."
So again, does this make Nelson Mandela a "tankie"? If so, what does it say about "tankies " and the west, in that the so called "tankies" supported Mandela in the fight against apartheid, while the west did not. In fact, the west often supported apartheid. Even Antony Blinken admitted to that recently.
"The Soviet Union was supportive of the freedom forces in South Africa, and of course unfortunately, more than unfortunately, the United States was much too sympathetic to the apartheid regime, so that history also doesn’t get erased, you know, overnight, it's a process," Blinken said.
I guess I just don't see much benefit in fraternizing with them, the optics on it are bad (see: hexbear being labeled and dismissed as a tankie instance), and if they're the ones who ultimately win, things historically have not gone well for the anarchists and anyone else who values personal liberties
I thought it was all the tankies from your instance flooding the fediverse with their tankie rhetoric, but it's nice that you're giving me the sole power to warp the public image
What's a tankie?
I think it's someone who does a lot of nitrous oxide at Phish concerts
Of course I know a tankie it's me.
My personal definition would be "authoritarian communist (or """communist""") regime supporters/apologists". I think a good litmus test is, if the topic of the Tiananmen Square massacre comes up, and their first input is "Ok, but, how many zeroes did the number of dead civilians really have", they're probably too far gone to bother engaging much with
Too many anarchist/commune types consider the authoritarians to be their allies because they also hate the capitalists, right up until the point they're next on the list of undesirables destined for the wall
Ok so a tankie is anyone who questions the baseless assertions of western regimes, the truth isn't actaully important to you, what matters is whether someone upholds obvious falsehoods and reinforces state propaganda but from the west
Got ya buddy
I forgot to add "struggles with reading comprehension", that's also a big indicator
"Reading comprehension" is when you accept everything you read at face value, I'm not really surprised that's something you believe
I didn't call anyone a tankie, a whole bunch of people from hexbear sure did show up feeling incredibly offended by my description of tankies though, if they want to out themselves like that, that's on them
No, most of us are tankies. We think using tanks on Hungarian fascists was cool and good.
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I would hope there's not too many useful idiots who think left unity will get them anything but a free ride to a "re-education" camp
You talk about having reading comprehension like it's the ultimate skill in understanding yet you're talking about re-education camps as if they're an existing thing for that matter. You should get some media literacy skills before you go around acting smug about knowing how the world works
You realize that even in the wildest fantasies of Xi Jinping's biggest fans, every single Western capitalist country is generations away from revolution? We can do left unity because 0.000% of communism or anarchism have been built, and the early stages of building either involve the same goals: getting workers to stand in solidarity with each other instead of fighting over petty trivial nonsense like "tankies" online. There is literally 0 harm that so called "authoritarians" pose to other leftists, in fact the same leftists who clutch their pearls over "tankies" tend to be the ones defending imperialism and the imposition of western economic hegemony on the imperial periphery (as long as they get healthcare!). What is more authoritarian and useful-idiot-esque than that?
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👏 Then 👏 read 👏 the 👏 Wiki 👏 page 👏
Because that will tell you the answer is 1. One zero. Because the number of dead civilians in the Tiananmen Square Massacre is zero. No civilian deaths there. Nada. Read the wiki page, it will tell you no deaths. This information brought to you by such Commies as:
Were there a limited number of deaths in protests elsewhere that wasn't Tiananmen? Yep, about 2-3 hundred across a few hundred cities. And that's bad! But is also pretty dang small relative to the protest size, and happens in all major protests in all countries everywhere.
This is and has always been a red herring. It's irrelevant if people were killed in the square or in the streets around the square. People were killed in Beijing by the Chinese military in order to suppress the protests. End of story.
Well, A massive, purposeful, misinformation campaign by the western governments and news sites that had claimed that there were no deaths in the square in the past and then changed their narrative all of a sudden, would, to me, suggest that these entities might also be misreprenting or lying about the other events. The story obviously does not end there.
Yes, Western media can definitely not be trusted. Better to get the real story from the secretive, authoritarian government that heavily suppresses speech and directly controls its major media outlets.
Dang I hate secretive governments, can you direct me to a western government that exposes all of its internal communications and doesn't have a huge amount of "former" state agents in major media publications?
edit: folks, I have had my weekend water on a Monday
You're right, there isn't a single Western country that has a freer press than China. In fact, China may be the world's last bastion of open information and free speech.
Except China doesn't squeal about how free their press is all the time- that's America and the west at large, all of whose media is owned by wealthy people.
There were some Western news outlets that lied about the events and propagated false information, and there were some that that did not.
The fact that Western media outlets cannot be blindly trusted does not mean that the Chinese state controlled media can. The Chinese state has a lot more incentive to lie about the events than independent news orgs do.
You should read Manufacturing Consent.
I have and I think that there is validity to the propoganda model.
But the propoganda model does not say that all reporting by Western media is false, only that Western media has a hidden bias. But while Western media has an underlying bias to shape a narrative that fits the interests of the wealthy, Chinese state media has an overt and explicit bias to push the narrative in a direction that fits the interests of the state.
So why would I be more skeptical of western reporting on the incident?
you really think their bias is in your favor?
Wild, when I read or watch literally any popular western media I find the bias overwhelmingly explicit and overt. It's almost like you're too deep in the propaganda to claim any perspective outside of it.
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Sources from around the world say China behaved badly; Chinese state media says China did not behave badly. Sources debunked!
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Sorry I forgot to add "Ok but, were they really inside the square, or just near it?"
Spending the first 7/8ths of your comment dancing around the main issue (at a minimum hundreds, thankfully you at least have to admit to that since those are the official Chinese numbers, potentially thousands, of civilian protestors being killed by the Chinese military), laser focusing on some minor detail like it's a great big gotcha, then brushing the whole thing off at the end with "Yep it's bad, but it happens shrug" is exactly what I'm talking about
I guess I should at least thank you for so deftly illustrating my point though
A few hundred cities across the country is not "near it" Something like half of the dead were cops or military. You should do some reading about where the weapons that killed them came from. Interesting stuff!
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My impression was that you guys were supposed to be more eloquent than this
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What does this actually mean? Is Nelson Mandela a "tankie" to you? You might think I'm being facetious, but I'm serious. I'll link some photographs and quotes from Mandela that a lot of the capitalists in charge want you to forget:
So again, does this make Nelson Mandela a "tankie"? If so, what does it say about "tankies " and the west, in that the so called "tankies" supported Mandela in the fight against apartheid, while the west did not. In fact, the west often supported apartheid. Even Antony Blinken admitted to that recently.
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I guess I just don't see much benefit in fraternizing with them, the optics on it are bad (see: hexbear being labeled and dismissed as a tankie instance), and if they're the ones who ultimately win, things historically have not gone well for the anarchists and anyone else who values personal liberties
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I thought it was all the tankies from your instance flooding the fediverse with their tankie rhetoric, but it's nice that you're giving me the sole power to warp the public image
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No but it sure doesn't help their public image willingly occupying the same spaces and appearing alongside them