this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2025
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Tankies are right wing
I now think of Tankies as being Alt-Left, just as modern conservatives are Alt-Right. Both are extremists, both are okay to use violent upheaval of society to get their way, both routinely ignore actual facts in favor or alternative ones (bOtH sIdEs SaMe), both are nearly incapable of having any kind of normal conversation without dragging politics into it (just look at any "meme" or "comics" community, especially just after Luigi), both have next to if not fully zero consideration for the other part in any conversation, both use nearly identical methods like "control the conversation" and "gish gallop" and "the card says moops" (from Innuendo Studios' The Alt Right Playbook series, but I notice that the tactics at least apply equally well to the Alt-Left) and so on.
Once you see it... you can't really unsee those similarities. But they aren't quite exactly the same, bc while they both shill for Russia, they use different talking points. So... there's that, for whatever that might be worth (very little imho).
Alt left wants to violently overthrow the tyrants preventing us from having viable public services and having a fair society.
Alt right wants an ethnostate.
Alt right spends hundreds of millions a year astroturfing social media to convince people that authoritarianism isn't an inherently right wing ideology.
I used the word "similarities" rather than "identicalities" for a reason, and not only bc the latter is not a word!:-P
Although take a look at how much "freedom" is available on places such as Reddit, vs. on lemmy.ml, and from the results you can form your own opinion.
For myself though, I think it laughable to consider how China or Russia or North Korea offers more "freedom" (to be sent to war against Ukraine more like it!?) than the capitalist empires of the West. Even a stopped watch is correct twice a day, but the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend.
That's the problem with using such a simplistic term to label people. I think when we say left or right it would be useful to specify which spectrum we're referring to. So if I'd try to define a "tankie", I would say that they are extreme left on the economical spectrum and extreme right on the liberty-authority spectrum.
You cannot be this while praising China or Russia
I've tried telling them that China is the biggest capitalist country in the world. They didn't like that...
In the US companies run the government. In China the government is the company.
Are you a "Hitler was the real socialist" kinda guy?
Probably more of a "Soviet inspired systems aren't socialist" kinda guy.
Hitler, like all authoritarians, was right wing.
Nazism was a religious nationalist movement. Right wing.
Turns out calling yourself a leftists doesn't just make you one.
The officially recognized definition of a Tankie is one who is a strong supporter of communism. Which, I think we all agree is considered a "left" wing ideal.
It's also strongly authoritarian, but it's solidly in the authoritarian left. So people calling others "Tankies" are, in theory, more right-wing than the people they're insulting. It's a left-punching insult.
Usually these people are strong supporters of China and the old Soviet Union and are staunch critics of 'imperialist' nations such as Britain and the USA.
They're supporters of authoritarian dictatorships. Which is distinct from, and frankly incompatible with, the ideals of Communism.
There are definitely those who decided that communism wasn't what it was, at took the label for themselves to try and fool their constituencies into believing their dictatorships were "for the best"... but they were never ideologically communist.
I wouldn't say they're strong supporters of communism per se, rather they're attracted to the material trappings of communism. It's red aesthetic fetishization.
Tankies aren't monolithic, but the fact that so many of them idealize the modern-day imperialist government of Russia (and its right-wing ideology) indicates that they are either misguided or insincere in their stated beliefs. Opposition to the West is given more priority than actual leftism, even if it means endorsing fascism. Putin's Russia represents the closest extant mirror to the idea of the USSR, if not its ideology, so it is idealized as its inheritor rather than its antithesis.
Similar is seen with China and its modern-day embrace of globalism and capital, despite still ostensibly having a communist government. It's all about the aesthetics of the revolution, original intent be damned.
I’m pretty sure between an anarchist and a tankie there should be no question who leans further left and it ain’t the tankie
I mean, it really depends on the qualities that you utilize to define "leftism". The real delineation between the two is their organizational hierarchy and tolerance of authority. Not exactly sure how that is used to determine who's more of a leftist.
Yeah, the communist dictatorships where the government controlled everything and dictated all of everybody's environment down from the national level are pretty light on organizational hierarchy and authoritarianism.
Again the level of authoritarianism isn't definitional in a lot of interpretations of left vs right.
A lot of people claim it to be purely economic, socialism vs capitalism. In this interpretation there are authoritarian and libertarian leaning people on both the right and left.
You will find out that on purely economic terms, the communist countries are remarkably similar to the classical Fascist propositions. They were mostly just forward with the same changes, possibly because the Fascists were killed after WWII and didn't have a lot of time to continue on the changes they started.
(But yes, maybe the Fascists would stop before reaching the same level, we can't know that.)
They are certainly not Right Wing though.
One, there isn't some governing body for the term "Tankie".
Second, the definition of Tankie means supporting China and Russia (TODAY RUSSIA) only because of their authoritarian policies, regardless if it is anywhere adjacent to actual communism or not.
For example, many Tankies will support any action Russia takes (which we've seen with Ukraine) if it opposes "the west". And no one can argue that modern Russia is even kind of communistic.
It's called a dictionary. And even though there are many of them, they agree on the definition. Words mean things. Kinda cool how that works.
That is not how language works
A dictionary describes words and their already existing meaning not governs or creates them.