Man, I really appreciate this post and I think tankies are absolutely authoritarian turd burglars. Calling them red fascists is fine and maybe that’s how history will know them.

I know there’s a lot of diverse thought on what makes a fascist and many definitions try to distinguish it from run of the mill genocidal authoritarianism.

That’s why I chose to distinguish tankies and fascists. I broadly think they have different goals, beliefs and methodologies, though the damage they’ve wrought is remarkably similar. At the end of the day, if we look at results, it’s probably just as fair to lump them in together.

[–] dannoffs@lemmy.sdf.org 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't like lumping them together because in my experience current tankies tend to be people who want good things, but are wrong about large chunks of history and current events. Fascists just want power and to enforce oppression so go with whatever story or lie they think will get them there as truth is immaterial to them.

[–] blightbow@kbin.social -1 points 1 year ago

tankies tend to be people who want good things,

That also describes civilians living in Germany during Hitler's reign. They were swept along with the populist zeal until they found their children passively picking up racial slurs and their neighbors competing to report on each other. This is why it's important to focus not just on the end result of Nazi fascism (the Holocaust), but the path that led there and the parallels that can be found in modern day societies. (both western and eastern)

[–] Nadya@kbin.social 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Tankies isn't a cute catch-all term for Communists who do have various goals, beliefs, and methodologies of how to transition to, create, and maintain a Communist state. They're Stalinists and/or Maoists who deny well-documented genocides and claim that everything against their ideology is a Western conspiracy theory and the only correct sources of information come from Russia and/or China. In a similar way that Neo-Nazi's claim everything is a Jewish conspiracy theory and the only correct sources of information come from their biased as all hell Alt-Right/Neo-Nazi sources like Stormfront.

This is the exact type of ignorance that I'm talking about when I say people defend Tankies because they were taught the Holocaust in school but never taught about the Holodomor.

E: "The US government is evil so the people the US says are the bad guys must actually be the good guys and are undoubtedly correct about everything. There is no such thing as CCP or Soviet propaganda - that's propaganda from the CIA. Read this article from the CCP explaining it all."