this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
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Tankie is just a pejorative for those who support existing socialist states.
I have supported socialist states, said positive things about Vietnam and China on countless occasions and never been called a Tankie.
So I think there is a discussion and attitude element to it.
You're a tankie.
Vroom vroom.
I've been called a tankie for saying ACA didn't far enough and was just a conservative plan.
Also seen people called it for saying maybe we should have better public transport. It's been rendered as useless as calling someone woke. Just a meaningless word people use as a slur at this point
Depends on the audience, more than anything. Most socialists aren't going to waste time calling each other a tankie.
The same comment can be interpreted differently based on the author instance by liberals.
Do the same type of comment with an account on .ml and see if people will call you tankie or not.
Hermeneutics in action. Thanks, Losurdo!
What Losurdo wrote related to that? I never read anything from him(I suck at reading important shit).
It's a common throughline in his writing, usually related to how we pervieve information based on our perception of the source. If the US says a country is evil, leftists might be suspicious of this claim and sometimes assume the opposite (to an extent), while conservatives would happily go along with it.
I recall he distinguished between hermeneutics of suspicion and hermeneutics of innocence.
Yep! If Xi Jinping speaks about unity in China, liberals immediately assume he is talking about Han supremacy, while communists will see it more about socialist unity.
Oh that is from him?
Not from him, but he put it to paper in an influential way that made it a salient topic among Marxists, at least among those familiar with Losurdo/Rockhill/etc.