I don't like spending this much time arguing against campism but they just keep talking at me.
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
1) Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
2) No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
3) Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
4) No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
5) No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
I struggle with the term "Tankie". Who is a Tankie? What makes them a Tankie? What makes them so frustrating? This term feels so vague that it just makes it easy lump all leftists into the term.
As far as I can tell, you're a leftist if you're not unpleasant to deal with and you're a Tankie if I find you unpleasant.
It sounds like some Boogeyman I've never seen or spoken to but I'm obligated to dismiss everything they say even tho I've never seen one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
If they have a god damn wiki definition, I'm not sure where you think its vauge. You just literally never looked.
wikipedia, lmao, I could go in there and change the definition, lol.
Hear that? Thats goal posts moving.
You went from no definition, to not liking mine. Instead of clicking on any cited sources, you closed off.
Go ahead, change it, see how well that actually works and how wikipedia is actually moderated.
Yeah, exactly and also if you mention the Gaza genocide on Wikipedia without putting in a billion allegeds then you'll also be banned, the article you linked even admits the definition has changed throughout history to refer to different things.
It even has a section on how its used on the internet!
Its almost like language isnt static, and has history beyond a one line deffitnition!
You are systematically dismantling your own arguments. "Tankie" is vague because it's a word for a label and the underlying concept being referred to can be very different when different people say it.
Also, my original point was that op didn't look for a definition and just decided to bitch about it. Not about a specific definition.
And thats true for a lot of the English langagr.
In fact it can even be geographical, like the word faggot. But its still clear when its a slur and when its a cigarette.
There's the entire history and usage on that page for you.
Not all leftists blindly support Russia or China just because they're anti-western. Tankies seem to ignore all the evil shit Russia does just because they're not the U.S./E.U/Israel.
Ok but we all agree that the US/Israel is the greatest evil on Earth right? Like sure Russia does bad stuff, but like the US is worse.
The point is it's not a contest, and we should be opposed to it no matter which country is doing it.
Yeah but if your goal is to bring the most good to the world, you'll get closer to your goal by fighting against the US than you will fighting against Russia.
"Lesser evil!"
"No! Not like that!"
That's only true if a stronger Russia somehow would be a better country than a strong USA. There's absolutely FUCK ALL to suggest that's remotely true.
It also a false dichotomy. You can hate Russias imperialism AND USAs imperialism.
Imperialism isn't a policy that states have, it's a global system of extraction from poorer countries into the countries that control most of the finance capital on Earth, it's not "big country goes to war with smaller country." Russia does not control global finance, global finance will pretty much always be their enemy. A stronger Russia (if it was still a semi-periphery country) probably would be better than a strong US, you're underestimating just how terrible the US is, and you're comparing apples to oranges, because the US is a country in the imperial core and its bourgeoisie control capital on an international scale, the bourgeoisie of Russia have almost no power outside of their country.
The concept of imperialism that you're using was first used popularly by Lenin, and it was an economic definition that described a global system. You should learn what unequal exchange is and what super-exploitation is, I think they're good concepts. Also read Neocolonialism by Kwame Nkrumah.
Again, you're making this into a two-sided contest between two huge turds. I don't choose either of them. I choose to fight the bad ideas and behaviors they're known for, at all scales and in all walks of life, regardless of comparisons between them.
They're both guilty of imperialism on a world wide scale and all the evils that includes, but aside from it's early days the US has generally been a better neighbour by pointing their evil overseas, Russia has largely been a menace to it's neighbours in every era of history. I would say that's the biggest difference.
Meanwhile, non-tankies blindly ignore the evil shit the west does on a much larger global scale and blindly accept the western narratives about Russia and China just because they’re too propagandized to realize they’re being lied to and misinformed. Not sure who the “blind” ones in this scenario are.
I'll keep saying this:
One side is a hyper-financialized economy of almost only consumers, which sits at the endpoint of the most global supply chains, devouring on a scale that is devastating the planet, pushing the environmental and human cost of that production on the global south, and who basically only export loans, monopoly priced essential goods, and IPs back to the rest of the world, that feeds their surplus production into an enormous military industrial complex that they use to force this global extraction system on the rest of the world.
While the other "side", we'll start with Russia, is an impoverished hellhole place to live in that has been economically gutted, and now has been fighting a war against Ukraine that has been going on for over 12 years, a war that is being used to throw the entire military might of NATO member states against, not to liberate Ukraine, but to try to use the opportunity to fight a proxy war directly against Russia, and the real goal is to bleed out Russia so it submits again to other side and they can put in a new dictator in charge that they can actually control this time. (I, for one, remember the time when Putin was their neoliberal darling.) Supporting Russia is a bit like supporting Saddam, you shouldn't support Saddam, the Ba'athists were morally corrosive (maybe too unfairly bad for this analogy, actually), but you definitely shouldn't support the US military and their allied countries in the Iraq war. (Like if you want to support the people of Ukraine, do it in a way that doesn't feed into the war, like hunger relief, or humanitarian aid.)
And China hasn't been at war with any other country since the Korean war. I guess China just kinda sits there, menacingly, as they build their productive capacity. And they're against Taiwan (which literally calls itself the "Republic of China" btw), but I don't think they do anything at all other than negotiate and respond in kind when the US moves more ships and drones there. Then there's the Uyghur stuff and the Tibet stuff, which I know there is probably a kernel of truth to, but I think that's up to people in China to deal with, and definitely won't be solved by like the US sending aid there, because again, when the imperial core does these things it isn't actually about the people, it's about exploiting the problems countries those countries have in order to tear them apart.
Keep coping.
The term originally comes from a divide amongst Anglo communists between those who supported the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, and those who were critical. The tankies were the ones who supported “sending in the tanks.” These days it’s a disparaging term for any authoritarian socialists.
The tankies were correct.
https://www.joewrote.com/p/jfk-files-reveal-the-cia-role-in
A Tankie is anyone who self-identifies as a Tankie.
I don't apply the term to folks as insult, I'm just acknowledging people who choose to identify as such.
Anarchists and what would become social democrats were calling Marx an authoritarian socialist during the 1st International. This is not new. This debate has existed for at least 160 years, just let that sink in, we haven't come to an agreement on this stuff for 160 years.