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As a leftist its also important to keep in mind we do differentiate between leftists who hold some opinions we disagree with compared to a Liberal who disagrees with us on nearly everything. Especially when said Liberals demand to be treated like leftists yet support imperalism, genocide, apartheid, capitalism, bigotry, and yet constantly call people "fake leftists" or "tankies".
You had me until "tankies". Tankies are scum and don't need defending.
It's not about defending tankies it's about people who are constantly shifting the focus of conversation to the most mockable section of online lefties.
The ruling class don't waste their time distancing themselves from qanon, they focus on furthering their class interests and emiserating the poor.
Liberals who are constantly calling people tankies are helping the ruling class.
I'm not taking cues from the far-right in not denouncing our worst aspects when I see them and letting them take up shop in our spaces. I don't see the need to whataboutism to them either and will call that out, but I don't want them in spaces I'm in either.
No one's defending tankies, nor saying we shouldn't call them out. The original commenter was saying liberals call all manner of leftists "tankies" when they actually aren't in order to derail them.
The next commenter stated: "The ruling class don’t waste their time distancing themselves from qanon, they focus on furthering their class interests and emiserating the poor." Distancing themselves includes calling them out. So it sounds to me like they're saying we need to be pragmatic like the ruling class and not distance ourselves from tankies, which is absolutely not something I'm ever going to do for those slimeballs. Actively doing it like some sort of performance apropos of nothing? Sure, maybe not. But if a tankie ever tries to associate with us, they need to be given the boot over their disgusting ideals.
I'm saying the need to instantly and constantly denounce tankies is tedious and counterproductive. I'm saying that policing the boundaries of leftism based on dumb shit said online is a reactionary distraction.
It's a common strategy used to distract from the core issues. It's like when supporters of israel go "but do you condemn hamas?!" or "oh, I notice you don't criticize hamas as much (therefore you must support them)"
I feel like you thought they were disagreeing with you, when they were pointing out the hypocrisy of Liberals but I dunno...
What's a tankie?
It's a political slang word. It refers to those who support leftist authoritarian regimes such as communist, China. Regimes where the state can do no wrong and the people do all the wrong so the state must step in to crush the people and "protect them" from dangerous, Western and capitalist ideas. Pretty sure the name derives from the 1989 tiananmen square incident.
The term has nothing to do with Tiananmen square and it's usage actually predates the massacre by almost 40 years.
Yeah you're right. I was for some reason conflating the USSR invading Hungary
You cant use your favorite strawman argument? How sad
And how do we do that?
This is the internet, everyone is as anonymous as they want to be. Lots of people find these posts by browsing by All, so they're not likely to be aware of (or care about) the rules for a particular instance. If a Liberal and a Leftist wander into the same community, it can be hard to tell them apart unless they've made politics their whole identity.
Its pretty simple, do you support genocide?
It's a strange state of affairs, there is a right wing recruitment pipeline deticated to making fun of liberals for being "cringe but also wrong"™.
An interesting experament you can do, replace "leftist", "the left" and "liberal" with "SJW" (swap the insider and outsider language) and ask yourself how much and in what interesting ways does the sentimate of the post change.
Damn SJWs supporting checks notes imperialism and capitalism
Maybe I’m in a bubble, but I have yet to see anyone who’s not genuinely a tankie being accused of such.
Ive seen people be called tankies for not supporting Kamala and opposing Liberal Democracy
for not supporting Kamala
That’s wild. I’ve never heard that take and have a difficult time believing that it is common.
opposing Liberal Democracy
What alternative were they in favor of?
That’s wild. I’ve never heard that take and have a difficult time believing that it is common.
World users were literally calling anyone who critiqued Kamala Russian bots, were you not paying attention for the last several months?
What alternative were they in favor of?
Depends, some leftists support a workers democracy, im personally an Anarcho Syndicalist
World users
Ah. I think I see where the problem is. I believe my instance defederated from
lemmy.worlda while back.You arent missing out on much
I've seen conservatives lob the word tankie around before like they do with other scary sounding political words. But not here on lemmy. "Tankie" has a very precise meaning on lemmy that everyone here seems to understand, despite a few tankies trying to gaslight people into thinking the term has "lost it's meaning".
For those who don't know what it means, what is "clear definition of tankie"?
someone who claims to be leftist but tacitly or gleefully supports authoritarianism, imperialism, or violent repression. Many are easily identifiable by their pointing to places that are not The West™️ and smoothing over, apologizing for, or denying, blatant horrors on the basis that they are unfriendly with the west. sometimes called red fascists.
It's actually important to ostracize these people as they are obviously the most blatant opportunists in leftist movements looking to implement authoritarian repressive regimes.
claims to be leftist but tacitly or gleefully supports authoritarianism, imperialism, or violent repression.
including those resisting US evil? Not supporting a war on Russia is tankie, because being too stupid to not understand we the people lose, and Russia needs to defend itself, is not as important as believing US propaganda that Russian leadership is evil for defending itself?
on the brightside ya'll normally just can't resist outing yourselves.
Is there a name for leftists that believe everyone deserves every war the US tells them is a "strategic imperative"? Even the ones where they use motivated nazis and very illiberal Islamist rulers?
Doubt it.
Spoken like a true lib who hasn't grabbed a history book in their lives. You have done exactly ZERO study of this so-called "authoritarianism", its characteristics, actual comparisons with western systems, and the reasons for certain degrees of oppression in different systems. Your entire analysis is vibes-based, and doesn't hold up to the slightest scrutiny, and leads you to being on the side of the US Department of State propaganda on 99% of occasions. Remember, people called us tankies 20 years ago for opposing the invasion of Iraq, because "Saddam is a rabid dog".
really searching for straws to grasp here eh?
"I'm a leftist, and I proudly support 0 historical leftist movements which actually achieved anything"
wild leaps of logic, care to show your work? i could use entertainment
Winning is authoritarian. Everything makes more sense when you understand that this is where the opposition to "authoritarianism" comes from.
It's how you can denounce movements that win, while suggesting the left uses tactics that lose. It is a meaningless word that means successful deviation from the desires of the West.
Bingo. The only "worthy" leftist movements in these people's minds are the ones that failed, because they weren't tested under real world conditions. Anarchism in the Spanish civil war, Allende, those are fine to glorify because they ultimately lost, and that way you can keep your moral high ground and standards by worshipping an idealised version of them rather than real-life socialism with material and historical costraints
In a nutshell, alternative-imperialists with a leftist bent. They're hypocrites. "Imperialism is evil...with these exceptions, those empires are cool".
It's frustrating trying to talk with tankies, because really I agree with practically all of their criticisms of the US and a few criticisms of NATO and the West at large. But then that gets turned around into a justification for X formerly-socialist country drafting soldiers to invade sovereign country "Y" with practically unanimous resistance, and I just don't see how the hell that's supposed to help the working class of either state.
yet support imperalism, genocide, apartheid, capitalism, bigotry
Yeah as a liberal I resent this. Im against all of these things except that I believe that the world is capitalist and would probably not be really any different even with a sudden communist takeover. Power corrupts any system just like it always has so you need safegaurds and checks that our system did have until everyone decided to throw out baby with the bath water
There are ideas i like that are communist(social programs, centralized production, not a huge fan of not owning my own stuff, but i dont think businesses should really own land), but i believe there is a lot of resistance to it and a slow burn towards utopia is a more fruitful endeavor.
not a huge fan of not owning my own stuff
Communism is when I own your toothbrush. Hand it over liberal.
Come and get it 😄
Have you heard of Market Socialism?
An idea with merits but again corruptable. Profits still exist but they go back to the cooperativee? The co-op would have to be uncorruptable or it would end up just like a corporation
Consider syndicalism, a free market of worker ran (and owned) syndicates (buisnesses).
safegaurds and checks that our system did have
Uh... Assuming you're from the west. The US was founded on slavery and genocide, and western Europe got to where it is through colonialism. What checks and safeguards did our countries ever have?
Checks and balances, regulation and with a united constituency you would have more accountable politicians. Instead we got the left and right doing the splits so hard we got the rich lefties hopping ship to the right
Again, never had such thing as "accountable politicians" in the west, we're founded on colonialism, slavery and genocide. We've never had these "balances and regulations" that you talk about, otherwise the people in charge for the invasion of Vietnam, Iraq, the bombing of Libya and of Yugoslavia, and an honestly endless list of atrocities carried out by the west, would have suffered consequences