I forgot to set a reminder so I’m a little late getting to this, but here we are again:
Are you a “tankie”?
Respond “yes” or “no”, I’ll collate results later
This process is being undertaken to determine if so-called “tankies” are conspiring to make you (yes, you) have a bad time on the internet!
vague or informal answers will be interpreted by the central authority (me). Only top level comments will be counted. I will not be providing further instructions or clarifications.
🤯
Link to previous results (very serious) hexbear / lemmy,ml
Link to previous “are you a tankie?” thread
I’ll likely check back in a week, my old pc died so itll take a little bit of time to prettify the results and write a report
Ciao, and of course, imperialism must be destroyed.
Tankie is when a third worlder socialist shares the most Milquetoast leftist opinion.
“Tankies” don’t exist.
People who unironically use the word “tankie” would say it’s someone who uncritically supports communist governments, but if you ever look at someone using it, it’s always because they are uncritically against all communist governments and so they interpret nuance or historical understanding as blind loyalty to communism.
Probably? At least in the sense that I’ve managed to gather from the very confused online arguments about the term. I’m a communist. While I’d love it if we could all peacefully vote our way into a better society, I recognize that it’s probably not going to happen and whatever nastiness we’d have to do to actually make the change is worth moving past the endless awfulness that is capitalism. And for the existing countries, while they’re not magical Christmas lands, I’ve learned they’re not quite as bad as the capitalists have fear- mongered.
And I get Anarchists thinking it’s states all the way down but…………. I don’t know what to tell you. What’s the alternative? Even if I want to get where you’re going, how do we get there? Where is the bus/train? I don’t see any running to get there.
Hey comrade, have you considered making an account on Lemmy.ml, Lemmygrad.ml, or Hexbear.net? Lemmy.world censors communist content, so you might at least prefer something like Lemmy.zip that can see the content communists are posting.
How does that work? I assumed one Lemmy account covered everything. Where do I go for each of these?
Lemmy instances are kinda like islands, but you can visit and see other islands that are on good terms, or “federated.” Federation can be one-way, ie you can see and comment on another instance’s posts but they can’t see yours, or it can be two-way, and you can comment back and forth. You are on Lemmy.world’s view of a Lemmy.ml post. There are comments from Hexbear and Lemmygrad users on this post that I can see, but you can’t, like this one.
Lemmy.world is defederated from Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml, the two biggest communist instances. In order to see their content and interact with their users, you need an account on an instance like those two, or Lemmy.ml, Lemmy.zip, etc. You don’t need one for each instance, just one federated with what you want to see.
Does that make sense?
So I just pick one of them and I’m good? Any suggestion which one to pick? Just the biggest?
EDIT: Also, am I able to just be logged into both so I can see both sides at the same time or do I have to swap back and forth if I want to check out world or the commy instances?
Well, what is it that you want? Do you want one account that can see almost everything? Lemmy.zip or Lemmy.ml would be better than Lemmy.world, and you can chat with Hexbear and Lemmygrad users as well as Lemmy.world users that way. Do you just want to talk with communists? Lemmygrad.ml or Hexbear.net might be a better fit, you won’t be able to interact with Lemmy.world that way. You can see Lemmy.world content and comment on it from Grad, but they can’t see your content. Hexbear defederated from .world so it doesn’t even show up.
Personally, I use all 3 depending on what I want to do.
I recommend checking out this guide by a good Lemmygrad comrade!
Thanks. Do only some of the instances have an old version? I see one for lemmy.zip but it doesn’t show up for ml or lemmygrad.
I think? Not actually sure, really!
A communist isn’t a tankie per sé. Tankies are people who blindly follow authoritarians of a communist regime and defend/deny the gruesome acts committed by said authoritarians. The idea behind communism is a valid one. In a perfect world, communism would lead to the star Trek utopia. Problem is, assholes will always take advantage and turn everything to shit. I still prefer communism over the heap of flaming shit most of the world lives in.
Tankie is a pretty cool sounding word, so yes.
yes
Yes
(Or at least I hope so lol)
So you’re cool with what happened at tiananmen square? Or maybe you deny anything bad happened there? Because that’s what being a tankie is all about. Tankie != Communist.
Ok so Tiananmen square had two main elements in the protest:
- Liberals who wanted to go down the US Road entirely instead of just the Dengist approach.
- Maoists who wanted to revert the Dengist reforms entirely.
I have way more sympathy for the second group than I do the first. A more ideal path would have been a re-education of the first group and an integration of the second group into the CPC more directly, but unfortunately this did not occur as protestors became militant.
This is not to excuse the CPC response of course; even in the face of political violence, even reactionary political violence from the first group, the military should have as light of a hand as possible in response, and I don’t think this was abided by in the events of 1989. However, I do think it was correct to suppress this movement in the first place in some capacity. The alternative would probably be colour revolution. Look at places like Venezuela and Nepal and Bolivia; they haven’t purged their reactionary elements upon socialists reaching power and capitalist coups/regime change become inevitable.
They were literally lynching soldiers of the PLA, that shit had to be stopped.
Yes.
That answer is only for my own country America, I do not have strong opinions for other areas and countries.
And I realize the term is broad, and gives connotations I do not intend.
A socialist movement that is backed by force, and not using democratic methods, would save far more lives than it would destroy.
Americans do not understand democracy because they do not understand, at a fundamental level, that ballot counts need to be witnessed and recounts always allowed.
They cannot be taught that. This removes reform by democracy.
But when reform is imposed on by force there are many who would disagree . So the revolution would need to defend itself. That means time and time again, this would happen repeatedly. And the cost would be horrible.
Of course my preferred solution would raise new problems, and a rise of a new elite would have to countered, and history shows that is hard. But I think because tens of millions of Americans will die if this revolution not happen, then it’s worth it
“In many cases, to avoid conflict is to prolong suffering”
-Ture
no
I don’t know enough about what happened in Hungary to even form an opinion on it and it isn’t at all relevant to today. But I do have actual principles and oppose imperialism, so other instances will say so anyway.
I don’t think so, I like USSR as a response to imperialism, current China is quite cool in many ways, but I don’t automatically support whatever governments agrees on just cuz they’re better than their competition.
Also Karl Marx was kinda genius, but not sure how he uses violence in his theory, of course a political theory must contain a corner for violence, but it is hard for me to trace what exactly was Marx’s exact plan.no
No. But my anarchist friends consider me one. Also I don’t consider the term tankie to be synonymous with communist or socialist.
If there were no meddling from the imperialist special interest abroad, there would have been no need for the tanks. Unfortunately the siege is ever present and ubiquitous.
“Tankie” isn’t synonymous with communist in the same way “pinko” isn’t, both are just pejoratives for communists.
No.
I’m an anarchist. I organize with Anti-authoritarian Communist though since most anarchist here are batshit 😅
I don’t think so but I have been called it. So from my perspective no. from other peoples perspective. yes. From what I think a tankie would be (full communist workers own the means of prodcution who then says russia or such is in the right direction) no. I mean I doubt they look at me as one of their own. I sorta doubt tankies like the term though if per se. I mean there is a difference between feeling that karl marx writings are correct and outlays a way for society to run and saying nk, china, and russia are doing a bang up job.
No communist thinks the Russian Federation is socialist, at most there is critical support in that the RF opposes the US Empire and the west as well as maintaining strong ties with socialist countries, but most communists do support the PRC and by extension the efforts of the CPC to develop a robust socialist system.
As for “tankies,” many label themselves as such as more of a joke, or to disempower the term. The actual pejorative though is fairly meaningless.
Yeah I think that when it comes down to it tankie is basically an insult to those that use it as a label and means whatever they want it to. So on the one side I will talk about how renting is not bad when the person who “owns” property lives there and get a lot of flak. I equally get flak when I talk about how property ownership is sorta an illusion given with taxes and such everyone rents from the government in some shape or form along with the fact that the government has to control an area and recognize the ownership for there to be ownership.
So on the one side I will talk about how renting is not bad when the person who “owns” property lives there and get a lot of flak.
I’m a former owner-occupant of a multi-unit property. This is a textbook petit bourgeois assertion, the kind of thing that Bernie Sanders might say. He’ll rail against crony capitalism and über capitalism but not per se capitalism. Petit capitalism as a treat inevitably leads to the haute capitalism and oligarchy we suffer under today.
If you’re meandering around support for capitalism, you’re not a communist, so I wouldn’t think “tankie” would apply to you.
I will talk about how renting is not bad when the person who “owns” property lives there and get a lot of flak.
nah it’s great being treated like a second class citizen by a fucking parasite with a part time job
Aigh’t, while i don’t believe in the premise of communism in human civilisation, i think socialism, without it getting over the freedom of people, is one of the way to ensure the future of humanity.
I believe a balanced amount of anarchism and socialism can, for a medium sized population, be good and sustainable on the long run.
Tho to be honest, i don’t know enough in politics to say an answer.
Why do you think this hypothetical solution is a good idea, and why not communism?
Because pure communism breaks as soon as you have more than a few hundreds of people living together, in my opinion.
We are not ants, and we as a specie are doing things more for ourselves than for others.
A hypothetical society wanting to approach to the closest version of communism would need to be terribly authoritarian and selective, and would be very vulnerable to non workers pushing down the economy. To live in communism means to not let freedom to the workers. It is as unsustainable as fordism.
I don’t know what you mean by “pure” communism. Communism is a mode of production based on collectivized production and distribution, it isn’t a religious vow. Humans are indeed not ants, I don’t see why you think people being self-interested gets in the way of collectivized and planned production and distribution. As for scale, communism works far better at larger scales, and I would say necessarily requires it. I think you may be confusing communism with communalism.
I don’t know what you mean by needing to be “authoritarian to non-workers,” especially because that’s the default in capitalism unless you’re a capitalist. You can have social safety nets while still having the labor necessary to keep society functioning and thriving.
Where did you get this idea of communism?
Looked up on an encyclopedia, i admit i have been actually confusing communism with communalism, or communism at its primal sense. I had the idea that communism is the abolishment of private property and the equal repartition of remuneration between people, wether they work hard or not. Kind of like the functionning of ants. Simply got this idea from high school honestly (heh).
Though, if communism is only about collectivised production and distribution, i can see why it would be interesting to successfully implement it.
Honestly, i haven’t got a good enough knowledge of political alignments yet to be able to answer your question correctly, thank you for making me understand that. Do you reccomand any reads/authors who approached this topic?
Funny you ask, I actually made an entire Marxist-Leninist introductory reading list! It’s designed to introduce key concepts and take you from no knowledge of political theory whatsoever into becoming a good cadre in any ML org. You obviously don’t need the whole thing, though, you can just read or listen to section 0a and you’ll be more than good, even just the first half of the section.
Communism, essentially, is economically compelled by the existing trends of capitalism, ie centralization of markets around a few firms and sprawling production and supply chains, as well as capitalism’s contradictions, like overproduction leading to crisis and the struggle between workers and owners (workers want more for their labor, owners want to pay them less). Collectivized production and distribution has a number of ways to account for labor and resource management, it’s far more complex than just getting everything for free.
Let me know if you have any questions!
Enlightened socialcentrism.
No
