• MapleEngineer@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Tankies are angry leftists. They’re the alt-left that the extreme right always complains about. I suspect that many of them are actually neo-Nazi trolls trying to prove that they aren’t so bad by cosplaying as tankies. They’re bad faith actors.

    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’m an angry leftist, but I ain’t no tankie. I’m pissed cause I’m middle aged, and have been dealing with over a century of outright lies from the rich.

      • MapleEngineer@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        I’m a pragmatic leftist. I know that being angry and demanding the murder of all rich people and government officials isn’t going to happen. We need to get organized like the christofascists are and use the system. Until we do the christofascists will continue to rise.

        • Guns4Gnus@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          The only reason I fear revolution is because I fear if my side wins, we’ll govern peacetime as we would during war.

          Really becomes hard to judge who your allies are when things get ugly, and there are way too many covert narcissists that know how to game their way to control.

          • MapleEngineer@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            There won’t be a revolution in Canada. If the tankies try there are only two possible outcomes. The tankies ends up in prison or the tankies end up dead. Your taking about using a few Gravy Seals with military style guns against a national armed forces and police that number in the hundreds of thousands with real military weapons, APCs, tanks, planes, etc. A bunch of military fetishist with murder fantasies don’t stand a chance. It’s all fun and games until a bullet rips through one of your comrades chests and it becomes obvious that they’re shooting white people.

            Just ask Ashley Babbit and the idiots that were around her when she died. The attack on the Senate wasn’t as fun after that happened.

    • admiralteal@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Tankie is all about embracing the tanks. They’re the authoritarian left.

      Primary beliefs (all stupid and wrong): the Soviets and People’s Liberation Army can do/did no wrong. Russia is still Soviet and still the good guys. Ukraine is a conspiracy from the West that is actually Nazi. Any geopolitical problems are the fault of the West who behaves as a complete bloc and is literally only motivated by the capital interest of billionaires. Africa and the subcontinent are the world good guys (just conveniently ignore literally anything bad that happens there). Lots of Islamophobia.

      As with all authoritarians, it’s all about conspiracy theories. If you try to argue with them, they simply don’t believe counterfactuals or will shift goal posts and start talking about something else entirely.

      Most of the angry leftists you encounter, especially in these parts, lean much more towards anarchism. Very different from tankies.

      • MapleEngineer@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        I’ve been including the ones who want to murder all the rich people and government officials with the tankies even though they don’t want to use tanks.

        • admiralteal@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          You’re not using the word right then. Which will hurt any arguments you make while using it.

          Again, it’s a pejorative all about embracing authoritarianism. The tankies love government officials so long as those government officials follow any kind of communist kayfabe. The tankies are totally okay with billionaire oligarchs in Russia. The tankies would oppose and protest any kind of violence directed against the government’s they like. They adore social hierarchies and loathe western democracy.

          And there are plenty of anarchists that embrace violence.

          Stick with alt-left or more direct pejoratives.

          • MapleEngineer@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            I include them because they are taking about “revolution” and the only way you successfully overthrow a federal government is by force which necessitates the use of tanks even if they haven’t considered the fact that the fetal government is going to fight back with tanks and many, if not all of them, will be killed.

            • admiralteal@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              That’s not what the word means. At all.

              It’s about being on the side of the tanks – specifically the Tienanmen Square tanks. It is literally the opposite of wanting to use tanks to overthrow the government.

              I understand how you’re using it. I’m just warning you that you are very much going your own way with this word and are going to look foolish if you do so.

              • MapleEngineer@lemmy.ca
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                1 year ago

                From Wikipedia:

                Tankie has its origins in British political rhetoric. It has since become a popular pejorative in English-language social media.[22] In 2017, left-wing writer Carl Beijer argued that there are two distinct uses of the term tankie. The original, which was “exemplified in the sending of tanks into Hungary to crush resistance to Soviet communism”. More generally, a tankie is someone who tends to support “militant opposition to capitalism”, and a more modern online variation, which means “something like ‘a self-proclaimed communist who indulges in conspiracy theories and whose rhetoric is largely performative.’”

                • admiralteal@kbin.social
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                  1 year ago

                  Yes, that’s what I said. The tanks are operated by authoritarians AGAINST the rebels. They are not tanks operated by rebels. Tankies will bend any logic to defend and support authoritarian governments so long as they present anti-capitalist.

                  It is all about authoritarianism. If you call an anarchist a “tankie”, you’re going to look like you’re being totally disingenuous.