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cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/c/iasip@sh.itjust.works/p/426876/the-downsides-of-running-a-fediverse-platform
S17E3 "Mac and Dennis Become EMTs"
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this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2025
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The tankies?
Those who literally deny the existence of the massacre in the Tiananmen Square, claiming that "nobody was killed" (or far more rarely, unapologetically stating that if they were, then they deserved it). Basically far-left extremists that exist in a world of "alternative facts" just like conservatives, the common denominator being that and simping for authoritarian regimes.
Words like "consent" tend not to matter to those holding that ideology.
"Tankie" does not come from Tiananmen Square, that is a common misconception. The term "tankie" is 33 years older than the Tiananmen Square massacre.
It originated to describe people who supported the 1956 Soviet Union military intervention in Hungary. Stalin sent in a bunch of T-35 tanks to crush the Hungarian Revolution. He was successful, and thousands of people died in the process.
Ever since then, "tankie" has been used as a derogatory term against Stalinists, Marxist-Leninists, communists, and leftists in general.
To be fair, tanks seem to be a favored tool of these oppressive regimes. I'm personally not against communism, they have some good ideas like universal child care, guaranteed jobs, and housing (even though the latter may be considered sub-par by some). The problem comes when these fucking authoritarian cheerleaders come out and say communist governments were never oppressive.
The "oppression" you're referring to is confiscating the properties of bourgeois capitalists and landlords, and imprisoning them and their accomplices in case of resistance. This confiscation and appropriation by the state is what makes free, universal care and other social benefits possible. It's absurd to expect the features of communism without the policies behind them.
Also, the idea that authoritarian socialist governments just have a sadistic tendency to oppress and torture poor peasants is deeply unserious and a work of imagination created by western capitalist propaganda.
The oppression they’re referring to is shooting at protestors wanting democratic reforms. The comment before that literally gives an example, the least you could do is look into it.
First of all, socialist governments, like any other government, did not use force on protestors unless provoked by seditious behavior (i.e. coup attempt or political unrest), and only in proportion, which was the case in Hungary and in China. Stories about tanks crushing the bodies of protestors is fictitious. Also, the history of the Soviet Union, the PRC and other socialist polities is filled with workers protests that were left unaltered because they are a natural part in the process of building socialism. Thus, the idea that freedom of expression was inexistent under socialism is false, which leads me to my second point.
The claim that the riots in socialist states called for "democratic" reforms is the furthest thing from the truth. In the case of Hungary, the 1956 uprising was orchestrated by the Prime Minister in order to establish a capitalist multi-party system and restore the property of the big landowners after they were purged in the preceding decade and their industries nationalized by the state. If you consider this to be "democracy" then you cannot consider yourself to be a leftist.
Ahh yes, the burgeois sailors of kronstadt.
Source.
Extremists like to use "alternative facts" or whatever other tactics achieve their goals. The means does not matter to them, only the ends, which they feel self-righteously justifies anything to achieve.
And then separately from that, gullible people also exist too. It is a bias that we all could fall prey to, though some of us seem more on guard against it than others.
(Tbf, many of those claiming those alternative facts are quite aware of just how nonfactual they actually are - they simply do not care as power, rather than correctness, is all that there is to them.)
Thats a really interesting bit of history, thank you for the additional context
The term mostly had been invoked by anti-authoritarian leftists derisively toward anyone who still supported the Soviet Union. In time, the usage generalized to apply broadly to authoritarian leftists, such as Marxist-Lenininsts (or Stalinists).
Now is it largely misused by liberals to designate anyone strongly critical of Western imperialism, which includes everyone from anarchists to campists.
I have so many questions. I guess I never viewed as "tankie" as left.
Hell, I consider myself far-left to the point of being a progressive, almost to the point of being an anarchist.
But my reality is rooted in actual facts.
You are in the echochamber though, and you just make shit up pretty much every time I see you post.
The trick is to confidently make shit up. The tactic isn’t unique to Reddit, but it clearly was inherited from that culture.
Talk about tankies long and one always magically appears!
I'm an anarchist, you'll call everyone you don't like tankie
"every position i have is true, you're the brainwashed ones!" ~continues to exclusively read washington post and NYT~
!meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works
The comm of misfit posters used to have a lot of open ideation about purging "degenerates", they've dialed it back a bit ever since I called them out about it.
You guys will call anyone tankie, even anarchists.
Every time I look at the modlog for someone there loudly complaining about 'the tankie triad' there's almost always a ban (often a temp one) for either being a bigot, insulting people, or doing 'both sides bad' about the genocide of Palestinians.
Stop larping as a leftist, nobody believes your BS.
To them anarchists are Tankies for not saying Gaza is filled with rapists. Check goat's ban log from his .zip alt. He legitimately said Gaza is filled with rapists.
MoG is a fascist utopia. They have had actual Nazi dogwhistles upvoted.
Note that the term "tankie" has become an anti-communist trope to demonize any person who's to the left of free universal healthcare.
I've been called a Tankie for saying Democrats should support popular policies to win elections they care about.
Lmao is this all you post about?
Yep, and then wonder why no one likes them.
we need a better topological geometry for these concepts, especially for these wacky edgecase fuckers like tankies. yeah, far left, like, you stand here, I'm going to move to your left until I've come around on the other side of the planet far far far far away left.
imho the vast majority of them are ccp click patriots waiting for the taiwan invasion to kick off.
Hehe, somebody was way ahead of you there...
haha this is fascinating
It seems to work so well 😁
Tiananmen denial is hardly the only qualification for the term. That's an example of typical behavior, not the definition.
It's also far from the worst thing red fascists have done so it's just so weird how hard people focus on it. At least talk about gulags and kulaks sometimes, damn
I find that when people use this term I get suspicious. It could be used to describe authoritarian Stalinists, Maoists, Marxist-Leninists, or just communists/socialists in general. I wish that posters would be more specific, because everyone and their mother has a different definition of "tanky". It often comes across as a thought-terminator. I'm not up to speed on the Lemmy beef, so I have no idea who's right, but I've seen like 10 posts about tankies and none of them really defined the term, which is very frustrating.
Tankie would be ml or militant left
It’s a pejorative used for anti-leftist authoritarians who unironically insist their extreme-rightist ideals are somehow leftist.
Ooh they hated that one
It originally was an insult used by communists against other communists to refer to people who supported the Soviet intervention into Hungary when the Hungarian government was collapsing. The Soviets intervened militarily to not only stabilize it but obviously make sure "their guy" would be in charge of the new government.
The communists who disagreed with this argued that Hungary should just be allowed to sort out their own government and the USSR shouldn't be making those decisions for them, and they called people who disagreed "tankies" in reference to visible tanks in the streets when the Soviets showed up.
The word was then adopted by anarchists as an insult against Marxists, because Marxists believe in using state force to build socialism/communism while anarchists think the state is inherently a force for bad. This meant that "tankie" no longer referred to just the Soviet usage of tanks in Hungary specifically, but began to be used by anarchists to criticize every time a state ran by a Marxist party used state violence ("tanks").
Liberals later discovered the word "tankie" and adopted it as just a synonym for "communist," and the word has pretty much devolved in its usage in recent years to largely just be a stand-in for "communist" but more derogatory.
https://lemmy.world/post/29072279