When a leftist, or progressive says “tankie” it is different from what the mainstream media perceives. It (tankie) indicates someone who is overzealously supportive of non-Western imperialist countries such as Russia and China and denies their atrocities.
Also, the term developed from the tanks deplored by the user to invade Hungary and denote people who supported such action.
Usually people who advocate military communism, such as defending tiananmen square, Stalin, and more. Basically it's usually the belief that anything a government professing to be communist does must be good.
I should emphasize that a lot of pro-Western outlets and commentators have recently weaponised the term to discredit any diverging points of view re-the Ukraine War. So someone like Cornel West would be a "tankie" by this point of view, which is actually kind of disgusting in how dishonest it is.
No one is suggesting that the states the authoritarian communists replaced were good or functional, just that they failed to actually uplift and make people's lives better. There's nothing to admire about one oppressive state being replaced by another.
Life expectancy in the US is currently dropping for the first time in decades. "line go up" isn't always a valid way of determining quality of life, but in the instance of life expectancy, I would say it is. Also, America is getting worse in basically every metric we can use to measure quality of life. Is "line go down" not a valid way of assessing quality of life either?
You beat me to the punch regarding the US life expectancy rate lol, but I kinda agree with both of you right now. Life expectancy can imply quality of certain aspects of life; like medical care and availability, but it isn't the end all be all to a quality life. To me it's just a factor, not a determining factor.
Tankies are far left Marxists/Communists that are so anti- USA/West that they gladly defend almost anything that opposes the USA. Even authoritarian states like Russia and China. To be clear not every Communist is a Tankie through. And if you critizises on of this countries for horrible stuff, the Tankies will see you automatically as a USA chill. Because, from my online interactions with them, they see the world in black and white.
196 is a shitpost sub where you must post something when you vist
a tankie is a authoritarian that believes they're a communist. they support the imperialist invasion of Ukraine, and they deny the tianaman square massacre, where the CCP ran tanks over college students protesting the authoritarian government. they deny a bunch of other atrocities as well, these are the only two i can think of right now.
a lot of tankies are going to be posting an essay by Engles that defends authoritarianism, asserting that authoritarianism is compatible with communism. which, while sure, isn't ideal because one person having power always ends in genocide. well, it doesn't end in genocide, genocide just... happens under authoritarianism.
Tankie is a pejorative label for communists, particularly Stalinists, who support the authoritarian tendencies of Marxism–Leninism or, more generally, authoritarian states associated with Marxism–Leninism in history. The term was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defense of the Soviet use of tanks to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring uprising, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions.
One factor is that the main devs of lemmy are marxist-lennists, so they are more lax in regards to tankie content. Another factor is that people fled to lemmygrad once genzedong was banned from reddit.
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