What are tankies? (why are they like that?)

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Worthwhile for those unfamiliar with tankies.

I'm not sure your description matches the video.

The video doesn't seem to be so much "why are tankies like that?" as "all socialists are tankies and that's a good thing".

A lot of things he said just seemed to be completely wrong. For example, he says that nobody ever said that Stalin or Mao did nothing wrong, but those are fairly common sentiments among the online left - you don't have to look very far to find whole subreddits dedicated to those ideas.

I'm not sure whether he was attempting to defend Castro or Kim when he compared them to each other, but in any case, both should be condemned.

He's probably right that most far-leftists (newsflash for all the socialists out there: you aren't "the left", you're just part of the left) are Marxist-Leninists, especially globally. But it isn't "Western arrogance" to then say that Marxist-Leninism is bad. If anything it seems to be patronising to not hold people to the same standards. "It's OK that you're evil because you're not white uWu" is racist in multiple ways.

Then there's the "well if it's not OK to support the Chinese government then it also shouldn't be OK to support the US government", which is "I'm 14 and this is deep" stuff. Like, yeah, sure, the US has done bad things. But the US is a liberal democracy (not a perfect one, but nonetheless), while China has been a one-party state since the war. If you don't like your leader in the US then you can elect a new one, with elections being held regularly and resulting in big changes in policy. China is an oligarchy ruled by a ruling class for a ruling class. There is no way for Chinese people to influence their government short of breaking into that oligarchy themselves.

I skipped ahead a bit and... this guy is literally talking about his "critical support" for Gadaffi and Assad. He blames the Syrian civil war on "US-backed militias", and not, you know, Assad torturing children who graffiti, the Syrian occupation of Kurdistan, or ISIS, all of which were more significant than the rebel groups backed by the US (who famously turned out to be basically useless in the actual war).

And then he ends his "why I support Assad" talk with "liberals uncritically support the US!", which firstly philosophically if not logically contradicts his earlier claim that nobody uncritically supports Mao, and secondly is just laughabe, isn't it? Like, who are these liberals who go around defending the Trail of Tears, slavery, Japanese internment during WWII, the bombing of Dresden, the Vietnam War, the war on drugs, the immigration policy of Donald Trump, and so forth? Even, say, the Electoral College? Basically every liberal will have criticisms to make of the US's human rights record, and if they're not American then they'll also be able to criticise their own country.

I guess this was useful because it exposed me to what a tankie thinks, but it's far too sympathetic to Marxist-Leninism. It isn't a critical analysis of what leads people down the tankie rabbithole, it's "tankies are good".

I am a Marxist-Leninist, and I condone those actions that deserve to be condoned.

Think of it this way: Churchill's grain requisitioning in Bengal created a famine that killed 4 to 5 million Indians. His response was unbelievably callous, even by today's standards. Stalin's grain requisitioning killed 4 to 5 million Ukrainians. I condemn both, but I don't let Churchill off the hook just because he's the accepted hero of the Western narrative. Liberals will respond to the Churchill issue probably with something like "It was wrong of him to do that, but..."

Socialism and capitalism, as ideological constructs, have evolved to be diametrically opposed to each other. Judging me by your standards, and you by mine, is like a fish in the river, staring at the ox on the riverbank - one breaths air, the other oxygenated water, they live in entirely separate elemental worlds. The British Empire starved, by some counts, over 100 million Indians to death, and a further 2 million Africans killed in the slave trade, on both accounts to make a profit. In our (communist) world, that is genocide, an evil beyond words, and many of your kind would rightly agree, yet not enough that you'd see capitalism destroyed. Likewise, the excesses of the NKVD, the massacres of Pol Pot (who we largely do not count as our own), and so on - they are stains on our history, but we would not see the work of worker's emancipation destroyed on account of it - such a thing would be as ludicrous as expecting the Catholic Church to shut up shop on account of the Spanish Inquisition, or their actions during the Spanish Civil War.

We ask for some mutual understanding from you, after all, we believe in solidarity and fraternity.

Subjective, circular logic.

TANKIE

Tankie is a pejorative label for communists and those who align with Marxism–Leninism ideology.  More generally, the term "tankie" has been applied for those who express support for one-party socialist republics that are associated with Marxism–Leninism, whether contemporary or historical. It is commonly used by libertarian socialists, anarcho-communists, left communists, reformists, and democratic socialists to criticise Leninism, although the term has seen increasing use by liberals and right‐wing factions as well.

The term "tankie" 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.

The term is also used to describe people who endorse, defend, or deny the crimes committed by communist leaders such as Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Kim il-Sung.  In modern times, the term is used across the political spectrum to describe those who have a bias in favor of authoritarian states with a leftist legacy, such as the People's Republic of China, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and Russia.  Additionally, tankies have a tendency to support non-socialist states if they are opposed to the United States and the Western world in general, regardless of ideology.

Source:  This Wikipedia Article 

So it would seem that "Tankies" advocate for the violent overthrow of governments they do not like (i.e., U. S. of A.), and/or for the violent destruction of economic systems to which they cannot adjust (i.e., Capitalism).

Yet those same people still enjoy the benefits of living in Capitalist and democratic societies -- hypocrisy at its finest.

Thanks for the reply Fnord. I don't know why you're so anticommunist but I'm not interested in arguing about it.

True Communism will never work, that is why.

Thanks, I was wrong all these years. Good job I found you when I did.

A Tankie is a nickname for a Marxist Leninist (a tendency started by Stalin). The term used to be pejorative. Now it is accepted term among many, perhaps most, Marxist-Leninists.

We should start a drinking game if a nation one of us resides in turns communist.

The game entails guessing the life expectancy of autistic tankies based on their personal attributes.

I can't think of a group of people more likely to be despised by the government and general public in a society where everything is shared than autisitcs.

Life was hard enough for NT's who were able to work and navigate the complex and dangerous social minefield of a communist nation. Imagine an autistic trying to tip toe around the Soviet KGB or being forced to live in North Korea and on top of that, they suffer a burnout after just 20 hours into a long work week.

It'll be like a real life version of The Hunger Games and I'll be extremely drunk.

Marxism-Leninism refers to a category of tendencies, not to a single tendency. For instance, some Marxist-Leninists are more in agreement with some Trotskyists than they are with other Marxist-Leninists.

This Maoist group is an example:

Road to Liberation

One of the tricks of the very far left is to be so ridiculous that no one will ever believe they are like that.

Anyone who says that should not be taken seriously. We are all just humans.

By this definition leftist "tankies" are an extinct species, and all modern Tankies are Right-wingers...Western conservatives are the main apologists for Putin, and his invasion of Ukraine, for example. And with Kim Jong Un....


https://youtu.be/LV6mVmAVQU4

A lot of Tankies are right-wingers but not all. Some Marxist-Leninists actually oppose Putin and his invasion of Ukraine. I honestly don't know if people would consider me, a hybrid of libertarian Marxism and Maoism-Third Worldism, a Tankie or not. However, I oppose the invasion of the former Czechoslovakia (the origin of the term "Tankie").

Nominalist - I am happy to see you back here. You are one of those users who I often think about fondly