this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2025
342 points (93.8% liked)
Fediverse memes
2481 readers
300 users here now
Memes about the Fediverse.
Rules
General
- Be respectful
- Post on topic
- No bigotry or hate speech
- Memes should not be personal attacks towards other users
Specific
- We are not YPTB. If you have a problem with the way an instance or community is run, then take it up over at !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com.
- Addendum: Yes we know that you think ml/hexbear/grad are tankies and or .world are a bunch of liberals but it gets old quickly. Try and come up with new material.
Elsewhere in the Fediverse
Other relevant communities:
- !fediverse@lemmy.world
- !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- !lemmydrama@lemmy.world
- !fediverselore@lemmy.ca
- !bestofthefediverse@lemmy.ca
- !fedigrow@lemmy.zip
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.
Tankies never seem to get that that part is not being critized, but the subversive of the movement by authoritarians.
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.)
Except you'd not get that healthcare and the rest if you didn't pay people off.
In theory it might seem fine, but in reality it was just a dictatorship, and quite a brutal one too.
eh docs and nurses are pretty fucking cool but don't work for free. of course you're going to pay people off, they need wages ffs
Communism = no currency. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of knowledge regarding communism in here. A bit of an echo chamber. It's funny how so many can hate something so much without actually knowing what it is they're hating. Ha.
...I'd prefer a single payer system where no one went without. Broke my nose while living in the UK and was impressed with their no bullshit system.
you can have democratic socialism of many flavors without going full on communism, and you'll never get to communism from here, abjectly shittified capitalism. I'd prefer denmark over...well, where has communism worked?
Like, I respect the medical professionals Cuba produces but would never want to live there.
Thats a really interesting bit of history, thank you for the additional context
Their name references a genocide, I doubt in good faith
Krono? Or are you referring to someone else in this thread?
Ohhh. I think you may have gotten confused about where you're replying to. I hadn't even seen them, as they weren't in the direct chain of comments I was replying in. I was thanking Krono for explaining that tankie came from violence carried out in the Soviet Union long before the tianamen square massacre, and so the name predated that particular act of violence
Anyway, I hope you have a lovely day :)
I don't think it is a common misconception, I think it's pretty common knowledge (at least among the terminally online) that it started with the Hungarian Revolution.
It seems more common knowledge for people actually in Europe. Many people in the USA seem to have never really heard the word. Especially the younger generations (which since this is a memes community... does seem slightly relevant to your statement, as I would expect a broader populace here as opposed to a community dedicated to discussions of world-wide import).
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.
Thank you.
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.
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 seem to have conflated multiple things there - that is a common test that is often used to determine if someone is to be labeled as a "tankie", but yes is not its actual definition.
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 😁
The framing of separating the "authoritarian left" from the actual left is basically accurate.
Why is "Far Left" marked as a trademark?
Because of intellectual propriety.
Did you intend "intellectual property"?
Regardless, I understand the meaning of the symbol, but not its applicability to the context.
At a guess, it might be intended to depict the concept of True (as in Genuine, Authentic) Far Left?
If so, I would argue that a corporate symbol does not match perfectly with the ideals of a Far Left, so I'd give it a grade of A for process (summarizing a lot of information into just one symbol) but only a C for outcome. It seems better if it had simply been removed entirely.
Then again, it's easy for us to criticize, and it was harder for someone else to have created it initially, so props to whoever did that - overall I think that the image conveys a lot and is a good match for the concepts (that one symbol aside).
Also, to me it seems obviously tongue-in-cheek, not meant so much for actual conveyance of teaching real information so much as to provide a bit of brevity surrounding the topic. (Usage of the word "fuck" aside, there's also "whatever", which seems not congruous with like an academic - even at the Wikipedia level - discussion of the reality of the topic matters, chiefly since it lacks precision.) Then again, I could be wrong.🤔
I think the concept is effective at lest in exposing the inaccuracy of horseshoe theory.
Yeah I presume - though I have no idea, really - that horseshoe theory is what it was being tongue-in-cheek TO.
And it seems remarkably effective in that goal, as evidenced by many people (other than myself) continuing to share it. It offers a nice balance of simplicity and complexity, at least in the sense of going one level deeper than left vs. right.
It's supposed to be funny.
The political extremes are often more exclusionary and sometimes holier-than-thou, which is why it's funny to say that you have exclusivity for the Far Left™ label. But as a leftist I also think that property is theft, intellectual property is not proper, hence... propriety.
I suppose. I feel the message is clear and accurate without the joke. With the joke, concerns about the anti-authoritarian left are being unduly exaggerated.
https://lemmy.world/post/29072279
It’s a pejorative used for anti-leftist authoritarians who unironically insist their extreme-rightist ideals are somehow leftist.
Ooh they hated that one
They usually do.
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
Here's what the sum of all human knowledge has to say about it.
Ostensibly left (soc/comm) pro authoritarian.