Do you think "tankie" is a useful term?
Yes
No
It once was, it isn't anymore
It didn't use to be, but it is now
I don't know what "tankie" is
Mao haircut of nuance button
quick history lesson for those who are curious.
"Tankie" Is a derogatory term the spawned from the use of tanks in hungary by the USSR against the 1956 uprising. Many saw this uprising as a movement for the people, and the use of full on tanks to stop it was seen as absurd, so people started complaining, and calling those who supported this action "tankies" because they supported the tanks. The thing that is often neglected is 1. the context, and 2. information on the actual uprising itself.
First I'll give a little context and then address the contents of the revolt.
This uprising followed "Khrushchev's thaw", a period in which Khrushchev rolled back many of the previous rules against capitalists and fascists in their and surrounding territory. This lead to many fascists being freed and congregating for movements to try and seize power back from the USSR.
There were some legitimate complaints about the USSR anywhere and in particular in 1956 Hungary, so some people did genuinely gather to press for reforms and better governance, with even some socialistic demands being made initially. This is the part you'll hear about from liberals. The part you won't hear about is what happened following this, and how the movement was co-opted by full on fascists. This isn't just a claim by an online Marxist but something we have clear evidence of. Here is a picture of the "protesters" standing over the tanks.
see that flag?
it's the long dead flag flown under the Nazi occupation of the country.
Perhaps they simply flew that flag because they didn't have better symbols? Okay, consider this passage from The Truth about Hungary by Herbert Apthker
This uprising was a sustained fascist mob, lynching communists and Jewish people. I'm certainly not known for my support of militarization or brutal actions, but I don't think that a strong response to this situation somehow makes the USSR or the people who supported their use of tanks, "red fascists", or otherwise poor communists or even just poor people in general.
Tankie is a useless term to me because standing against fascism "too strongly" doesn't make you somehow a reverse fascist or some nonsense, it makes you an anti fascist. Standing against fascism is how you defeat it. I am a "tankie" in the original sense that I support the use of tanks in the intervention against the fascists in Hungary. Not as a blank check, I'm sure there is nuance and perhaps they could have done things differently, but it is not an action I think the USSR needs to be condemned for taking. Despite this, I don't think the word "tankie" is even particularly useful for reactionaries anymore, as it's becoming so diluted as to refer to anyone left of the person saying it, with it making it's way all the way from intra-communist criticisms to now being something fascists use to deride anyone vaguely left.
Using "Tankie" as a derogatory term implicitly supports fascist lynchings, please stop
What you just read is a conspiracy theory.
One photo of one person holding one (not particularly fascist) flag is evidence of the fascist nature of the whole revolution? (The primary flag associated with the revolution, ftr, is a 3 striped flag with the central emblem cut out)
Apthker's collection of accounts is little better.
There were fascists who mobilized during the events of 1956, certainly. It'd be weird during a period of revolution if they didn't try to make a move. But there's simply no evidence given that they had "co-oped" the evolution or that the dominant, revolutionary socialist factions wouldn't have dealt with them quickly if they hadn't been focused on dealing with the USSR's attack.
Apthker's account has a few central flaws:
1) treating anti-AVH (secret police) sentiment and anti-USSR sentiment as anti communist generally, and anti communist sentiment as adjacent to antisemitism. The bulk of the revolution was done in the spirit of cleaning house, returning to communist ideals and moving past the horrors of Stalinism. People had every reason to hate the AVH. Similarly, the demands in relation to the USSR were things like an end to Russification, reworking onerous war reparations Hungary was paying to the USSR, and domestic control over the natural resources of Hungary. Treating these sentiments as adjacent to antisemitism/fascism is a classic tactic of treating any opposition to the USSR as definitionally fascist.
2) there is no real attempt to evaluate how widespread antisemitic sentiments were, one expression of antisemitic sentiment is simply assumed to reflect a group attitude. Contrast with, for example, Leslie Bain giving this anecdote
“The Jews were responsible for all this! Rakosi, Gero, Farkas—all Jews—brought the Russians, and whom have they murdered? Rajk, Pallfy, Szalai—non-Jews!” Before he finished his last sentence a young man next to him hit the speaker with such force that he fell on his face. The reaction of the crowd was interesting. All cursed the fallen man for his words and his crude effort to incite anti-Semitism, which had always been virulent and politically useful in Hungary.
3) a classic technique from bad historians, some elements of the topic get copious amounts of citations, but then critical aspects have nothing. The specter of impending mass programs/extermination programs is invoked. No citation that hundreds of people were being held for execution. One newspaper report from November immediately after the revolution asserting that crosses were used to mark homes for extermination. (Where? How widespread? Why is marking in this way necessary? What does marking communists even mean given that the revolution was carried out primarily by communists)?
This narrative (of the USSR bravely resisting fascism) is a direct extension if the original USSR propaganda line used to oppose the revolution.
The only way to make sense of this narrative is if you accept the classic tankie premise that all mainstream history sources are tainted and that the only acceptable sources are those that confirm to official USSR narratives. Especially now that we've had decades for the dust to settle, you have to grant a tremendous amount of power to the conspiracy to believe that the events described in the op happened and haven't been substantiated. This is even harder when the late USSR and the state of Hungary/popular Hungarian narrative have decided to treat the revolution as heroic. How likely is it, if the narrative of the op is accurate, that we don't have loads of first hand accounts from the "hundreds" of people who were being held in advance of execution? How likely is it that "the revolution was a sustained fascist mob lynching communists and Jewish People" and the dominant narrative of the 17k Jews who left contradicts this?
The argument really gives itself away in the final line. If you use the term tankie, you're signally support for fascist lynch mobs. And we know the op believes there's no such thing as opposing fascists too violently. So the circle is complete: if you oppose the USSR violently repressing socialist revolution and murdering hundreds of non combatants, you should be violently repressed. Same as it ever was.
