#tankie

[h4ganah]

[asharkapologist]

I posted this on an anti-tankie leftist subreddit and it got hundreds of upvotes, so I decided to post it here as well.

Pretty hard to tell them apart sometimes.

(Apologies to my girl Rumi, I’m sure she’s not a tankie. And Jinu’s got problems, but at least he’s not a Russian troll.)

[adrithetankie]

why is the term “basic needs shouldn’t have a price tag on it.” considered radical? i thought that was common knowledge?

[lesbianfidelcastro]

Time for some more discourse but this time I’m just contemplating the things I’ve seen people say about “tankies”. Allegedly we’re mostly just rude and nasty people, like apart from political reasons, which kind of mystifies me because of course I’ve seen rude tankies but the community I have found on here is very lovely. I don't know what kind of tankies these people are meeting but it's sure not the tankies I know lol

But the main thing is that I think even many other leftists seem to misunderstand our politics, not to mention liberals and conservatives

One particular issue is the issue of imperialism. I say this because I saw a communist on here talk about how tankies support Russia’s “imperialism” because we believe it’s not as bad as US imperialism. I have problems with that assumption and framing ofc, but I think much of the imperialism discourse comes from the fact that we are operating on different definitions

To most people, imperialism refers to the exertion of political or military or economic influence by any nation. This is the wikipedia definition, it is the mainstream definition

Marxist-Leninists of course use Lenin’s definition, which is entirely different. We may understand a country’s foreign policy as exploitative, aggressive, or generally problematic, but that does not necessarily equate to the Leninist definition of imperialism. If we claim it’s not imperialism without specifying that, it just sounds to others like we condone everything basically

I think us tankies have got to get better at clarifying our theory and our perspectives, because a lot of the hate comes from severe misunderstandings of what we’re talking about

Sometimes just out of curiosity I look up anti tankie tags on tumblr and 99% of the time the criticism is targeted at things that most of us don’t believe

I think we need to become more receptive and conscious of the way we are perceived by the general left as well as the average person if we wish to have effective communication about our politics

[stillunusual]

In tankie clownland, Putin's simps are more oppressed than gay people or women….

[estrogen-induced-girl]

I get the appeal for fledgeling Marxists get for just accepting tankie as a title, but please don't. Its not worth it. Even when meaning its original context the USSR was a capitalist and imperialist nation by that time. You gain nothing from this.

[neighbourhood-threat-official]

On tankies

'Tankie' behaviour is incredibly narrow-minded and lacks nuance. I would even go as far as to say it is an obstacle to actual socialism. It is also telling that the people engaging in are usually Westerners.