Okay, I’m clearly ignorant. What’s a “tankie”?
Short answer: folk who are so pro-Communist that they think the Tiananmen Square massacre was a good thing. The massacre in which the CCP bulldozed protestors with tanks.
Hence, “tankie”
Edit: apparently I’m wrong on the origin of the term, and it predates Tiananmen Square. See the reply below.
I will add that given the current projection of power currently, China is a far more powerful authoritarian communiststate than Russia, so most tankie propaganda is China-centric these days.
Well, the tanks in question are actually those sent by the USSR to crush the Hungarian Revolution and Prague uprising.
Oh wow. So like, extreme right wing and the fucking Republicans. Fuck all those people.
Extreme left-wing/communists.
I’ve learned not to lean into labels - the right seems to be as dangerous to democracy as the far left, as they seem to now embrace the tactics of what we used to consider “leftie” or communism. They want to maintain control and don’t care how they get it.
Libertarian vs autoritarian. Left vs right.
You’re comparing apples to oranges. Both the left and the right can be good. The problem is that people are hungry for power and money. Any system crumbles when the foundations are based on greed and corruption.
I really hate the left vs right fight, it is pointless. Both systems can be good, both systems have flaws, both systems can be exploited, both systems have been exploited in the past… A system isn’t going to save you from a corrupted government and corrupted private interests
Libertarianism, IMHO, has always been a sheeps-clothing for Authoritarianism. All it does is break it down to “the wants of the individual overriding society”, but winking & knowing full well it only works when individuals collect and work as a group. Libertarianism === Authoritarianism.
I don’t disagree, so long as we’re talking about similar distances from center when we say ‘far’. At least in the US, people talk about the far right and the far left, except they’re really talking about people who are slightly left. US doesn’t have far left. Far left is the USSR and other authoritarian communist states (I’m unsure if any of these still exist).
Though honestly I think it just makes more sense to push back against anyone who’s too far on the authoritarian scale as I feel like that’s mostly what people have a problem. Governments (in my opinion) need to be at least a bit authoritarian in order to enforce laws at all, but a lot of the modern political sphere is pushing hard on overly authoritarian policies in nearly every space and country.
Totally agree.
Yeah, extreme left wing basically. Think that capitalism should be overthrown by force. Same as jan6-ers but pro Communist
Nah tankies specifically are those that support Maxist-Leninism to a fault. Thats why they sypport the tanks rolling over student protestors. They’ll fight for single party state socialism that winds up not as a vanguard, but as corrupt state capitalism. Other leftists despise them because revolution doesn’t necessarily mean becoming the USSR, nor should it.
Wrong spectrum. Both Republicans and Tankies are authoritarian, which is why they feel similar (especially because current republicans are barely even conservative and have mostly gone all in on the authoritarian part).
If they keep it to themselves, it shouldn’t be a problem.
If they ban and censor users because of those views though…
Don’t know how true it is, but I saw a post claiming that they were banned for criticizing the CCP.
So are there any real downsides to having an account on this instance? I chose it randomly when I signed up and don’t know enough about the situation.
Should I be concerned enough to go make another account or is it essentially meaningless at the end of the day?
I guess follow your beliefs on this one. Also, it’s possible that by you being there, you add to the number of active users on that instance, therefore increasing the appeal for newer users to join in and possibly donate to the founders. (which are tankies)
