It's basically a term people on the left use for people on the extreme outer-reaches of the left, typically unthinking, uncritical, and unreasonable supporters of bolshevism and authoritarian communism, and pretty much any oppressive regime that considers itself "anti-west."

They love putin, jinping, kim, assad, khamenei, etc.

They stylize themselves as "Marxist-Leninists" and your instance is full of them, so if you signed up unknowingly and aren't a tankie, people might just assume based on the ".ml"

But yeah, most people on lemmy are tired of arguing in circles with tankies, who typically rely on ad hominems, strawmen, sealioning, and other bad faith or uncharitable arguments to bully you into exhaustion. Some of them have to be bots or russian trolls, cause no one can honestly be so dense. It can feel like arguing with someone from r/conservative, just with the opposite opinions.

you can't preemptively murder children because in your fan fiction they die later on

Yeah but closer to the eastern bloc you're likely to hear the term "vatnik" used instead.

Tankies and vatniks have a lot of overlap.

From my understanding, a vatnik is specifically someone who is shilling for the russian government. Not necessarily under a veneer of leftism (because the kremlin is far-right-wing).

A tankie may or may not be directly shilling for the kremlin, but it's always an auth-comm under a guise of leftism.

Tankie vatniks exist of course, but they're just the center of the venn diagram.

"Tankie" was originally a British slang term from the 50s.

In 1956, when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary, the British Communist movement was split over whether this action was cool, or sucked.

The people who thought it sucked derided their opponents who thought its cool, as "Tankies", because the images in the newspapers featured lots of photos of Soviet tanks rolling into Budapest.

After this, it stops being used for the most part, until it started being reclaimed by socialists online as a tongue-in-cheeck insult to throw at each other. Because, let's be real, it's a silly sounding word that's fun to say, and silly words are among the UK's biggest cultural exports.

Eventually though, Tankie breached containment and started to be used by people who had zero connection to any kind of socialist movement or history, and its meaning began to warp.

I've seen Marxists, even those think the Soviet invasion of Hungary was bad, called tankies. I've seen Anarchists called Tankies, I've seen right wing guys who love trad russian Orthodox Christianity called Tankies.

It's a word that doesn't mean much anymore. It's like when your grandpa calls Joe Biden "Pinko Scum"

? People have been martyrs for non-religious causes since forever, man.

What could possibly go wrong?

I have a list of world leaders whose death'll make me happy. These are people that make the world better by dying.

All communities become politics communities over time...

You agian missed two very important words that OP wrote

To Iran

That means if you were Iran then you would be having those thoughts. Not someone normal.

wait, being Iranian means it's ok for USA/Israel to kill Iranian schoolgirls?

if someone else wants to kill you, does that give me the moral right to kill you first?

Are you being willfully dense right now?

Oh, come on now, they'd never call Putin a fascist.

Good for him.

Oh true, I forgot to add that they'll complain about literally anyone except for actual fascists...

There!

I'm not the one justifying war crimes that killed over 100 school girls.

So you're just naturally dense. Got it.

Have a good one.

Nah, the guy was a piece of shit and I'm glad he's dead and fully supporting people meming in him. I'm not giving some opressive dictator that does all the same shit I hate people like Trump for, just because he also hates America.

Thank you. I had an idea, that it was something like that. It seems that on lemmy it means everyone left of poster (or OP), the poster disagree with.

Every shitpost is a political post. Tell me why you feel this is more political than the post about global corporation KFC's rubber nuggets.

Tankies are basically maga but for "socialism"

They don't have any actual values or morals and will happily support the most disgusting and heinous people that opress people, are racists wexist homophobic, that murder civilians and even commit genocide as long as they say they hate capitalism, and western imperialism.

That is a pretty vague definition, and that is probably what irks me about the term. It can be used as a slur for anything you don't like. Like "woke" for conservatives. I switched home when I found out .world blocks instances they don't like. Lemmy.ml seemed the to be the broadest, left accepting instance and they block out porn by default, win-win in my book. Infact I like the fact that I can be an anti-imperialist in places like hexbear, without being called a tankie. Being against killing school children does not mean I support the iranian goverment. I hope you take this answer in good faith. It is written in honesty.

anarchists will use it for almost literally anyone

I mean, yeah? Like the most basic understanding of anarchy is that hierarchy is a bad thing, so it applies to a lot of political philosophies

Warms the cockles of the heart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

And if one points out Wikipedia (while very imperfect, yes) is just Western Propaganda, well, that’s a pretty good indicator, too.

So easy to take care of Iran, but so hard to take care of Russia.

Seeing the USA waltz in dropping bombs over literally nothing but ignoring the Ukraine is pretty bizarre.

Everything is politics. Saying "no politics" is politics. The unwillingness to understand this is arguably a huge part of the problem, particularly in democratic systems. Every breath you take from the moment you are born until the moment you die is both a function of, and contributes towards a political zeitgeist which spans centuries in both directions. At best, an individual's attempt at "avoiding" politics merely cedes a portion of their own agency to others, which is again, a political act.

That's the thing, how would I know if I am tankie, if I don't have a clear definition. If it is defined by wether or not I am oppossed to military moving into Budapest 70 years ago. I am probably not a tankie, but I say probably, because everyone writing about seem so biased I find it difficult to see the truth of it. But my moral compass tells me it is always wrong to use military against civilians. Always.

Your heart seems to be in the right place but you're largely misinformed, or taking things in a vacuum. Regardless, is it America's place to bomb yet another country, yet another group of people who haven't attacked them first, for whatever reason you might think?

Thank you for sharing the wikipedia article. I hadn't read it. A lot of people find Wikipedia controversial for various reasons. But it is one of the most precise encyclopedias on the planet. And you can check out editing history etc. What I am most interested in, is the use here ofcourse. Because it seems to me people use it as a vaguely defined slur to slander people they deem to leftist.

Somebody shared this link. It helped me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

I find it very interesting that you get downvotes for this comment. My experience is that this is the way most people use the term and they get so angry, when you point that out.

It's not that vague if you've ever encountered one in the wild. You would know exactly what it's referring to. And it's nothing like conservatives using "woke." They use "woke" to describe anything mildly progressive. Tankies aren't progressives, they're accelerationist armchair militants. They call democratic socialists fascists.

Even if your opinion aligns with them on most things, it doesn't automatically make you a tankie. If you're not an auth-comm intent on bullying everyone who disagrees with you the slightest bit and labeling all nuance and critical reasoning as capitalist imperialist propaganda, then you're probably not a tankie.

That's also different from critiquing actual imperialism and capitalism. But tankies' overuse of those terms and others like "fascist" waters down the meanings and obfuscates the terms, making it harder for good-faith communicators to actually discuss these topics critically.

You can be anti-imperialist all you want, but tankies use western imperialism as an excuse to justify supporting imperialist regimes like Russia. They're full of cognitive dissonance.

Go ahead and disagree with someone slightly on .ml or hexbear and see what kind of response you get.

How's Libya doing these days? Is it good?

A decade ago, it was "as a black man in america..." Now I suppose it's "as an autistic person in america..."

Still the same troll farms operating out of russia.

Are you in some way pro Putin, Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Kim ? Then you might be a tankie.

If you think they are/were despicable mass-murderous dictators then you're not.

At the end of the day the deeds define the word, not the other way around. Not everyone will use the word correctly or appropriately. It's why only you yourself can truly categorize as such, but at that point you must come to terms with what that means, positively or negatively.

The bias thing is a real problem, but also sometimes not. It all depends on the context. Some people with unreasonable opinions will absolutely waste your time by never accepting difficult realities and talking around it, so identifying a mindset that's immune to self reflection can be useful. But similarly if a label is all that's needed to dismiss an opinion also is not very reasonable. But it's how some people operate. So sometimes not standing behind a label can be more fruitful as not to entice those presuppositions.

That's usually how the tankies try to convey it, but otherwise I haven't seen that argument.

I've yet to try those kinds of response, when I discuss with people. Then again I haven't been going into discussion about Yemen for instance. Mainly because my actual knowledge is simply to small to contribute. I do support anti-imperialist struggles, even by regimes I don't like. But that does not mean I waiver my right to call out they in turn tyrannize their populations.

And yeah, I have a feeling we have a lot of online cosplayers here in the fediverse, but I will keep treating people as if they are real, when I interact. That however also mean I will keep asking people for definitions. I.e. what do you mean when you say "fash", "tankie", "lib" and so on. People use the slurs to hide behind and everyone loves if we can make everything black and white.

But I am a socialist and I have been called a tankie several times and I've even been banned for a couple of sub because I asked about that definition. I don't mind people not liking what I say, but I will not take being slurred without questioning it. If that means a ban, well I am happy for getting out of another echo chamber.

Who the fuck has "no agenda"? I'd like to meet this fully ass fictional person.

So people are "tankies" if they define "tankie" as slur meaning "left of poster"? That once again sounds like the way MAGA use "woke" about stuff they don't like.

Excellent way to put it. I vote for @socsa to represent me on lemmy.

the way my Iranian friends have put it as they celebrate the death of the head of the regime and brace themselves for the impact of the new regime is that when you live under opression all your live, you learn to celebrate the small stuff, even as you know what's coming will also be bad

Mainly because my actual knowledge is simply to small to contribute

See, an actual tankie would never admit to having limitations on their own personal knowledge and understanding.

But I am a socialist and I have been called a tankie several times

I'm a socialist too and tankies have called me a fascist because I believe in democratic-socialism instead of bolshevism. They clearly don't know what fascism is.

Idk if that's a shitpost as much as its kind of absurdist humor.

This was the best shitpost we've had in some time and it has a clear agenda:

https://lemmy.world/post/43484865