Anyone who stands against genocide and opposes war has been lumped in with “tankie” for a long while now. That centrist is empowering the Nazis.
Someone misinterpreted the post.
Another centrist who thinks the left just doesn’t get it.
Thank you.
Because being a passive centrist while the world slides towards authoritarianism, global conflict, and environmental holocaust is not morally acceptable.
You don’t have to be a Tankie to want to fight these fascist fucks and their suicidal agenda.
I mean a lot of people don’t want to have their way of life userped by these radical idiots. One side is calling for a civil war and the other side is effectively campaigning for concentration camps. Normal people don’t want to engage with either brand of insanity. They just want to go to work and go home, spend time with their family.
“Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
The left is not calling for a Civil War. They’re demanding basic human rights for everyone, and the capitalist have made it clear they’d rather kill everyone.
If you feel equally threatened by the left and the right, it’s because you support fascism. You just prefer a lighter flavor of it that you’ve benefit from.
But sometimes history comes along and says “too bad.” There is no historical precedent for fascism or extreme wealth inequality being corrected by electoral politics.
If you’re able to comfortably sit on the fence, recognize two facts: One, that’s a position of entitlement (Plenty of people are already having their lives destroyed by what’s happening). Two, being passive is choosing to allow authoritarianism to win.
To reiterate, I’m not a Tankie. I don’t whitewash the heinous history of revolutions, upheaval, and failed government systems. And I am positive that I’m screaming into the void. In every historical example I’ve studied, the comfortable middle class eventually sides with elite authority and not the peasants. And the peasants always lose. But the alternative is too awful to surrender to. Centralized techno-fascism and eventual catastrophic conflict with China are what’s in-store.
I don’t believe that’s true. I’m not aware of any revolution the peasants lost.
Well if you say anything like ‘we shouldn’t give weapons to Nazis,’ you’re going to be labeled a tankie, too.
Imagine looking at the current state of the USA and saying “communists are the problem!”
tankies are such a small niche group, i dont think theres enough of them to have a significant on policy, unlike right wingers have real numbers on thier hands.
They run TikTok among many other CCP funded operations, I wouldn’t disregard them personally.
You’re not wrong. Many of them are exposed to propaganda on TikTok and it is a growing issue. Espionage is being done to divide the left and consolidate the right. Just because it’s not as noticeable as the propaganda from the right doesn’t mean that it’s not having subtle effects. If it gets people to disengage or not look out for their best interests then it is effective. All this to say, there is a way to bring about positive change that has to do with being involved locally.
Thanks for the grasroots money, this small group is actually very loud. The loudest of them all. They maintain the illusion that communism is when you like Russia, and that’s their entire purpose
Isn’t there a difference between the right and the far right though
I wouldn’t say so, I’m a consequentialist so when I see a billionaire pedophile felon in the white house removing the 14th amendment while not a single GOP congressman opposes him, I feel like the entirety of the US right is effectively gone and only the far right remains.
The right is sill around. They just have a ‘D’ next to their name.
Ah yeah sure, taxing the rich, removing money from politics, making healthcare and bodily autonomy a human right, all such right ideals. /sarcasm
I don’t think any of this happened last time the democrats were in charge? Or any other time before that. Seen from Europe, democrats are definitely right of center, just less so than republicans.
The DNC haven’t had more than 48 senate seats in over ten years, and just before that they expanded medicaid to tens of millions of americans.
Taxing the Rich was the Harris Campaign, with promise of a unrealized capital gains tax for earners over $1M USD, and enshrining Roe V. Wade as well as many other things in the list require defeating fillibuster, but even if the senate had changed the rules to bypass fillibuster: only 48 seats.
Quality of life has declined in the USA and progress has stagnated. And I know why. Only 48 seats.
All I’m saying is everything is further to the right in the US. These things you listed aren’t even partisan issues here, they’re just normal things. But I see you’re just downvoting and arguing so I’ll be on way cheers.
the one’s who do the bad shit and the one’s who support it. sure if thats enough difference for you ig
Let’s be honest, the Nazis and Tankies align on like 98% of policy. They both support Donald Trump, for example. They both enable ethnostates to send minorities to camps. They believe in a nation ruled by one supreme absolute leader.
The ACP is the only american so-called communist org that supports Trump, and virtually every other segment of the serious organized left considers them a fascist org. Don’t buy into fascist framing of issues or you are working for the fascists when you spread them
And Chinese state run TikTok promoted him and Hexbear was singing his praises. Bottom line is anybody who opposes “us imperialism, capitalism” is happy to see Trump make cruelty the point, happy to see Americans suffer in decline.
Tankies aren’t far left, they’re just the CCP’s tools of war.
That is a total and complete lie. DSA, the largest socialist org in the USA in 100 years is unwaveringly against us imperialism and capitalism, and Trump. There are virtually no tankies in DSA, even the most ml aligned factions in DSA are not “tankies” as you try to slander.
Democratic socialism is opposed to imperialism and capitalism, none too fond of China or Russia (though I’m sure if you bad faith make certain generalizations you could make illogical connections to suit your purpose), virulently anti Trump and “tankies” when they pop up in our org usually become disengaged ineffective sectarian hyper minorities, though they rarely pop up at all.
In fact if you aren’t opposed to US imperialism, you are on the right wing, and have no right to speak on it. Do you think the genocide in Palestine is a left wing position? Be serious
If you’re not talking about Tankies then what are you even arguing against? I think you’ve just been fighting a strawman in your head rather than against anything I’ve written.
Heres a tip, if you don’t want to be treated like a pro-authoritarian bot then stop defending them and stop throwing your hat in with their lot.
Bernie Sanders early in his career rejected the label of socialist because he didn’t want to be associated with the USSR, China, and concentration camps, you can find countless quotes on that. He also doesn’t even oppose capitalism, in his book “It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism” he outlines that the problem is late stage, undemocratic, uber-capitalism and his ideal system is adding the social safety nets they use in scandinavia while taxing the rich.
I’m not defending tankies, I’m disagreeing with your extremely narrow categories, that would define 90% of non tankie leftists as tankies.
I’m not making a strawman when I say that support for us imperialism is support for the Palestinian genocide. That’s just like common knowledge at this point.
Flattening Sanders entire political career, which started out with him organizing as a socialist, into a narrow category is as dishonest as doing the same with the history of the USSR. There is not much worth defending about the Stalinist bureaucracy that the USSR became. Even throwing the USSR and China in the same bucket when referring to Sanders is a historical revision, since Sanders entire political life began after the Sino/Soviet split. However information about the atrocities of Stalin came from Kruschev. Trotskyists and anti-authoritarian communists, like CLR James, could see that much was wrong with the USSR, but the truth wasn’t revealed until the 60s. Other great american communist organizers like James Cannon mistakenly cooperated with the Comintern, who systematically destroyed the movements in the USA that got us our new deal. Cannon and many others were eventually purged from the american socialist movement, turning it into yet another husk of the workers movement under the auspices of the “communist international.”
After the Vietnam war, the USA and China both supported the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese communists, who were supported by the USSR. Are you a supporter of the USA’s war in Viet Nam? Or the Khmer Rouge? I certainly hope not!
Dealing with reality isn’t a strawman, unless you’re an idealist. I hope you aren’t waiting for the good capitalists to save us from our current situation, because our version of capitalism is irredeemable. We are in the late stage, which only means that we are part of the global financialized economy. An economy that enslaves the third world, and huge swaths of the first world, in order to keep its ruling classes.
If you are in favor of having a ruling class, which would still exist under social democracy, then IMO your position is closer to trumps than any leftist. And I work with thousands of leftists all over the world. Look at how European social democracies are also being taken over by fascist parties. It is not a realistic defense against fascism.
Trumps whole strategy, which is actually the strategy of the global tech elite, is to crash the US economy to force an asset bubble (recession) onto the EU. At which point, anti-immigrant fascistic parties will mobilize their message to overturn the “good capitalist” social democratic reforms and allow capitalist destruction of the welfare state.
Social democracy is falling apart in real time, and I think you can’t see it because you have no theory of change. You see things categorically rather than dynamically, which removes you from actual conditions. As much as I’d like to disabuse you of those notions, you seem pretty committed to your narrow idealist views, which is a shame as we could use more spicy fighters on our side against Trump, and less performative resistance that only contributes to mass confusion.
I think the thing you’re asserting isn’t what the person you’re responding to.
Tankies bad, we’re talking about tankies not leftists.
The way finitebanjo defines it though, as anyone who rightly opposes US imperialism as being a tankie, is what I’m arguing against. I’m arguing against conveniently abstracted generalization of messy histories that support a very very narrow view, which defines most leftists as “evil tankies.”
I’m arguing against any views, coming from tankies or progressive liberals, that statically categorize historical and political relations, which are inherently dynamic and change over time. I’m arguing against sacrificing deep understanding at the altar of some slanderous and IMO dangerous mischaracterization of most leftists.
I think its possible that you, as someone who seems to feel comfortable using the term tankie, don’t understand the way it warps actual political discourse away from radical but sometimes correct positions, and toward ineffectual online camps. I’m aware of the kind of weird super online left that takes up their own ignorant campist positions and defends them with like memes. Sometimes these people even crop up in actual organizing and can wreak havok if they get control, I can think of a few examples of real life “tankies” causing great harm to our movements. But it is very rare.
In fact if you ever meet like a “Stalinist” or as you might call them, “tankie”, from a third world country, they are completely unlike the white western online tankie that you’re referring to. They have certain questionable views which the synthetic online tankies try to copy, but their practical activity, their organizing work, is incredibly serious, well intentioned, effective and engages actual exploited people in a revolutionary way.
But the way Tankie gets defined sometimes, it seems like anyone who reads and understands Lenin is a trump supporter, which is totally wrong, but exactly how I would describe finitebanjo’s polemics. This would put people like Paulo Friere in the category of tankie because he has certain third worldist sensibilites despite being probably the greatest humanist theorist since Marx himself. Considering that this is an author and educator often taught in even christian seminary schools, as well as many secular advanced degree programs, and also studied seriously by every left tendency, the definition of tankie often completely misses the mark.
Maybe I am mis-stating that point a little, I don’t know what is in peoples hearts when they use the term. But as someone who is definitely active on the communist left and not a tankie, even anti-tankie peeps don’t call me that, that is how it looks to me. The way that I avoid becoming a tankie is by studying, reflecting and applying theory in a practical way. Arguing that I am misunderstanding the situation seems to refute everything that makes me a principled leftist. So I have a hard time with your characterization of my arguments.
They both support Donald Trump, for example.
lmao what?
They both enable ethnostates to send minorities to camps.
lmao what?
They believe in a nation ruled by one supreme absolute leader.
Dictatorship of the proletariat doesn’t mean total rule by one dude named proletariat, it means total rule by the people.
Dictatorship of the proletariat doesn’t mean total rule by one dude named proletariat, it means total rule by the people.
Tankies want a vanguard of the best brightest to lead and educate the proletariat into a new “socialist” future. Conveniently, the best and brightest happens to be them and their homies.
They also just so happen to have a new vision of socialist utopianism of you working in a sweat shop for 14 hours a day and eating rationed food while they sip fine wines and write bullshit very online mutants will recite as scripture in the future.
Tankies support China and the USSR, neither of which have ever practiced rule by the proletariat, and of which the remainder is committing their own little genocide at home.
Weird how they brought a billion farmers out of poverty. I wonder why they would do that if those farmers didn’t have any influence.
We certainly don’t see that happening in capitalist countries right nextdoor, such as India.
the remainder is committing their own little genocide at home
lol you still believe that? Anybody can literally just go to Xinjiang, there’s no travel restrictions. Don’t you think they would try to keep foreigners from going there and talking to people if they were committing a genocide?
Thank you for being a perfect example of the point I was making, enjoy your dead minorities and your roads paved in the blood of the innocent.
Ah yes, if you oppose capitalism too much, you just start hating minorities. That’s just horseshoe theory. They wouldn’t teach it in schools if it wasn’t true.
Definitely don’t come to China, Vietnam, or Cuba and check for yourself, just trust your government.
Honestly wouldn’t go there if you paid me, but I respect the journalists brave enough to do so.
wouldn’t go there if you paid me
Why? Vietnam is beautiful, experiencing towns built around bikes instead of cars and being able to buy good meal for 1.20 USD is good for your soul. China is the most developed country in the world right now, and I’m planning to go back in a month or so. I haven’t been, but I hear Cuba has lovely beaches and rum.
Were you under the impression these places were dangerous?
These liberals and their “both-siding” will be the death of us all
And they are both downvoting you haha
There is literally only 1 downvote
it is very clear you don’t live in a small southern county
if you were a centrist before 2020, and you still are in 2025, then you’ve moved Right, since the Overton window shifted Right.
if you kept your principles you’re now Left. that’s how the window works.
The very model of the modern major liberal.
It’s not a bell curve. It’s a trumpet headed to the right.
I’m too uneducated on politics (read: stupid) to even know what left and right means. Where do I land
Most people have confused politics. If you want to land somewhere you need to educate yourself and develop principles so that instead of not knowing where you’ll land, you’ll know exactly where you stand
Well they are slightly vague terms, so please don’t feel stupid. A shocking amount of people who think they know, don’t know.
Left wing politics are generally about a rejection of hierarchy of people. Consequently, they tend to be interested in an international community because we are all the same and deserve the same. As freedom is something that everyone wants for themselves, the left tend to be in favor of an equally free community, e.g. freedom to love.
Right wing politica are generally about hierarchy of people. But not because the hierarchy is necessarily the point, but it tend to be in favor of maintaining the current state, Which just happens to be hierarchical. And usually everything get viewed from a hierarchical pov. E.g. nationalism is a hierarchical view of country and people, your country and its people above other country and their people.
Obviously you could point at the historical stance of us republicans that they want a small government and argue that a small government creates less of 2 class citizens, the law markers and the citizens. But the left would point out that a small government just enables the powerful people to exploit the weak people and create more 2 class citizens.
On the left: The strong hierarchy in the previous attempts of “communism” is the reason why some people will say that true communism was never tried. Other will argue that you need a little bit of authority to run a communustic state.
So the whole thing is a little more complex than “freedom” and “restrictions” and who supports what “restrictions” when.
Right: in favor of privately owned means of production.
Left: in favor of publicly owned means of production.might need to back up a little. personal, private, and public ownership are different things in one of the areas i worked in. same distinction? personal property is still legal, just privately held businesses not so much. brain’s fuzzy, am i remembering right?
Firstly, this concept only applies to means of production, as in the stuff that is used to produce stuff which could be sold. So e. g. a sewing machine.
Without getting into the weeds:
a. Personal: You own and operate the sewing machine, you pay for the resources consumed and own the item produced. (Good)
b. Private: You own the sewing machine but someone else operates it. You pay the resources consumed, the laborer a previously agreed upon amount and own the item they produced. (bad)
c. Public: the public owns the sewing machine and pays for the resources consumed. The laborer is paid the value of their work. That is, the value of the item produced minus the value of the resources consumed. (Very good)
How “the public” and “the value” are determined is the source of leftist infighting (anarchists vs marxist-leninist). But since both agree that private ownership needs to be abolished the call is for leftist unity to stand together against the people that currently own the means of production privately (the bourgeoisie) and exploit those that have to sell their laborforce in order to survive (the proletariat).
thanks for the refresher! i have worked in too many similar fields with bullshit jargon where they have basically made homophones antonyms just to fuck with anyone who decides to get uppity and do anything cross-discipline so now my brain is:
it’s one of those “i know i learned this somewhere, and i’ll remember in 3 days i’m sure!” things so thanks for helping a fellow out.No issue, here is a good intro to Marxism if you want it https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm
Six strawmen in a single post! Well done, that must be some kind of record!
Reeeeeeeeeee I spouted centrist nonsense in a leftist space and I’m getting ratio’d reeeeeee
The ratio is not enough.
It is clever, you see, that any disagreement must be done online, therefore reinforcing the premise of the meme.
Can I be a leftist without being a tankie then?
Yes, you can even be a communist without being a tankie.
Not now that the term has expanded to mean everything to the left of Kamala Harris.
tankie is, as i understand it, a combination of authoritarianism, leftism, and some weird nostalgia for the soviet union i’m not entirely sure i’ve just been casually trying to pick stuff up.
That’s more likely to be Nationalist Bolshevism. The correct term is should be ‘NazBol’ and they’re nationalistic right wingers.
Keep in mind some users on Lemmy use the term ‘tankie’ to include anyone with opposition to capitalism and will argue to include anyone who is pro-palestinian or even anti-war ironically.
But those users just so happen to be critics of the Nuremburg Trial verdicts, so their opinions matter less than the NazBols to begin with.
i remember talking about the nuremburg trials with some… now that i think about of it most of them were lawyer friends, and i only have basic education about the nuremburg trials. a few of them have studied them in depth, and now that i think about it the only criticism i ever heard about the verdict was, if you’ll allow me to paraphrase, “you’re going to spend your whole life disappointed if you keep expecting everything to be perfect”.
Here I distinctly recall a user calling the execution of Julius Streicher an inhumane act and that we lost our humanity executing unrepentant Nazis.
So that’s fun.
so i’m very much not a fan of the death penalty as i’ve seen the criminal punishment system fuck up. a lot. they’ve gotta be above reproach if we can trust them with literal power over life and death.
at the same time, unrepentant Nazi. if it had been up to me, I’d’ve wanted to give him the ol’ Robert-François Damiens. first: people are allowed contradictions. second: sometimes the brutality is part of the point. hold the unrepentant nazis up for generations as villains. don’t allow them to be buried in normal cemeteries. Take their ashes and spread them around the country to be on permanent display in each and every post office as an example of why you don’t fuck with the postmaster. teach your kids “you end up being one of those damn nazis i’ll put you in the community ash jar myself”. we really could have done better.
Yes? You do realize tankies are a minority group and that in many nations “leftist” is just a normal political position?
I’m honestly not sure what you’re trying to say here
The vast majority of communists globally are “tankies”. I know that Westerners don’t consider non-westerners to be “real” though
Define tankie? What is this based on?
Good thing being left of center is far more nuanced than communism, then.
Also, not going to get into a debate about whether certain people should be considered people or whatever you’re baiting, sounds like fascism to me.
I disagree that left of center is more nuanced than communism. Most communists historically reject all forms of sectarianism, although we can fall into it anyway for a lot of reasons. I have love and admiration for many progressive liberals, and leftists that are not communists (commies are often not the most left faction, leninists tend to be more center left.) When you get to this level of analysis though, left right and center stop being useful and you have to dig into actual issues and political action.
But many progressive liberals are wrongheaded or idealist and dualist, which is not conducive to nuance. But also people are often much more deep and full of insight than their politics suggest
“thinking that non-westerners are people sounds like fascism to me. I’m a leftist by the way”
All people are people, regardless of where they live. Borders are just another way for capitalists to fuel the class war. Keep malding that I’m not a tankie 🤙
Incoherent.
I think they’re interpreting your response to the meme as “centrism bad” while the meme in question only offers Nazi, Tankie, or Centrist. These sort of mixups happen in these discussions where the implied context is just so massive.
To me it looks like you’re trying to paint everyone who’s not a Nazi or a tankie as an ‘enlightened centrist’.
🤷 try glasses
Try anarchism. Goes down smooth
i’ve known too many people who went anarchist > ancap > asshole > sovcit. I’m sure it works well for you, but i feel like it’s playing with
fireblack tar heroinSay what. No one I know has ever gone down that route. Anarchism is the furthest reach from ancap or sovcit.
I guess I and my friends have the antidote: read some actual theory. You couldn’t possibly agree with theory then go ancap. Sounds like you’re describing YouTube anarchists.
People need something else to focus on. When everything is politics then politics is everything and it’s stupidly difficult to get people interested in doing anything positive.
It’s hard to avoid politics when giving kids lunch at school is fucking political for some reason.
There is a group to blame for politicizing everything, and it is disingenuous to blame ‘people’ in general instead of that group in particular.
I mean, everything is politics whether anybody likes it or not, because politics is just what you get when you have a hierarchical power structure.
And this is what I mean. Everything is very much not politics but if you politicize everything then by definition it becomes so. People need to stop doing that.
What’s an example of something that’s not politics but is politicized?
You’ve already asserted that there are no valid answers to that question. Why did you bother asking?
Because either you’ll cite a good example and prove me wrong, or you’ll cite a bad example and confirm I’m right. While I doubt you’ll be convinced in the latter case, someone reading this exchange might be, so there’s value to be had in either case.
You’ve already asserted that everything is politics whether I like it or not, including this conversation, and since I don’t get involved in “prove me wrong” political conversations on the internet I’ll just exit.
So you’re wrong but too arrogant to admit it
Ideological polarization is actually pretty low among average Americans. It’s mostly felt among the highly politically engaged and politicians. So to that extent, this image seems accurate.
If you think the next US civil war will be fought between Nazis and Marxism-Leninists, you don’t understand American politics very well. The US in 2025 isn’t Stalingrad in 1942.
Nitpick: They’re Marxist-Leninists, not Marxism-Leninists.
Maybe if you mean this as the left vs the left… sure.
Uh… fucking cope hard. The Nazis won’t care about your enlightened centrist when they arrest you for being brown and/or the wrong kind of white.
“I think we need a mixture of both!”, he shouts while be loaded into a cattle car.
