• gravityowl@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    I see tankie used far more as a pejorative Term for leftists (socialists, communists and or anarchists) than actually being used with any nuance to criticize authoritarian apologia

    Your view is incorrect. It can be both. There are people who will absolutely use tankie as a generic insult for “person on the political left”. But it’s also a specific term within leftist movements to criticize specific issues with other leftists (I.e., defending authoritarianism, an either-with-us-or-against-us mentality, unconditional love for the USSR/China, etc)

    One can draw parallels between capitalism’s failures and the successes of authoritarian socialist/ communist regimes without praising authoritarianism

    This is very true. But, by the latter definition I gave, a tankie would actually not do that. We’re having a conversation that has been had thousands of times before by leftist people about the more radical wings within their communities

    One can also condemn authoritarianism while also acknowledging that one form of authoritarianism will be or is worse than another

    By definition, one who has that level of nuance, would not be called a tankie. Now, obviously a user can just use the term tankie as a generic insult for “you leftist”, but that’s when nuance comes into play. Sadly, we’re are talking about instances that are very much incapable of such level of nuance.

    Those are my thoughts as someone who was literally a member of my country’s communist party and left that same party precisely because of the issues I mentioned within the second definition. And based on my experiences, instances like Lemmygrad are absolutely that type of tankie.

    • exploitedamerican@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      It isn’t necessarily my personal view, its what I’ve experienced empirically throughout certain forum based internet spaces

      • gravityowl@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        It isn’t necessarily my personal view, its what I’ve experienced empirically throughout certain forum based internet spaces

        Unless you ran experiments/collected data (in which case, I woul genuinely love to see that) to gather such info, your “empirical” data is just observation-based. In which case, it can be skewed.

        I’ve noticed your account is relatively new. So of course if one were to hang out with centrists and/or on Reddit, the average experience would be unbalanced as the typical use of the term tankie would be viewed as “generic insult to a person on the political left”.

        But on Lemmy I’ve noticed far more people using the term tankie accurately to describe a specific fringe of the leftist movement. The type of fringe that, for example, still defends the USSR no matter what and is incapable of criticizing authoritarianisms.

        Having said all of this…welcome to Lemmy! Lol hope you like it here :)

      • Zagorath@aussie.zone
        0·
        2 months ago

        I’ll tell you, my “empirical view” is that I’ve almost (if not absolutely) never seen it used against someone who wasn’t simping for China—or worse, modern-day crony-capitalist Russia. As though anyone defending Russian imperialism against the perception of American imperialism has any legs to stand on from a leftist’s perspective.