Are you a "tankie"? (2025 edition) (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by manuallybreathing@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I forgot to set a reminder so I'm a little late getting to this, but here we are again:

Are you a "tankie"?

Respond "yes" or "no", I'll collate results later

This process is being undertaken to determine if so-called "tankies" are conspiring to make you (yes, you) have a bad time on the internet!

vague or informal answers will be interpreted by the central authority (me). Only top level comments will be counted. I will not be providing further instructions or clarifications.

🤯

Link to previous results (very serious) hexbear / lemmy,ml

Link to previous "are you a tankie?" thread

I'll likely check back in a week, my old pc died so itll take a little bit of time to prettify the results and write a report

Ciao, and of course, imperialism must be destroyed.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I align most with Nia Frome's viewpoint in Marketing Socialism. Essentially, we can't shy away from loaded terms, liberals will accuse us regardless, so it's more important to correctly demystify rather than taking the "easy" path of distancing ourselves from "tankies," as though "tankie" means anything other than "communist/leftist/anti-imperialist/etc."

We should correctly call out "tankie" as something to not be afraid of, it just means "commie" or "red" or "pinko," and not let the word have power over discourse when discussing leftist politics.

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[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

But 'Tankie' is not the ideology at all. There is no reason to defend anything which is not the ideology itself. The word Tankie is so meaningless and vague that the only reason to ever use it is if people are actually trying to push on it. In which case you'd first have to ask them what they even mean by the word Tankie because they probably don't know what it means to begin with (nobody really does at this point).

Using it as a self-identifier is self-defeating.

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[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Using "tankie" as a self-identifier has the same effect as calling oneself a "commie," it signals that being accused of being a communist isn't anything to take offense to. If I am going to be called a "commie, pinko, red, tankie, etc" then it is best to call it out for what it is: Accurate insofar as it describes me as a communist. I'm not going to deny those who call me by such pejoratives, rather I'm just going to explain why I'm a communist. Using it as a self-identifier blunts the pejorative and makes it less effective in public discourse to shut down communist speech.

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