What always confuses me is when I see a queer tankie or conservative, it's like why are you shooting yourself in the foot
40I'm a queer conservative. I believe in conserving indigenous sovereignty, the environment, pagan religions, labour regulations and the strength of unions, and our knowledge of history. I question these newfangled ideas like capitalism and binary gender because I think they're no good. Things were just fine when we had 10,000 genders and I don't see a need to change that!
36People want a good team to root for. They want simple answers instead of the truth. You can just say your nation or other nations are great and must be defended from justifiable criticism because an attack on them is an attack on your own identity.
11Serious question: Why are far-left idealogists being labeled anti-queer? I've simply never heard of this before.
Conservatives (U.S. politics) are 100% in that bucket... But most of them are far-right at this point (and patently nuts.)
10A lot of tankies have killed queer people
7
While historically, and contemporaneously, communist countries have been harsh on homosexuality, surely next time the gays will be safe!
8After the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, homosexuality (as well as abortion) was decriminalized.
It was only after Stalin's counter-revolution that gay sex (and abortion) were made illegal. People spoke out against it, including queers and feminists in the Comintern. Again, wtf are queer (or feminist) tankies thinking?
2
Are tankies really that big of a problem? No one worth their weight (or not chronically online) actually uncritically worships former socialist projects, the whole point is to study and preserve the nuance of what occured in former socialist projects for future socialism. Tankie is such a chronically online term that kills any discussion of former socialism whenever I see it in service of avoiding it altogether. 196 having it in its community banner screams of insecurity.
Terfs on the other hand have serious intitutional power and have actually shaped international politics in their rhetoric. A few weirdos on an online discussion webpage does not compare to an international counter revolutionary bloc of fascists who have already enacted harm. It's telling when there has already been an incident of terf-adjacent transphobia in this community than a "tankie infestation."
29Look up "horseshoe theory", might explain a few things
7do you unironically believe in horseshoe theory?
27The horseshoe theory is bullshit not because tankies and nazis don't behave similarly, but because they're not the two logical extremes of the same spectrum. You can be far left without being a tankie by just not being a bootlicker, and you can be far right without being a nazi by (you guessed it) also not being a bootlicker. Even with how many boots you lick the left/right division of the political spectrum is still horribly reductive, but it's super important to split the axis of authoritarianism vs liberalism out of it when addressing tankies, because they have a lot of colloquially left beliefs with the authoritarianism and anti-progressivism commonly associated with the right wing.
7
It's in the encyclopedia of political fallacies somewhere between "it isn't corruption if it's legal" and trickle down economics.
13*look up "lying about being a socialist/feminist", might explain a few things
7Nah I've met some that genuinely believe the stuff they're saying. Definitely there's a lot of people just bullshitting to create outrage though.
1
What are the two terms please?
4TERF (trans exclusive radical feminists) are basically transphobes who say "trans people are bad for women rights".
Tankies are a bit more vague in usage. But basically these are self proclaimed socialists who are actually more into authoritarian leaders. They will appreciate Stalin for everything he did and defend North Korea's political system. Sometimes even praise China and Russia for being "anti-imperialist". So they have all the social backwards ideas, even more so than TERFS because why would they be feminists.
21Tankies are a derogatory term for any Communist government that has a large military force that they use. Basically, if any Communist country uses it's military power, they're tankies. It's western propaganda to make every Communist nation look evil. It started with the Tiananmen Square riots and the picture of the guy standing in front of the tanks leaving the square the day before the actual fighting happened. It's also used to pretend that countries like North Korea or China are somehow more violent and authoritarian than the US.
5Your bias is showing, lol.
Tankies are generally anti-west authies that root for self-proclaimed "communist" systems like China (which is state capitalist) or Russia (which is an oligopoly, the exact thing late stage capitalism devolves into). They generally spew the exact authoritarian and bigoted bullshit as the alt-right but do it under a different flag that historically opposed nazis, which is why they constantly claim that they're somehow completely different and even more, "opposite" to nazis. Lemmy unfortunately has an infestation of them because the developers are tankies, which often shows on lemmy.ml (the instance said devs run).
Like most reactionaries, tankies have no principles either, just a group they hate and they will twist their ideology as much as it takes to get you that end result. For tankies, that group is "the west". They will coat their bullshit in opposition of the ultra-rich (which most of us can agree on) but make no mistake, as long as you live in a western nation they want you gone, or at best subjugated. This is currently the most apparent in their support of Russia's genocidal war against Ukraine, because it props up a power that they perceive as "friendly" to them, but you might also catch them supporting the Uighur genocide and respond with extreme amounts of whataboutism every time such a take is brought up, essentially detracting from any problem in world powers they align with with counter-accusations of "the west".
22Origin of the term didn't originate with China and the Tiananmen square massacre...
From wiki:
The term "tankie" was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defense of the Soviet use of tanks to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring uprising, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions.
18it started with the Tiananmen Square riots
It actually started with British Marxist-Leninists who criticized the USSR's use of tanks to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and the communists who defended the USSR's imperialism were called tankies.
It started as a way to call out people who call themselves communists but nonetheless engage in or defend imperialism, and to this day that remains the meaning of the word. There are some liberals out there who use the word against all leftists, as a way to imply that leftism is inherently authoritarian. But that is not largely how it is used online, and it's definitely not how OP was using it.
13Found a tankie.
2
Either I've aged really fast, or you guys are speaking a new language, can someone explain what any of this means?
4TERF = Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism
Feminists who also don't like Trans people, especially trans women.
Tankies = people who support rivals to Western power, usually saying they support communism but they actually just support whatever Russia and China do. Some are state propagandists, some are just edgy teenagers.
4
What are the two terms please?
3Fuck both groups tbh
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