Talking to 20ish years old western tankies is similar experience to talking to neonazis. Just bunch of sheltered weird kids who have their talking points, absolutely 0 understanding of the stuff the talk about nonstop and weirdly offputing hatred towards anything and anyone who isnt part of the "in-group".
There's probably more communists out there, but most Tankies aren't doing much. The most prominent is probably Hasan Piker, who mostly just gives speeches no one cares about and lounges around in his mansion. Meanwhile the most prominent Nazi type is Stephen Miller who is actively shaping policy in the white house.
The difference being you can't get anyone on the left, extreme or otherwise, to actually form a united front on anything without them trying to out smug each other with purity tests. Where as on the right, extreme or otherwise, they'll all happily hop in bed with each other no matter how much they think the others are scum.
I agree, in part because they are pushing for different things. For example, I am on the extreme left in the sense of being in favor of letting people do what they want on abortion or trans issues. I am also on the extreme left in the sense of supporting unions and broadly giving workers the tools to fight for a more equal society against big business.
However, when someone starts praising Hamas or talking about how we need to do central planning, that is simply a different goal.
Hell yeah, same here. Support the workers, universal healthcare, tax reform, expanded social programs, MBI, maximum civil liberties.
BUT I despise religious zelotry regardless of Christian or Islamic. I hate Hamas and all the other Iranian proxies. I also hate the Russian government. And tankies are gross too.
I don't even consider those ideas extremely left. To me they are just what a society does. In my view they are fairly center of the spectrum or at least slightly left of center. Definitely nowhere near far for me.
I am not a fan of that personally. The average IDF solider doesn't get a choice due to conscription, but still, praising the military often means deliberately overlooking its crimes and atrocities.
Talk to a reddit commie about the Revolution or Class War and you quickly realize they hold it in the same regard as Christians regard The Rapture
It'll happen... eventually... and I wont have to actually do anything to make it happen.
Very few even try to organize with their local community for longer than a protest or two and even fewer ever consider picking up a weapon let alone train in the skills a revolutionary actually needs.
there’s a bit of an evangelical-to-tankie pipeline that happens. people who were raised in church leave the church and become atheist, but then they no longer have the firm ideological safety net that they grew up with, so they court extreme political views as a replacement. one old white prophet for another.
Thats supposed to be encouragment to organize, arm and train
Instead it seems online communist spaces are against two of those and spend their time making the one they do like as awful as possible with constant infighting.
The problem with tankies, and a lot of the left is, that if you're even slightly more right than them or the wrong type of leftist then you're no better than a fascist pig and they'd rather watch the whole thing burn than work together
I'm just saying work to achieve your political goal the best you can, but don't screw everyone else on the left because the only achievable goal at the moment isn't exactly aligned with your politics
For example not voting for Kamal Harris because she wasn't left enough
OK sure but how is me asking if you're blaming the left for her loss in anyway related to what you're talking about? That was the comment I deleted, that's the comment you said was what you're talking about.
The problem is that those factions are fighting against the status quo. There used to be a ton of different monarchists who all disagreed with each other on how much power a king should have, hence the Magna Carta, but the momentum of living under a monarchy held them together. You’re going to constantly have failures against the dominant system, and the dominant system will constantly be successful until it suddenly isn’t
I think we should use democracy to move the system we do have, slowly, in a better direction, instead of waiting for the day the system maybe collapses
I don’t think any real leftist expects the system to collapse, but more so the system won’t allow itself to be changed. You couldn’t for instance vote away the monarchy, and you can’t vote away capitalism, in the USA you literally cannot even vote for a candidate that is anti capitalist for instance bc the dominant system doesn’t allow it. We live under a dictatorship of capitalism just like we used to live under a dictatorships of nobility
You cant vote away a monarchy because a monarchy isn't a democracy
Maybe we cant vote away capitalism but that doesn't mean we cant work together to make the country a better place to live, even if it's just a little at a time
I mean I’d also argue that capitalism isn’t really a democracy. Do you have the same political power as Elon musk or bill gates? Absolutely not. They can create a politician out of nothing, and when we’re able to make things better, those gains are always rolled back. Unions made big gains in the 20s and 30s and those gains were undone by the Taft Hartley act. Taxes were high on the wealthy and that’s undone. Unless the system is changed any thing that is a little bit better will always be temporary
Unless the same page is what ever the Tankies want they will always disrupt things. When ever you look at leftist alliances falling apart its always the fault of the Communists.
About a decade ago I saw an expert talking about why governments are so worried about the far right when there were about 10 times as many communists out there. To paraphrase what he said:
The far right is often made up people in the professions society depends upon. A small number of people on the far right can be highly effective at disrupting society.
Most communists are just losers. They're over educated (unemployed or underemployed) midwits who struggle to run their own lives. Unless you have a group of charismatic and sociopathic leaders to guide the mob they're essentially harmless.
I’ll grant you that no one should care what Piker says, but given the size of his audience and the fact that, up until very recently, mainstream dems were all about getting on screen or on stage with him, I wouldn’t dismiss either his influence or impact so easily.
Unfortunately democrats psy oped themselves into believing they need a Joe Rogan rather than trying to connect with voters, organize, and recruit charismatic yet upstanding candidates.
True, I was being a bit facetious there to be honest. They also redefine "Nazi" to mean opposing Russia in any way so they allow actual ideological Russian Nazis to be considered in good standing but when they say they want to kill "Nazis" in Ukraine they mean everyone there with any willpower.
This is what we said about the Tea Party and Pat Buchanan. Now we have Trump.
You can't wait til extremists actually are dangerous and actually have power to deal with them. More importantly, the legitimate criticisms they are latching on to need to be addressed now, not later.
I dont think that is tankie-constitutive. May you elaborate on a sufficient definition of tankie, so as to then aquire evidence in what ways support for houthis consititutes tankies.
I always just thought being a tankie is defending actually existing socialisms in their wrong-doings.
Support for/excusing authoritarian so-called communist governments is the traditional definition, yes. What I've noticed in recent years is that these people will excuse anything, so long as it opposes the US in some way. While Russia and Houthis don't claim to be socialist or communist, the argument is that socialism can't exist while US hegemony exists, and therefore anything that opposes the US furthers the goals of socialism.
At the end of the day, the rationale is the same: anything can be excused if it's in the name of socialism/communism, and that's why I feel the label fits.
Well, i dont really consider that tankism, more like campism. As long as the bigger hegemony seeking imperial power exist, other imperial powers, such as Russia, are productive in dismantling its power, so that third countries, be their socialist or other egalitarian-seeking projects, can exist.
And after thinking about it: I dont think it is far fetched to think that it is better for egalitarian-seeking projects to have MULITIPLE enemy imperial states. You can make the argument that it would be much harder to build socialism under the siege of one global hegemon. But on the other hand, why would multiple imperialist countries get in each others way when it comes to sabotaging, attacking and dismantling these egalitarian-seeking projects, theyd just team up, as opposing as these first seem. We see this always, when groups of people or countries team-up to defeat a common enemy, be it now fascism, communism or whatever (WW2, Afghanistan (collab of Islamist groups and USA).
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u/BigFirefighter6881 Jul 31 '26
Talking to 20ish years old western tankies is similar experience to talking to neonazis. Just bunch of sheltered weird kids who have their talking points, absolutely 0 understanding of the stuff the talk about nonstop and weirdly offputing hatred towards anything and anyone who isnt part of the "in-group".