I’m not sure I’ve seen any evidence of it existing though, is it just a Boogeyman, or so something that happened a while back? An in joke of some sort?

  • sapient [they/them]@infosec.pub
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    1 year ago

    “Gender updates” is the best term i’ve heard for transitioning in a while. I’m stealing it now, the bigots can’t have it. 󰱫

    (also note for anyone reading: the term “tankie” refers to people who embrace authoritarianism and usually specific self-declared “socialist” states repressing civilians, often modern day states that don’t even pretend to be socialist like Russia, or the CCP, or North Korea/DPRK, or even just any nation considered “anti-West” regardless of their behaviour or internal political structure x.x

    It started when parts of the Communist Party of Great Britain split off from the main party because the main party supported the USSR crushing (with tanks) Hungarian socialists trying to break off from the USSR, for a number of reasons - others were involved too, but the worker councils themselves were major parts of the uprising - see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956 - there were attempts at worker council parlimentary democracy and such, as well as attempts for direct-democracy ^.^

    The most recent Tankie Thing is supporting Russia for invading Ukraine, or doing weird enlightened-centrism on it because the USA gives support to Ukraine. More broadly, tankies generally seem to act as if any act by another country is always less bad than the USA, and that only the USA can be imperialist, or various variations on this concept >.<.

    It should be noted that the right wing have started to some degree calling all leftists tankies and IMO anyone should reject this attempted co-option of the word because it allows people to falsely conflate leftism with tankie ideologies, even though they are often a small minority in IRL leftist activism, with more common groups being anarchists, democratic socialists, some Marxists (even some Marxist-Leninists, which itself is a controversial term tbh), various libertarian socialisms and communisms, and the odd further-left social democrat ^.^)

      • sapient [they/them]@infosec.pub
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        1 year ago

        lol you really think I just parrot the US state department. Honestly this is another thing with tankies, they seem to be incapable of conceiving of geopolitics more complex than “arm of the USA” or “not arm of the USA”.

        The idea of only partial-alignment even among nominal allies, and complex conflicting geopolitical interests, and the idea of spectrums and complexity beyond “US=bad” “not US=good” is foreign to them, or even criticizing actions of organizations rather than just deciding XYZ organization is evil or good and retroactively justifying or opposing every action they take (let alone consider that an action could have mixed consequences or ethics, both positive or negative ;p).

        For example, I am still capable of criticising Ukraine’s actions (for example like using cluster bombs, even if last I saw Russia used them first I still am not in favour of them) and the propaganda they produce, or worrying about the effects of the significant debt on Ukrainians and their public services in the form of disaster capitalism, or also generally expressing my issue with States as a whole while still opposing brazen imperialism by Russia ^.^, or criticising the dehumanisation of Russian people in some of the conversations I’ve seen (especially the people who left Russia, when those are the people least likely to support the Russian Government’s actions and are often fleeing persecution themselves e.g. queer Russians).

        I just don’t usually specifically say these things because in practise the conversations in which it comes up are already horrifically derailed by apologia for Russia’s actions and enlightened-centrism, so expressing the nuance is completely useless because the people I’m responding to just hate anything they associate with “the West” (which itself is not necessarily a fully coherent concept) and usually massively whitewash the shit going on in Russia, both about Ukraine and also other things <.<

      • NuMetalAlchemist
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        1 year ago

        …you’re still stooges for American imperialism.

        Says the stooge for authoritarian genocide?

        Like what, lol.

    • Strawberry
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      1 year ago

      even some Marxist-Leninists, which itself is a controversial term tbh

      Could you elaborate on this? I have not heard of a controversy about this term

      • Franzia
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        1 year ago

        Marxist-Leninists tend to have accidentally read russian / USSR propoganda and will have some sussy takes because of it. Marxist-Leninist youtubers are all tankies or cult-like and it’s a bit of a nightmare.

        • Strawberry
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          1 year ago

          Oh I was reading that as there being some kind of linguistic controversy about the term marxism-leninism xD

      • sapient [they/them]@infosec.pub
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        1 year ago

        Marxism-Leninism as a term was actually created by Stalin as a sort of post-hoc justification thing. It was not made by Lenin, but Stalin. This is linguistic weirdness/controversy, in that the name can serve to hide it’s origins from casual readers.

        The other commenter has explained the more concrete thing with the fact that lots of them are tankies or proto-tankies ^.^