I’ve run across these terms several times, but without enough context to figure out what they mean. Could someone help me out, please?
ETA All of you are amazing! A huge thank you to everyone who responded, and an extra thank you to those who have provided links or explanations to further and/or related information. I am learning so much by reading all of these comments!
Removed by mod
But there are people who identify as left-wing who will support China and Russia while downplaying their authoritarianism.
That’s not something being invented as a boogeyman. Anyone can go to lemmygrad.ml right now to see it in action.
I have no time to listen to American liberals wring their hands about China’s authoritarianism while the US jails more people than any other country in the world, employs the death penalty, engages in coups, counterrevolutions, and props up fascist regimes in every continent on the globe. WE live in an authoritarian police state. WE just had a nationwide uprising against it three years ago and observed what was perhaps the most sophisticated counterinsurgency campaign in modern history get waged against it as the entire political establishment, from shitlib to frothing fascist dug in their heels and ensured nothing would be done about these out of control murderpigs.
If you are a leftist, you are an anti-capitalist. If you call yourself a leftist and you aren’t an anti-capitalist, you are a joke. If you are an anti-capitalist, you must recognize that the bourgeois state is illegitimate. If you recognize that the bourgeois state is illegitimate, you don’t carry their water and make the case for them to militarize even further while the growing homeless population gets picked off in the streets by vigilantes and we inch closer and closer to outright pogroms against the LGBT+ community.
The Russian Federation is fucked. A consequence of the 90s shock doctrine, scrapping the Soviet Union and selling everything which wasn’t nailed down to a bunch of gangsters. They are ruled by a right wing, reactionary, socially conservative government. Still, that doesn’t make their crushing defeat a benefit to the world. It won’t be the left filling that vacuum. I am not going to root for the fucking US just because Russia is bad, and I am not going to root for Ukraine which has effectively banned all left-wing opposition parties, media, and labor unions while rehabilitating Nazi collaborators. I hope for an immediate cease-fire, what I have hoped for since the beginning, but for the bloodthirsty liberals this is not enough. They need to make a point, and they care very deeply about where we draw a bunch of lines on a fucking map, no matter how many people need to die for it, and what the social and political ramifications are.
I defend China, and to a much lesser extent, Russia, because I know what the alternatives are. If the US had its way, Western finance would batter down the walls of China, privatize everything in sight, and deliver the biggest increase of poverty in world history. Even bigger than the collapse of the Soviet Union. This would all be in the aftermath of the most lethal war in living memory. Potentially bigger than World War II. It would give the Capitalists the liveblood they need to survive for another century at least. And we WILL NOT SURVIVE another century of Capitalism. The WORLD is fucking dying. Climate change is going to claim the lives of millions. Interstate conflicts resulting from the effects of climate change are going to kill millions more. The turbulence will drive the militarization of police, borders, and surveillance to extremes we cannot even imagine.
You got down voted but you’re right. Tankie is the new form of commie after that fell out of favor. Western “champaign socialists” (another term I hate but it kinda applies here) use it to criticize people from countries that actually have had socialist experiments. Most of the leftists globally are not western and would fit under the standard western definition of tankie. But if you’ve never come close to overthrowing your own government, are you positioned all that well to criticize someone elses revolution while you sit comfortably in the imperial core?
Poor countries face challenges that rich countries can’t imagine often from western interference and revolutions are an ugly business. No Castro was not Santa Claus but he was a marked improvement over Batista.
Did you notice the huge amount of downvotes on any post in here that isn’t outright insults the so called “tankies”?
During the Red Scare, calling someone a “communist” was itself a death threat. Red Scare is now over and you have people openly declaring themselves communist, that’s why they had to come up with a new term. Tankie was their first attempt but they messed up by making it too restrictive, now they’re pushing a new term
“Woke.”
Example sentences: “Free healthcare is wokeism”
The above is a natural evolution since “Free healthcare is communism” would have the opposite effect if you keep repeating it over and over. At some point people will declare themselves “woke” and the right will come up with yet another new term.