this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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What's a tankie?
I think it's someone who does a lot of nitrous oxide at Phish concerts
Of course I know a tankie it's me.
My personal definition would be "authoritarian communist (or """communist""") regime supporters/apologists". I think a good litmus test is, if the topic of the Tiananmen Square massacre comes up, and their first input is "Ok, but, how many zeroes did the number of dead civilians really have", they're probably too far gone to bother engaging much with
Too many anarchist/commune types consider the authoritarians to be their allies because they also hate the capitalists, right up until the point they're next on the list of undesirables destined for the wall
Ok so a tankie is anyone who questions the baseless assertions of western regimes, the truth isn't actaully important to you, what matters is whether someone upholds obvious falsehoods and reinforces state propaganda but from the west
Got ya buddy
I forgot to add "struggles with reading comprehension", that's also a big indicator
"Reading comprehension" is when you accept everything you read at face value, I'm not really surprised that's something you believe
I didn't call anyone a tankie, a whole bunch of people from hexbear sure did show up feeling incredibly offended by my description of tankies though, if they want to out themselves like that, that's on them
No, most of us are tankies. We think using tanks on Hungarian fascists was cool and good.
Baseless accusations, lies, peddling long since-disproven myths and then whining when the consequences come around do actually offend me, you got me
I feel like that definition would include a lot of anarchists I know tbh
I would hope there's not too many useful idiots who think left unity will get them anything but a free ride to a "re-education" camp
You talk about having reading comprehension like it's the ultimate skill in understanding yet you're talking about re-education camps as if they're an existing thing for that matter. You should get some media literacy skills before you go around acting smug about knowing how the world works
You realize that even in the wildest fantasies of Xi Jinping's biggest fans, every single Western capitalist country is generations away from revolution? We can do left unity because 0.000% of communism or anarchism have been built, and the early stages of building either involve the same goals: getting workers to stand in solidarity with each other instead of fighting over petty trivial nonsense like "tankies" online. There is literally 0 harm that so called "authoritarians" pose to other leftists, in fact the same leftists who clutch their pearls over "tankies" tend to be the ones defending imperialism and the imposition of western economic hegemony on the imperial periphery (as long as they get healthcare!). What is more authoritarian and useful-idiot-esque than that?
Idk I don't think that's a very useful or accurate way to look at things. I do a lot of organizing and mutual aid alongside leftists of all types, (as well as liberals).
👏 Then 👏 read 👏 the 👏 Wiki 👏 page 👏
Because that will tell you the answer is 1. One zero. Because the number of dead civilians in the Tiananmen Square Massacre is zero. No civilian deaths there. Nada. Read the wiki page, it will tell you no deaths. This information brought to you by such Commies as:
Were there a limited number of deaths in protests elsewhere that wasn't Tiananmen? Yep, about 2-3 hundred across a few hundred cities. And that's bad! But is also pretty dang small relative to the protest size, and happens in all major protests in all countries everywhere.
Sorry I forgot to add "Ok but, were they really inside the square, or just near it?"
Spending the first 7/8ths of your comment dancing around the main issue (at a minimum hundreds, thankfully you at least have to admit to that since those are the official Chinese numbers, potentially thousands, of civilian protestors being killed by the Chinese military), laser focusing on some minor detail like it's a great big gotcha, then brushing the whole thing off at the end with "Yep it's bad, but it happens shrug" is exactly what I'm talking about
I guess I should at least thank you for so deftly illustrating my point though
A few hundred cities across the country is not "near it" Something like half of the dead were cops or military. You should do some reading about where the weapons that killed them came from. Interesting stuff!
Like you just did? Focusing in on location? Instead of taking in the larger argument? Your hypocrisy reeks
My impression was that you guys were supposed to be more eloquent than this
eloquence is spent on those deserving it. Why engage civilly with you when it's obvious you're not interested in good faith discourse?
This is and has always been a red herring. It's irrelevant if people were killed in the square or in the streets around the square. People were killed in Beijing by the Chinese military in order to suppress the protests. End of story.
Well, A massive, purposeful, misinformation campaign by the western governments and news sites that had claimed that there were no deaths in the square in the past and then changed their narrative all of a sudden, would, to me, suggest that these entities might also be misreprenting or lying about the other events. The story obviously does not end there.
Yes, Western media can definitely not be trusted. Better to get the real story from the secretive, authoritarian government that heavily suppresses speech and directly controls its major media outlets.
Dang I hate secretive governments, can you direct me to a western government that exposes all of its internal communications and doesn't have a huge amount of "former" state agents in major media publications?
edit: folks, I have had my weekend water on a Monday
You're right, there isn't a single Western country that has a freer press than China. In fact, China may be the world's last bastion of open information and free speech.
Except China doesn't squeal about how free their press is all the time- that's America and the west at large, all of whose media is owned by wealthy people.
There were some Western news outlets that lied about the events and propagated false information, and there were some that that did not.
The fact that Western media outlets cannot be blindly trusted does not mean that the Chinese state controlled media can. The Chinese state has a lot more incentive to lie about the events than independent news orgs do.
You should read Manufacturing Consent.
I have and I think that there is validity to the propoganda model.
But the propoganda model does not say that all reporting by Western media is false, only that Western media has a hidden bias. But while Western media has an underlying bias to shape a narrative that fits the interests of the wealthy, Chinese state media has an overt and explicit bias to push the narrative in a direction that fits the interests of the state.
So why would I be more skeptical of western reporting on the incident?
you really think their bias is in your favor?
Wild, when I read or watch literally any popular western media I find the bias overwhelmingly explicit and overt. It's almost like you're too deep in the propaganda to claim any perspective outside of it.
Well if western media were trustworthy it would probably be very easy for you to back up your claims with actual sources that haven't been debunked.
Sources from around the world say China behaved badly; Chinese state media says China did not behave badly. Sources debunked!
Post the non-debunked sources then, it shouldn't be difficult.
Edit: Yet again I ask a lib for sources and they disappear. It's incredible. I responded within a minute, and they have nothing lmao. It's always like this
What does this actually mean? Is Nelson Mandela a "tankie" to you? You might think I'm being facetious, but I'm serious. I'll link some photographs and quotes from Mandela that a lot of the capitalists in charge want you to forget:
So again, does this make Nelson Mandela a "tankie"? If so, what does it say about "tankies " and the west, in that the so called "tankies" supported Mandela in the fight against apartheid, while the west did not. In fact, the west often supported apartheid. Even Antony Blinken admitted to that recently.
Lol we're under no such illusions. Just because you see us agreeing on capitalist critiques, which I suppose makes you uncomfortable, doesn't mean we agree on what to do about capitalism.
I guess I just don't see much benefit in fraternizing with them, the optics on it are bad (see: hexbear being labeled and dismissed as a tankie instance), and if they're the ones who ultimately win, things historically have not gone well for the anarchists and anyone else who values personal liberties
That's you. You're doing that. It's you thats doing the labeling. If you don't like that label, stop using it
I thought it was all the tankies from your instance flooding the fediverse with their tankie rhetoric, but it's nice that you're giving me the sole power to warp the public image
I mean you're the person right now in this interaction using the label tankie, despite the fact that a "tankie" is someone that supports the intervention in hungary in the 70's. It's a weird label to be throwing around all willy-nilly, so you must have a reason for it. Seeing as how you're against that label being used, you should probably stop using it. Take some responsibility
Agreeing that capitalism sucks ≠ "fraternising", though. Do you expect anarchists and other sorts of libertarian socialists to start shilling capitalism because "tankies" have laid claim to communism or smthn? Lol
No but it sure doesn't help their public image willingly occupying the same spaces and appearing alongside them
The tianamen square protests were no actual witnesses saw anything happen and we're every alleged eyewitness have been proben to have lied? That.protest? The protest where "people were mushed up" but all fotos of the square show no such bodies (except for police officers that had been lynched by the protesters)? That protest?
The protest were the most famous video is of a guy blocking tanks who is then peacefully escorted away? https://streamable.com/unjnw9
Also define authoritarian