I’ve seen Anarchists called “tankie” so at this point it either needs to be entirely redefined or done away with. Even suggesting people to read Marx can get you called a tankie these days.
You are not making a point by asking those questions…
If you think those where legitimate actions but generally think of yourself not as an authoritarian kind of person and in your book you don’t fall under the definition of tankie, you may very well think so.
I believe many people would argue that if you are in favor of any kind of violence against the own civil populations with the army this brings you over the edge. But even if so, this doesn’t make you as as person atankie, no questions asked, case done.
You can be generally against nuclear power except in one very specific case, scientific long time submarines for example, this doesn’t make you a nuclear enthusiast. In my oppinion its the same with tankie, but if you find an excuse for every or nearly all instances (by socialist/left/eastern block) it paints a picture that suggests you may be generally in favor of such measures if they are done by an entity you sympathise with, which would make the term fitting in my opinion
If you believe the term can refer to entities who are not on the left wing side of the political spectrum, you may be in a minority. But one could of course take those positions… I would strongly disagree with this one personally though, and I don’t think this is how a lot of people use the term. I think most people use it to describe a portion of the socialist/communist spectrum, again the boundary is blurry but the direction is quite clear. (which gives you the answer for most of your questiom btw.)
Now let’s turn the table:
Do you think the terms “left-wing” and “right-wing” are meangless/useless?
If not could you please define them for me?
Edit: some typos Also: you keep referring to states, which of course helps some ways of your argumentation but I think its mostly used for people, not nations
It is my opinion that all violent events must be judged within their context and on a case by case basis. The Cuban government absolutely should have stopped the Bay of Pigs, while Chun Doo-Hwan absolutely should not have butchered his people.
As for Authoritarian, the word is usually thrown against Socialists without backing up what it means. If I say I am in favor of a Socialist Republic, which extends Democratic control to Production and eliminates the idea of the Wealthy influencing the state, does that make me an Authoritarian? Yes, according to those abusing the word Tankie.
For your question, leftism is support for Socialism and movements towards it, while rightism is support for Capitalism and movements towards it.
Cool that that’s your opinion, I have the opinion that one can generally judge actions by their nature. In my opinion raping someone is bad, Using nuclear warheads is bad, using the military against (any) civilians is bad, and especially if it is against your own people they are supposed to protect.
This doesnt mean I have to have a black and white opinion which will never under any circumstances change, but I generally condemned such actions. The goal in my opinion must always be to move towards a peacefull and just society without oppression, if the outcome is the killing/opressing of your own people there is something fundamentally flawed with the system which needs to be addressed.
To play the game:
I have seen people call capitalists “left” because they wanna make “social democracy” capitalism, I have seen people called right wing who literally wanted a dictatorship without markets. Those terms can refer to anything an are meaningless in today’s discourse.
What would you do when the “doppelte ausrufung der republic” happens in Germany? Would you say the socialists there where right wing because a lot of them were in favor of (deeply controlled) capitalistic markets?
–> you see, those ways of argumenting simply don’t actually make a point.
Tankie: Someone who is authoritarian to a degree he sees using the army (tanks) against the own civilian population as a valid and legitimate action. Sometimes used as slur by people against those measures (or generally highly authoritarian top down approaches of state theory) or as (positive) self reference by people in favor of such measures (or generally highly authoritarian top down approaches of state theory)
Woke: from civil right movement, someone who is weary of loyalty to the state and instead examines society/policy/politics himself. - in modern times used as slur against progressive and ecological conscious people by right wing people.
Tankie: Someone who is authoritarian to a degree he sees using the army (tanks) against the own civilian population as a valid and legitimate action. Sometimes used as slur by people against those measures (or generally highly authoritarian top down approaches of state theory) or as (positive) self reference by people in favor of such measures (or generally highly authoritarian top down approaches of state theory)
Don’t know what your problem is defining both.
EDIT: Not to be confused with “I know exactly who a tankie is and who isn’t - my definition is 100% correct” or even “there are exact boundaries and conditions to what a tankie is”
Its like “peace”, " progressive", “right-wing”, different people will give you different definitions, my point is, that there is a concept to which the word refers and different interpretations/ambiguities don’t render the term useless simply by existing.
I assumed people would be smart enough themselfs to know that the term is directed at left wing entities.
My definition must be 100% correct and .ml and hexbear try to disprove it from every vector, people purposely ignoring the context and the rest of the comment, but Just stating “the term means nothing” without any arguments or evaluating further than “its like woke” appears to be a good argument to them…
Then my argument just is: “It means something” “its like >left-wing<” That should be equally appealing.
Yeah, a bunch of people misuse both ‘woke’ and ‘tankie’ as just insults so both seem to lose meaning. Especially with politically charged words, I think leftists have a knee jerk reaction to being mislabeled a tankie and come to the conclusion that it is meaningless and not just misused.
I’m pretty damn left leaning and I’ve never been called a tankie. I rarely even see anyone being called a tankie, except people who are defending authoritarians. The scope of the word “tankie” seemed generally pretty clear to me.
Same, never experinced problems with misusage of the term (in real life). When i mentioned this in another thread, someone chimed in and stayed they were experiencing it constantly for no reason and also leftist around him would be called that. Later that discussion it was revealed that he thinks everyone who doesn’t agree with Stalins policy is not (true) left…
I hear waaaaayyy more complaining about the term tankie from actual tankies than I hear people using it as a general slur against left people.
I get called a tankie pretty frequently for anything vauguely left of biden on Lemmy. Ive never heard the term IRL, but I HAVE been called a communist IRL two or three times for saying a 40 hour work week should cover a basic level of housing.
HM… Are you defending (authoriatharian) policys of historical socialism a lot? Because i am in the the left side of the political spectrum too, and didn’t have this experience on Lemmy. Maybe its because I frequent European. Communities more often, where there is not so much red scare as in America.
I have also beend called a communist, also in real life, but this wasn’t meant as an insult but as a description. I argument in favor of a democracy without capitalism, maybe with councils (strange that there seems to be no English word for “rätesystem” which doesn’t involve worker or soldiers, which is to exclusive IMO), so calling me a communist/socialist is understandable and (apart from some very rare instances) wasn’t meant to discredit me.
I have never been called a tankie though, and have never (even online) seen someone get called a tankie who had undogmatic views. People will defend dictators like Stalin, then define everyone who doesn’t agree with Stalin as “libtards” and then get upset when undogmatic socialist who get mislabled that way call them tankies.
Sure, as with every buzzword misuse cases will exist, but most peoples argument is that they use the term for “everyone on the left spectrum” so its is meaningless, but for them the left spectrum only includes tankies, and they just define everyone else as not left.
Are you defending authoritarian policies of historical socialism alot?
Nope, but I do point out that most socialist countries fail due to direct US intervention, which is true but inconvenient to their narrative that socialism is a failure.
I have also been called a communist, but this wasn’t meant as an insult but a description
Are you familiar with the American concept of the “Bible Belt?” It’s essentially just the American Southeast, Texas out to the East Coast, up to mid-Virginia or so. (The confederate states, basically.) This section of the country continues to be hyper religious and hyper conservative. What I’m getting at is that in this neck of the woods, socialist and communist are used almost exclusively as slurs lol, for anybody who doesn’t have an almost comical conservative stance.
Hm seems like the local discourse seems kinda f up. I can imagine the same for conservative parts of Europe. Still IMHO we should not let terms (mostly used in interleft discussions) get destroyed by the far rights low insight in the details of left politcs
A lot of people around me tend to parrot that a lot of the safety measures are not for explosives detection, but for drug trafficking prevention. I’ve always disagreed because nobody ever presented any evidence to it, and the measures in place do come from explosive detection (unless they have metal drugs now idk). But I’ve wondered whether there is some truth to it.
TSA literally says on their own website that they are not looking for drugs and will only report it to the police if it’s blatant.
TSA’s screening procedures are focused on security and are designed to detect potential threats to aviation and passengers. Accordingly, TSA security officers do not search for marijuana or other illegal drugs, but if any illegal substance is discovered during security screening, TSA will refer the matter to a law enforcement officer.
I’ve watched a video about this recently. The problem is, most detectors were based on X-rays in the past decades. Liquid explosives are pretty close to the density (and/or other properties) of water, and you can’t tell for sure whether there’s toothpaste or boom juice in that tube.
However, some airports started using expensive MRI MRI like X-ray* machines that can see stuff in more detail, plus, it lets you to make cross sections from different angles and therefore have a 3D model that you can rotate on your screen (it’s rather cool).
EDIT: I just realised someone else linked this, too. I would leave it here, it’s still educational.
I’d just like to clarify: the new machines aren’t MRI (the magnets in those would prohibit all metal objects being within 100ft).
The new machines are also xray; but the xray emiters and detector are now on a spinning carriage similar to an MRI. This allows you to build a 3d model of the object and calculate it’s volume, which when combined with the density measurements gives much more reliable material detection.
This also means your stuff doesn’t have to be removed from bags to ensure items aren’t blocking each other from the scanner.
I just took a charter flight that didn’t involve going through TSA or the airport terminal.
Whatever happened on the flight itself was irrelevant as the sheer pleasure of getting on a plane without the standard anal probe far outweighed all other aspects of the journey.
All in all, “Tankie” is just the modern version of “Pinko!” I’ve seen Anarchists called Tankies, every manner of Marxists, non-Marxist Socialists, and more. It truly lost all of its meaning and is just Lemmy’s Red Scare.
A huge portion of that comes from Lemmy.world, which is the largest instance to defederate intentionally from Hexbear and Grad, which has the presumably unintended effect of making Zionists and other far-right wingers feel comfortable in an Anticommunist instance.
Unintended may be somewhat true, in that nobody explicitly had that as a conscious reason, but it was an obvious result that they could’ve known beforehand. So I don’t think it’s useful at all to call it unintended. Just an easily understood and expected side effect
lemmy.world has comments in their community, where they call for the nuking of developing countries, when they read news of social injustice. By that logic, their ‘civilized’ country should be nuked thrice, because cartoonishly evil, rich scumbags like Jeffrey Epstein and their associates still have a free pass for raping minors in their creepy sex-dungeons.
I’m starting to realize one of the biggest issues with the fediverse is how much tribalism is going to play a part in interactions between instances. It seems like every instance is going to have some absurd stereotypes that get repeated as fact.
Some people in .ml and hexbear were labeled tankies, accurately or not, and now you’re all tankies. And this post seems to be in response to that, saying the word tankie isn’t even a real thing. And now we have comments suggesting lemmy.world is also a unified group promoting certain ideologies. It’s the largest instance, we’re gonna have one-off crazies saying stupid stuff.
I know it does makes a small difference being on .world vs .ml/hexbear. But most people in both are leftists if what I’ve seen is accurate. We’re just being stereotypical leftist splintering ourselves into separate groups over the smallest differences.
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