VolatileExhaustPipe , 11 months ago

He is right though. It isn’t a fallacy, the usage of the word tankie is so far removed from content that it is a bad term and more thought terminating than anything.

Tankies were originally a small subset of some Western and some, mostly East European, socialists and communists which were in favour of a (para-)military response to the revolt in Hungary in 1956. It was a complex situation and even people not on the side of Nagy within Hungary were in favour of the Soviet action.

The term now was used, and amplified by intelligence agencies and Western media, to decry the Soviet action and more importantly de-legitimize several communist groups. In that sense the functional usage of the term is similar, but the question is where would the slur hit actually?

In principle it would hit a small sub section of MLs who followed Khrushchev’s decision. Many people within the pact did see the de-Stalinisation and how it was communicated as problematic, as it enabled opposition forces to claim ground in countries. Nagy tried to do introduce reforms, the most far reaching: “Hungary to leave the Warsaw Pact and declare neutrality in the Cold War.”

Countries thinking about leaving the dominant two powers spheres of influence during the Cold War were often met with violence. See the Jakarta Method for more information about that (i.e. Vietnam, Korea, Indonesia, the whole of South America). During that time colonialism was also still relevant and colonial powers did use excessive violence, this is another part of the book.

Now what you and others do is labeling people who are to the left of the Soviets at that point as Tankies. Which is doubly wrong and cynical. What is interesting is that the slur can be traced back for the last 6 years to the US and there to more right wing places. It wasn’t primarily a phrase that was used by leftists. However after the heating chamber of the alt right online people used it to label even people who are democratic socialists at best.

In that sense it is a continuity to the Red Scare, to not have to engage with content.

Luckily the US would never in the 1950s use regime change in countries, for example it would never use military force in Guatemala to ensure the profits of the United Fruit company and the CIA director’s family or

alike1948–1960s Italy 1949 Syrian coup d’état 1949–1953 Albania 1953 Iranian coup d’état 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état 1956–57 Syria crisis 1957–58 Indonesian rebellion 1959–2000 assassination attempts on Fidel Castro 1959 Cambodia, Bangkok Plot 1960 Congo coup d’état 1961 Cuba, Bay of Pigs Invasion 1961 Cuba, Operation Mongoose 1961 Dominican Republic 1963 South Vietnamese coup d’état 1964 Brazilian coup d’état 1965–66 Indonesia, Transition to the New Order 1966 Ghanaian coup d’état 1971 Bolivian coup d’état 1970–1973 Chile 1976 Argentine coup d’état 1979 Salvadoran coup d’état 1979–1989 Afghanistan, Operation Cyclone 1975–1992 Angola, UNITA 1981–1990 Nicaragua, Contras 1982 Chad 1996 Iraq coup attempt