138

On tankies and online discourse about them (lemmy.eco.br)

submitted 5 days ago by Emanuel@lemmy.eco.br to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

88 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm not one to post often. I'm not really one to rant to strangers online often, even. But, after migrating from r*ddit to lemmy, I've had this on my mind and this seemed like the place to vent.

I see discourse about tankies constantly on Lemmy. This struck me as odd. Why are these so called tankies such a threat? Why do I see people calling themselves left-wing and attacking tankies more voraciously than neoliberals and, sometimes, even fascists?

I think I know the answer, just as well as most people who will read this. These are the Zizeks of the world: people who do indeed think in a left-wing oriented way, but fail to recognise that they're also Western to the core and the biases that come with that.

I sincerely care about this much less than the actual reason I'm making this post. That is: why don't these people notice that their talking points, left-oriented as they may seem, always end up supporting US allies or attacking US enemies? I mean, do these people not see that Ukraine winning the war is a boon to the US, regardless of who is "right" in that conflict? Many other such cases, but I think I've made my point, or, rather, my confusion, clear.

That's it. That's the post.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] Angel@hexbear.net 50 points 5 days ago

I love saying "tankie and proud" as a response to "anti-tankie" discourse. It really is just a thought-terminating cliché, often used by misguided westerners who truly do not understand class consciousness and materialism, with some of them going as far to paint "tankies" as "reactionaries disguised as leftists," when in actuality, "anti-tankie" sentiment is actually what seems to be more of a reactionary tendency posing as leftist, especially when you know of the horrors supported by prominent "left" anti-communists like Orwell.

I used to hang around anarchist/demsoc spaces a lot more, and in the past, I fell into this trap of painting AES states as being as "evil" as capitalist propaganda wants you to believe they are, and I tried whatever I could do to distance myself from them, their thinkers, and their ideologies. However, in the grand scheme of my life and the path that my material conditions led me down, three things eventually ended up turning me away from that kind of thinking:

Joining Hexbear: When I got tired of using Reddit, especially since I was fed up of all the bigotry and discrimination that was seeming unavoidable on that site, I joined Hexbear because I was looking for an alternative that was not only accepting of marginalized peoples but more inclined toward leftism as a whole. Though I was still an anarchist when I first joined Hexbear, I quickly came to understand that the people that are commonly demonized as "tankies" are not this evil group of horrid people that many anti-AES leftists paint them as. It's actually been the contrary!
Reading Theory: Reading Lenin especially helped with me overcoming this, but of course, just gaining an actual better understanding of the theory of Marxism in general was a huge plus as well.
Connecting With Black Radical Thinkers: This is a bit of an extension of the previous point, but as a black person, I noticed that the common leftist tendency of many black radicals, such as the Black Panthers, was more in alignment with Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, etc. I didn't find black nationalist associations with anarchism to be as common, and I wondered why. Being able to examine the words of thinkers like Kwame Ture, Angela Davis, Frantz Fanon, etc. helped me process the connection of black liberation and how it pertains to radical ideology that I felt like I had a more difficult time grasping when I was mostly hanging around white, western anarchists and demsocs, considering their own ideological understanding of leftism and then tying it to the construct of black liberation. Black liberation was much harder for me to wrap my head around looking at it through a more anarchist lens than it was looking at it through a Marxist lens.

Though I am a former anarchist and a Marxist now, this isn't meant to be a sectarian dig at anarchists. It's just more of me being frustrated with how such "anti-tankie" sentiment has painted genuinely effective leftists as monsters and "fascists in disguise" when they have been nothing but the opposite, and ultimately, they have led the greatest and most broadly applicable implementation of tactics that can actually liberate so many oppressed people, both in the context of class and identity.

[-] HumanAnarchist@hexbear.net 18 points 5 days ago

I've gone through a very similar story. I've realized that anarchists and tankies are not enemies are really want the same end goals. I'm still an anarchist because I truly do believe that hierarchy is fully avoidable BS but hexbear has worked it's magic on me. I now call myself an anarcho-tankie.

Hexbear introducing me to the concept of critical support was what fully awakened me to the idea that tankies and communists and everyone else aren't the bad guys. Anyone who opposes the US Empire deserves my support, because the US empire is responsible for the most oppression worldwide.

Side note: I find that the stereotype that many online anarchist spaces are largely ignorant, white, suburban teenagers to be largely true. (Source: I was one) However, I don't find this to be a reason to shed the anarchist label because of people like andrewism.

~hope any of this made sense, was just a little brain dump~

[-] Angel@hexbear.net 14 points 5 days ago

I fucking love Andrewism, and I still watch him quite regularly even though I'm now a Marxist.

He's from Trinidad and Tobago, which is where my family comes from. I feel really connected to lefty content from someone like him as someone born to Trinidadian/Tobagonian immigrants who are quite conservative.

I'd never be sectarian, but I'm definitely over the deeply unserious anarchists that'd rather be "anti-authoritarian" edgelords than push for actual effective leftist action. Thankfully, a good deal of anarchists, especially ones you encounter IRL, are not like that.