this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2025
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When you don't have a coherent worldview it's very uncomfortable to think about the questions people on the left ask you, so refusing to think about it is the easiest solution. Calling people commies and reds and pinkos used to work but the bozos who came up with those are all obviously buffoons and liberals know it, so they stole "tankie" from leftist infighting and slap it onto anybody whose questions make their brain feel weird.
I think there could be some learned helplessness from being soaked in
for their entire lives. Providing thoughtful analysis that leads them to a conclusion that 'tastes bad' to their 
results in a kind of political disgust. Spit it out fast! Tankie just happens to be the current floating signifier available to forget that nasty taste of historical materialism, etc.
The derrangement is wild though. Someone will be like "Actually I think history is nuanced and that we should look at it with a critical eye, avoiding oversimplification" and people respond with "I bet you are an evil person that thinks throwing babies off cliffs is good! Fuck you babykiller! I can't believe you are defending killing babies!"
It's like watching a switch go off and some sleeper agent programming kick in.
Then there's a few posters who seem to think that if they don't make a million posts a day about tankies on lemmy the sun will set on freedom and by next week we'll all be mining rare metals in siberia. Umm this is a link aggregator for disaffected weirdos.
They have constructed their mind palaces where liberalism is the smart, grown-up worldview, but now they're not on Reddit where they drastically outnumber the leftist posters. They have to constantly bang the drum of tankies to reinforce their dominance of the instances where the moderators are all liberals. Otherwise our posting powers would allow us to get in and change minds
For the anticommunist power-posters, I think what you're saying makes sense, but a lot of people have a similar (less overstated) reaction from a much more casual perspective, and for understanding those people, I have a comment: There has been a project for 80 years now of tarring communists, the USSR especially, as being equivalent to Nazis. It is ubiquitous and you rarely ever see a specifically contrary claim. It makes sense that at least some people would just shrug and accept it. Given that, imagine being told "Actually I think history is nuanced and that we should look at it with a critical eye, avoiding oversimplification" regarding people who you believe were as bad or even worse than the Nazis; isn't that like someone saying that about the Nazis? Like those people who want to rehabilitate Hitler or deny the Holocaust? I think most of us would be appalled.
So that makes it more challenging to figure out how to address those people, who are really the only people worth addressing because the power posters aren't listening.
Good insight! My family is Polish and left after the war. My exposure to the complexity of wtf happened started at a young age, like my grandmother lamenting how curtailed her rights were in Australia vs soviet Poland where she was respected as an independent worker. While also discussing the atrocities that happened during the occupation and the trauma of marginalising religious life and shit by force.
I suppose halfway across the world it's just "reds and blacks bad. Glorious allies (no no the white allies (Slavs weren't white yet)) save the world"
So it looks like I'm defending something universally horrible, instead of trying to be like why did things go the way they did?
I saw someone on reddit say "tankies/campists" the other day, they love to take leftist infighting words and use them in place of "commie."
Someone who almost reflexively takes sides against the USA, NATO, or whichever side in a conflict is more closely aligned with these... thus ending up with the correct ethical stance over 90% of the time.
It's just tankie for when ultras are mad that someone is supporting China, or Russia or Hamas, or Iran or whoever, no matter how critically.
Someone who correctly identifies that imperialism has a team of nation states that support it, and chooses to align with the nation states that opposed them in kind.
It’s a person who likes to camp, and who will make fun of you for having a cheap Coleman tent.
Sh-sh-shut up y-y-you campist 😫
As an olive branch, when it comes to car camping I think the coleman dual fuel stove is the best choice for cooking. You're still a fucking nerd.
My buddy has one of those. Good stove. I mainly backpack so I have a MSR pocket stove. And I have different tents, I swear. I call my Coleman tent the fart tent, from all the farting I’ve done in it.
Trying to reduce pack weight but insist on bringing my separate fart tent.