They’ve gotten very strange in the past year or so. I’ve seen multiple dbzer0 users, including two admins, do complete 180s on tankie bullshit, and it’s rather bizarre.

My best guess is that tankies offer them a sense of community, which is how many terminally online folk get drawn into it. People who have a deep desire for community will overlook moral issues if invited to be a part of that community, and even adopt, consciously or unconsciously, those positions in order to better ‘fit in’ with the community.

In a time when the real world is more recognizably hostile than ever, or at least for as long as most of us here have been alive (insofar as we are both aware of it and noting that it is backsliding rather than improving), online communities probably seem quite tempting to hew closer to.

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[–] tricerotops@hexbear.net 81 points 4 days ago (4 children)

using the word tankie at all is such an online thing i get second hand embarrassment

[–] Jabril@hexbear.net 30 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I was warned at a DSA event 8 years ago to "watch out for tankies." Communist Caucus member

[–] spectre@hexbear.net 23 points 4 days ago

Lmao what dot hey think they're going to do? Say something that person disagrees with?

Watch out!?!? I guess

Hilarious that you don't have to "watch out" for liberal bs though

[–] Chana@hexbear.net 24 points 4 days ago

I've been called tankie by a Trot and in that particular context, okay, fair.

[–] moss_icon@hexbear.net 25 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I have literally never heard it used in real life. Seems like a terminally online younger Gen Z thing.

[–] jack@hexbear.net 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Local anarchists have thrown it at various comrades in my PSL branch

[–] moss_icon@hexbear.net 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

As an anarchist I apologise for those people

[–] jack@hexbear.net 9 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

My city has an especially obnoxious and liberal anarchist scene, but I know it's not representative of all anarchists. No need for you to apologize on their behalf left-unity-2

[–] Comrade_Squid@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 days ago

Tankies are mentioned a lot in my trotskyist party a fair amount. Its usually "we did x action and this tankie said this thing"