!asklemmy@lemmy.ml - ARE YOU A TANKIE? - informal poll results ~
😱
A ridiculous question. “Tankie” isn’t a term anyone self-identifies with, it’s mostly a term used by liberals to hurl at anyone to the left of them or anyone who agrees with western foreign policy. The survey results will be as meaningless as the term “tankie” itself.
Image description: A5 page, with various pie charts and text, indicating the results of an informal poll from lemmy.ml, full image text in spoiler
full image text
ARE TANKIES TAKING CONSPIRING TO MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A BAD TIME ON LEMMY.ML ??
DOES THE WORK FOR YOU!!
WE ASKED !asklemmy@lemmy.ml ARE YOU A TANKIE?
First stack of pie charts shows the yes / no split, highlights that the lemmy.ml yes responses made up less than half of the yes votes, hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml only made up a small portion, some hexbear-ians even vote no
second and third pie charts show the yes votes, and no votes by instance respectively
third stacked pie chart shows the yes / no split by instance, overlay-ed with the total yes / no votes
only top level comments were counted
tankies are closer than they appear
Deeply unserious
NDTS
full results / data
COUNTA of yes
@lemmy.ml = 10
@lemmygrad.ml = 5
@lemmy.world = 3
@lemmy.zip = 1
@hexbear.net = 3
@lemmy.sdf.org = 1
@lemmy.one = 1
Grand Total = 24
COUNTA of no
@lemmy.ml = 2
@lemm.ee = 2
@lemmy.world = 8
@lemmy.blahaj.zone = 1
@reddthat.com = 1
@ttrpg.network = 1
@hexbear.net = 4
@lemmy.jhjacobs.nl = 1
Grand Total = 20
taken from archived post https://archive.md/AAY1L
this was fun, thanks for the polling idea, Kristina (I spent too long on these charts because yours looked so spiffy, I hope you specifically are impressed lol), solidarity cleaning that data up, and general reminder people only half read anything before launching into a diatribe
tl:dr yes, tankies are totally conspiring to make sure you have a bad time on lemmy.ml
Are tankies conspiring to repeat the “tankie is a meaningless term” mantra till someone believes them?
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.
So if I call a car a giraffe the word giraffe looses its meaning and becomes invalid?
Misusage of terms doesn’t cancel out the concept these words refer to lul
If it would in would just call my bake rolls fascists, so the fascists go away
What is a “tankie?” Every person gives a different definition. It’s like “woke.”
And woke also has a meaning conservative dbags can’t steal.
deleted by creator
Please refer to the other 3 times in this thread where I defined it, I suppose you are able to scroll 1-2 screens up
What would have been the non-tankie response to the Bay of Pigs?
Are liberals tankies because of the Kent State massacre? What about the American Civil War?
The same is obviously true of South Korea for their slaughter of leftists and pro-democracy liberals in Gwang-Ju via the Army.
Same also goes to Israel for murdering their own hostages and slaughtering Palestinians, and the US for supporting it.
Your answer is nice in that it’s a definitive metric we can track, unlike vibes-based answers I usually see. However, it is extremely broad in scope.
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.
u can no more define tankie than you can define woke.
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.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
I guess this is because they were allies and the east block was more closely related to each other then most States today.
Edited out assumptions
deleted by creator
“Hmm can’t fool me Ivan, you’re just presenting facts that prove your point and make me look foolish, aren’t you?”
The dastardly tankie strategy of knowing what you’re talking about before you start talking about it.
The Soviet satellites weren’t actually independent by definition. That definition might need a little work but the gist is fine.
deleted by creator
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.
Edited for at least a bit less sassyness
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.
Thr word tankie even has a wiki page
I think it’s a useful term, saying authoritarian communist is just too wordy.
What is your definition of a tankie
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)