tankie colloquially refers to communists who deluded themselves into thinking authoritarianism can breed anything other than opression and that to give power to the people, you first got to take it away from the people.

That is probably the most on point description.

While I do genuinely feel sorry that this roommate of yours behaved in such awful and shitty way, my point was about the larger communities as a whole. Especially now that there are openly fascist people in power in the US and in a lot of other countries, I believe it’s even more important to be united. Or at least, as I quoted before, know where the differences lie.

That doesn’t mean being supportive of wrong behaviors and/or people of course. Being critical of wrongdoing is an essential skill. But in my opinion one can’t be as critical when generalizing about such large groups

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Calling them something else is a stretch, all but their geopolitical beliefs are leftist

Thanks a lot, now I’m just thinking about the fake dog shit factory.

I kinda do, that’s why I wrote, but no hard feelings :)

Just tag anyone getting upset in the comments. I’ve already seen 2 people I’ve previously tagged as tankies.

Surely this boot is worth licking!

PSL is marxist-leninist in ideology and doing all the activities I described. Perhaps way in the future I will have to fight with them, but for now we align on many issues and work side by side. Don’t allow propaganda to paint too broad of strokes.

What lmao? The people who you call tankies are aggressively pro union. Find me a “tankie” site that thinks otherwise.

And you would call the PSL tankies. Here’s a Wikipedia excerpt from their page:

International affairs

PSL calls for a 90% cut to the military budget of the United States, the closure of all overseas military bases, and a halt of US aid to Israel.

PSL supports the Worker’s Party of North Korea. PSL describes North Korea as a “communist government” and North Korea as “one of the few top-to-bottom, actually-existing, alternatives to the global capitalist system”. PSL has defended North Korea’s human rights record against criticism by the United Nations, which it calls “thinly veiled justification for U.S. aggression toward North Korea”, and argues that “conditions in North Korea are vastly better than those in other developing countries”. PSL supports North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

PSL supports the Communist Party of China, criticizing only Chinese economic reforms into a “market socialist economy”. PSL argues that “militant political defense of the Chinese government” is necessary to stave off “counterrevolution, imperialist intervention and dismemberment”. PSL defends China’s human rights record, and strongly denies that the People’s Liberation Army massacred peaceful student protestors in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. PSL denies that China has suppressed democracy in Hong Kong. PSL has praised the 1950–1951 annexation of Tibet and defended the status of Human Rights in Tibet under the administration of China, claiming that “progress made [since the annexation] has revolutionized life for Tibetans.”

PSL supported the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea. PSL did not support the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but blamed the invasion on NATO and the United States. In its statement on “Russia’s military intervention”, PSL highlighted the “plight of ethnic Russians […] in the Donbas”, Russia’s “legitimate security concerns”, and NATO’s “provocative behavior”.

PSL opposes US intervention in the Syrian Civil War, and has generally been supportive of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Russian military efforts in Syria. PSL denies that the Syrian government used chemical weapons.

Oh no, someone fell for tankie memes rather than talking to a tankie and learning what their deal is.

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Anarcho communism just makes sense. If communism is a moneyless, classless, stateless society, is it not by default anarchist as well?

And I’m not referring to any of the so called “communist” countries because they’re all variations of socialist and not communist. They all have a state.

I’m someone with a leg in both tendencies, as it were. I purposely avoid getting too into the theory weeds, in favor of interacting with actual people. I see the word “tankie” used veeerrryyy liberally lately, and it feels like it doesn’t signify very much. Respectfully, thinking about “immediately after the revolution” is getting way ahead of yourself, at least in relation to who you work with today.

we dont need power to the people after some magical revolution somewhere in the future. we need to prefigure non-hierarchical structures in the here and now, and while even building the capacity for violent insurrection.

i dont trust a revolutionairy army, that is build on authoritairian principles, to give power away to a newly forming anarchist society, once in power. if all that people know is hierarchy, thats the structures they will tend to recreate.

looking at real revolutionairy movements, it appears to me that they either turn anarchist during the prolonged struggle or forever stay authoritairian despite their best efforts.

The thing is historically leftists ally with anarchists until they get power and then they execute the anarchists. They want unity as long as it’s convenient for their agenda, but that’s true of any philosophy that encourages power structures of any kind.

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Isn’t tankie just a pejorative for socialist?

Then you will have told me that.

But real talk, it’s looking more and more like some kind of auth future may be inevitable. I hope not.

His star is actually different.

The Moorcock star is 8 outwards arrows with radial symmetry (not very chaotic to have symmetry but we’ll get to that)

Games Workshop (whose early writers were largely anarchist and heavily inspired by Moorcock) added a circle to the symbol, with the arrows escaping the bounds (like in the anarchy A). They’re also often, but not always, asymmetrical. Also, sometimes it’s not! Sometimes it’s just Moorcock’s! Chaos, bitch! There’s specific meaning behind a lot of the differences but it’s not relevant.

That’s the Games Workshop Chaos Star. Period. It even has similar arrowhead design to the arrow heads used directly on the figures.

For reference, this is a particularly complicated Warhammer Chaos Star:

Note in particular the lines on the outside of the circle, in between the main 8 arrows.

Anarchists aren’t the only ones that use the star btw:

Which is why I downvoted this shit, as it happens. Real anarchists aren’t ripping off corporate symbols to beef with Marxists in 2025.

Not the smart ones, anyways. There’s plenty of black fascists running around, red fascists are going to have to take a number.

That all said, I haven’t read a lot of Moorcock, compared to way too much Warhammer. If you’re saying they got their variations from Moorcock too I’ll believe you.

Can you define what a “tankie” is? It absolutely is red scare bs. No one calls themselves that.

Also, tankies simply aren’t communists.

Liberals not being able to tell the difference (E: or tankies in denial) doesn’t make this anti communist.

fair! but i do worry the term is at risk of being overused to the point of no longer having a cohesive meaning.