this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2025
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How do people actually fall into the "Tankie" mindset? (anarchist.nexus)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by stinky@anarchist.nexus to c/anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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After seeing a megathread praising Mao Zedong, an actual mass killer, and a post about a guy saying "99% of westerners are 100000000000% sure they know what happened in 'Tiny Man Square' [...] the reasons for this are complex and involve propaganda [...]," I am genuinely curious what leads people to this belief system. Even if propaganda is involved when it comes to Tiananmen Square, it doesn't change the atrocities that were/are committed everywhere else in China.

I am all for letting people believe what they want but I am lost on why one would deliberately praise any authoritarian system this hard.

Can someone please help me understand why this is such a large and prominent community? How have these ideals garnered such a following outside of China?

EDIT: Thank you to everyone who has responded! This thread has been very insightful :)

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[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Nuance? In my hate thread? You get out of here with that nonsense!

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's more or less the same position the rest of us "tankies" have. We push back on bourgeois framing of the flaws of real socialism, be it fabrications, exaggerations, or minimizations, but we acknowledge that there are real flaws.

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Omg someone who is named specifically!

Can I ask you what you believe/want to happen?

Real talk homie, I'm genuinely curious!

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What do you mean by "named specifically?" Either way, I want the end of the era of imperialism, and the completion of the already begun global transition to socialism, and then the global transition to communism. I want a better world, one I believe we are in the long, queer, protracted, messy process of bringing about, and as such I support the movements that further this process.

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Someone said your name further up in the comments.

And that sounds dope as fuck from an objective pov.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

"Queer" as in complex and not easily defined, though communists are very often queer sexually.

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think I'm going to refer to myself as queer from now on.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Go for it.

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Last question homie, what dafuq is a tankie?

I've gotten loads of answers that pretty much describe them as leftist authoritarians.

I also read you might be one. So, in your own words. What that?

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's just a pejorative for those that recognize the legitimacy of socialist states as they exist in the real world, and support them.

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Can I ask you your feelings on authoritarianism?

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think it's good for the working classes to wield the state against capitalists, fascists, landlords, sabateurs, etc. and a bad thing for those groups to wield state power against the working classes.

[–] Loco_Mex@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

And whats your opinion on Russia invading Ukraine?

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 months ago

I think it's bad that the west installed a Banderite regime in 2014, and that said Banderite regime killed 13,000 civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk for seceding from the new far-right government. The whole war was avoidable, and the best way for it to end is for Kiev to cede the 4 oblasts that already voted to join the Russian Federation, that way Ukrainians don't have to die for wealthy US capitalists and Ukrainian compradors and the people of the Donbass can exist in peace in the country they voted to join.