Saw some posts about .ml today and thought I'd jump on the bandwagon lol
this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2025
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I've been on Lemmy for over a year, where I learned that there's some difference between liberals and leftists, though what those are, I don't know. I also had never heard the term tankie before Lemmy. I've never cared to look any of these terms up though. Probably makes me one of them...
There is a simple test to determine if you're a tankie, specifically.
Did Tiananmen Square happen? Specifically, was it bloody, consented/orchestrated by the CCP leadership, and resulted in the deaths of unarmed civilian protesters?
Was it wrong that it happened?
If both answers are yes, you're not a tankie. You believe that oppressive regimes are evil regardless of which side of the political spectrum it spawns from.
Bonus points if you think Stalin was anything but benevolent. If you think his methods were "tough, but firm," then you're a tankie.
Wasn't tankie originally cold war British Communist slang to refer to people who agreed that the Hungarian revolution of 1956-1968 Was funded by the CIA and that rolling the tanks in was as such an appropriate response
(No I don't have this memorized so I had to double check but that was the original meaning)
In 1700s Europe the people in power were the nobility (the descendants of feudal aristocrats) and the clergy (the church). Their claim to power (legitimacy) was that God willed it, and also they had the biggest army ("ultima ratio regum").
Liberalism arose from "enlightenment thought" and basically said that all humans are equal, therefore state legitimacy comes from the consent of the people, and therefore there should be a set of laws that guarantees everyone's rights and gives everyone a say in how society should be run. Some subjects (such as religion) belong to a "private sphere" that the state has no say in and is therefore beyond politics. State power should be minimal and tightly regulated through mechanisms such as the bill of rights or the separation of powers. This ideology was the foundation of the US independence and the French revolution. The political thinkers most emblematic of it are John Locke and Montesquieu.
The people who gained most from erasing the special place in society of the nobility and the clergy ("abolishing the privileges") were people who were rich but not part of these organisations, that is to say merchants and industrialists. Leftism was born out of the "social question" : everyone having the same rights is cool but the richer in society clearly benefit more while the poorer are unable to make use of these "rights" (for instance having the right to a trial does you no good if you can't afford a lawyer ; or being allowed vacation days is pointless if you can't afford to stop working). It is somewhat at odds with liberalism, because solving the social question might require to break some rules of liberalism (most notably state non-intervention, private property, and separation of powers). The most emblematic political thinker here is Karl Marx.
Some leftists theorized the state should be violently overthrown in order to install themselves as dictators and therefore solve the social question by directly redistributing wealth to the poorest. The most important of these is Lenin, who took over the government of Russia in 1917, turning it into the Soviet Union. However he soon died and passed power to Stalin, who cemented his dictatorship and took over a number of countries through military force. When some of these countries (most notably Hungary in 1956) tried to rebel, the Soviet government sent in their army. Thus "tankie" is an insult ― it means one who excuses the brutality of the Soviet government, or more generally the usage of force by a leftist power. It mostly means the same as "stalinist".
Meanwhile, in the US people were divided on how much state power was acceptable to use. The democratic party used state power to fix the economy during the great depression (Roosevelt), then fight racism during the civil rights era (Johnson) ; today a part of society aligned with the democratic party wishes to use state power to fight sexism and other social issues, therefore being closer to the leftist view. The word "liberal" in US parlance came to mean those people, who today call themselves progressives, and the "liberals" I referred to earlier are sometimes referred to as "classical liberals" in order to avoid confusion.
I hope this clears things up
I wish I would have had someone like you as a history teacher in school. Back then we got a very brief and basic "here are the definitions of socialism/communism. These may sound good, but that's just because you're young, they're actually bad. We're not discussing why, or going into specifics." I'm not sure the discussion even goes that far today in US schools, as most teachers like having a job.
Of course my gut reaction to this as a teen was to launch into my own "semi-tankie" anti-west, anti-imperialist phase. After a few swings back into liberalism, I eventually found a comfortable (if idealistic) ideological home somewhere between socialist democracy and social anarchism, but it was a long, bumpy, and confusing road there.
It seems quite a few on this site never made it past that angsty adolescent phase. They'll tell you "tankies" is an insult, or a slur even, but I'm not exactly worried about hurting someone's feelings with that when they openly call for authoritarianism and even support ethnic cleansing and genocides, as long as they're done by countries or groups that have their approval.
That's nice thanks. I'm nowhere near an authority on these subjects so I am quite afraid of talking out my behind.
All stalinists and maoists I met (very few) were contrarians like you describe, and enjoyed being provocative regarding sensitive questions like dekulakization or the Uyghurs. However I think there must be some kind of current trend in their favor, as maoism seems to be on a slight ascend. Perhaps this is due to a rise in Chinese soft power, as Xi Jinping presents himself as a kind of neo-maoist and reformers have been de-emphasized in Chinese media. Or maybe I just spend too much time on Lemmy lol
Now might be a good time for anarchism. It seems to me we live in a time where people refuse to believe in grand visions of a future society, where people are quite individualistic, and where leninist-inspired leftism has been discredited. But anarchism can offer local-scale and immediate improvement, respects the individual, and doesn't have much of a record of human rights violations. All is needed is to avoid the term "anarchism" in favor of the phrase "what if there was no leader and we just took decisions collectively?" haha
I don't think we can win at the word re-definition game. They'll twist it into something bad no matter what we do. What we want is fairly called anarchism.
Sincerely,
an actual libertarian
P.S. fuck capitalism
I agree with the sentiment but some practicality is needed. I think most unpoliticized audiences would hear a pitch about "workers' self-management" but balk at "anarchism". However the word is very good when some bite is needed.
I do think Proudhon messed up when he chose "anarchism" though, it already meant "chaos" long before that. And in the US "libertarian" was heinously stolen. In general words seem to have a very hard life in the US.
I think "direct democracy" might be a more palatable alternative.
I was in a texas highschool until few years ago. The coach was also teaching the finance class due to teacher shortage.
At least biweekly he would freeze the class to talk about North Korea and say things like "Communists are more dangereous than Nazis."
So it still goes on, but more aggressive now.
There are teens here (I'm one) so maybe we're at least some of the people that "never made it last that angsty adolescent phase". Although I'd bet that there are quite a few adults falling in to that category here too
I'm part plankton, so at least some of me isn't angsty adolescent anymore at some hundreds of millions of years old.
I think your instinct there is correct, sadly
*This was only applicable to western European nations. Liberalism was the moral justification for the enslavement of the world under colonial and neocolonial schemes. Since Europe was said to be the cradle of morality and values, the rest of the world were barbarians who were deemed needing stewarding and European intervention.
This is very much not true. Leninism is a theoretical development of Marxism applied to preindustrial nations. Marx theorized that the socialist revolution would stem naturally from developed industrial nations, but Bolsheviks saw the revolutionary potential not only of the industrial workers but also of the peasants. Lenin led a democratic vanguard party until his death, but understood that a socialist project in construction will have interference from capitalists both locally and abroad, and needs state repression of said interference in order to be able to carry out the goal of redistribution of power to the people because capitalists won't just give it away.
I think you misspelled "eliminated fascism from Europe and saved tens of millions of lives from Nazi extermination". It wasn't done personally by Stalin, but by the socialist project of the USSR as a whole.
You did a great job disregarding the colonial history of the west and the implications it had for billions of people in the global south.
a liberal is probably your average usa democrat that is considered conservative by european standards
a leftist is anyone that democrat might consider too radical (like bernie sanders who, for a lot of leftists, might just barely be considered leftist)
edit: i’m being downvoted - am i wrong? i was under the impression that this was the difference between a liberal and a leftist
Liberal is an actual ideology. A hallmark of liberal thought is that business can do things better than government. Leftist thought starts at capitalism is bad, and is much deeper than you think. Democrats of all types are liberal. The kicker is so are the Republicans. It's one reason that Republicans are able to push the Democrats to do anything they want. They don't fundamentally disagree on things.
the problem with left and right is that there is more than one dimension they're being used in. for instance see the political compass.
also the most basic definition of liberal is unregulated. it doesn't necessarily mean just economic. could be drug use or gun posession etc.
Even the compass is flawed, though it's somewhat better than the linear representation. I feel like, though the average person may mostly inhabit a particular quadrant, the majority will have something they resonate with in at least one of the other 3 quadrants (even if they won't admit to it, haha).
My instinct, though, is that we should spend less energy squabbling about classification and more on getting along and lifting each other up. Expressing that, though, will in itself earn you the label of either a "commie libtard" from the right or "not a real leftist" from the tankie crowd (which is pretty rich coming from them lol). It's a game that can never be won.
Pretty decent description.
I was a liberal up until this year and I've been radicalized pretty hard but that also means I fucking despise the people who are hardcore haters of liberals. They're on the right side, just need more pushing.
Liberal is used differently in different places, which causes a lot of the confusion. Kind of like how conservative sometimes means resistant to change and sometimes means regressive depending on who has adopted the label.
The oversimplified pattern that I see for a linear political spectrum, which is too simplified to be accurate when one gets into the weeds but easier to explain conceptually is:
Leftist -- Liberal -- Centrist -- Conservative -- Far Right
In the US liberals are called leftists by the conservatives who are actually the far right because our overall spectrum is shifted pretty far to the right. Centrists aren't really in the middle as much as they are trying to appease both sides. Again, this is very oversimplified but when you hear that liberals aren't really leftists they are basically saying that liberals are not nearly as far left as they claim to be.
For being so anti-US, tankies keep.on repeating the us-centric, capitalist rebranding where neoliberals, democrat party, right wingers who have no support for liberal principles of emancipation, rights and freedoms etc are claimed as libs. It's like they want to surrender what leftists strive for and support right wing newspeak.
The right-of-center factions seem far more definitionally fleshed-out in the public mind. (In the US at least.)
I'm in my 30s, and a news and politics junkie (a very cursed special interest to have in 2025) and I'm still trying to figure out where the dividing lines are on the left. It also seems like right-wingers either get slowly pulled right with the Overton window, or just stay where they're at for life. Whereas us lefties can have a tendency to hop around, trying on different ideologies like they're Linux Distros.
There's nothing innately wrong with that (unless you get sucked into problematic beliefs/behavior). We just tend to be perennially unsure about "correct" beliefs, which may contribute some to the division and the somewhat blurry lines between factions on "the left".
If you were a tankie you'd open your comment with a 7 paragraph on why you're not a tankie, followed by a dissertation that would make a HD2 autocannon proud by deflecting so much
I came here for funny memes and shitposts. Now I've got to answer for choosing the wrong instance because apparently it is run by tank enthusiasts who we all hate for reasons I don't understand.
It's not hard to understand.
Dessalines and Nutomic, the two lead lemmy devs, think that Tianenmen Square didn't happen. They think the genocide currently going on in China of that particular group of muslims (Uighyur or something like that, I can't spell it right) is actually a social program for their own good. They think that Ukraine is legitimately filled with Nazis in their government and military and that Russia is rescuing the poor populace from their oppressors.
Effectively, China and Russia can do no wrong. Dessalines in particular regularly bans people from lemmy.ml who say otherwise.
The term "tankie" is in reference to the tanks China drove over people during the Tianenmen square massacre.
Edit for the sake of jackasses: Better explanation of the term "tankie" from another commenter here. And it's spelled Uyghur.
Happy now?
It's very telling the commitment people have to this conversation before they form strong opinions.
I'm so sorry that the lack of two ddg searches ruins my argument for you.
It's even more telling that your only counter to my comment was to attack minor problems.
Edit: I've edited my comment. Do you have anything of actual value to say now?
My point wasn't really to 'counter' anything, especially when you don't seem to have enough curiosity in the matter to double check even spelling.
So to be clear, your answer is "No, I don't have anything beyond a weak as hell ad hominem based off of entirely imagined character traits and motivations."
What are you actually trying to say when you claim I have a lack of curiosity in the matter? Don't be chickenshit. If there's something you believe is false about what I said, be out with it.
Otherwise you're welcome to fuck off.
Someone's pissy. Two main points of disagreement, let's start at objectively wrong. From wikipedia:
So Tankie has never been about Tianenmen square, but it is the sort of lazy take one might land on when they don't have much curiosity about history and do their best to connect the dots high school gave them.
To the more misleading wrong:
Russia is not a communist country, and hasn't been in 30+ years, this is important to remember because too often people act as though Tankie's reverence for the USSR applies at all to Russia, it does not. Broadly the tankie take on Russia/Ukraine is that fundimentally NATO is a militaristic arm of western Neo-colonialism, and that after encroachment Russia started the war. Then during the Biden administration in particular, the US used this as a proxy war against Russia, and like with many of it's proxy wars, the US funded and armed politically radical groups. It is very much a view of there are no good guys in this war. I don't even really fully agree with this reading but again, my point was more that you don't really look into what your arguing and the laziness shows most notably in your guess about the history of the term tankie, and an apathy to even run spell check.
Left and Right are terms coined to easily differentiate between which side of the aisle you say in the French parliament and also which brand of American politics you were into at the time.
The left was championing the American liberalism that was coming out of the Age of Enlightenment and the Revolution, the right was …. Well the right.
Shockingly both sides didn’t actually care about people but rather their side gaining power
I say this because left and right are relative to whoever is measuring them, most on the left do not consider American liberalism to be the left anymore than an American liberal would think those on the left represent them.
Neoliberal means pro capitalist, but with a fe social safety nets. Neoliberal and liberal are often used interchangeably adding to the ever increasing list of definitions for liberal.
Tankie is pretty clear.
The whole liberal/leftist thing is… a bit manufactured edgelord wankbait.
All of the terms are clear.
Tankie is a derogatory term used to left-punch against those who support socialist countries that opposed US+EU hegemony and colonialism.
Leftist is a generic word to talk about everyone who considers themselves progressive and wants things like a welfare state, but it's a relatively umbrella term that includes or not socialdemocrats (pro-capitalist reformists) depending on who you ask.
Liberal, in the English language and due to US influence, is generally used in a derogatory way to refer to western progressives who believe capitalism can be stewarded and reformed into social justice. In the rest of the world it's a word more often used to refer to people who believe capitalism is best left untouched and it will take care of itself.