I keep seeing this term “Tankies” on Lemmy, but I’ve only ever seen it on Lemmy. I can’t tell if you mean people who wear tank-tops, or people who drive tanks. Neither one makes sense given the context of this, or other threads I’ve seen the term in.
Starting to think it’s a slur of some kind, but I don’t see who it would be against.
Tankie is a term that stems from the UK Communist Party (fringe political party) mocking some of its more extreme members that defended the USSR sending tanks in to quell civilian protests in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. And later, to mock those who defended Mao’s crackdowns.
Since then, the term has evolved to mean any westerner who proclaims to be left but defends the imperialist actions of Russia/their human rights abuses, despite them not even being remotely left wing anymore. To a lesser degree it’s also applied to China.
In short: a westerner who rails about how horrible and imperialist the west is, but falls silent or defends it when Russia or China do the same or worse.
It would've cost you less time to put that term into your address bar and let your favorite search engine take you to Wikipedia and other informative sources, than writing this comment and constantly wondering what that term means. It's absolutely not a term related to Lemmy, it's just that lemmy.ml, lemmygrad, hexbear and the Lemmy developers themselves are Tankies.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I keep seeing this term “Tankies” on Lemmy, but I’ve only ever seen it on Lemmy. I can’t tell if you mean people who wear tank-tops, or people who drive tanks. Neither one makes sense given the context of this, or other threads I’ve seen the term in.
Starting to think it’s a slur of some kind, but I don’t see who it would be against.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Tankie is a term that stems from the UK Communist Party (fringe political party) mocking some of its more extreme members that defended the USSR sending tanks in to quell civilian protests in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. And later, to mock those who defended Mao’s crackdowns.
Since then, the term has evolved to mean any westerner who proclaims to be left but defends the imperialist actions of Russia/their human rights abuses, despite them not even being remotely left wing anymore. To a lesser degree it’s also applied to China.
In short: a westerner who rails about how horrible and imperialist the west is, but falls silent or defends it when Russia or China do the same or worse.
DarkThoughts@fedia.io 2 months ago
It would've cost you less time to put that term into your address bar and let your favorite search engine take you to Wikipedia and other informative sources, than writing this comment and constantly wondering what that term means. It's absolutely not a term related to Lemmy, it's just that lemmy.ml, lemmygrad, hexbear and the Lemmy developers themselves are Tankies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie