Tankies are like NRA lunatics that dream with the chance to shoot somebody, but are scared to try alone.
I’m not sure about that; I think a lot of radicalizing discourse of late comes from the same place. Life under late stage capitalism is hard, and people are not sure why, nor can they articulate it. And they can tell it’s getting worse. Its a rife breeding ground for fascists, but when you hit leftist spaces, the tankies have the biggest net. You’ll be greeted by r/socialism, and find yourself in its web of subs. You might get pulled in by a Gravel Institute video (especially since you might be aware of Prager U and are interested in a video from the other end). It might be Chapo Trap House. And a lot of entry points into Tankie spaces are extremely compelling. For a lot of people, it will be the first anti Imperial talking points they will ever hear, with no liberal “but this is the greatest nation” filter.
I think this content is actually good and useful. The USA is guilty of myriad atrocities that its citizenry doesn’t know about, or the full depth, or doesn’t think about in order to get through their daily life.
But then after you get past that, the Tankie reveals himself to be “Anti Nato” without an cohesive political or moral position, in a very “politics as a team sport” kind of way. Russia is a moderately sized challenger to NATO, so they love it. It is also a successor state to a Red Empire. Ukraine is NATO making overtures to NATO, so they don’t like it. Israel is an imperialist NATO outpost, and they are committing a genocide, so of course they don’t like it, but so many tankies have shown their whole ass diving into Antisemitism, making fun of Jewish names, or Jewish influence on policy, that Ive exited most of the tankie spaces I was still in. Antizionism is not antisemitism, and they are antisemites.
But compare that to China, where they deny a genocide because it is being perpetrated by the largest challenger to NATO and still nominally communist state in the world, and you have your answer.
I’m not going to try to read on your ideology, but I think you’re missing why people dislike tankies.
It’s not that they are against NATO, Israel, US, Ukraine… Or that they support Russia, China…
The problems are two:
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Absolute belief that the world is black and white, and that their side is a paragon of virtue and quality of life, and human rights… Any and all criticism is “western propaganda”. This means anything they can’t deny is the others side fault “Zelensky is to blame for defending” and “Israel is to blame for attacking”.
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Beyond just “excusing” the atrocities, they love them. Anybody who opposes them is a valid target. They might rationalize it in some cases, but in the end there are no innocent civilians unless they support them.
Edit: I’ve seem to have hurt some tankies feelings. Good.
1 is just your lack of reading/knowledge. 2 is simply describing war/conflict in general (e.g. dronies don’t see innocent civilians among their enemies)
the Tankie reveals himself to be “Anti Nato” without an cohesive political or moral position
Opposition to NATO is a cohesive political position. We’re happy to explain our views when people are willing to hear us out, generally though, people just want to put nonsense into our mouths and then call us nonsensical.
but so many tankies have shown their whole ass diving into Antisemitism, making fun of Jewish names, or Jewish influence on policy, that Ive exited most of the tankie spaces I was still in. Antizionism is not antisemitism, and they are antisemites.
As usual about accusations towards tankies, there’s no link. Show your receipts or stop making stuff up.
“Opposition to NATO is a cohesive political position. We’re happy to explain our views when people are willing to hear us out, generally though, people just want to put nonsense into our mouths and then call us nonsensical.”
Why are you opposed to NATO?
But compare that to China, where they deny a genocide because it is being perpetrated by the largest challenger to NATO and still nominally communist state in the world, and you have your answer.
In fairness most people deny the genocide claims made by the anti=China think-tanks.
