I use it similarly to what is described in this Wikipedia article, in particular the last paragraph of the introduction is what disturbs me the most with some Lemmy users. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

Lmao who tf is

endors[ing], defend[ing], or deny[ing] the crimes committed by [notable] communist leaders such as … Pol Pot[?]

The last paragraph quotes fucking Ross Douthat, come on now

Lots of terms need defining. “Illiberal” just means not capitalistic, which yeah that’s all leftists. What is authoritarian? Usually a definition that gets thrown around applies more to capitalist countries vs those listed.

So it’s just a western communist that supports non Western communist projects? 🤔

I love it when liberals use ‘illiberal’ as a criticism. Begging the question much? Of course we’re illiberal we’re anti-capitalists!

Don’t whisper it in hushed tones as if we’re being shy about it and might be embarrassed. Liberalism is the cause of so much misery in the world I’d be more embarrassed to be called a liberal.

The best of it is that even liberals accept that liberal society is atrocious; they just throw up their hands, claim that it’s the only option, and benefit decadently from the system while the world burns as if nothing could or should be done about it. The nerve.

someone who uses tankie is almost always someone who claims to be a socialist but has not read marx

20 yards of linen, now put down the knife before someone gets buttered

It’s essentially cope for them not just supporting “nominally” socialist countries because their stance is one of anti-imperialism. Iran should have nukes.

Isn’t Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the Russo-Georgian war imperialism? I still don’t get them, except being blinded by their hate of USA’s war crimes, which I can understand, but it still seems like an irrational conclusion to become a tankie. They end up supporting or refusing to criticize regimes that generate similar war crimes.

Marxists, following Lenin, define imperialism as the monopoly of finance capital. Not as a synonym for ‘conquest’, ‘annexation’, ‘empire’ (not that I’m saying all three necessarily apply to Russia in Ukraine—a conclusion on that isn’t relevant, here).

When US (Anglo-European) finance capital dominates the world through the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and petrodollar, supported by a network of however many hundreds of military bases, all paid for by it’s vassals and enemies due to said dominance, there’s little to no room for anyone else to even consider being imperialist.

We can discuss that if you like. I’ll likely need others to chip in. I’m not proposing that I have all the answers. It’s not something with a clear answer. But we can’t have the debate at all unless we agree on common definitions and frames of reference. Otherwise it feels as though liberals simply do not understand what’s being said. It’s just talking past one another, where one side has a coherent definition and framework and the other side… doesn’t.

I’ll let you decide whether you can honestly say you have a theoretically sound concept of imperialism depending on how much dedicated literature on imperialism you’ve read.

Yeah it’s important that we, as Marxists, therefore proceeding scientific,ally, make very clear from the onset as to what we mean when we use the term ‘imperialist’ with this more specific, narrow, Leninist definition which only really applies to modern capitalism, or more precisely the modern capitalist world-system. Conceptual clarification is essential for any scientific endeavor, including Marxism.

Even on this definition however, we can note that it is perfectly possible (and concretely, empirically, historically confirm this possibility by looking at the international situation pre-WW1) that there be several powers or polarized groups of powers each of which behaves imperialistically in the Leninist sense. The difference today is that we currently still have a more or less unipolar as opposed to multipolar imperialist (Leninist sense) world-system.

If someone calls Russia ‘imperialist’ in a different sense, then they might not be wrong, and saying that they are because our definition doesn’t apply isn’t relevant beyond the fact that there’s confusion over the concepts being used because people are equivocating between them, simply because we are using the same term/sound/word/signifier. If we do the latter we are engaging in a semantic debate disguised as, because confused with, a substantive debate.

Good points. I also wouldn’t be opposed to accepting that capitalists in Russia would/will try to become imperialistic in the monopoly of finance capital sense. In the one hand, the logic of capital might force their hand. On the other hand, capitalists are gonna capitalist, in part because they fetishise the hoarding of wealth like everyone else living under capitalism.

Whether Russian imperialism becomes a realistic possibility, though… I’d be interested in seeing some stats on that, interpreted in light of the idea that the next type of multipolarity will be quite different to the one at the turn of the twentieth century. Ig if anyone’s done that leg work it’d be Michael Hudson but I’ve not come across it if he has.

the Russo-Georgian war imperialism

Wait, are you saying Saakashvili has done an imperialism? Because even western/EU reports have confirmed that Georgia started that war, not Russia.

They end up supporting or refusing to criticize regimes that generate similar war crimes.

“From 24 February 2022, which marked the start of the large-scale armed attack by the Russian Federation, to 30 July 2023, OHCHR recorded 26,015 civilian casualties in the country: 9,369 killed and 16,646 injured”

Almost 10 thousand civilians killed is horrible. But compare this to Iraq: it’s less than the first month of the war in Iraq, and no US politicians was tried for war crimes. Maybe you should ponder this factoid.

If you live in a NATO country maybe you should demand Blair and Bush to be tried for their war crimes. If you live in the west you should spend more energy of criticizing the ruling class above you.

“supporting or refusing to criticize” This is a made up leftist. Per definition there is no leftist that uncritically supports a right wing capitalist country.

There’s a concept called “critical support”, which most “tankies” are practicing. You have criticism of a side but its the lesser evil so you support it despite your criticism. You won’t hear much of that criticism publicly though because that’s counterproductive.

Like if I want the US to recognize the DPRK as a sovereign state so we can at least begin discussing Korean reunification, why would I bother mentioning my criticism of Juche?

I would avoid saying “lesser evil” for critical support cases, because revolutionary defeatism exists for lesser evil situations where nothing is progressing against the primary contradiction. It’s more a recognition that a shitty thing can be progressive/forward moving relative to its opposition. Russia winning/getting a peace deal with Donbas and Crimea out of Ukraine gets us much closer to ending global imperialism than Ukraine getting it’s land back or worse.

We want the larger capitalist empire to loose to the smaller capitalist empire because that leads to better outcomes. Saying otherwise is telling half truths at best.

No. Both are bourgeois states and yes I prefer the weaker one winning in this case, but the framing of “big vs small” is very ignorant of any reason to support something critically

The general “tankie” position is that the people of Donbas, who mostly do not want to remain part of Ukraine, will not stop suffering attacks without Russia fighting Ukraine off. Russia does not seem interested in siphoning resources from or subjugating the people of Donbas, as they did not the people of Crimea, who merely became Russian citizens. This is very different from US carpetbombing for oil.

US bombing is bad, but Russian bombing is ok? Why do you not apply the same critical spirit to both the USA war crimes and the Russian war crimes?

If it constitutes war crimes according to neutral analysts, it’s not.

Yeah it’s just like they’re Sudeten-Russians, happy to become real Russians once again

I don’t think that the Germans had the popular support of Sudetenland in their annexation.

That’s no problem, we call all learn new things every day. You can read about the history of Conrad Henlein (?) and the politics of the annexation to understand the analogy here

You’re in a thread with half a dozen comments like “wow libs and tankies are celebrating this?”, followed by a bunch of “tankies” explaining (again) that they do not actually like modern Russia.

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