this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2025
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[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 29 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Just replace "woke" with "russian".

[–] BluJay320@lemmy.blahaj.zone 48 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Authoritarianism is authoritarianism. Doesnt matter how you paint it.

[–] BrainInABox@lemmy.ml 23 points 6 days ago (37 children)

Not really, no. To a capitalist, all forms of leftism is 'authoritarian,' because they consider private property natural and oppose leftists 'stealing' in.

'Authoritarianism' just isn't a particularly useful term because nobody who uses is is ever actually categorically opposed to forcefully compelling people to do or not do things. They will always have a build in exception for what ever they consider to be 'legitimate authority', and what they consider justified authority will just depend on what political philosophy they ascribe to. So really calling the word just means "someone with a different political theory to me with regards to legitimate authority."

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[–] prototype_g2@lemmy.ml 11 points 5 days ago

Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?


On authority, by Frederick Engels 1872

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm

[–] Carl@lemm.ee 28 points 6 days ago (1 children)

True but only for terminally online liberals. I still haven't heard anyone in real life ever use that word.

[–] folaht@lemmy.ml 13 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It will happen in a few years from now.

[–] driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 11 points 6 days ago

Bet is going to be conservatives using it to talk about anyone left to Hitler

[–] MetalMachine@feddit.nl 18 points 6 days ago

Its become the boomer equivalent of calling everything bad communist.

[–] garbagebagel@lemmy.world 14 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 12 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)
[–] AntiOutsideAktion@lemmy.ml 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Wikipedia has a good article about the term

If you think Hitler is bad, wait until you hear what he has to say about the soviets!

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[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

All it really boils down to is "supports AES," though. The article even says as much.

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[–] davel@lemmy.ml 27 points 6 days ago
[–] TheOakTree@lemm.ee 21 points 6 days ago (29 children)

Tankie doesn't really mean anything to me anymore. Even self-proclaimed tankies often have trouble defining it in a way that is consistent among leftist groups.

[–] DoiDoi@hexbear.net 26 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (5 children)

A tankie is anyone to the left of whoever is using the pejorative. Usually because they expressed a critique of imperialism or aren't sufficiently racist towards the Chinese.

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[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 15 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I believe in reclaiming "tankie" in the same way as "queer." Schoolyard bullies don't really care to distinguish between the many different labels encompassed by LGBT+, and so they inadvertently invented a term that could be very inclusive and all encompassing, even if you're still figuring out who you are, you call always fall back on "queer" to give the general idea.

In the same way, the term "tankie" gets applied to people of all sorts of different left ideologies. There are significant differences between different leftist ideologies, but our critics don't care to understand or distinguish between them, so I consider tankie to be a similarly inclusive term. Do you support anything that any socialist government has ever done? Do you think Cuba had an effective literacy program? Congratulations, you're a tankie, welcome to the club.

Note that my identifying with the term isn't really an invitation for people to use it. But, you know, if people want to keep using it as this broad, meaningless term that lumps a bunch of people together, as I see it, it only works to our advantage as "tankies," it pushes people towards us and helps us remember what we have in common instead of fighting over our differences. So I'm not exactly going to fight the label particularly hard.

[–] GrammarPolice@lemmy.world 12 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Tankie = derogatory term for Marxist. It's that easy

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[–] glimmer_twin@hexbear.net 20 points 6 days ago

Tank you very much

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