In current discourse on Lemmy, there is much fearmongering about “tankies,” yet this term is frequently ill-defined and moreover used as a thought terminating cliché. Roderic Day goes over the term, and offers contextualization and explanation for those who uphold and defend Actually Existing Socialism, in this short 8 minute article. My favorite paragraph is as follows:
“Anyway, the basic point is that socialist revolution is neither easy (as the Trotskyists and ultraleftists would have it) nor impossible (as the liberals and conservatives would have it), but hard. It will require dedication and sacrifice and it won’t be won in a day. Tankies are those people who think the millions of communists who fought and died for socialism in the twentieth century weren’t evil, dupes, or wasting their time, but people to whom we owe a great deal and who can still teach us a lot.”
If you consider yourself a Socialist, you have a duty to try to better understand and contextualize historical Socialist movements. It is only through correct analysis based on fact and not fiction that we can move onward.
According to how I see it used online, a “tankie” is essentially a socialist that reads and understands theory, historical and material dialectics.
I am a tankie.
Anyone who walks the path of reading theory and taking it seriously will doubtless be labeled one by those who haven’t read theory, presuming they actually try to correct misconceptions and relay knowledge of theory.
Technically it originally was used against British Communists supporting the USSR putting down a color revolution in Hungary.
