IDK which tankies you are seeing, but the ones on Lemmy are Russian trolls who very clearly favor Donald Trump
Edit - lmao right on cue
The tankies I see on Lemmy are Zionist trolls who deny Genocide and favor Joe Biden.
I don’t think any of the tankies I’ve seen on this site have been Zionists – they usually use Israel as an example of Western imperialism actually. I’d find it kind of weird for them to be Zionists, since that part of the Middle East has a LOT of socialism – the PLO is made up of mostly socialist & social-democratic entities (led by the left-leaning Fatah party), and is the “legitimate” Palestinian West Bank government, although they’re the opposition coalition in the territory’s legislature, which is dominated by Hamas since the country’s last election in 2006 (the next election was supposed to happen in 2021, but it was and still is postponed by Hamas due to Israel continuously blocking Jerusalem’s Arab residents from voting; the recent genocide has seen a sharp drop in Fatah’s popularity since they primarily advocated for peaceful means of resolving the conflict).
Tankies ARE definitely genocide deniers in another sense though (Uyghurs) so it’s not much better. I remember a lemmy.ml comment I posted getting me banned from the site, since it was maps of countries’ foreign investment amounts from China, countries’ economic reliances on China, and countries that voted against recognizing the Uyghur genocide (a China-enjoying commenter was arguing that predominantly muslim countries’ governments didn’t vote for condemning the Uyghur genocide in the UN, therefore it’s unreasonable to say that there is one; of course, the governments in question were almost all relatively poor/impoverished/struggling/corrupt countries heavily funded by China that also relied a lot upon trade with China, which would suffer greatly from making diplomatic moves against the CCP – it also aligns relatively well with countries that don’t have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, of course).
The tankies actually don’t like socialism unless it has “Chinese characteristics” (billionaires, authoritarianism, etc).
Yeah I haven’t actually spotted Zionist tankies ever.
Though it would make sense for socialists to really hate Hamas given that it’s a fascist organization that massacred people living in Kibbutz’s which are socialist communes.
But tankies don’t really care for socialism, I don’t think most of them even know what it is. Tankies are generally simple minded people that like the aesthetic of Che Guevara t-shirts, and red flags with yellow symbols on them. It’s about being rebellious against whatever they feel mommy and daddy like. They’re generally in university which means mommy and daddy are well off and so socialism feels like something they wouldn’t approve of, so they throw on a Che Guevara t-shirt and wave around whichever red flag they think looks the coolest.
So the US is always the bad guy, any allies of of the US are also bad guys, and therefore any adversary of the US or it’s allies must be the good guys. Doesn’t matter how horrible an enemy of the US is, they will look the other way so they continue to subscribe to this simplistic fantasy world view. At least until they finish university and become the asshole bosses of the working class.
Where progressives
Trick question. Anyone to the right of tankies but left of conservatives is a liberal, as far as tankies are concerned.
“Tankies” tend to use the term liberal in the classical sense, which lumps conservatives in with progressives.
That’s somewhat confusing since a classical liberal and a modern social liberal are quite distinct things. Plus, even two hundred years ago liberals were distinct from conservatives.
I suppose to tankies, it’s liberals all the way down.
If you believe in democratic socialism, to tankies, you’re a liberal.
Most self-aware freikorps supporter, if you’re a social Democrat you’re just announcing to everyone that you are going to be predisposed to trying to accommodate fascism abroad if it means you personally get healthcare and economic benefits.
Social democrats arent democratic socialist but go on
Could have fooled me, these are the same people cheering on the Democrats while they enabled this genocide in Gaza. They’re oh so progressive and worried about minorities, unless you’re from a designated enemy country In which case they’re goose stepping with the rest of the Americans.
Tankies don’t hate Trump enough to vote for Biden.
I consider myself a socialist (albeit, not a tankie, since I don’t agree with mass centralization of power, since that would inevitably lead to corruption). I like Prof. Wolff’s idea of forcing all companies to be worker-owned cooperatives, which will help to take away power from the owner class, who currently has control over the government via donations, paid lobbyists, super PACs, etc.
I hate Biden with a passion. I think he’s a neoliberal corporatist warmonger, and he’s very, VERY far from my ideal candidate. I’d even go so far as to say I hate him as a candidate. I’m still voting for him though for a few reasons, though.
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We have a FPTP voting system, which leads to only having two parties to choose from, as George Washington warned against.
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The Supreme Court is probably going to have some vacancies soon. We’ve seen how Trump’s appointees turned out. Biden vowed to appoint progressives to the SCOTUS.
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Biden has been the most pro-labor, pro-union president we’ve had in a very long time, even if he still isn’t perfect on that front.
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Lina Kahn is sweet (current head of the FTC), and I want her to remain the head for the forseeable future.
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I think Trump being elected is going to lead the country into literal fascism. I didn’t think his first term was going to, and I took him to be a joke, but then January 6th happened. Also Trump is worse on basically every domestic and foreign policy compared to Biden. Project 2025 is all I really need to say when it comes to Trump’s policies.
I think people who shame voters are causing people to want to be less involved in politics, rather than voting for the non-fascist. As Hillary Clinton showed us in 2016, voter shaming is actively harmful and helps the other side win. There was absolutely no reason that Trump should have won in 2016, except Clinton was so full of herself, and didn’t care to listen to anyone who was to the left of her, especially after she helped rig the DNC primary against Bernie (as the John Podesta email leaks have shown). Hillary also helped Trump win the RNC primary in 2016 (see: the Pied Piper strategy), since she incorrectly thought that Trump was the easiest candidate to beat.
The DNC continued to rig every primary against the progressive candidate after that (against Bernie in 2020 by forcing all the other neoliberal candidates to drop out prior to Super Tuesday to prevent splitting the vote against Biden, and against Williamson in 2024 by essentially not even having a primary, even though they technically did), and they wonder why people hate them.
I don’t hold out much hope for the US to be a prosperous nation for anyone but the wealthiest class anytime soon. I genuinely believe that the wealthy would rather have fascism over any kind of socialism, because fascism will at least keep them in power.
But still, I’m going to hold my nose and throw up a little in my mouth as I cast my vote for Biden this coming election, because the only other option is literal fascism.
I like Prof. Wolff’s idea of forcing all companies to be worker-owned cooperatives
How would that work in the real world? Like if I work somewhere there’s 100 employees, I’d have a 1% share of the company. So I’d be getting 1% of the profits. I work really hard and now the company is making a lot of profit and so I’m making a lot of money because my share in the company. That’s cool. But we’re doing so well we kind of need to expand. So we need to hire 50 new employees. Do those new employees get an equal share as me? So now I only get 0.75% share of the profit after spending a decade working on developing an awesome product and the person hired yesterday now gets the exact same 0.75% share? Do new employees have to take out a loan to buy a share to be employed? Or do we just give away the shares which will lessen the value of of my share for no compensation. Maybe we shouldn’t hire anyone new, my retirement plan involves my share in the company not losing value.
If I leave the company do I sell my share of the company? To who? The other employees? Do they pool together their money to do a buy-back? What about that person just hired doesn’t have the money to buyback the share of someone leaving the company? Are they forced to take out a loan?
It feels like an idea that sounds nice until you consider the details of how it would actually work in real life. But I guess that’s just socialism in general I guess.
Good analysis. But I have to disagree on number 5. IMO, Trump and his cadre won’t be able to do a facist takeover, for precisely the reason you listed - Jan 6. That was their moment, the time for all the shittalkers to get off social media and do something, the high water mark. Aaaand what did they accomplish? They freaked out a bunch of Congresspeople, put some cops in the hospital, did some light property damage, and went home. Promptly leading to, if not a crackdown, than an investigation of everyone involved.
I dunno man, I don’t see any future that involves them doing anything more than some scattered violence against ‘woke’ targets, which will only hurt them in the long run due to the reactions against it. There just…aren’t enough of them to do anything.
Completely my opinion, of course.
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As a Russian bot /tankie/woke/whatever for the next pejorative is: I’m planning on voting for Biden because Putin told me to.
