Is there a difference between tankies and commies

[Make America Grumpy Again]

Wanted to see if you thought they were synonymous or not.

[Benjamin Frank]

Is what you are asking is 'does communism in practice inherently lead to authoritarian/totalitarian dictatorship'?

[dead0man]

I view them the same, more or less.  To me, a Tankie is a bit more.....antagonistic in his hate of, well, everything that isn't far left authoritarianism.  Commies are just ignorant people who were influenced by a bad person and haven't been talked out of it yet and tend to downplay the authoritarianism or claim "it doesn't have to be that way".


I am not suggesting these are the textbook definitions or that you should look at the two groups that way.

[Ferguson97]

All tankies are communists, but not all communists are tankies.

[John Dule]

Only in aesthetics, not in substance.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

All tankies are communists, but not all communists are tankies.

Came here to post this.

Tankies are communists who idolize authoritarian communist or socialist leaders and regimes and who either deny the atrocities committed by those leaders/regimes or support them, claiming they were necessary for the greater good.

While a communist who for example admit that Stalin and Mao were awful, but claim they were not true communists or that their policies didn't reflect communist values and that true communism hasn't been tried is not a tankie. (They're still most likely completely delusional, but still not a tankie).

To exemplify:

Person A: "The Chinese government is an awful dictatorship, but they're just state run capitalism and not actually communist in the true meaning of the word. The actual communist policies that Marx advocated for hasn't actually been tried anywhere." - Person A is a communist, but not a tankie.

Person B: "People in China are actually a lot freer than we are in the west. The lies about a Uyghur genocide is just western propaganda to undermine an anti-imperialist government. The limitations on personal freedom is necessary to counter CIA infiltration and actually for the benefit of the people." - Person B is a communist and a tankie. 
 

[Antonio the Sixth]

A communist is anyone who believes that a classless society where resources are distributed on the basis of need or other egalitarian goals is 1. achievable and 2. desirable.

A tankie is someone who believes that any regime that has called itself communist was/is in fact communist (in that regard they have far more in common with conservatives than with other leftists) and that this mere fact puts them above any reproach.

There is some overlap, of course, but only some.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

All tankies are communists, but not all communists are tankies.

I disagree: it's not uncommon to find people with moderate or syncretic beliefs with an unshaken belief that America Is Evil And All Her Enemies Are Misunderstood

[Benjamin Frank]

In terms of communist leaders. Communism is a wonderful elixer to a power hungry person in that it combines a Marxist message with a great appeal to many ordinary citizens along with a 'turn-key' model for an authoritarian dictatorship.

Not only does communism remove major areas for potential rivals: business people and creative people in general, but commnuist dictatorships can even tell people where to live and what work they have to do. No other system gives a dictator that much control over people's lives.

So, not all communist dictators have been total authoritarians (A tankie I guess), think of Tito in Yugoslavia for instance (though he was not a full communist in that he experimented with democratic socialism), but communist governments tend to be that way, or descend that way, because they inherently encourage the worst people to become leaders.

[Ferguson97]

All tankies are communists, but not all communists are tankies.

I disagree: it's not uncommon to find people with moderate or syncretic beliefs with an unshaken belief that America Is Evil And All Her Enemies Are Misunderstood

Sure, but that’s not what tankie means.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

All tankies are communists, but not all communists are tankies.

I disagree: it's not uncommon to find people with moderate or syncretic beliefs with an unshaken belief that America Is Evil And All Her Enemies Are Misunderstood

Sure, but that’s not what tankie means.

If we're being really reductive, then nobody who isn't a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain during the Khrushchev era is a tankie; but if we're talking about people who had a weird fixation on the ussr as a force for good, there were liberals and social democrats who were used as Moscow useful idiots.

[The Mikado]

The term "tankie" was invented in 1956 to describe Western apologists for the Soviet crushing of Hungary's uprising against its communist government, which led many Western leftists to grow disillusioned with the USSR and see it as a fundamentally imperialist power-hungry state rather than a liberationist force like the USSR had sold itself to the world as during the Second World War. People who still thought the Soviets sending in the tanks to crush the revolt were a distinct minority even among Western Communists and became called tankies.

[Ferguson97]

All tankies are communists, but not all communists are tankies.

I disagree: it's not uncommon to find people with moderate or syncretic beliefs with an unshaken belief that America Is Evil And All Her Enemies Are Misunderstood

Sure, but that’s not what tankie means.

If we're being really reductive, then nobody who isn't a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain during the Khrushchev era is a tankie; but if we're talking about people who had a weird fixation on the ussr as a force for good, there were liberals and social democrats who were used as Moscow useful idiots.

Yes but not all communists view the USSR as a force for good.

[The Mikado]

All tankies are communists, but not all communists are tankies.

I disagree: it's not uncommon to find people with moderate or syncretic beliefs with an unshaken belief that America Is Evil And All Her Enemies Are Misunderstood

Sure, but that’s not what tankie means.

If we're being really reductive, then nobody who isn't a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain during the Khrushchev era is a tankie; but if we're talking about people who had a weird fixation on the ussr as a force for good, there were liberals and social democrats who were used as Moscow useful idiots.

Yes but not all communists view the USSR as a force for good.

Pretty much this: there's a reason after 1956 so many Western Communists either switched to calling themselves Trotskyites (disavowing responsibility for anything the USSR did after 1924) or Maoists (given how insanely little information got out to the world about Maoist China in the 1950s-1960s people were able to pretend it was a far different society than it was). It allowed people to wash their hands of the USSR. Tankies were the people who continued openly supporting the USSR after that series of events.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

Yes. Tankies often don't have any coherent economic philosophy. Their only motivating factor is pain for the west and anyone they view as associated with them. That's why they're equally comfortable with cheering for hard-line Marxists like the Kims and far-right kleptocrats like Putin.

[Dr. MB]

Yes. Tankies often don't have any coherent economic philosophy. Their only motivating factor is pain for the west and anyone they view as associated with them. That's why they're equally comfortable with cheering for hard-line Marxists like the Kims and far-right kleptocrats like Putin.

North Korea doesn't really claim to be communist anymore. They kinda abandoned the facade. But yeah you bring up an interesting point.

[HisGrace]

Plenty of self identified communists don't support the Soviet Union or Maoist China so yes.

Is what you are asking is 'does communism in practice inherently lead to authoritarian/totalitarian dictatorship'?

I would say yes to that but someone who identifies as a communist may not be aware that that's the case.

[Crumpets]

IIRC, the term "tankie" originated with the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary with the tankies being on the side of the Soviets. Granted, I'm not intimately familiar with Hungarian politics at the time, but I think it's pretty widely agreed that Nagy was very much a communist, just not one that was willing to be subjugated to Moscow.