• Bernie_Sandals@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    It’s a new way of saying “commie”, used because it doesn’t instinctivelly make people think of McCarthism and the Red Scare as explicitly using words such as “commie” and “Communist” would.

    In other words, rebranding, a Neoliberal speciality.

    Oh shut up and get off your high horse, Tankie was literally created by communist party members after the Soviets brutally crushed Socialist Democracy in Hungary in '56, and gained more use by communists after the brutal crushing of Socialist Democracy in the Prague Spring of '68.

    For 60 years Tankie has been a term used against Authoritarian socialists by democratic socialists. Neoliberals have nothing to do with yall deep throating every autocrat than can say “America bad”.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      So “thankie” is now used in the US in the same sense as “commie” used to be used in the US: to imply that somebody is an authoritarian communists.

      Which is what I wrote.

      I never said or implied it the term was invented by neoliberals. I further never said it was used by neoliberals in the correct way, i.e. for actual authoritarian communists.

      It’s exactly the core of the problem that neoliberals use “tankie” in the same way that “commie” used to be used by old fashioned capitalist: to imply that anybody to the left of them aren’t merelly center-right/center-left/left but actually the same as authoritarian communists.

      It would be absolutelly fine if Liberals were using “tankie” to refer to actual authoritarian communists only, but that’s not what’s been happenning at least here in Lemmy: it’s been progressivelly applied to those less and less to the left (authoriarian or otherwise) to the point that it’s even used for people who disagree with Biden’s support for Zionism (an ultra-nationalist etnic fascist ideology) and the Genocide they’re committing.

      Again, just like in the old days “commie” was used for, say, people who were in favour of unions.