this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2025
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I thought tankies were the far left? Or are they.. further left than that?
Tankies don't even really fit most definitions for leftism that try to use something more concrete than vibes. They just think they're far left because they like the aesthetics of governments that tried to be or at least called themselves communist.
If we're using the original definition of left and right, they'd technically be on the right.
The original meaning was whether or not you supported the monarchy. I'd say that a dictatorship is close enough that it applies.
Of course, politics isn't one dimensional. Even the "political compass" isn't really enough, here, there's probably an axis of the political graph for each major axiom of governance.
Honestly the best descriptor for tankies is just "authoritarian communists." That tells you where they stand better than any attempt at a spectrum or graph.
Parenti, in Blackshirt in Reds, covers this topic excellently. He does not gloss over the flaws and corruptions in the USSR, but he is realistic in giving a fair assessment of their successes in the midst of their failures. A big point being what you mentioned above: the USSR had to continue focusing production towards just being on even footing with the US in terms of defense, to protect against the very real threat of the US overthrowing the government as they were doing in so many other communist countries. At no time during the USSR's existence were they ever not under attack by some outside force or another (the NAZIs, CIA, multi-national capitalist interests etc). Here's a good quote talking about the Stalin era and progressive policies during that time:
Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism by Michael Parenti
Sure thing lib. Stalinism, the thing that nearly solely killed fascism, is fascism. You're welcome on behalf of stalin, by the way, for killing nazis when you people wouldn't.
I dont call people tankies for thinking that communism is cool. Or that the west sucks.
I call people tankies, when they defend the ethnic cleansings and the great purge of Stalin by saying "we just had to defend ourselves" or portraying them as an integral part of the struggle better peoples lives.
Because i personally dont think that deporting entire ethnic groups from their homelands is needed to better peoples lives. I dont think the paranoid xenophobia of Stalin helped anyone and at worst crippled the ability of the Red Army to withstand the initial invasion of the Wehrmacht. I think his usage of the word "counterrevolutionary" completely devalued the word because calling Zinoviev, Kamenev and Trotzky counterrevolutionaries for calling for collectivization, only to turn around and calling Bukharin counterrevolutionary for opposing collectivization is a sign for devolving into a byzantine power struggle.