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What's a Tankie? (lemmy.world)

I keep hearing the term in political discourse, and rather than googling it, I'm asking the people who know better than Google.

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[-] PearOfJudes@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 months ago
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[-] A1kmm@lemmy.amxl.com -1 points 2 months ago

While someone's political beliefs are highly multi-dimensional, there are two axes that are commonly used to define where someone sits:

  • Economy - Left is favouring social responsibility for people receiving economic support (supporting people to meet their basic needs is everyone's collective responsibility), while right is favouring individual responsibility (meeting your basic needs is your responsibility, and if you die because you can't, even if it is due to something outside of your control, tough luck).
  • Social liberties - Social Libertarian is favouring individual decisions on anything not related to the economy / rights of others, while Social Authoritarianism supports government restrictions on social liberties.

Since there are independent axes, there are four quadrants:

  • Socially liberal, Economic left - e.g. Left Communism, Social Democrat, most Green parties, etc...
  • Socially authoritarian, Economic left - e.g. Stalin, Mao. Tankie is a slang term for people in this quadrant.
  • Socially liberal, Economic right - Sometimes called libertarian. Some people with this belief set call themselves Liberal in some countries.
  • Socially authoritarian, Economic right - e.g. Trump. Sometimes called conservatives.

That said, some people use tankie as cover for supporting socially authoritarian, economic right but formerly economic left countries(e.g. people who support Putin, who is not economically left in any sense).

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[-] RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz -1 points 2 months ago

Something funny about posting the question to .ml and seeing the renoved comments at the top hah

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[-] njm1314@lemmy.world -2 points 2 months ago

I've always felt the best way to define them as someone so against westernism that they support authoritarian governments like China and Russia while ignoring the hypocrisy of said governments. They're not really communists, and they would violently oppose actual communism.

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this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2025
113 points (93.1% liked)

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