this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2026
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Tankie is a general term for someone who thinks there is a clear justification to use force or the threat of force to impose a socialist system on a state. The term originates with people who supported the USSR "Sending in the tanks" to annex other countries and crush dissent from people in their sphere. They are what people mean when they "If you go far enough left, you get your guns back." These days they tend to be a tiny minority within the rather small minority of actual leftists. They do exist, and some of them are pretty out there, but not the way the .ml crowd tends to characterize them. They're terrified of them, because in their heads the most terrifying thing in the world is a leftist that is willing to fight back, and they don't recognize anything that doesn't kill someone as "fighting."
By this "definition" every non-reformist socialist is a "tankie".
Funny how you claimed to be a socialist previously, but now you imply that basically all socialists are bad.
Firstly, which countries did the USSR annex when the "tankie" pejorative was coined? Any annexations after that?
Secondly, the "dissent" in question were NATO-backed nazis. Please tell us why you think that forcing capitalism on a country is good in your eyes, and should not be opposed.
What actions do you even disagree with here?
This is extremely funny, considering that your position seems to be "the rest of the world should be subjugated by NATO, and everybody else is bad to take forceful action against that", which is very much not "leftist".
Wait so .ml isn't a community of tankies? I've been on here for 6 months and I just assumed that .ml was tankie central based on how people talk.
No. Or at least that isn't what the term was coined as. They discover a new word and then reinterpret it as kind of a weird cosplay thing.
Wait so are you mad at tankies or .ml? Or both?
I learned a long time ago there's no point in being mad at people on the internet. If I'm going to have a beer with someone, I'd probably choose the tankies. They're way less likely to call for the genocide of my family, my nation and torture and murder of people who think like me, but hey, do your thing.