this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2026
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Can you define, what is a tankie?
A talkie is a motion picture that has an accompanying soundtrack, allowing you to hear the actors in it talking.
lol, but I'm guessing you meant 'tankie'? Which is odd for you to bring up, because I didn't use that word at all. It seems like you might already know what a tankie is, if you're able to tell I was referring to them.
But sure, I'll take a crack at a definition for you. But only quid pro quo -- after I define 'tankie', I want you to define 'liberal', okay? That's only fair.
Tankie: A person who (at least nominally) holds leftist, communist, socialist views and thinks it's a wonderful idea to enforce those views with (among other things) actual tanks ... even against, say, unarmed protesters. While (at least nominally) economically leftist, they often hold some very right-wing conservative social views and are usually keen on enforcing those with abundant state violence as well. Always a big fan of countries like the USSR, China, and North Korea, and usually will not entertain any criticism of anything those countries have ever done. Usually considers 'the west' in general and the United States in particular to be the greatest evil the world has ever seen (calling them and them alone 'imperialist' -- a term that can never apply to anyone else), and will 'critically' (uncritically) support absolutely any country that stands in opposition to them ... even if that means supporting Islamic theocracies or kleptocratic oligarchies. Most importantly, they have very little tolerance for differing viewpoints and would eagerly silence differing viewpoints using state violence if given the opportunity.
Okay, now define 'liberal' in your own terms.
Thank you for being kind enough to recognize autocorrect causing problems.
I asked because it highlights who is causing leftist infighting by labeling people as tankies when said person disagrees with their points of view.
To answer your request, a liberal is someone that supports liberalist values. Liberalist values are ones that value individual rights over the rights of all people. Often, it's presented as "the right of the individual to X," not considering whether or not it actually helps all people equally or just a select few, and often it is benefitting only a select few. They employ a nonscientific approach to the social sciences (particularly political and socioeconomic sciences), prefer to function on what usually would seem to benefit themselves, and inso reject Marxist theory or theories built off of it such as Leninism while ignoring the historical evidence of it being the only successful threat to capitalism effective enough for capitalists to consider it a threat.
If you wanted a good starting point for identifying liberal values in ones ideologies, here's a solid starting point.
So, a communist who values individual rights is still 'liberal' to you?
(Also, I should probably clarify: Not every communist/socialist is a tankie. Not even every fan of the USSR/China/etc is a tankie, as long as they can admit that those countries do have faults and flaws. I consider 'tankie' to be a very specific category of people.)
Yes, I do consider them at least partially a supporter of liberalism, wouldn't you? That's what liberal has represented since its inception.
Virtually all communists I know are vocal about the problems in those countries when surrounded by people that are educated about them. However, that's rarely what you see on here, which is where critical support is important.
Definitions vary.
To me, "liberal" means someone who supports individual rights, representative democracy, and capitalism.
I might enjoy individual rights, but I'm kind of meh on representative democracy, and very much against capitalism.
Hm... Critical of them in secret, eh? I'd love to see some of those secret conversations, then.
Not in secret per say, it's more like this meme
Bro gave the liberal definition of a tankie. 😂
Liberal.
This definition is very much too concise.
This comment gave me aids.
No refunds.