We're reclaiming the word. Here's what it means now.
The word “tankie” was coined by British Trotskyists for use against leftists who did not oppose the USSR intervention in Hungary in 1956 and resurrected after 2011 by pro-regime change leftists who used it to mock leftists who opposed the destruction of the Syrian state.
But the self-definition of “tankie” can be derived from Lenin’s advice to the socialists in WWI. When most of the socialists of Germany, Russia, and France were lining up with their own governments, Lenin advocated what was called at the time revolutionary defeatism. He wrote: “During a reactionary war a revolutionary class cannot but desire the defeat of its government.” He wanted socialists, rather than celebrating their countries’ achievements in overt or covert war, to take up the struggle in their own countries: “one cannot be a sincere opponent of a civil (i.e., class) truce without arousing hatred of one’s own government and bourgeoisie!”
In my view, this is no different from what Chomsky has advocated for decades. As he was wont to do, he repeated this message constantly in the hopes that it would stick (it didn’t):
“…One of the most elementary moral truisms is that you are responsible for the anticipated consequences of your own actions. It is fine to talk about the crimes of Genghis Khan, but there isn’t much that you can do about them. If Soviet intellectuals chose to devote their energies to crimes of the U.S., which they could do nothing about, that is their business. We honor those who recognized that the first duty is to concentrate on your own country. And it is interesting that no one ever asks for an explanation, because in the case of official enemies, truisms are indeed truisms. It is when truisms are applied to ourselves that they become contentious, or even outrageous. But they remain truisms. In fact, the truisms hold far more for us than they did for Soviet dissidents, for the simple reason that we are in free societies, do not face repression, and can have a substantial influence on government policy*.”
This idea - that we’re supposed to think about the effects of our work and therefore focus on the crimes of Western imperialists, not the crimes of their enemies - is one Western tankies take seriously.
If you’re wondering why the small group of us on social media around my podcast (the Anti-Empire Project) and Sina’s (The East is a Podcast) affectionately call each other “tankies” and the politics behind it, read on.
For the purposes of this post, a tankie is someone who doesn’t want the destruction of states that are currently targeted by the US. (more...)
These British Warthog armored vehicles aren't called "tanks". pic.twitter.com/MSs6lXVVP3
— The Anti-Genocide Project (@justinpodur) August 27, 2021
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