this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
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I've seen several references to some sort of rift between the users of these instances today. What's happening?

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[–] FunkyStuff@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Anarchists are cool, but they're really only a minority of communists worldwide. Whatever you think "authoritarianism" is (as far as I'm concerned if you believe in having a state at all, then that state will exercise a monopoly on violence and will be repressive) it describes almost every single communist on planet earth. The game of splitting hairs on what does and doesn't count as a "tankie" achieves nothing but divide a movement that has common cause.

If I'm being forthright, I'll just go ahead and ask: if anarchists are the only communists, why even have the concept of "tankies" at all? Why not just say you're pro-anarchist and anti-communist? From my perspective, all that the whole thing of saying that there supposedly are communists who aren't "tankies" achieves is create two categories:

  • Real people who exist in the real world and have actual, flawed political movements
  • Imaginary perfect people that only exist in your head

Then because you can find real examples of the first category, you can find the flaws they have, and compare them to the ideal people in the second category. But maybe I'm wrong, maybe there really are a ton of Marxists out there that figured out the secret to having a perfectly consistent anti-authoritarian ideology that is still distinct from anarchism. If you could let me know who they are, that'd be awesome.