Online cultures

Many leftist organizers, including Marxist-Leninists, can attest the term “tankie” wasn’t used widely in meet-spaces until the rise of image boards, Reddit, YouTube monetization and other incubators of online cultures. Previously, the label was created by Marxist-Leninists to describe certain strains of MLs denying or justifying atrocities. Non-MLs tended to use “red fascists” coined in 1938 and 1939. Then with social media, “tankie” either became a badge of honor or as an insult across the political spectrum.

## **Issues With Online and Activist Cultures**

* "Always Against The Tanks: Three Essays on Red Nationalism" https://ia903102.us.archive.org/32/items/alwaysagainstthetanks/AlwaysAgainstTheTanks.pdf [PDF, 1.25MB, EN], https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/various-authors-always-against-the-tanks [various formats, EN]
* “Everything you ever wanted to know about tankies, but were afraid to ask” https://libcom.org/blog/everything-you-ever-wanted-know-about-tankies-were-afraid-ask-08032018?page=1 [EN] (libertarian communist archive)
* "Is Genocide Denial Anti-Imperialist Now? How Tankies are Taking Over Leftbook and the London Student Scene" by Darya Rustamova https://www.mangalmedia.net/english//is-genocide-denial-anti-imperialist-now-how-tankies-are-taking-over-leftbook-and-the-london-student-scene [EN] (diapsoric post-Soviet leftist)
* "The left's Warriors on Terror" by Michael Degerald https://www.aljumhuriya.net/en/content/lefts-warriors-terror [EN]
* "Not so progressive" https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2020-09-30/not-so-progressive [EN] (Trotskyist organization)
* "Hands off the US! Stand with the American people and their democratically elected leader against the regime change plot!" by R Totale https://libcom.org/blog/hands-us-stand-american-people-their-democratically-elected-leader-against-regime-change-pl [EN] (libertarian communist archive, satirical piece applying tankie logic to the US protests)
* "Gentrifying Activist Spaces- PSL Philly" https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kwq901syx7F3ApCg\_bGTDAXN4RFf7ZK3/view [EN]
* "RT Reporter Exits Network After ‘Misguided’ Praise of Stalin’s Gulags" by Jon Levine https://www.thewrap.com/rt-sameera-khan-exits-stalin-gulags/ [EN]
* “Reputation Markets: Reality, Dangers, and Possibility” https://c4ss.org/content/52196 [EN] (left-market anarchist publication)
* "ben norton, wikipedia, and the grayzone hissyfit" https://wokeglobaltimes.com/grayzone-hissyfit [EN]
* “Against the Logic of the Guillotine: Why the Paris Commune Burned the Gullotine and We Should Too” https://crimethinc.com/2019/04/08/against-the-logic-of-the-guillotine-why-the-paris-commune-burned-the-guillotine-and-we-should-too [EN]
* "China, the Canadian left, and countering state capitalist apologia" by Vincent Wong https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/china-the-canadian-left-and-countering-state-capitalist-apologia [EN]
* "Open Letter to Jacobin and Monthly Review: Stop Racist and Misogynist Attacks on the Emergent Indigenous, Eco-Feminist Left in Latin America, and Address the Crisis in Today’s Ecuador." by Tendance Coatesy https://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2021/03/01/\_\_trashed-6/ [EN]

### **Research articles**

* “Epistemic Exploitation” by Nora Berenstain https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/p/pod/dod-idx/epistemic-exploitation.pdf?c=ergo;idno=12405314.0003.022;format=pdf [PDF, 325 KB, EN] (talks about how oppressed people are obligated to prove their lived experiences)
* "A classification of denials of the Holocaust and other genocides" by Israel W. Charny https://sci-hub.st/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14623520305645 [PDF, 148 KB, EN] (talks about types of genocide denial that is applied to atrocities tankies defend)

### **News articles**

* "Inside Kolektiva, the social media platform built by anarchists and activists" by Ella Fassler https://www.mic.com/p/inside-kolektiva-the-social-media-platform-built-by-anarchists-activists-42617028 [EN]
* "History of Syria’s war at risk as YouTube reins in content" by Sarah El Deeb https://apnews.com/article/syria-ap-top-news-international-news-technology-online-video-d9f1c4f1bf20445ab06cbdff566a2b70 [EN]

### **Magazine articles**

* “The Qiao Collective and Left DIasporic Chinese Nationalism” by Brian Hioe https://newbloommag.net/2020/06/22/qiao-collective-nationalism/ [EN]
* “From Kanaky to Algeria, the Guillotine is also a Colonial Weapon” by Léopold Lambert https://thefunambulist.net/history/from-kanaky-to-algeria-the-guillotine-is-also-a-colonial-weapon [EN]

### **Blog posts**

* "Ending the Idealization of the Other" by JN https://medium.com/@jnchien/ending-the-idealization-of-the-other-d54a6c760720 [EN]
* "BOYCOTT ANSWER COALITION! PSL IS CORRUPT!" by John Willflow https://johnwillflow.wordpress.com/2014/01/29/boycott-answer-coalition-psl-is-corrupt/ [EN]
* “These Are The Opportunists You Were Warned About” https://spectralred.home.blog/2020/02/14/these-are-the-opportunists-you-were-warned-about/ [EN]
* "The Fault In Our Star System: The Trouble With BreadTube" by Anarchasteminist https://anarchasteminist.wordpress.com/2019/10/21/the-fault-in-our-star-system-the-trouble-with-breadtube/ [EN]
* “The Foreigner’s Guide to Appropriate Protests by Some White Leftist From Brooklyn” by Jim Kovpak https://nobsrussia.com/2019/01/25/the-foreigners-guide-to-appropriate-protests-by-some-white-leftist-from-brooklyn/ [EN] (satire)
* "The Anti-War Left 100 Years Ago vs the Anti-War Left Today" https://web.archive.org/web/20150603011748/http://bennorton.com/the-anti-war-left-100-years-ago-vs-the-anti-war-left-today/ [EN] (archived, Ben Norton deleted most of his tweets and posts before *The Grayzone* started associating with *RT*)
* "Richard Medhurst: Another Cog in the Pedo to Political Journalist Pipeline" by Kristen Van Houten https://medium.com/@precious\_sheen\_dog\_960/richard-medhurst-another-cog-in-the-pedo-to-political-journalist-pipeline-17e6af3be867 [EN] (Archived: https://archive.is/VOMLZ)
* "The Conversation-Industrial Complex" by Reverend Aaron https://criticalthoughtcritique.blogspot.com/p/the-conversation-industrial-complex.html [EN]
* "The Rokfin’s Troubling Conservative Content" https://rokfinfiles.noblogs.org/post/2021/06/01/rokfin/ [EN]
* "Russia, Trump and the New ‘McCarthyism in Reverse’" by Charles Davis https://pulsemedia.org/2016/09/10/russia-trump-and-the-new-mccarthyism-in-reverse/ [EN] (talks about how the term is being used incorrectly)

### **Documents**

* "Open Letter to Monthly Review" https://www.criticalchinascholars.org/interventions/ [EN]
* "Correspondence with Noam Chomsky" by George Monbiot https://www.monbiot.com/2012/05/21/2181/ [EN]
* "Operation Storm of White Tears" https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P0jXrvOJabx2dSu1mE17UzgcaTMMCOMGiaddA4VrDnA [EN] (talks about Black Hammer’s online strategy to cause attention for their horrible worldviews)

### **Encyclopedia**

* "Revolutionary Communist Party (US)" https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Revolutionary\_Communist\_Party\_(US) [EN]

### **Audio**

* "The Fault In Our Star System: The Trouble With BreadTube" uploaded by Libertarian Socialist Rants https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWJP5Ces0Ok [7:57, EN]
* “Against the Logic of the Guillotine” uploaded by the fire these times https://thefirethisti.me/2020/03/25/againstguillotine/ [43:05, EN]

### **Videos**

* “Problems with YouTube & the Internet Creators Guild: Technology & Politics” uploaded by PhilosphyTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsL0-1cwh0w [14:10, EN]

* "Why Debating Sucks (According To a Competitive Debater" uploaded by Sarah Z https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcHPmVxtFw8 [31:53, EN SUB, EN]

* "Fluent English Speakers from Poorer Countries Aren't Reliable Sources" uploaded by Empanada Report https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bE3PW\_HJ5k [3:31, EN] (Marxist-Leninist, member of Solidarity with Cuba, supports Vietnam [Laos is client-state of Vietnam] and Rojava, white Australian settler with Greek ancestry living in Argentina; has extremely abrasive personality on Twitter and Reddit and is considered as an irony-poisoned bro)
* "YouTube Dominates Everything" uploaded by Empanada Report https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y\_qqECdPqyc [7:00, EN] (Marxist-Leninist, member of Solidarity with Cuba, supports Vietnam [Laos is client-state of Vietnam] and Rojava, white Australian settler with Greek ancestry living in Argentina; has extremely abrasive personality on Twitter and Reddit and is considered as an irony-poisoned bro)
* “I’m a Journalist Who Hates the News” uploaded by Johnny Harris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkUH2tP8PYw [12:48, EN SUB, EN]
* "Xanderhal Is A Disingenuous Dense Mother F\_\_\_er! (5 Layers Deep Response Video)" uploaded by DarkViperAU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A20vucHAH4 [24:07, EN]
* "Abandoning counter-revolutionary SLIME and adopting Maupin-thought!" uploaded by Thought Slime https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8OsvahWWzw [34:47, EN] (white Canadian anarchist, member of the IWW)
* "Is Caleb Maupin the savior of humanity? (the ideology question)" uploaded by The Serf Times https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVtLzdEOXI8 [30:00, EN] (white democratic socialist, but reminds everyone he is half Métis, half Chilean mestizo)
* "Johnny Harris: A Story of YouTube Propaganda' uploaded by Tom Nicholas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dum0bqWfiGw [33:00, EN SUB, EN]
* "The Case Against the Guillotine" uploaded by Saint Andrewism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwG0\_YvQsUg [17:52, EN SUB, EN] (Black Trinidadian solarpunk anarchist)
* "Why is Twitter so toxic?" uploaded by Thought Slime https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXclb2alGvk [19:53, EN SUB, EN] (white Canadian anarchist, member of the IWW)
* "Thoughts on YouTube: Breadtube | Debates | Streaming vs Video Essays | Creator Income" uploaded by BadEmpanada https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZAX81vLI80 [38:21, EN] (Marxist-Leninist, member of Solidarity with Cuba, supports Vietnam [Laos is client-state of Vietnam] and Rojava, white Australian settler with Greek ancestry living in Argentina; has extremely abrasive personality on Twitter and Reddit and is considered as an irony-poisoned bro)
* "'Anti-Capitalism' is Capitalist" uploaded by Saint Andrewism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1ZK2-viyAo [11:52, EN SUB, EN] (Black Trinidadian solarpunk anarchist)
* "Using Wikipedia as a source" uploaded by Viki 1999 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdlGKRqh2\_U [21:29, EN SUB, EN]
* "Is it Antisemitic to Call Landlords 'Parasites'?" uploaded by Spencer Sunshine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxGyWJa60RA [12:03, EN]
* "How I didn't fall down the alt-right pipeline (Explicit)" uploaded by KAR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38D6nelxnmc [16:37, EN]
* "EVERYBODY'S CANCELED!" uploaded by Punks for Progress https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KigCpaBnDw8 [16:51, EN]
* "Trouble 19: Quiet Storm" uploaded by subMedia https://sub.media/video/trouble-19-quiet-storm/ [33:26, EN SUB, FR SUB, EN]; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nByUB5Y5Eqs [33:26, EN SUB, EN]; https://kolektiva.media/videos/watch/1c806d99-4caf-45f0-ac6e-e1dedca53b82 [33:26, EN SUB, FR SUB, EN]; https://vimeo.com/327392964 [33:26, EN SUB, FR SUB, EN] (Canadian anarchist media collective)
* "VidMe or Why Platforms Aren't Your Friends" uploaded by Folding Ideas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3snVCRo\_bI [15:46, EN SUB, EN]
* "The Most Uncomfortable Obsession of Debate Streamers" uploaded by BadEmpanada 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiBy8twi-28 [6:35, EN] (WARNING!- child abuse, discussion about child pornography; Marxist-Leninist, member of Solidarity with Cuba, supports Vietnam [Laos is client-state of Vietnam] and Rojava, white Australian settler with Greek ancestry living in Argentina; has extremely abrasive personality on Twitter and Reddit and is considered as an irony-poisoned bro)

### **Websites**

* Situationists: reading guide https://libcom.org/library/situationists-reading-guide [EN]

### **Archived**

* https://archive.is/RcA0i [EN] - explaining what a “tankie” is in response to the meme featuring pictures of BIPoC with the caption “tankies”
* http://archive.is/LvQV6 [EN] - original account behind *Qiao Collective*
* https://archive.is/IQ827 [EN], https://archive.vn/XCFIQ [EN] - critiquing The Red Nation’s political ideology
* https://archive.is/kg0zs [EN] - folks behind *Qiao Collective*
* https://archive.is/D7q3s [EN] - *Qiao Collective* misrepresented a infographic to “prove” that most Chinese people trust their government
	+ Actual sources:
		1. “Country-level estimates of trust” https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cross-country-variation-in-trust?tab=table&time=earliest..latest [EN] (talks about trust with people in general, not with the government)
		2. "Global Evidence on Economic Preferences" by Armin Falk, Anke Becker, Thomas Dohmen, Benjamin Enke, David Huffman, and Uwe Sunde https://sci-hub.st/https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/133/4/1645/5025666 [PDF, 2 MB, EN] (talks about trust with people in general, not with the government)
* https://archive.is/4hbkd [EN] - American Dengists are Trotskyists
* https://archive.is/UYnV9 [EN] - shitpost about the (blank) million communists
* https://archive.vn/hQmM6 [EN] - instances where *Qiao Collective* overstates their language fluency
* https://archive.is/SMkFW [EN] - Esha Krishnaswamy of *historic.ly* podcast is a corporate IP lawyer
* https://archive.ph/wip/NsLXA [EN] - how "tankie" is best understood as Marcyists, who were originally Trotskyists, since most Marxist-Leninists are not "tankies"
* https://archive.ph/qIUbT [EN] - reclaiming "tankie" to signify traitors to communist movements
* https://archive.ph/8efES [EN] - discussion about how using "third world" is outdated, and the term "global south" is over-simplifying relations of near-abroad imperialism to international imperialism as well as relations of right-wing dictators to radical left movements
* https://archive.is/tyIrx [EN] - how right-wing views and left-wing campism accidentally dovetails despite incompatible values
* https://archive.ph/uXFYj [EN] - how content creators shouldn't be at the forefront of leftist movements
* https://archive.is/UKNjJ [EN] - PSL exposed for monitoring their members' likes

### **Notes**

* When people post the banner with a collage of people of color entitled “tankie”, point out none of them are considered “tankies” and it’s usually an insult reserved for 1956 Hungarian Uprising, 1989 Tiananmen Square, Marcyists, Bosnian genocide deniers, famine deniers etc.
* The term “tankie” was originally coined by Marxists who disagreed with Khruschevites
* Applying “tankies” to Marxist-Leninists in the Global South don’t make a lot of sense because it has a very specific term in western Marxism
* “Tankie” in social media spaces is an overused 4chan or Reddit meme originating from /leftypol/ that completely lost any meaning or context behind state repressions of workers’ revolts
* Prior to social media, many non-ML Marxists and anarchists don’t like using the term “tankie” because it’s a ML-created terminology to describe different camps within ML circles
* "Tankie" is a term which punches right. If a liberal uses it, then "tankie" becomes coded anti-communism.
* Fidel Castro and Che Guevara are white settlers, not people of color, and many Indigenous activists and leftists of color in Latin America do consider them as settlers or as white. Many Indigenous activists get annoyed when USian leftists consider them as “PoC” or “Mestize/Mestizx”. Castro and Che are only racialized because of USians’ perception of Latin America
* Che and Castro being white does not negate the good things they have contributed to socialism or the world. BIPoC are tired of them being tokenised by white communists
* The counter-meme(s) to “tankies” featuring anarchists of color, Trotskyists of color, council communists of color and libertarian socialists/libertarian Marxists of color is/are tokenizing, non-consensual and unnecessary because none of the BIPoC in the original “tankie” meme are/were tankies
* Defending the existence of communist states or former communist states does not make a person a “tankie”. It’s suppression of workers’ revolts and denying better conditions (eg. pensions)
* Claiming Angela Davis as “a tankie” to dissuade non-MLs from supporting prison abiliton or to persuade non-MLs to read Stalin’s theories is misleading. She is now part of the Committees of Correspondence for Socialism and Democracy, which would be considered to the right of Democratic Socialists of America. And it is not unusual for different strains, tendencies, schools and scenes to cross-pollinate across leftism.
* Every time someone complains about the Iron Front or three arrows, remind them Thälmann was so awful, even other Stalinists hated him and some of the designers behind the three arrows were Leninists; and the Communist Party of France used the three arrows in their anti-fascist agitprop
* Three arrows iconography stopped being associated with the German Social Democrats and the Iron Front when Maoists, Eurocommunists, autonomists and other anti-authoritarian Marxist or anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninist tendencies in Europe started using the logo in the 1960s to 1980s before spreading amongst American anti-fascist groups
* “Red fascist” was popularized with Russian anarchists and with western European Marxists in the late 1930s
* Mango Twitter and the publication *Mango Press* started as a meme when a Canadian leftist took a corporate biography video on YouTube about Mao Zedong seriously, which regurgitated misinformation about a mob killing a man because of a mango. Most of the people involved [on Mango Twitter] are Dengists or are capitalists, entrepreneurs or petite bourgeoise. Stalinists, Maoists, Hoxhaists etc regularly dunk on Mango Twitter.
* Luxmeburgists started using chili emoji in response to mango emoji in order to dunk on Dengists
* Council communists started using the pancake emoji to dunk on Mango Twitter. This is in reference to Anton Pannekoek’s surname
* Part of why *Jacobin* is a shitshow is because it’s a magazine which accepts anything vaguely leftism from any author
* *Libcom* is just an online library of all leftist tendencies, most of which is already shared with *Marxists.org*. The admins behind the Twitter account, who are the ones some folks have problem with, don’t have anything to do with the library itself
* “Anti-communist left” is a term coined by Michael Parenti to disintegrate other Marxists from criticizing the USSR even though other Leninists disliked how USSR became after the death of Lenin, Troskyists dislike how USSR became after Trotsky’s exile and Stalinists dislike how USSR became after the death of Stalin, Maoists dislike how PRC became after imprisonment of Jiang Qing (and so on, denote henceforth the schisms in Marxist movements). When you see someone use this term, they are probably a Parenti stan (at best), a Brezhnevite, a Dengist or a Marcyist (worst outcome because they are the shittest, illogical Trotskyist tendency). If the person throwing around the term is a LaRouchite [or a New Right fascist, and sometimes Duginist], bail and run far away because debunking endless conspiracy theories, gish-gallop style, is not worth your time. The reactionary bullshit quagmire LaRouchites spew is best left to the dustbin of paleoconservatives’ [as well as other strains of isolationist right-libertarianism] along with the garbage spiral of alt-right’s and Kiwifarms’s inanity of trolling people online.
* People who unironically say “actually existing socialism” or “AES” are either anti-communists, Brezhnevite revisionists or counterrevolutionaries, not Marxist-Leninists. Brezhnev let the USSR stagnate into an economic [and socially conservative] decline despite criticisms from other Marxists [from within the USSR and outside of the USSR]
* Not everyone who call themselves “Marxist-Leninist” are Stalinists, Maoists, Hoxhaoists, MZT, HCMT or other schools of ML thoughts and many of them are just neo-Trotskyists (eg. PSL, WWP) doing entryism into ML spaces or other leftist spaces (eg. the DSA)
* "Stalinist" was a term coined by other Leninists who saw the shortcomings of Stalin's regime
* Marcyism sucks because the tendency synthesizes both the worst of Stalinism with the worst of Trotskyism instead of producing the best of both
* Pop left sucks. Situationaists critiqued this  many time if you need context