Tankies are a term that references the teinimen square massacre, where this man named tank man, stood in front of a tank, creating this iconic image that was published globally in the media. Tankies refer to people who say that the massacre was a legitimate use of force by the Chinese communist party because of things like western propaganda and the extreme tactics communist sometimes use to fight back against it. They are basically people who believe communism is valid.

Is this true? In a sense sort of. It is true that these same western countries which post a photo in their media of one brave man standing in front of a tank also probably murdered a few thousand people that year to secure some mineral rights. Although it’s hard to see that when you just see a communist state putting down a protest. I don’t really have a position on it. I can sort of see both sides of the argument. Considering that the communists were oppressing free speech and trying to implement censorship, I tend to side with the revolution on this one. I am a Democrat. Not the political party, but the ideology. I believe that people should have power and human dignity and the human experience is more important then profits or even private property within reason.

Yet it is also true that western countries do use the idea of freedom and stuff improperly to foster right wing revolutions in communist countries to denationalize them and implement their own propaganda networks, and it is also equally true that the CCP is essentially a military back authoritarian regime that censors its people. Really what side you would ultimately take on this issue depends on your core values. Do you believe that socialism needs a chance? That workers should control their economy? You might fall in more on the side of a tankie. Do you believe the U.S capitalist system is the greatest thing in terms of freedom in human history? You might fall in with the liberals and the protestors. This was a much better argument 25 years ago before the U.S also became a censoring, antifree speech, authoritarian country. Yet every communist state as far as I can tell, became authoritarian and has much more in common with fascism than socialism. There is that too. If anyone could have made communism work, it would probably be Russia. They had the power to actually do it, yet they failed. They implemented antifree speech laws. They had political indoctrination and all of these other things which completely ruined their society and economy.

Democracy and freedom is a very intoxicating Idea, in fact a great idea, except for the fact that people are very gullible and stupid and love to blame all their problems on other people. It’s really difficult to actually maintain a democracy without at the very minimum propaganda. The trump presidency is a perfect example of this. A democraticly elected authoritarian who wants to dehumanize minorities and censor free speech, while getting in under the guise of freedom and patriotism. What is more unamerican than censorship? What is more unamerican than a king? What is more unamerican than having a state and corporate backed religion? Yet so many people fail to see this. Are we really any more free than the Chinese or the Russians? Have we ever been? Is it really any different if your own father is abusing you because you won’t go to church rather than your state abusing you because you want democratic political parties? Hard to say.