Even if you disagree with them, Trotskyists are not tankies, simple Marxists aren’t tankies, leftists curious and exploring different theories aren’t tankies, and ffs anarchists like myself are not tankies.
I feel like “tankie” indicated a very specific worldview at one time, but it’s been used lately a lot to mean things like “doesn’t agree with nations supporting oppression and inequity up to and including genocide” – which is drastically at odds with how I’ve seen the term used in the past, no?
I always say that capitalism is treated as a default, and its failings as “facts of life”. Judging socialism or anarchism by their few short, sabotaged instances without giving people a few hundred years to refine i the systems isn’t a fair comparison.
Very well said!