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I'm curious what folks here think about tankies.
I remember seeing a twitter thread during the onset of the Ukraine war explaining why Russia and China growing powerful even to the point of imperialism is vital to combat western imperialism, "someone has to do it". Whether one agrees that Russia has been constantly provoked by NATO or not, its difficult to spin Russian actions as "anti-imperialist". Similarly, China's land and water disputes with its neighbours. It appears both these countries have become a sort of canvas to project their ideologies. They often call western conservatives "far right" and often attack their criticisms of feminism. But how do they explain China's own censorship of feminist activism, the fact that independent labour unions are illegal, the push for pro-natalism, the push for masculinity training, etc.? I've seen many articles countering the stories about Uyghurs, but not much on the above. What really makes the "tankie ideology" attractive? I can fully understand and even sympathise with their gripes over western imperialism and even Israel to an extent, but I don't get the narratives that its all the neoliberals and the "far right" against China, essentially projecting the whole issue as a new cold war of ideologies between neoliberalism and communism.
Are there really still left-wing tankies out there who are now in support of this invasion?
All of the Putin apologists I run across myself are right-wing. They have the same "the enemy of my globalizing enemy is my friend" justifications as a left-wing tankie would typically have had back when it was Hungarian blood greasing the treads, but these ones are clear that the type of globalization pissing them off is mostly LGBTQ+ ideology rather than capitalist ideology. (To be clear, most right-wingers aren't neo-tankies, and most left-wing thought I read from the Cold War wasn't by tankies, it's just that the exceptions were pretty one-sided in each case)
I don't know what to think of it, but I find it fascinating. I've barely gotten used to political principles "switching sides" in one direction, with left-wing beliefs like "people should be judged as individuals, 'blind' to their demographics", "electronic voting machines are an unacceptably insecure way to tally elections", or "people should be able to get and keep jobs regardless of their personal politics" that still seem smart today but that (sometimes after brief universal support, sometimes directly) changed to have right-wing valence. "Russian authoritarianism and oppression is bad" might be the first good right-wing idea I've seen move the opposite way ...
The ones in support of the invasion itself are fairly rare, but I've seen a goodly number of far-left-wingers whose viewpoint is essentially that West should drop all support of Ukraine due to escalation dangers and because Ukraine is too Nazi-friendly or corrupt for them. Not as much pro-Russia, but anti-anti-Russia. Of course, one might well argue that this position is objectively pro-Russia within the current context. Also, when it comes to subsidiary issues like NATO expansion and so on, I'd argue that within continental Europe that is still more opposed by the far left than the far right (both within countries currently applying for NATO, ie. Sweden and Finland, and outside of them).
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Well, the Grayzone folk are still very sympathetic to Russia. Right wing culture warriors supporting Putin doesn't surprise me. As you said, they see the cultural establishment in the west as stridently opposed to them and their values, which they see closer to the vogue of Russian society, so they seek any disturbance to the status quo at home even if it may come from abroad. This isn't to say that I agree with them, just that I can at least rationalise their attitudes. As someone else had stated below, its not that I dislike left wing tankies, I'm just trying to understand their worldviews in their own ideological domain. China is hardly communist anymore, and sure we can go by the CCP's rhetoric that only "compassionate reeducation" is happening in Xinjiang for the sake of argument, but things like the crackdown on progressivism and "feminisation" of men are policies that the Chinese government (and western right wingers) openly and unapologetically espouses. What would a left wing tankie that laughs off Jordan Peterson's lectures (that is, the ideas of one pundit) on the crisis of masculinity say about China's own state guided programs to promote masculinity?
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