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Cake day: May 8th, 2023

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  • A1kmm@lemmy.amxl.comtoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlWhat's a Tankie?
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    12 days ago

    While someone’s political beliefs are highly multi-dimensional, there are two axes that are commonly used to define where someone sits:

    • Economy - Left is favouring social responsibility for people receiving economic support (supporting people to meet their basic needs is everyone’s collective responsibility), while right is favouring individual responsibility (meeting your basic needs is your responsibility, and if you die because you can’t, even if it is due to something outside of your control, tough luck).
    • Social liberties - Social Libertarian is favouring individual decisions on anything not related to the economy / rights of others, while Social Authoritarianism supports government restrictions on social liberties.

    Since there are independent axes, there are four quadrants:

    • Socially liberal, Economic left - e.g. Left Communism, Social Democrat, most Green parties, etc…
    • Socially authoritarian, Economic left - e.g. Stalin, Mao. Tankie is a slang term for people in this quadrant.
    • Socially liberal, Economic right - Sometimes called libertarian. Some people with this belief set call themselves Liberal in some countries.
    • Socially authoritarian, Economic right - e.g. Trump. Sometimes called conservatives.

    That said, some people use tankie as cover for supporting socially authoritarian, economic right but formerly economic left countries(e.g. people who support Putin, who is not economically left in any sense).



  • I think it was a 18th century British fad that spread to America - for example, look at the date on this London newspaper from 1734:

    London Gazette November 5 1734 - in the text it does also use the other format about “last month”, however.

    It didn’t make it into legal documents / laws, which still used the more traditional format like: “That from and after the Tenth Day of April, One thousand seven hundred and ten …”. However, the American Revolution effectively froze many British fashions from that point-in-time in place (as another example, see speaking English without the trap/bath split, which was a subsequent trend in the commonwealth).

    The fad eventually died out and most of the world went back to the more traditional format, but it persisted in the USA.