BookToker DEBUNKS tankies!?!

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]So, I am going to be reacting to this book talker sim book talks badly and they have a very interesting Tik Tok lesson on how to deal with tankies. So, what book talk is this is the corner of Tik Tok that loves to read books. First of all, I love how they have a whole whiteboard that's colorcoded. How to deal with tankies with tankies like what in red and then they have tanky noun a do nothing accelerationist chronically online genocide denying quote unquote mauist quote unquote Marxist Leninist quote unquote Stalinist. I'm obsessed with this. I love how happy they are. I wish I could be this happy. I wish my life had so little going on that I could be this happy complaining about tankies.

[00:00:41]>> Or pass a social reform that would meaningfully improve the lives of all the workers around you and then someone comes into the comments on your social media and calls you a neoliberal imperialist sheep dog, then you might have a tanky problem.

[00:00:55]>> This person doesn't even have an IRL example. All you're doing is like complaining about social media comments.

[00:01:00]Get a grip. I am going to narrowly define tankies as a do nothing accelerationist chronically online genocide denying mauist Marxist Leninist or Stalinist.

[00:01:12]>> The big problem we have here is like Tanky like has such a slippery definition. Whoever I think is bad as the tanky and so this definition is a good example of a completely slippery definition of tanky. First of all, what do we mean by genocide denying? What genocide? Are you talking about the hollowore? By that definition, bourgeoa scholars who acknowledge the halddemore was not an intentional famine, but you know, just a famine caused by different policies, bad weather, etc. I mean, are they denying a genocide? And then second of all, they have mauist, Marxist, Leninist, and Stalinist in quotes. Like, why are they in quotes? Technically, I wouldn't fall under this definition because I'm not an accelerationist and I'm not a do nothing. I am chronically online though.

[00:01:47]>> If you call yourself a tanky, but you are not all those things, then this video is not about you.

[00:01:52]>> I'm confused then. Like if you're defying tankies this narrowly, isn't this literally like what? This would be like 10 people. Are we just complaining about 10 people in your comments?

[00:02:00]>> Important to define our terms because communists have never agreed on what communism actually is or means unlike what tankies will tell you. They'll tell you they and they alone.

[00:02:11]>> I mean, look, it's a stateless classless moneyless society, right? I mean, is there that much controversy? Some people might differ on how to get there and how to get to that point, but like it's pretty unanimous. It's a stateless classless moneyless society. Truth of the matter is, if you ever get four communists in a room, you're going to wind up with five communist organizing parties.

[00:02:28]>> Well, yeah, but like they're going to disagree mainly on methods of how to get there. They're not really going to disagree on what communism is.

[00:02:34]>> We're going to talk about topics like tankism is really just Calvinism.

[00:02:38]>> What is this tankism? Is that a new ideology now? I'm so confused. What is going on? I feel like this is social democracy slop. American social democracy brain rot. Y'all will see later in this Tik Tok, but very very much made by an American. Tankism is fed [ __ ] >> Fed chart. The captions say fed chart.

[00:02:56]>> Don't know communist history and don't >> what >> don't actually read or think critically about the books that they're always talking about.

[00:03:04]>> You know, say what you want about tankies, but you know, I think they're probably the most well- read tendency on average than, you know, all the other tendencies. What do social democrats read? Kowsky. noticing that this is very similar to the work I did in 2023 and 2024 where I broke down Zionist ideology and talked about how to dismantle it and argue with it. And I'm pretty sure I can do a good job doing the same thing with Tankey's because they actually use many of the same rhetorical strategies and logical fallacies that Zionists do.

[00:03:32]>> Citation needed. If we wanted to talk about the Palestinian struggle, the left, the tankies have always been alongside the Islamists. some of the few people that have stood side by side against Zionism. The PFLP, the DFLP comparing tankies or communists or whatever to Zionist is a bit silly. I be like, Sim, why is this a big deal with all that's going on in the world? Like, why should the left be fighting with itself? But I see tankies as like again this definition of tankies as a Calvinist cult similar to Christian evangelicalism. Like any cult, it is leading our youth astray. Look what what what is this? Protect the children.

[00:04:13]Protect the children. They're getting seduced. They're getting seducted by Marxism, Leninism.

[00:04:18]>> Let me try to prove just that first claim. I >> I love the updated chart. This is beautiful. Color coding different parts of what makes a tanky a Calvinist.

[00:04:26]Tankism and Calvinism. So on the tankism side, you have Lenin, Mao, Markx, and then on the Calvinist side, you have the Old and New Testaments. The leftist version of Professor Jiang. Christian Protestantism started by John Calvin, a 16th century French theologian and Calvinism becomes Puritanism and then it's brought to the US by the Puritans and there it becomes the precursor to Christian evangelicalism. They line out a very philosophical history of Calvinism and try to connect it to Tankism. I'm like this is a very American lineage. Like seriously, like are you saying that tankies are an American phenomenon? What are we doing here? quote unquote tankies exist all throughout the world, especially in the third world, especially in places like Southeast Asia. Why are we focusing only on the states and Calvinism in the States? For Calvinism to play a big role in the development of tankism, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

[00:05:17]>> I keep seeing Calvinism everywhere because the United States keeps reproducing.

[00:05:22]>> Once again, why are we focusing on the United States? Do they think there's a compound in the United States where like tankies live in their little cult where they read Markx Lennon and Stalin? The tanky phenomenon, quote unquote, is worldwide. Why are we focusing only on the United States? Like, this is so American centric.

[00:05:36]>> New packaging the way evolution keeps reinventing the crab.

[00:05:41]>> I mean, that's such a funny comparison to talk about evolution reinventing the crab. Because, you know, evolution is natural selection through survival of the fittest. That's kind of saying that tankism is the best ideology because it keeps surviving. Tankism is the best ideology because it's the ideology that actually survives and builds long-lasting states. You know, maybe the reason tankism is so prolific is because it actually succeeded instead of like the 15,000th time they've tried democratic socialism and gets crushed in a coup. If we want to talk about evolution, how many times has entreism into the Democratic party succeeded?

[00:06:09]>> Red flags that you're dealing with an ideology that's really just Calvinism is that baked into its DNA is the idea that purity is achieved through suffering.

[00:06:19]And this was echoed all throughout the past week by Tankies in the comments of my video saying that reform is bad. They were telling me that the fact that Zoran Mandani passed universal child care for all New Yorkers is actually that's a bad thing. First of all, that's not the point that a lot of people make when they're critical of social welfare reform in the first world. The reason social welfare reform is criticized by Tanky is because it's obviously built on the back of the spoils of imperialism.

[00:06:48]We have America brain completely forgetting that social democracy in the first world is ultimately about who gets the bigger part of the imperialist pie.

[00:06:55]When Tangis are criticizing welfare in the United States or in all these other first world countries, it's on those grounds. It's not because suffering in and of itself is a virtue. It's that these programs that are supposed to alleviate suffering are built on the suffering of the third world. Maybe instead of abstracting that critique so much to the point that becomes purity through suffering, maybe you should engage with that critique >> because then the workers get too comfortable. Accelerationists definitely do have some of that. But like, you know, once again, the major critique that most people have of social democracy is that it's built on the spoils of imperialism. Not that there is something virtuous about suffering.

[00:07:27]>> Hate everyone. They want us to suffer.

[00:07:29]The only way we will ever be purified enough to achieve revolution is if we are suffering as much as 18th century surfs.

[00:07:37]>> So Americaentric. It's like, yeah, you know, the American proletarian is just suffering so bad. We just here in the United States, we have some of the best standards. you have like some of the best wages comparison to the third world. Like let's be so real.

[00:07:47]>> Wrapped up in the second principle of Calvinism that I see in tankism which is the idea of predestination that we can't really change our fate.

[00:07:56]They say things like there's no possible way to improve society through voting for a democratic politician to ever be good.

[00:08:04]>> Didn't you literally talk about Zora Mamani? Like bro has literally betrayed Palestine again and again. This is a structural critique. This person is very clearly misrepresenting a structural critique that anti-electoralists have, which is that sure, you can vote someone in, but they are very quickly going to be consumed by the political machine that subsumes bourgeois politics. In the same way that it happened to Bernie, in the same way it happened to AOC, in the same way it happened to Zoron. They're not saying that they're predestined to become bad or whatever. They're saying that there's structural impediments to actually being a principled left-wing politician, >> doomed to suffer in their ideology. and it's important that they do suffer to bring about a foretold rapture that is coming.

[00:08:42]>> I don't know anyone who says this within Marxism. There's obviously structuralist and volunteerist strains. I'm pretty sure most people understand that, you know, revolution is something we have to organize for and not something that's just going to happen. Socialism or barbarism isn't a prophecy. It's a warning and that we need to work to get socialism and not barbarism. Silence. A book talker is speaking.

[00:09:03]organizing that we might do whether it's like running political candidates, you know, running election, building third party power, or trying to make Democrats more progressive, passing social reforms in your area. Even even they were poo pooing organizing strikes and labor movements. Anything short of revolution they say is pointless because is it is not predestined. It is not what Mark said.

[00:09:27]>> I have never heard anyone say you shouldn't do any organizing ever because revolution is predestined. Who can we have a citation? Can we have a screenshot of a comment? I will take a screenshot of a comment at this point. I have never heard anyone argue that you shouldn't do anything but wait for the revolution.

[00:09:41]>> Happen in the way that Markx said it would happen 200 years ago.

[00:09:45]>> Not really. Like I mean Markx's prediction that revolution would happen in the most industrialized capitalist states didn't really bear out. But revolution ended up happening in like the most oppressed third world countries like China, like in Vietnam. Revolution happened there because you know obviously he didn't foresee the development of imperialism. this idea that like we need to follow Marxist prophecy like no Marxist theoreticians have always been very adept at updating Marxism to the modern day. That's what Lenon did.

[00:10:07]>> Similarity I see between tanks and Calvinists is a a a strategy of accelerating towards this foretold rapture. Right? So the tanks believe the revolution is coming in a mystical way.

[00:10:20]They have >> not really I mean you have to organize for revolution. You know, the critique that tankies have is that organizing for reforms, organizing for elections, campaigning, all this infrastructure that's built on electoralism goes away when your candidate wins. If you are in an organization that is trying to get a candidate elected and then the election happens, boom, there goes all your momentum. There goes all that energy.

[00:10:41]There goes all that money that you poured into an election. Nine times out of 10, that candidate probably isn't going to get elected. So, congrats. you just wasted all that energy that could have gone to something, you know, productive towards actually building a revolutionary consciousness towards actually building something long-lasting to like a short election season like, you know, all of it was completely wasted. And it happens again and again.

[00:10:57]>> They arrive when the conditions that again marks laid out 200 years ago or that Lenin then reiterated or Mauist or the Mau >> whatever Ma said. Like this person doesn't even know what they're talking about. Like what are you yapping about?

[00:11:11]Book talkers that don't read books.

[00:11:14]the revolution will come when the conditions are met. So just like >> have you ever read Mau or Lenon? They do not say that they talk about the objective and subjective conditions, but they very much also emphasize you know subjective conditions of like a revolutionary working class that is organized through a vanguard party. Not that you know the revolution is just going to come through objective conditions alone.

[00:11:35]>> Tankies think that uh it's good actually when workers are suffering more and more. It's good actually. You are talking about American workers. People are critical of social welfare programs in the first world because they are built on the spoils of imperialism. The easing of their suffering is very much built on getting a bigger piece of the imperialist pie. Once again, you need a global perspective to understand that critique. You know, you don't need the American brain that like completely ignores workers in the third world. It takes a very internationalist approach to understanding capitalism because capitalism is a global system. It is fundamentally built on the exploitation of third world countries. reforms fail and more and more people are being like imprisoned and starving to death and their environment is collapsing and the ecosystem is collapsing. They're not going to do anything to stand in the way of those things because they believe all of those terrible calamities and suffering will get us closer to the revolution which is going to appear magically out of nowhere. No one has ever said this. No one has ever said that the revolution is going to happen magically. The whole point of Lenin is he's arguing in favor of a vanguard party that's going to be organized, that's going to agitate for a revolution, that's going to make it happen. Same with Mau, you know, like they don't expect the revolution to happen by itself. They want an active, conscious body of professional revolutionaries that are working towards that.

[00:12:49]>> Hankism and Calvinism appear to be orthodox religions. So what are the features of >> orthodox religion?

[00:12:56]>> Orthodox religion. An unwavering adherence to dogma. not going to be criticizing or questioning any of the judgments of Marx, Lenin, or Mao.

[00:13:06]>> Marks, Lenin, and Mao all developed each other's ideas in some way that were opposite what they intended. Once again, Mark said revolution would happen in the imperial court that it would happen in countries that were most developed in terms of capitalist development. And it didn't. It happened in Russia. It happened in China. It happened in Vietnam. It happened in oppressed third world countries. And Lenin updated Markx and said actually Markx did not foresee imperialism. And also this idea is that tankies are like dogmatic and never disagree with each other. Have you ever talked to to a tanky Marxist Leninists, Mauist, Stalinist, like all of them hate each other and disagree with each other.

[00:13:37]Like just the question of whether China is actually a real socialist or not.

[00:13:40]People will fight each other to the death. There's no dogma in these circles. Everyone disagrees with each other constantly. Raked interpretations of a narrow list of texts. These interpretations, by the way, are not your own. They're not asking you to read these texts and think critically about them and come up with your own ideas and arguments against them. They're going to tell you what to think about the texts and they're only going to give you it's going to be a narrow list. They're not going to want you reading too widely outside of their canon. Official Marxist Leninist reading list. It's all Lenin Stalin Mau a little bit of marks. Where in this reading list do they tell you what to think about these texts? No, it's just saying read this book. You know, you might come away learning something from it. And by the way, there is Ho Chi Min over there in the corner.

[00:14:26]>> Frankly, tankies don't want you reading too much Markx because Marks, I think, would have hated Lenin.

[00:14:31]>> I love when anti-communists or anti-tankies or anti-Lenonists try to do this argument. Oh my god, Marks would have hated Lenin. One, you hate Markx, too. Like, why the I trust anything you have to say about Markx? If you hate Marks and you haven't read anything Markx wrote, >> sold out the October Revolution. sold out the October revolution. Milen organized that >> is not purifying. That's a lie. It's just suffering. And right now in our yes flawed corrupt electoral system, there are a surprising number of decent people running to alleviate suffering. The problem isn't suffering. The problem is alleviating that suffering comes at the cost of who? If to alleviate your suffering, you require a bigger piece of the imperialist pie. You're not actually alleviating suffering. You're just redistributing it.