What is a ‘tankie’? If we follow the origin and root of the word we can think of it as a reference to a person who has the tendency towards the use of tanks, the rule of the tank, and hence a tankie. But ‘tankie’, just like any other word, is a material representation that points at a concept or an idea (beyond the material). That is why if we stick to the definition we just provided for the word ‘tankie,’ we need to acknowledge that it is only a definition, open to interpretations as is, but also can be reshaped and reformulated. Consequently, the word ‘tankie’, by being a word, is a transcendental object connecting the material to what is beyond it: an innovation.

While the word can live in a script on its own within the material, once liberated to what is beyond the material, the word, any word, cannot live in isolation. Neither its definition, regardless of its definition. Other elements start to come into play in the struggle to approach what is beyond it. The context in which it was written, the context of the writer, of when it was written, and where it was written. Even the script itself starts overdetermining itself, where a given word is now also affected by the word before it and the word after it, the sentence before and the sentence after, and so on. Drama. Yet another innovation. 

So if we consider the word ‘tankie’ again, hearing it from an anarchist, a communist, a religious fundamentalist, a democratic socialist, and a liberal, it is the variations in the definition of the word across different performers that is now in action: politics is theatre. But it is particularly within the ‘democratic’ sphere that is focused on here. And ‘democratic’ here is a reference to the western notion of democracy today. Within such sphere, ‘tankie’ is a word assembled to a person who is opposed to the western notion of democracy.

But the record of the western bloc, the ‘democratic’ bloc, is not scarce on the use of tanks, even when the opposition to such democracy are themselves short of tanks (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Palestine, and so on). The use of tanks by the western bloc is often justified through the potential ‘tankification’ of a certain region or state or country, and now the tank battalion from the west arrives as the liberator from the (what could be) tank battalion from within. So it is not the ‘tank’ per se that is in question, but the rule of power, what the tank manifests: order and inequality.

It must be then that the tank battalion coming from the west is sourced from a position of equality, labeled in the west as democracy. So perhaps it is particularly from this notion of democracy the monologue should start. I will refer to western democracy and, simply, democracy interchangeably.

Democracy motivates itself as a correction to the inequality in superior-inferior social dynamic within the notion of the state: a democratic state. But the impossibility of this correction lies in the definition, for equality is the abolishment of inequality, and to correct rather than abolish the state as perceived in the order of privilege (inequality) is to aim for equality while presuming inequality. We are already able then to say that democracy constitutes a perversion. For if democracy is to live up to its objective, that it claims, then it is for democracy, as a notion, to kill the state and then commit suicide.

Otherwise for it to exist, and persist as a notion within the state, it must then serve a purpose from without its proclaimed objective. If democracy finds itself within inequality, then it constitutes, in its essence, an acceptance of inequality. By extending its definition to a redundancy, it serves as a distraction from the realization of such acceptance. From within the redundant then, it acts as a force of divergence. Instead of the convergence of the struggle over several mediums against privilege, each medium is now an independent struggle, striving for its own notion of equality within inequality. Too theoretical? Maybe. We can instead examine democracy from a practical point of view.

It is natural to start examining western democracy from its origin: capitalism. Specialization of the means of production was a maturing step for such means, and capitalism generally. As one demonstration of such maturity it contributed to increase in efficiency, elevating the means of production to means of mass production. As another demonstration of such maturity, more important in social context, it contributed to an uninterrupted production cycle where the labor organization in a factory has now deteriorated into fragments: from unionism to trade-unionism. So instead of a union organizing the struggle between the whole of the labor body and the factory owner, each trade now has their own struggle and their own union: exactly identical yet separable(?).

The result is a rat race: transforming the binary dynamics between the laborers (those who don’t have) and the factory owner (those who have) into dynamics within a spectrum, ranging from least exploited to most exploited. This race, however, is not about identifying the winner and loser, but merely aims to reorganize the losers. For regardless of the result of the race one thing will remain unchanged: the factory ownership. In other words the winner of the race is now the first to concede and accept the notion of exploitation.

With the penetration of the means of production into society, this methodology of deterioration through specialization crystallized under the notion of democracy. The social struggle deteriorated in a similar way still for an uninterrupted “production”: racial struggle, gender struggle, economic struggle, southern struggle, sectarian/religious struggle, and so on. Equality is now ‘constructed’ in a deceiving form: opportunity for all.

But the consequence of this construct is consistent with privilege and its order, merely presenting a new perspective on the fractal aesthetic of privilege: perpetuation. For under this construct, the struggle of the exploited to return to their humanity (equality) is perverted: oriented towards winning the race rather than abolishing it all together. Under this form of ‘opportunity for all’, while not everyone is a ‘factory owner’, whoever is not aspires to be one. So it is not that democracy breeds authoritarianism, rather that democracy is itself authoritarian. Albeit glorified.

So now when a democrat is pointing at a ‘tankie,’ they are actually pointing at themselves: everyone is a tankie, authoritarian tendency is now an identity. With this redundancy, there is nothing beyond the word to approach anymore. It is sealed as a label, chained within the material, and the residual is a perpetual identity crisis, a perpetual tankie tantrum.