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Tankie

Tankie, Conspiracy Theorist, And Other Pejorative Tools Of Narrative Control

Bloomberg pundit Noah Smith had a very revealing interaction on Twitter the other day that I've been meaning to write about ever since. It began with Smith sharing a screenshot of an article by journalist Yasha Levine which condemns US imperialist escalations against China and ties them to the sudden spike in anti-Asian hate crimes we've been seeing. Smith shared his screenshot with the caption, "I hold by my prediction that the American Left is going to split into A) social democrats, and B) foreign-policy-obsessed pseudo-tankies." "How do we stop the B group from driving the narrative?" one of Smith's followers asked him. "Well, first we teach everyone the word 'tankie'!" Smith replied, with a Substack article he authored explaining that any leftist who opposes western imperialist agendas against China should be branded with that label and dismissed.

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