I was listening to this series on audio book in the shower when this occurred to me. ‘Gadara’ is a fantasy species of wolfpeople’s word for enemies that are respected and even trusted. A worthy foe sort of thing.

The idea is that the predatory wolf people believe friends can betray you, but an enemy can be trusted to act in their own self interest if they show themselves to be an honorable sort. Each party to the relationship maintains their status as enemies and expects the other to kill them if given the opportunity, but also can work together against threats to both. Being a gadara to someone also confers a bit of protection with your gadara’s allies. A gadara can vouch for each other, and have laid claim to the honor of killing the other. So vouching for a gadara is saying “I want to be the one to kill this one, please respect that and leave them to me.”

So to bring this around, an understanding between individual tankies and anarchists where both parties understand their ideals are incompatible, but the other can be trusted to work against fash would be a pretty useful arrangement. If we don’t look past each other to the greater threat of fascism we won’t be around long enough to get to have our fight in the end.

  • HuntressHimbo@lemmy.zipOP
    1·
    3 days ago

    Tankies as a whole, no. Individual tankies absolutely could be. Also it is quite possible to be honorable and still evil, you can be a villain and still be honest and idealistic enough to be trusted to act against a common enemy. If a tankie told me they would put me against the wall if they had the power, but would never betray me to ICE that is a slim common ground, but being that direct I might trust enough to share info or loosely coordinate against ICE

    • hypnicjerk@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      Tankies as a whole, no.

      the litmus test for tankies is whether they blindly support modern era china, russia, and nk, all authright (wannabe) empires. what do you think a tankie is?

      • HuntressHimbo@lemmy.zipOP
        1·
        3 days ago

        the litmus test for tankies is whether they blindly support modern era china, russia, and nk, all authright empires

        This is pretty close to my own thoughts, though my definition might go more into the ideological underpinnings of those positions. There’s also a lot of leeway in the “blindly” on that one, and I would guess I am less likely to label someone a tankie than others here.

        The term is thrown around pretty loosely on Lemmy. I’ve been called a tankie on here for criticizing democrats and for disagreeing with specific criticisms of the Trump regime (things like going after Melania’s nudes or other things I find entirely trivial next to the monstrous crimes) so I expected it to be taken as the more vibes based usage here.