this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2026
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The funniest part about the whole tankie thing is that it was coined by British reactionaries in response to the suppression of a counter-revolution in Hungary, which has now been revealed to be a CIA op.
I think calling it an op is going too far. There was a democratic students' movement that siezed the radio station, and they had mass support. The CIA gave support to an ex-Nazi who provided military training after this had happened. The crackdown by the Soviets was brutal and many innocent Hungarians were killed. Dismissing the whole thing as just a CIA op makes it sound like another Bay of Pigs, which this was not.
There was no mass support. The US was cultivating a proto color revolution, a formula that's been used time and again since then. What we do know is that in cases where there was no crackdown on Western funded reactionaries, then we got outcomes like in Chile. Thinking that this was some organic movement is frankly absurd. Also, can read up on precisely the tactics used, and how they have direct lineage in nazi propaganda https://november8ph.ca/psychological-warfare-in-the-strategy-of-imperialism-v-l-artemov/
People hated the Rákosi government for its political repression and economic austerity measures. Imre Nagy was not a western-sponsored colonel in the Hungarian military, he was a communist. After the fighting in Budapest, revolutionary workers councils organized all over the country. You think the CIA and Radio Free Europe were responsible for that?
My issue with this type of logic is that it's all or nothing. Thereis a sentence in the declassified document, therefore the whole thing was orchestrated by the US. There was more going on here than Operation Gladio.
Read the book I linked to educate yourself.
Lol, yeah, totally reasonable way to engage with someone.
Sorry, I always forget that books to a liberal are like garlic to a vampire.
Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and told them "I can't talk to you because you're too ignorant, you have to read this book first"? How did that go?
I try to avoid interacting with imbeciles in day to day life.
So ignoring your namecalling and dogmatism, I read the first two chapters of the book, introduction and the chapter on psychological warfare in the 1950s and 1960s. The only thing it says about Hungary is that it was a counter-revolution. Do I have to keep reading into the 1970s and 80s to find out where it's revealed that the imperialists orchestrated the whole revolution? Should I cite histories by marxists and communists that talk about spontaneous worker councils?
Here, just for kicks
https://www.union-communiste.org/it/1996-12/30-hungary-1956-the-workers-councils-5619
I look forward to the next round of insults, comrade, you're really doing your movement a service.
Nobody said there weren't contradictions in Hungary. What was said is that the CIA was actively exploiting these contradictions to foment a counter revolution. And this precisely the formula that has been used since. And of course, history shows us how these spontaneous worker councils work out in practice. Also, somebody whitewashing western imperialism by using disingenuous arguments is not my comrade. People like you are the reason the west is where it is today. You reject practical ways of combating capitalism while peddling Utopian snake oil.
I realize that continuing this is pointless but I'll just suggest that you attack the idea and not the person next time.
I suggest you work on your reading comprehension because I addressed your idea.
No you didn't. You think the Hungarian Revolution was a counter-revolution initiated by bourgeois reactionaries funded by the CIA, with no popular support. I think it was an uprising initiated by students that then became a massive proletarian revolution against the repression of the Rákosi government. You didn't "address" this disparity. You just insulted me.
The book you cited doesn't really talk about the revolution itself, so I have to infer that the author thinks that the psychological warfare waged by the West against the Warsaw Pact countries fooled the revolutionaries into revolting against their government because it convinced them that communism was bad. Again, although the CIA was present, I don't accept this as the primary motivation for the revolution.
It's not what I think, it's what documents released by the CIA say. You're the one who keeps pretending that it was some organic worker movement. Meanwhile, the book describes with numerous examples, of how these reactionaries are groomed and used by the west. It's obvious that you're going to continue believing whatever you need to believe, so there's really no point continuing the discussion.
maybe you need to mask the garlic smell. Try writing Harry Potter on the book and you might just be able to get them to read.
Comrades, we must engage in fierce ideological struggle to determine whether the correct reading of the current moment comes from The Hunger Games trilogy or the later, more mature work of The West Wing.