I tried explaining my problems with tankies without calling them tankies. In fact, I used their own terminology to describe my disagreement with them. It, uh… well it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

George Orwell fought in the Spanish civil war on the side of the Marxists. His army was betrayed by the Marxist-Leninists. After that experience, he wrote 1984, in which a totalitarian government uses “newspeak” to suppress dissent by suppressing the very ideas that people are capable of communicating. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Marxist-Leninists describe their disagreements in terms that turn criticism of them into gibberish. I think it’s exactly what Orwell was writing about based on his experiences.