this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2026
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Given I'm new to lemmy, I learned the difference between some of the instances. Specifically lemmy.ml 🙃.
"Nah man, someone with good policy but they're caucusing as a democrat? Don't vote for them, they're not calling for seizure of private property, they're all scams!"
So you want me...to vote for the conservative? Like, wut?
"Start your own revolution!"
Uh huh. I'm ready for the call, but just as Lenin himself argued, a single person like myself won't help the people dying right now that way...the first person killed wouldn't be a billionaire, it'd more likely be myself, friends, family, or neighbors given the state's monopoly on violence.
They told me to read State and Revolution. They weren't expecting me to have already read it 🙃
I fucking love this graphic
What the fuck is a tankie?
Someone who doesn't consider atrocities committed by dictatorships or totalitarians in the name of "communism" as real or a problem.
So, holocaust deniers too.
I'm not sure what you mean by that, but anyone who denies the holocaust or other genocides are bad people and should be resisted.
That includes the genocide of Native Americans, Armenians, Palestinians/Gazaians(?), the Rohingya people, the Ukrainian people, Darfur, the Hutis, Bosnians, Cambodians, Tartars/Baltic Nations/Chechans/etc... under soviet imperialism, etc...
NONE of these are acceptable and fuck anyone who whitewashes these because they think it was necessary for their ideology
Forgive me for using AI to make a summary but I don't have the energy to write up a long winded explanation on it
A tankie is usually a slang term for someone on the far left who defends or excuses authoritarian communist governments, especially the Soviet Union, Maoist China, or similar states.
The name comes from people in Western communist parties who supported the Soviet Union sending tanks into places like Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 to crush uprisings. "Tankie" started as an insult from other leftists who thought that support was indefensible.
The meme is joking about how some tankies can end up with political positions that don't fit neatly on the normal left-right spectrum. For example, they might:
Oppose capitalism (far left).
Defend highly centralized states and strongman rulers.
Support nationalism in certain countries.
Excuse military invasions if done by states they like.
Agree with parts of the far right on issues such as anti-Westernism or hostility toward liberal democracy.
So the "stethoscope" shape is saying:
It's a joke, not a serious political model, but it resonates because many people feel that hardline authoritarian communists often end up taking positions that seem disconnected from the usual left-right divide.
You could have saved us all the use of AI and the paragraph answering the moron. Behold:
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=what+is+a+tankie
tankies are the original left wing
According to .world anyone to the left of Reagan.
Tankies think that anyone trying to fix the system instead of burning it down is a fascist.
I mean the system does need to be burned down. You can't fix a machine that's doing exactly what it was designed to do. You tear it down, maybe repurpose some of the parts, and build a different machine that doesn't do what the previous one did.
Despite how relatively rough it is now it's not anywhere near as bad as it was in the "golden age" of the 50's or any of the times monarchs have lost their heads. If the "burn it down" crowd can't work with others then they're not the people you want building a new nation.
I work with others just fine. I do several different community volunteer projects every weekend, educate anyone willing to listen on how fucked everything is and how supporting any part of the uniparty will only continue to make things worse, join book clubs run by socialists, and help spread the word of actually good candidates at every level of government that run on third party platforms. This is how you begin the work to destroy and repurpose the machine.
I'm glad you're able to do those things. A lot of people talk the talk online without actually living it offline.
That being said, I think "the uniparty" is just another way of saying "both sides bad," a phrase uttered by right-wingers and right-wingers who fancy themselves fence-sitters while exclusively attacking left-wing candidates.
It's a term that sanitizes apalling right-wing behavior while downplaying the work of progressives who take beatings, from "friend" and foe, while trying to accomplish anything that actually helps people.
I've no doubt that I just angered a few tankies by even calling members of "the uniparty" progressives, but as I said they'll call them "genocidal imperialist capitalists" regardless.
I call them that because I've seen them time and again compromise with right wingers and many of them side with them on bills they didn't even need the votes for. Even the "progressive" stuff they try to put forward isn't progressive. People love to praise Obama's ACA forgetting it was Romney's health care act. People call Biden "one of the most progressive presidents we've ever had" forgetting that he gave massive amounts of funding to ICE and made lives harder for marginalized groups on his way out (I won't bring up Gaza cause that's just a given). He went on about raising the minimum wage....over the course of several years after he would be out of office anyway and not to any amount that would actually help people.
I don't care if this comes off as "making perfect the enemy of good". I care about standing up for what I believe in and so far the only candidates that run on what I believe in are third party candidates which is why I spend time helping them and voting for them. I live in a state that's been deep red since the 90s and has only gotten more and more red with every election both big and small, so helping a party that makes friends with right wingers is pointless to me.
Unless the system™ resides in a country that historically opposes the USA
"trying to fix" = voting for genocidal imperialist capitalist political parties
No. That is inaccurate.
netanyahu approves this
tankies are what you call, conservatives that never vote. conservatives large majority outvote left leaning groups, with alittle help of voter suppression.
Good, but what about Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism?
so lenin told you to vote for imperialist genocidal pedophile party
Apparently the ongoing genocide in Palestine would be so much worse now under the evil witch Kamala Harris. There was no other choice but to enable Trump.
thats strawman but uniroincally more civilians died under biden administration