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?
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.
What's the difference in foreign policy between the GOP and the Dems? All we see from outside the empire is fascism and bombs, regardless of who's in charge.
We literally have worse wealth inequality than in 1700s France.
Would you rather live now or in 1700s France?
Because for me personally I enjoy living with the benefits of the various progressive eras that enable me to do things like buy meat that wasn't sitting on the floor being eaten by rats and coughed on by a worker with tuberculosis.
Give it another few hundred years and we'll look back at practices from 2026 that seem equally appalling.
Good for you?
"trying to fix" = voting for genocidal imperialist capitalist political parties
The system that killed a hundred million Native Americans, did hundreds of years of African slavery, initiated countless illegal wars of aggression which resulted in tens of millions of civilian deaths, and is now actively burning the planet to a crisp? That's the system you're gonna fix?
Yeah, because when the "burn it all down" crowd tried forming their own government to keep their slaves we had a war over it and they lost.
I'm sure you're very proud that you only did slavery for the majority of your country's existence, and not all of it.
You say that like it's a bad thing. Yeah, I'm very proud people fought and died to change a system for the better. Maybe if you tankies weren't so cynical you'd be able see some of the good instead of only the bad.
I mean, to be fair, your country still does slavery. It's not awful chattel slavery, but you do still lock people up for non violent crimes and then use em for slave labor. Hard country to defend.
To be fair, the US is like a patchwork of small countries wearing a trenchcoat and in some states they have amended their constitution to rid themselves of the kind of forced labor you are referring to. Others are trying. It's not where it should be, but getting so many people to agree on something without killing each other can be a slow process.
It's not even a trait unique to the US. If you look at any region of the world close enough and you'll find evidence of some kind of Gulag or Gulag-like system. Does that excuse it? No, it's still an awful practice. But within the context of our conversation it is a negative part of a system that has positively changed over time without having to burn the whole thing down.
It's unique in terms of western countries.
Unless the system™ resides in a country that historically opposes the USA
No. That is inaccurate.
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.
No, I won't forgive that, and I certainly ain't reading it.
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
Is it because you can't read?
netanyahu approves this
Good, but what about Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism?
tankies are what you call, conservatives that never vote. conservatives large majority outvote left leaning groups, with alittle help of voter suppression.
Maybe if you have no political understanding whatsoever!
I'd love to see a link showing this sentiment. I've literally never seen anyone say this lmao.
I guess you're simply too lazy to look through my comments?
https://lemmy.ml/comment/26044065
Are you drunk? Nowhere in that comment is anyone saying to vote conservative. In fact, they advocate for PSL. I don't know if you know this, but PSL is leftwing.
Username does not track lol.
By splitting the vote for the progressive, you, unfortunately, will effectively aid the conservative in this particular race.
I would LOVE to get more support around 3rd parties, as I mentioned, I work with WFP and DSA to help other parties.
Unfortunately, we live in a first past the post system, the dominant 2 are the only ones that have a chance in these instances.
I despise how liberals will attempt to blame 3rd parties for any losses democrats receive as if the individuals had a magic power to win the election on their own and threw it away as that argument cuts both ways. Rather than a candidate being forced to meet their constituents which overwhelmingly support progressive policy and people choosing to not vote for someone who doesn't represent them, which is a fair position to have.
But let's live in reality here. Look at the California race and the republican is at the top while the dem vote is split between a progressive class traitor billionaire and an aipac zionist establishment dem. Thankfully, in a way, it's a jungle primary, but in a standard primary that republican would have just won. So, effectively, they're telling us to elect the republican by disqualifying the progressive or splitting their vote further.
C'mon guy. Don't be disingenous here. I asked the question of "do you want me to vote for the conservative" based on the fact that we have a de-facto 2 party system and the incumbent dem dropped out of the race leaving 1 progressive dem and 1 rape-ublican terrorist. Never did I claim that they told me to vote for a conservative directly nor did you request for a link outside of the claims that I made. Reading comprehension may be difficult, but that's why there are quotes around what I did claim that they said. That's why you're getting downvoted friend.
Not my fault you cant see in color, and only see red and blue. The divine right of kings seemed inalienable, and look where we are now. Also, I don't give a shit about down votes lol, I've seen the garbage you guys up vote!
You just told someone who told you they work with 3rd party and advocacy groups and who told you they want RCV and popular representation that they're "colorblind?" Are you drunk? That reading comprehension is getting you again.
You also said voting third party splits the vote.
Dialectical thinking. Examine the material and concrete conditions around the situation and act strategically.
Acting out of pure ideology and applying a purist rule makes you no different from MAGA. Arguably, it defeats the very systems you supposedly want to build.
Are republicans a fascist death cult? Yes. Is the democratic establishment helping them usher in fascism? Yes. So maybe vote for the individual that has a chance of winning that calls out both of them and has policy that counters fascism regardless of what label they have. If this wasn't a FPTP system in America, the situation may be different and my response would be different. That's not the reality we find ourselves in yet.
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
Kamala "most lethal military in the world" Harris? Kamala "I wouldn't have done anything differently than Biden" Harris? Hmmmm...