Personalized Political Spectrum
Submitted 1 day ago by MTZ@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b1384e99-60b9-4992-b692-72b0264ac82f.jpeg
Comments
caligine@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 hours ago
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I don’t consider tankies lefter than me.
Drusas@fedia.io 1 day ago
Seriously. Tankies are authoritarians who consider themselves leftists.
deranger@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Authoritarian / libertarian is on a completely different axis from left / right, no?
Riverside@reddthat.com 1 day ago
Tell me which actually existing, relevant, long-lasting leftist projects you support and how they’re further to the left than Cuba.
Riverside@reddthat.com 1 day ago
Tankies support systems that have brought about immense increases in life expectancy, worker’s rights, women’s rights, free healthcare, free education, and literally defeated fascism. It’s still baffling to me that in 2026, witnessing the descent to fascism of the west (Trump, Meloni LePen, AfD, Vox…) you’re still so threatened by Chinese socialists who literally don’t have a fascist party or by the Soviet socialists who literally saved Europe from Nazism.
pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
They’re so left they’ve wrapped around and became fascists
DScratch@sh.itjust.works 16 hours ago
They’re on the Leftest off-ramp that heads back the other way.
5in1k@lemmy.zip 8 hours ago
Shit, there’s plenty of Non Tankies to my left. Tankies want to use force to control people’s thoughts and actions.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Tankies are drunk on hierarchy and violence.
Riverside@reddthat.com 1 day ago
Oh, cool, tell me what historically successful, relevant and long-lasting leftist movements you support! Wait, you don’t support any actually existing leftism…
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Hey I found the Tankie who thinks they’re on the left!
kkj@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 hours ago
Being better at violence doesn’t make you more left, it makes you better at violence. That can be useful, but it isn’t the same thing. Your argument boils down to “might makes right” and could be expanded to classify social democracy as “more left” (after all, it’s left of the global status quo and its citizens are the happiest on average). In fact, you might even be able to use the argument for liberalism; it’s left of monarchy and fascism. Sure, it frequently decays into fascism, but so did the USSR.
merdaverse@lemmy.zip 19 hours ago
Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml 17 hours ago
Accurate
jali67@lemmy.zip 9 hours ago
Forgive my ignorance, what is a tankie?
Riverside@reddthat.com 8 hours ago
Someone who sees through cold-war anticommunist propaganda and defends the anti-imperialist and massively progressive Actually Existing Socialist states (USSR, China, Cuba, Vietnam…) instead of belonging to the “compatible left” that doesn’t actually have a history of successful struggle against capitalism and imperialism.
People will be called tankies for defending the socialist figures and projects which get vilified in western discourse precisely because of their success against capitalism and fascism (Fidel, Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh), whereas anticommunists will only praise historical figures and projects who failed (Allende, Rojavas, Spanish anarchists) because their metric is not actual improvements to quality of life of people but ideological purity.
Edie@lemmy.ml 9 hours ago
Someone you dont like, with a vaugly leftist connotation.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 8 hours ago
It’s essentially a pejorative for “communist.” I recommend the Prolewiki article on “Tankies,” as well as Nia Frome’s essay “Tankies.”
“Tankie” was a pejorative for Marxists that support socialism in real life then as well as now. It originated in the Communist Party of Great Britain. The term was coined because of the British tendency towards silly-sounding insults, and because the Soviet Union sent in the Red Army to stop the western-backed fascist insurrection. This caused a split in the party (as it always does in western orgs).
The Hungarian revolt in 1956 was infested with anti-semitic pograms. MI6 funded, supplied, and trained the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries. These counter-revolutionaries were allied with fascists who were lynching Jewish people and Communists. The Truth About Hungary by Herbert Aptheker heavily relies on citing western sources like the New York Times. Aptheker backs up his claims heavily.
"The special correspondent of the Yugoslav paper, Politika, (Nov. 13, 1956) describing the events of those days, said that the homes of Communists were marked with a white cross and those of Jews with a black cross, to serve as signs for the extermination squads. “There is no longer any room for doubt,” said the Yugoslav reporter, “it is an example of classic Hungarian fascism and of White Terror. The information,” continued this writer, “coming from the provinces tells how in certain places Communists were having their eyes put out, their ears cut off, and that they were being killed in the most terrible ways.”
“But the forces of reaction were rapidly consolidating their power and pushing forward on the top levels, while in the streets the blood of scores of massacred Communists, Jews, and progressives was flowing.”
“Some of the reports reaching Warsaw from Budapest today caused considerable concern. These reports told of massacres of Communists and Jews by what were described as 'Fascist elements’ …” (N.Y. Times, Nov. 1. 1956)
“The evidence is conclusive that the entry of Soviet troops into Budapest stopped the execution of scores, perhaps thousands of Jews, for by the end of October and early November, anti-Semtic pogroms - hallmark of unbridled fascistic terror - were making their appearance, after an absence of some ten years, within Hungary.”
“A correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Maariv (Tel Aviv) reported:
During the uprising a number of former Nazis were released from prison and other former Nazis came to Hungary from Salzburg . . . I met them at the border . . . I saw anti-Semitic posters in Budapest . . . On the walls, street lights, streetcars, you saw inscriptions reading: “Down with Jew Gero!” “Down with Jew Rakosi!” or just simply “down with the Jews!”
Leading rabbinical circles in New York received a cable early in November from corresponding circles in Vienna that “Jewish blood is being shed by the rebels in Hungary.” Very much later-in February, 1957-the World Jewish Congress reported that “anti-Semitic excesses occurred in more than twenty villages and smaller provincial towns during the October-November revolt.” This occurred, according to this very conservative body, because “fascist and anti-Semitic groups had apparently seized the opportunity, presented by the absence of a central authority, to come to the surface.” Many among the Jewish refugees from Hungary, the report continued, had fled from this anti-Semitic pogrom-like atmosphere (N.Y. Times, Feb. 15, 1957). This confirmed the earlier report made by the British Rabbi, R. Pozner, who, after touring refugee camps, declared that “the majority of Jews who left Hungary did so for fear of the Hungarians and not the Russians.” The Paris Jewish newspaper, Naye Presse, asserted that Jewish refugees in France claimed quite generally that Soviet soldiers had saved their lives.”
Further, the CIA also backed Hungarian resistance forces:
Prague in 1968 was a similar fascist uprising in both cases there were some elements of progressive protest, but these were greatly overshadowed by the fascist movements. Dubcek wanted to sell out to the IMF, and restore capitalism. The idea that any of this was about “democracy” or “freedom” is silly, it was always about Cold War tactics to destabilize socialism.
TL;DR imagine if the January 6th rioters were armed and trained by foreign governments, started lynching officials and Jewish people, and the US sent in the army to put down the insurrection. The MAGA chuds would claim that it was about “freedom” and “democracy,” but we all know that they just wanted Trump in office.
Nowadays, it’s used by any random anti-communist to refer to anyone that supports socialist states or doesn’t buy into the imperialist narrative about global south countries. It was the ones they call “tankies” that knew the stories of WMD and Saddam’s forces leaving babies outside of incubators were both bullshit to manufacture consent for war, but now that its decades later the anti-communists all suddenly have collective amnesia about their willing participation in spreading the lies of empire to murder hundreds of thousands of people.
ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 9 hours ago
A person who believes that an authoritarian state is righteous and justified as long as it calls itself communist (even if it’s not), examples being the USSR, North Korea, China, and oddly the current capitalist Russian federation. You can find a more in-depth answer here.
HazardousBanjo@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Tankies aren’t leftists in reality.
Maybe left of Nazis, but they aren’t leftists.
The political left and authoritarianism are inherently contradictory.
Its the political right that embraces authoritarianism. Hence why we call them “Red Fascists”
taygaloocat@leminal.space 1 day ago
The political left and authoritarianism are not contradictory. Leftists are not always Libertarians, and many of them will and do trade freedom for safety regularly.
Riverside@reddthat.com 1 day ago
Tankies support systems that have historically brought massive improvements to working and peasant classes in the oppressed world. Doubling and tripling life expectancy wherever communism arrives and succeeds, literacy from 20-30% to 100% in a few decades, women’s rights, worker rights, free massive healthcare, free education… You just argue against tankies because you’re a westerner whose leftism is conformed by CIA propaganda. You don’t support any historically successful socialist movement (Cuba, Soviets, China, Vietnam, Laos) precisely because they defeated capitalism and fascism.
Especially hurtful as a Spaniard, where we leftists lost our civil war because the biggest leftist movements were anarchists and they couldn’t win a war.
Saledovil@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
The nazis’ economy was a shell game of debt, and they were overextended militarily. Their regime would have fallen even if they had won the war. Secondly, the USSR at first joined forces with the nazis until they were betrayed by them, and after the soviets joined the allies, they received massive aid under the lend-lease act. And even with the aid, they still had to rely on human-wave tactics.
aketawi@quokk.au 20 hours ago
saved Europe from fascism
a fascist state fought a war against a competing fascist state. simply being on the side opposing Nazi Germany doesn’t magically make your state a perfect divine utopia
tristynalxander@mander.xyz 18 hours ago
[deleted]HazardousBanjo@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
The political compass isn’t an objective model
spuriousMoot@lemmy.zip 22 hours ago
Found the tankie.
Deceptichum@quokk.au 1 day ago
Nah, tankies aren’t any more or less left. They’re just more authoritarian focused.
Riverside@reddthat.com 1 day ago
You literally ban all tankies in comms where you can do it, you’re abusing authoritarianism.
Tankies aren’t more left than anarchists, we’re just more scientific and less corrupted by cold-war propaganda.
eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 hours ago
You literally ban all tankies in comms where you can do it, you’re abusing authoritarianism,
authoritarianism is when bedtime, am i rigt?
Deceptichum@quokk.au 1 day ago
Yeah, anarchism is about free association and likewise disassociation.
Authoritarianism isn’t “you can’t come into my house and do what you want” that’s a child’s understanding of the concept.
Bahahaha oh that’s cute. You try to force the human condition into something you think you can quantify and control and call that science?
And what? Tankies are 100% stuck on cold-war propaganda, anarchists don’t care for it and hate both sides. Meanwhile those losers yearn for Stalin.
Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml 12 hours ago
It’s a marketplace of ideas right up until you make them look stupid, then they conveniently forget their opposition to authoritarianism just long enough to suppress all dissenting opinions
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 1 day ago
dudesss@lemmy.ca 15 hours ago
Oh fuck, the MAGA crowd has started posting.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
[deleted]dudesss@lemmy.ca 14 hours ago
Ok good
Squirrelanna@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 hours ago
It’s hardly a secret that screaming The Eptein Files works like a dragon shout.
hansolo@lemmy.today 19 hours ago
Oh, I know better than to participate in this discussion.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Nice try, Tankie.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Yeah, lots of pointless arguing further down in here. Like arguing about whether authoritarianism is left or right like that even matters. There are no set of single labels that can describe everyone’s motivations, goals, and what they are willing to do to get them, so arguing about the labels is pointless.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
are you pro or anti sea piracy?
lugal@sopuli.xyz 10 hours ago
I felt similarly until I discovered anarchism
LORDSMEGMA@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Tankies are left?
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 1 day ago
No.
plant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
yes
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 20 hours ago
Communists are left, yes.
Riverside@reddthat.com 1 day ago
Yes, we support the movements that have brought the most significant development of worker rights, welfare state and anti-imperialism.
T00l_shed@lemmy.world 1 day ago
If you believe in the horseshoe theory they aren’t. I believe in the horseshoe theory
Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml 16 hours ago
“Tankie” is a meaningless pejorative used by feds and morons to smear actual socialists, as is “authoritarian”. Refusal to wield authority in defense of socialism only guarantees capitalism will destroy it anywhere it is attempted.
gmtom@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Average .ml behaviour
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Bruh tankies aren’t further left than me
Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml 16 hours ago
You are a liberal
Una@europe.pub 15 hours ago
Feline anarchy is the only valid. Human whole purpose is to server cats. Fuck everyone else.
lugal@sopuli.xyz 10 hours ago
I heard about arachno communism but this is new to me
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
server cats
I tried to do that, but they wouldn’t let the cats in the colo.
MTZ@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Isn’t that just ancient Egypt? At any rate, based AF.
Mulligrubs@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
I’m not a fan of communism, but I DO very much like tanks.
A libertankian, perhaps
Riverside@reddthat.com 8 hours ago
You could be a fan of both, like me! Soviets made absolute beauties, and importantly, they made them cheap and mass produced. Imagine a HUNDRED THOUSAND T-55s with APDS, what a beauty. For reference, those tanks first saw combat against Israel if I’m not mistaken ;)
electric_nan@lemmy.ml 7 hours ago
Where is the Black Panther Party?
quips@slrpnk.net 21 hours ago
And this is how those in power stay in power.
Francislewwis@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Everyone thinks they’re in the based zone and everyone else is the problem 😂
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 1 day ago
I would strongly contest the idea that tankies are durther left than anarchists. This only make since if you're a shitlib.
PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 1 day ago
A one dimensional political spectrum! Proper shit post, sir!
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 19 hours ago
I hate this left/right shit. There’s only conservatives and everyone else.
ghen@sh.itjust.works 15 hours ago
This is based, but I think the based zone is bigger than the tankie zone. They’re just louder because they don’t get what they want
3yiyo3@lemmy.ml 16 hours ago
Tankies are not further left, they are further right
rwtwm@feddit.uk 21 hours ago
The green bar is far too wide
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 1 day ago
I think tankies are further right than most leftists, but you’re welcome to call everyone to the left of you soulists.
umbrella@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
itt: people proving op right
backalleycoyote@lemmy.today 1 day ago
Tetragrade@leminal.space 1 day ago
Truth nuke.
Rumo161@feddit.org 13 hours ago
Based
ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 17 hours ago
Somehow this turned into a political argument instead of people just saying “based”
ArgumentativeMonotheist@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Does left and right just mean prosocial Vs antisocial? What do these directions used as political labels even mean? Are they useful labels?
thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
tankies aren’t “further left than me” they’re “more authoritarian than me”
“further left than me” are idealist utopian communists and “more libertarian than me” are idealist utopian anarchists
quips@slrpnk.net 21 hours ago
Yep. Authoritarianism does not lie leftward, it is not a leftist principle.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 17 hours ago
nobody can agree what “left” means
Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de 15 hours ago
That is nonsense.
The left was coined by its opposition to the monarchy while the right supported it.
So left has been currently and historically speaking in opposition of hierarchies and in favor of equality.
The right consequently has been in favor of hierarchies.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
it means a very scary mountain
Gold_E_Lox@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 hours ago
libertarians are not anarchists
Quill7513@slrpnk.net 20 hours ago
Anarchists are a genre of libertarians though. It’s just that who dominates the landscape of “libertarian” is ancaps, who are just fascists with a weirder set of steps to implement a fascist nightmare.
ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 9 hours ago
Anarchists and Libertarian used to be synonymous, since Libertarian was a way to talk about Anarchism without being persecuted. Later in the US Proprietarians coopted the term Libertarian, and later even Anarchism by claiming to be ‘Anarcho-Capitalists’.
WraithGear@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
the point of the meme is to be wrong…
Riverside@reddthat.com 22 hours ago
How is Utopian communist further left? A non-realizable ideology isn’t left, left is one which actually has political power and is based on material reality, because it’s the one which ends up achieving results.
thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
the farthest extremes on either sure are unrealistic and deluded. just because you like one side doesn’t mean they dont get crazy when you go far enough. it’s VERY important not to lose site of that.
yes a communist utopia is unachievable. yes there are people who are actively pursuing that impossible goal. that does not make them unleft.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 17 hours ago
Yeah, exactly. This graphic is really bad. I guess it’s supposed to be incorrect, but it sends a bad message.
Also, the only people calling anyone “shitlibs” are literal tankies. Sane leftists don’t call anyone “shitlib.”
Any leftist to the right of my on the spectrum is probably considered center-left. I prefer democratic socialism and/or social democracy, using incremental progress to achieve leftist reform.
People are allowed to have different opinions than me. That’s what democracy is. But no one can be allowed to be authoritarian in a democracy, because authoritarianism is incompatible with democracy and a danger to it.
Authoritarians don’t respect diversity of opinion, they don’t tolerate differences. So I’m so tired of authoritarian-minded people whining and calling me intolerant just because I shut them down when they’re trying to dominate others.
Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml 16 hours ago
Image
caligine@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 hours ago
>democracy
look inside
>attachment to particular institutions, policies and practices