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:
Far left and far right are where you’d expect them to be, but tankies somehow wandered off the chart into their own weird political dimension.
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.
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