“Tankie” is a term referring to authoritarian communists, due to the tendency of authoritarian communist states to use tanks in crushing protesters - such as the Soviet Union crushing Hungarian workers in 1956, or China rolling tanks into Tienanmen Square against student protesters in 1989. “Tankie” is also used for apologists for these regimes.
Tankie is sometimes misused as “Someone to my left I don’t like”.
I’d say “often misused” these days. It’s become a common Reddit term to describe anyone left of Obama 🙄
That may be, I haven’t been to Reddit in a while. On here, there’s some misuse, but a lot of people who it actually does apply to, mostly from .ml anymore; formerly Grad and Hexbear when they were federated. Fuckin’ playing apologist for Uyghur genocide, North Korean Juche, saying Hungarian workers were ‘fascists’ who had to be crushed. Weird stuff. Hate seeing them around.
