This is just speculation because it hasn’t been explained definitively to me, but my assumption is that it refers to the Tiananmen square video where it was one dude vs a column of tanks and tankies are people supporting the column of tanks side of that conflict.
And from there it evolved to mean anyone supporting the Chinese or Russian authoritarian regimes. It might apply more broadly to anyone supporting a regime that uses brutal dissent breaking tactics, though in the west it might apply to situations specifically involving that brutality (France, Britain, and USA have all recently used some brutal tactics, though none of them have deployed tanks to settle a protest/riot that I’m aware of).
And just to repeat, that’s my current best guess as to the specific meaning of the term, I could be entirely wrong.
Tankie is a term British communists used against other British communists who didn’t oppose the USSR invading Hungary in 1956. These days its pretty much any Marxist-Leninist.
This is just speculation because it hasn’t been explained definitively to me, but my assumption is that it refers to the Tiananmen square video where it was one dude vs a column of tanks and tankies are people supporting the column of tanks side of that conflict.
And from there it evolved to mean anyone supporting the Chinese or Russian authoritarian regimes. It might apply more broadly to anyone supporting a regime that uses brutal dissent breaking tactics, though in the west it might apply to situations specifically involving that brutality (France, Britain, and USA have all recently used some brutal tactics, though none of them have deployed tanks to settle a protest/riot that I’m aware of).
And just to repeat, that’s my current best guess as to the specific meaning of the term, I could be entirely wrong.
Tankie is a term British communists used against other British communists who didn’t oppose the USSR invading Hungary in 1956. These days its pretty much any Marxist-Leninist.