Tankie

Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support acts of repression by such regimes, their allies, or deny the occurrence of the events thereof.

Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defence of the Soviet use of tanks to suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions.

Paterson recalled: When I asked him how he could possibly have sided with the tankies, so called because of the use of Russian tanks to quell the revolt, he said "They wanted a trade unionist who could stomach Hungary, and I fitted the bill.

[6][15][16] The CPGB made mild criticisms of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, which they justified as a necessary intervention,[17] although a hardline faction supported it, including the Appeal Group who left the party in response.

[22][23][24] According to Christina Petterson, "Politically speaking, tankies regard past and current socialist systems as legitimate attempts at creating communism, and thus have not distanced themselves from Stalin, China, etc.

More generally, a tankie is someone who tends to support "militant opposition to capitalism" and a more modern online variation, which means "something like 'a self-proclaimed communist who indulges in conspiracy theories and whose rhetoric is largely performative.'"

[30] The Intercept journalist Roane Carey identified the "key element in the tankie mindset [as] the simple-minded assumption that only the United States can be imperialist, and thus any country that opposes the U.S. must be supported.

[35][36] The term tankie has also been used in contemporary times to describe the defenders of anti-American leaders like former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad or those who propagate pro-Russian narratives in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian War.

[4] It has been applied to "elements within the self-identified [American] left that have soft-pedalled Russia's aggressive foreign policy and history of human rights abuses", according to Sarah Jones of New York.