Saw some posts about .ml today and thought I'd jump on the bandwagon lol
this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2025
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What the hell are tankies?
Folks who approve of the authoritarian methods used to enforce their vision of the left.
Tank diplomacy was what the “auth left” did/does to maintain control.
So calling someone a tankie is a derogatory term for someone who espouses leftist ideals but also is down for some authoritarian action.
My understanding is that it specifically is a reference to the tanks at the Tianenmen Square massacre.
The tanks at the Tianenmen square massacre are an example of tank diplomacy, but it was the Soviets who did it time and time again when there was any sense of uprising.
Tankies were British communists originally, called that as they fell lockstep in with the Soviet ideology and the Soviets were the “tank diplomacists”
Some of the first uses of the term are from the mid 50s in relation to supporters of the suppression in Hungary.
It's specifically a reference to the tanks USSR sent to Hungary in 1956 and the events of Prague Spring in 1968, though Tianenmen Square fits the bill too.
They just can't help crushing someone with tanks.
It's not, but that is an example of it. Terms older then that.
a derogatory term specifically for the authoritarian Left.
but in all seriousness, i believe it’s a derogatory term for a communist
not all communists. Tankie is specifically for the authoritarian Left
on lemmy it is, on reddit its used to describe both the hard left and usually to describe people ina specific sub, where they act as the "moral " center of that city/location that nobody wants thier opinion on, often time its been taken over by tankies of that city/location or conservatives. (such as fare inspection, jury duty etc, they act all holier than thou you should do the right thing, and would immediately try astroturf you if you offered oppoite opinion)
That's how people unaware of the diversity within left spaces use the term. Communists aren't always tankies
Tankies are the Stalinists, Maoists and modern defenders of North Korea (Authoritarian left).
Are you new here?
Edit: 2y6mo? Do you only read the nsfw coms?
As the political subs here are extremely one-sided, I mostly block them. So yeah, mostly NSFW.
Tankie is a left-punching scary military-sounding word used to try and denigrate supporters of actually existing socialist projects. It's used by westerners who live in the imperial core and cannot accept that socialist countries subjected to immense pressure by dominating world capitalism have to resort to less-than-pleasant repressive methods against external interference. The people who use the word "tankies" won't call US democrat-voters "dronies" despite their support to US drone-bombings during Democrat rule on the other side of the world, and they won't call EU-socdems "colonialies" despite their support of neocolonialist murderous regimes. Evil sounding words are reserved to punch to the left, not to fight the system