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this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2025
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By skimming the front page I don't see many tankie-traits. Loads of communism and socialism, sure, but not much tankie stuff. But I'm sure there's a lot of them in the comments with "interesting" takes on the cultural revolution and the holodomor.
In practice, liberals and anarchists call anyone who defines themselves as a communist a tankie. Liberals will frequently use it for anyone who claims to be any sort of socialist.
Maybe sometimes. I don’t think this is generally true. Though I’ve also met tankies who think you’re not a real communist unless you’re a tankie. Are you one of those people?
To me you’re not a tankie unless you consistently apologize for, minimize, or dismiss oppression under so-called socialist countries. There are a decent number of communists who don’t do this but they’re not the majority from what I’ve seen.
I've seen liberals call social democrats tankies. It's been turned into a meaningless term.
A word sometimes being misused doesn’t make it meaningless. Personally, I don’t see this all that often.
But yeah I mean incorrect usage should be criticized when it appears, certainly.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted for this. I've SEEN real tankies, doing odd things like cheering for BRICS to rise up or Russia to defeat NATO in Ukraine because late stage capitalist oligarchy counts as communism if it's Russian or something, I don't know?
But the VAST majority of the time I see it used is by neoliberals as an excuse to dismiss literally anyone anywhere on the actual political left out of hand.
neoliberals would not call you a "tankie", since "communist" is already a deogratory/perjorative term for them.
liberals don't use "tankie", they would just use the term "communist"
They absolutely use tankie.
I think you may be misinterpreting soc-dems or anarchists or whoever else on the left as liberals
Well give that another think because you're wrong. This idea that liberals don't use the word tankie is so off base and moronic I don't know where you guys are coming from.
I think most liberals don't know what the word means. Not saying no liberal uses it though.
Here's a reddit (ugh) thread of (mostly) liberals discussing the term.
It's not some secret code word.
well yeah, it's an askreddit thread discussing the question
Right, with the OP commenting that liberals frequently call them a tankie. And then a thread full of liberals sharing their opinion on the term, pretty damned clearly showing they know what it means. What else do you need?
You're right. It seems to be mostly anarchists and such. There might have been more tankies back in the day, or maybe I just misremembered.