The first time I saw this word being used was here on Lemmy, when I arrived during the reddit exodus. I'm not a native English speaker though.
It was used on Reddit, but not widely. Mostly by insufferable 'enlightened centrists' who didn't want to engage in good faith argument.
It's now a blanket term for "anyone left l politically left of me" used by insufferable liberals who don't want to admit that trying to curry votes from Republicans lost them the election.
For a time it was being used to describe actual Chinese and Soviet sympathisers, but given how quiet that particular group has been after the election, I suspect it was interchangable with state sponsored bot accounts.
And then there is me who keeps getting called both tankie and liberal.
This is the part where I would normally state my opinion in geopolitics but since both sides have their sources and "fact checks" I won't. I'm tired of this information war. The only geopolitical thing both sides (yes even the great majority of liberals) can actually agree on is the Palestinian genocide. The rest is split between Western and Anti-Western reporting with both sides having blind spots for sources favouring their side whilst denouncing the sources that do not fit their world views.
And whilst we - the economic left - are fighting an unwinnable war over geopolitics the economic right is making the economy less social whilst radicalising in nationalism and conservativism with every election.
