OP obviously does not know the definition of a tankie.
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It's a new way of saying "commie", used because it doesn't instinctivelly make people think of McCarthism and the Red Scare as explicitly using words such as "commie" and "Communist" would.
In other words, rebranding, a Neoliberal speciality.
The Red Scare is not just a thing of the Fascist Far-Right over there: now that they're even cozying up to Genocidal Fascists, the Oligarchic American Far-Right (a.k.a. Neoliberals or just Liberals) are also starting to use the same framing of "Everybody to the left us are Communists" as the Fascists, though, granted, they're more modern and sophisticated than the Fascists and use focus groups and other market research techniques to evaluate the reception of their messaging, which probably showed that words such as "commie" don't go well with their target audience, and things like "tankie" yield much better messaging interiorization and viral spreading thanks the absence of pre-existing skepticism associations, unlike with "commie".
As more and more of the façade of Neoliberalism collapses and it becomes more and more obvious theirs is not a Political Ideology of Properity for the many, that their talk of Merit is complete total bollocks (every single one of the most celebrated "success stories" of the current Era were born rich) and that they're just a slicker, well-funded, marketing-heavy modern pro-Oligarchy Ideology, expect an increase in their demonization of any and all political opponents, much of it already visibily in many countries were Neoliberals call themselves "center" and "moderate" and call any political party who is not Neoliberal "extremists" - equally for leftwing or rightwing - even though the Overtoon Window having moved so much to the Right in 4 decades means most of those to their left who they call extremists defend policies that were considered center-left in the 70s (unions, universal healthcare, social security, progressive taxation, consumer protection, market regulation, nationalized critical infrastructure) whilst to the right of the Neoliberals there's just the Fascists.
My complaint, which you basically brought up, but more specifically is the capitalist stooges are comparing militant communist of the cold war era to the people today that just want universal health care, more unions/stronger labor laws and better cheaper or god forbid free education.