196

Yeah, that's not the tankies here; these are "North Korea is a great country, actually" tankies.

When a liberal says "tankie" they mean anything remotely communist-looking. When a leftist says "tankie", they mean authoritarians who like red flags and self-proclaimed communists who nonetheless support hierarchies and have no plan or intention to bring them down. I think the vast majority of people here knows this already.

Is the USA a “functioning” state with all the oppression, racism, greed, invading other countries out of monetarian interest and environment destruction?

I hope you realize that this is an incredibly privileged take. The US is rife with issues, but the hardships experienced by the average western citizen doesn't even compare to the suffering that you would find in, say, Pol Pot's Cambodia, or (to a less extreme extent) Maduro's Venezuela. To compare what a US citizen deals with on a daily basis due to capitalism to what a citizen of any of those countries had to go through is very reductive and may be perceived as disrespectful to many who had to live those experiences.

Tankies on their way to explain why teaming up with the Nazis to conquer Poland is actually based and totally in line with Marxist philosophy.

they yearn for the glorious people's boot

tankies arent radical left. they are authoritarians ffs

holy shit they kicked the tankies out of 196

that sub often tended towards outright anti-leftism

A nazi with red aesthetic

They're communists, but not your every day "people should hold the power" communists. More like "tianenmen never happened, and if it did it wasn't that bad" type

Tankie was first used for that kind of communist supporter who kept singing Russia's praises/defending Russia even when Russia was sent 5000 tanks to crush a popular uprising in Czechoslovakia (the "Prague Spring") on August 20, 1968. Some people just couldn't accept that a communist country could do something bad, so defended the action.

Nowadays, it's used to refer to those that are strongly supportive of Russia, completely ignoring the awful things they do. Often these days there's a lot of anti American bent to it. Like, anything anti America and American "imperialism" must be good - even blatant and awful Russian Imperialism.

These days they calmly explain how Ukraine just needs to come to the table and discuss peace (ignoring that Ukraine wouldn't exist if they did so) and blame America for the war in Ukraine for... well... they're America. The people who want war, or are causing the war, are those giving Ukraine weapons - not the country that is literally invading it.

Originally, it was used to describe communists who followed the party line and supported suppressing Hungarian workers with tanks.

Today it means ultra-authoritarian marxist-leninist.