Tankie is a perjorative word, but it refers to those who support authoritarian communism. For instance by denying documented historical events, or support or defend repression from authoritarian regimes.
Multiple problems with this paragraph alone.
- There is no non-authoritarian communism.
- Then most liberals would be “tankies” because they still think the 1928 famine in the ussr was a genocide and the june 4th incident in China was a massacre. Historians widely disagree with both notions.
- Communists do not deny anything, we just care a lot more about the reasons for events to learn from them. This leads us to learn that the liberal, anti-communist naratives of such events is always bs and leads us to much more reasonable discussions about them.
- “Authoritarian” is a meaningless word. All states are authoritarian, because they use their authority and state violence to uphold their laws and defend their existence. Thus there are no “non-authoritarian” states, ergo “authoritarian state” being a trueism. The term is part of the liberal propaganda toolkit, scary terms for states that are not based on liberalism.
- “tankie” refers to britsh communist who supported the intervention of the Warsaw pact to put down the Hungarian counter-revolution. By now it is a mix of a liberal version of “woke/SJW” and red scare “commie”, with the intention of both.
Tanks are easy to get! First you have to befriend a tank manufacturer…