this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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The original "tankies" were British communists who supported Soviet violence against Hungarian and Czechoslovak communists. The revolutionary regimes in those countries were led by their communist parties, but independent of the Soviet Union. So the tankies showed loyalty to Soviet imperial power against communism.
Your knowledge of the history exceeds mine, but I can’t help think your context furthers the point that this term is rather complicated. It still seems like a really strange word to be using in this context. It carries some historical weight that doesn’t quite fit in the modern wheel barrow.
Regarding the broader politics, modern anti-capitalists tend to “no true scotsman” the 20th century horror show. I have changed as I got older and come to accept that 19th thinkers lacked the creativity needed to incentivize collectivism at the state scale and fell back on force of arms. We (the 21st century left) must be more creative or those who suffered and died in that mess died for nothing.