The tank has nothing to do with Tiananmen, it's a reference to the Hungarian revolution and Prague uprising of the late 50s and 60s.

there has been a lot of misinformation about what is a tankie

You think so? I think the definition has been the same all the way, a communist fundamentalist with the tank possible alluding to Tiananmen Square.

I've seen quite a lot of it unfortunately >.<. I've seen a lot of tankies in threads claim that anyone who calls them out is not a leftist and equate opposing authoritarian """communism""" (none of the states they like to bootlick are or have been actually leftist, imo) with anti-leftism.

The odd liberal actually using tankie as a generic term to attack any leftist doesn't help, though I contend that most usage is by non-authoritarians and it was created as a term by non-authoritarian leftists. (I don't consider any authoriatarian ideology to be leftist because for me leftism is about distributing power and less hierarchical organisation and society, so I don't consider tankies leftist ^.^).

In case you are curious, the tank refers to the 1956 hungarian revolution btw, where the local worker councils (original meaning of the word "soviet") attempted to seize control back from the USSR, and the USSR killed the people there with tanks.

I disagree with OPs claim of the tankies being CCP employees too. While there are probably a few tankies that actually act directly as CCP propaganda agents, I dont think its likely to be many of them. People are plenty-capable of bootlicking all on their own ;p

And given how offputting they are to other people who would otherwise be attracted to leftism.... I'd be more inclined to think they are CIA agents, if I was prone to conspiracy theories, but I generally think people are capable of being bootlickers and holding authoritarian and offputting views without government prompting ;3