“Tankie” “Socialist” “Communist” the same things thrown at any politicians left of center.
And a few right-of-center, when you look at how DLC Dems like Biden and Clinton got smeared.
Socialist and Communist, sure. But what politicians have been called tankies? I thought tankies were a specific type of communist.
Yeah tankies are just authoritarian apologists specifically for Stalin and Mao types
I’ve seen like 20 different interpretations of “tankie” on lemmy since moving over here from reddit last year, never heard it before that and I’m a pretty political person.
Tankie is definitely a newer term that hasn’t hit the mainstream zeitgeist, I already see it thrown around on lemmy like how conservatives call everything “woke”, just a matter of time imo.
To clarify, the other two are usually right wing smears, tankie appears to be a left wing smear to those further left. I know the idea behind it is fake leftists who are actually just Authoritarions but… Still lol that’s how it goes with labels a lot of the time, especially the more niche it is
Tankie has been a pretty common phrase at least since I was in college. I thought they were the folks who carried water for authoritians like Mao and Stalin. It’s more specific than ‘woke’ or even ‘liberal’, in my experience it’s more akin to calling someone maga or antivax; it confers specific positions. I’ve had friends who proudly identified with the term. Unless it’s changed in meaning recently and I didn’t get the memo.
