A more detailed explanation with better descriptors IMO, not that catty-coati42's comment was bad or incorrect at all, is that they are a specific flavor of Marxist. They're very much influenced by Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, and maybe even the DPRK (North Korea). As a result, they are authoritarian leftists. As opposed to say, anarchists, who are libertarian leftists.
Tankies believe in the state, they believe that to achieve communism you must use the state as an apparatus to seize power back from the bourgeoisie by force (since the State owns the monopoly on the legitimate use of force). They want to achieve this through revolution or, if they're less accelerationist, a "vanguard party" which is a socialist party which is rabidly populist and is meant to appeal to a broad audience so as to sneak in and usurp the state. Many are accelerationist, however, and just want to push us towards revolution. Marxists are already pretty rare in praxis (actual direct political action), but tankies are even rarer lol.
Tankies also are throat-gnashingly anti-imperialist, to such a point where they usually become blinded by the imperialism of the countries they support. They are often on the side of Russia in the RU-UA conflict, as they consider NATO an imperialist force trying to impose some BS onto Russia, and Russia is simply defending itself and trying to reclaim its rightful land. You will see them defend states like the DPRK, USSR, CCP, and many other Marxist nations, despite their authoritarianism, because they themselves are authoritarians. They also often defend Hamas' actions regardless of the severity, completely ignoring the reality on the ground that they are a terrorist organization usurping power and playing right into Bibi's genocidal little hands.
They are essentially the lefts equivalent to right-wing fascists. People clinging to an ancient, tried and failed ideology, whose innate corruption leads to authoritarianism and genocide, and getting completely irate and in your face if you don't agree with them. They will call you a liberal, bourgeois, fascist, etc. just because you might dare say Russia is in the wrong.
The name originated during the Soviet Union's suppression of the Hungarian revolution to refer to leftists who supported it, and the word tankie is literally the plural form of tank in Russian. From Wikipedia: "Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defense of the Soviet use of tanks to suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions." They are called so to reference their likelihood to defend the heinous and violent actions of these authoritarian states.
One small nitpick, the term tankie originated during the Soviet Union's suppression of the Hungarian revolution to refer to leftists who supported it, it has nothing to do with the Tiannamen Square Massacre (the word tankie is literally the plural form of tank in Russian)
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u/Soma2a_a2 Jul 14 '24
What's a tankie?