On lemmy.world I posted a comment on how liberals use ‘tankie’ as an invective to shut down dialogue and received tons of hateful replies. I tried to respond in a rational way to each. Someone’s said ‘get educated’ I responded ‘Im reading Norman Finkelstein’s I’ll burn that bridge when I get there’ and tried to keep it civil.
They deleted every comment I made and banned me. Proving my point, they just want to shut down dialogue. Freedom of speech doesn’t existing in those ‘totalitarian’ countries right? But in our ‘enlightened’ western countries we just delete you.
To my understanding:
Tankie refers generally to communists, but it depends on who’s using it as to what it means. If a liberal uses it, they probably mean anyone left of Bernie Sanders. If an anarchist uses it, they probably mean communists, particularly any who “support” Stalin and/or Mao - their ire usually earned from “Victims of Communism” bullshit.
Essentially, leftists who use it are using it to decry people who are too uncritically supportive of current or past communist governments in their eyes. Liberals who use ir mostly just mean any serious lefty.