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Tankie

Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support acts of repression by such regimes or their allies. More specifically, the term has been applied to those who express support for one-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republics, whether contemporary or historical. It is commonly used by anti-authoritarian leftists, including anarchists, libertarian socialists, left communists, democratic socialists, and reformists to criticise Leninism, although the term has seen increasing use by liberal and right‐wing factions as well.

The term "tankie" was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). 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. In British English, especially within the left, it can be used to mean someone with traditional statist left wing views, compared to more moderate centrist politics.

The term has extended to describe people who endorse, defend, or deny the actions of communist leaders such as Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. In recent times, the term has been used across the political spectrum and in a geopolitical context to describe those who have a bias in favour of anti-Western states, authoritarian states or states with a socialist legacy, such as Belarus, Cuba, China, Syria, North Korea, and Russia. Additionally, the term pejoratively describes political activists who are said to have a tendency to be favorable towards non-socialist states and political groupings with no affiliation to socialism if they are opposed to the United States, regardless of their ideology, such as Iran or Hezbollah.

Definition

After the Prague Spring, the term was used to describe Communist party members of Western countries who had supported the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact states, of which Czechoslovakia was a member. It was also used in the 1980s to describe the uncritical support the Morning Star gave to the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. According to Christina Petterson, "Politically speaking, tankies regard past and current socialist systems as legitimate attempts at creating communism, and thus have not distanced themselves from Stalin, China, etc."

By 2017, tankie had re-emerged as internet slang for authoritarian communists, and it became particularly popular among young democratic socialists. In 2017, left-wing writer Carl Beijer argued that there are two distinct uses of the term tankie. The original, which was "exemplified in the sending of tanks into Hungary to crush resistance to Soviet communism". More generally, a tankie is someone who tends to support "militant opposition to capitalism", and a more modern online variation, which means "something like 'a self-proclaimed communist who indulges in conspiracy theories and whose rhetoric is largely performative.'" He was critical of both uses. The Intercept journalist Roane Carey identified the "key element in the tankie mindset [as] the simple-minded assumption that only the United States can be imperialist, and thus any country that opposes the U.S. must be supported."

Usage

In the United Kingdom

Tankie originated in the UK as a term for hardline members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). This Stalinist or "tankie" wing of the CPGB was associated with the views of the strong CPGB presence in British trade unions. Journalist Peter Paterson asked the Amalgamated Engineering Union official Reg Birch about his election to the CPGB Executive after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. Paterson recalled:

When I asked him how he could possibly have sided with the tankies, so called because of the use of Russian tanks to quell the revolt, he said "they wanted a trade unionist who could stomach Hungary, and I fitted the bill."

The support of the invasion of Hungary was disastrous for the party's reputation in Britain. The CPGB made mild criticisms of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, which they justified as a necessary intervention, although a hardline faction supported it, including the Appeal Group who left the party in response.These events then led to much of the subsequent internal politics of the CPGB to viewed along the lines of "tankies versus Euros".

The term continued to be used into the 1980s, especially in relation to the split between the reform-minded eurocommunist wing of the CPGB and the traditionalist, pro-Soviet group, the latter continuing to be labelled tankies. The term is sometimes used within the Labour Party as slang for a politically old-fashioned leftist. Alastair Campbell reported a conversation about modernising education, in which Tony Blair said: "I'm with George Walden on selection." Campbell recalled: "DM [David Miliband] looked aghast ... [Blair] said when it came to education, DM and I were just a couple of old tankies." In 2015, Boris Johnson referred to Jeremy Corbyn and the left wing of the Labour Party as "tankies and trots", the latter referring to Trotskyism.

Modern Internet uses

The term tankie has been used in English-language social media to describe communists, particularly those from the Western world, who uphold the legacies of communist leaders, such as Lenin, Stalin and Mao Zedong. While generally used pejoratively, some Marxist–Leninists have re-appropriated it and used the term as a badge of honour.

The Taiwanese left-wing magazine New Bloom alleges that many modern tankies are members of the Asian diasporas of English-speaking countries. In particular, members of the Chinese diaspora searching for radical responses to social ills such as xenophobia against Asians are drawn to tankie discourse. This modern conception of tankie has also been described as "diasporic Chinese nationalism".

An instance of the modern usage is the description of those "who instinctively defend China based on the idea that it is an example of actually existing socialism resisting Western imperialism", in discussions around the persecution of Uyghurs in China and justify the "anti-terrorism" operations of the Chinese government.

In 2022, New York magazine observed that in the US "so-called tankies don't make up the majority of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) membership or wield much power within the broader left, but they do exist", and that "leftists from other countries have been contending with the American tankie for years", quoting activists from Hong Kong and Poland, two countries that have existed under authoritarian communist regimes.

The term tankie has also been used in contemporary times to describe the defenders of anti-American leaders like Bashar al-Assad or those who propagate pro-Russian narratives in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian War. It has been applied to "elements within the self-identified [American] left that have soft-pedalled Russia's aggressive foreign policy and history of human rights abuses", according to Sarah Jones of New York.

In media

In the 2006 play Rock 'n' Roll by the Anglo-Czech author Tom Stoppard, the character Max, based on Eric Hobsbawm, discusses with Stephen what to read to hear what is happening in the Communist party, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe. Their options are Marxism Today and the daily newspaper, the Morning Star:

MAX: Marxism Today? It's not so much the Eurocommunism. In the end it was the mail order gifts thing. I couldn't take the socks with little hammers and sickles on them.
STEPHEN: Well, Read the Morning Star and keep up with the Tankies.
MAX: The Tankies ... How the years roll by. Dubcek is back. Russia agrees to withdraw its garrisons. Czechoslovakia takes her knickers off for capitalism. And all that remains of August '68 is a derisive nickname for the only real communists left in the Communist Party.

Explanatory notes

References

General and cited references

New Statesman (9 August 2016). "What exactly are 'Trots' and 'Tankies'?". New Statesman. Archived from the original on 16 September 2021. Retrieved 23 November 2019.