“tankies,” a left-wing community that first arose in the 1950s in support of hardline actions of the USSR and has evolved to support what they call “actually existing socialist countries,” e.g., CCP run China, the USSR, former soviet countries, and North Korea.

Giving enormous "skimmed a Wikipedia article" energy in this abstract. This is what you get from STEM guys who don't think the liberal arts are real. Come on guys, just get one political science or history scholar, even a liberal one, someone who didn't just learn about the existence of communism last week.