Take, for example, my recent post about the controversy around the film The Interview and the DPRK. A commentator, clearly of the traditional "anti-tanky" way of thinking, complained about my supposed endorsement of the DPRK and argued that it would be progressive for the imperialists to invade and occupy North Korea. They were opposed to the supposed "tanky" arguments that have been made about the defense of the DPRK but had no problem arguing for the necessity of imperialist tanks (and planes and sanctions and guns and troops) to serve some sort of progressive role. That is, they were making the same argument as the tankies they were opposing, but in some sort of bullshit Second Internationalist kind of way. The tanky narrative, then, overcodes the reality of the DPRK, producing a very unscientific binary: either you're a tanky who supports the DPRK unconditionally as a socialist paradise or you're some sort of "critical" anti-tanky who supports the necessity of imperialist intervention––but since the latter demands a similar material reality as what it is opposing (i.e. military repression) then it makes no sense to argue about the errors of tankyism in the first place.
At this rate, a tankie will soon be anyone who opposed the Iraq War. I got called a tankie for expressing skepticism over the Libyan intervention
People literally demanding to send in the tanks decrying others as tankies, smh.
https://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2015/01/tankyism-and-competing-imperialisms.html