Your mistake is thinking that people who use the word tankie have any kind of consistent definition, or even understand the politics of the person they're name-calling.
It used to refer to a very specific incident where Khrushchev sent in tanks to suppress unrest. Anyone who supported that decision was called a tankie.
Now it just means "person on the left that I don't like." Trots are tankies, anarchists are tankies, Joe Biden is a tankie. The word doesn't mean anything.
I thought the term was coined by Brit MLs, who opposed force to suppress unrest in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, to describe those that were on with it. If I'm incorrect, please hit me with those facts, I don't want to be misinformed.
Not really?
He wasn't really a Marxist-Leninist... that we know of.
And technically, wouldn't tankies also just be a subset of MLs, based on the original usage of the term?
Uh, no? I think they're one and the same.
Your mistake is thinking that people who use the word tankie have any kind of consistent definition, or even understand the politics of the person they're name-calling.
It used to refer to a very specific incident where Khrushchev sent in tanks to suppress unrest. Anyone who supported that decision was called a tankie.
Now it just means "person on the left that I don't like." Trots are tankies, anarchists are tankies, Joe Biden is a tankie. The word doesn't mean anything.
Ah, to me, MLs are tankies only and I prefer to keep it that way.
I like the word "tankie" and, well, am one, as far as I'm concerned.
But that's just me. For a long time, that was my definition.
I thought the term was coined by Brit MLs, who opposed force to suppress unrest in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, to describe those that were on with it. If I'm incorrect, please hit me with those facts, I don't want to be misinformed.
British Trots, not MLs, came up with it
Ah. Thank you for the correction!
I wouldn't say that at all, if anything, one is a subset of the other.