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.[12][13] It was also used in the 1980s to describe the uncritical support the Morning Star gave to the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.[14][15][16] 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."[17]
By 2017, tankie had re-emerged as internet slang for authoritarian socialists,[18] and it became particularly popular among young democratic socialists.[19] 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.[20]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."[21]
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."[25][a]
The support of the invasion of Hungary was disastrous for the party's reputation in Britain.[7][26][27] The CPGB made mild criticisms of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, which they justified as a necessary intervention,[28] although a hardline faction supported it, including the Appeal Group who left the party in response.[29]These events then led to much of the subsequent internal politics of the CPGB to viewed along the lines of "tankies versus Euros".[30][23]
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."[31] 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.[32][b]
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.[33]
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".[34]
In 2022, New York magazine reported 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.[36][37]
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.[4] 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.[36]
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.[39]
^New Statesman (2016): "The first time 'Tankie' was written down was in the Guardian in May 1985, in an article describing the Morning Star crowd: 'The minority who are grouped around the Morning Star (and are variously referred to as traditionalists, hardliners, fundamentalists, Stalinists, or "tankies"—this last a reference to the uncritical support that some of them gave to the Soviet "intervention" in Afghanistan).'"
^Petterson, Christina (2020). Apostles of Revolution? Marxism and Biblical Studies. Brill. p. 11. ISBN978-9004432208.
^Paterson, Peter (February 2011). How Much More of This, Old Boy...?: Scenes from a Reporter's Life. London: Muswell. p. 181. ISBN9780956557537. OCLC751543677.
^Pimlott, Herbert (2005). "From 'Old Left' to 'New Labour'? Eric Hobsbawm and the Rhetoric of 'Realistic Marxism'". Labour/Le Travail. 56: 185.
^Andrews, Geoff (2004). Endgames and New Times: The Final Years of British Communism 1964–1991. Lawrence & Wishart Ltd. pp. 93–94. ISBN978-0853159919. [John Gollan] said 'we completely understand the concern of the Soviet Union about the security of the socialist camp... we speak as true friends of the Soviet Union'.
^Parker, Lawrence (2012). "1977 and all that". The Kick Inside: Revolutionary opposition in the CPGB, 1945–1991 (2nd ed.). November Publications. pp. 75–95. ISBN978-1-291-19609-2.
^Parker, Lawrence (2012). "Introduction". The Kick Inside: Revolutionary opposition in the CPGB, 1945–1991 (2nd ed.). November Publications. pp. 11–14. ISBN978-1-291-19609-2.
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