tankie

A hardline Stalinist. A tankie is a member of a communist group or a "fellow traveller" (sympathiser) who believes fully in the political system of the Soviet Union and defends/defended the actions of the Soviet Union and other accredited states (China, Serbia, etc.) to the hilt, even in cases where other communists criticise their policies or actions. For instance, such a person favours overseas interventions by Soviet-style states, defends these regimes when they engage in human rights violations, and wishes to establish a similar system in other countries such as Britain and America.

The term is used to distinguish the rare individuals with these kinds of beliefs from communists more broadly (including Communist Party members), whose adherence to Soviet doctrine and attachment to existing "socialist" states is somewhat weaker.

It is always more-or-less abusive in the sense that those termed tankies do not use the term themselves, but it doesn't have any particular bite (unlike, say, Trot).

The term derives from the fact that the divisions within the communist movement first arose when the Soviet Union sent tanks into communist Hungary in 1956, to crush an attempt to establish an alternative version of communism which was not embraced by the Russians. Most communists outside the eastern bloc opposed this action and criticised the Soviet Union. The "tankies" were those who said "send the tanks in".

The epithet has stuck because tankies also supported "sending the tanks in" in cases such as Czechoslovakia 1968, Afghanistan 1979, Bosnia and Kosovo/a (in the case of the Serbian state), and so on (whereas the rest of the communist movement has gravitated towards anti-militarism).

An apologist for dictatorial regimes with atrocious records on human rights, so long as those countries are not the US. A person who thinks that because the US is flawed, and has done bad things, that that means that countries that are or have traditionally been our adversaries (generally communist countries) are actually perfectly fine places to live, and everything bad that you hear about them is a Western lie. Someone who goes beyond just being a communist or socialist, into defending some truly awful regimes, a tankie throws out the baby with the bathwater.

See delusion

Anyone who doesn’t think communist countries are required to roll over and die when confronting a capitalist belligerent.

Most powerful and knowledgeable political opponent you could encounter from an obscure edge of the internet landscape. They boast strong support for any entity that identify itself with the commons and have combative attitude against any repression of liberty, freedom and dignity imposed on the downtrodden.

They're devout defenders of Joseph Stalin.

A member of the Royal Tank Regiment of the British Army. The RTR are part of the Royal Armoured Corps- the rest are generally referred to as donkey wallopers or cav ( bit too yankee).

an adjective used to describe those who have the capacity to consume food or drink in an unusual, extreme, or sometimes lethal manner.