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."[15][a]
The support for the invasion of Hungary was disastrous for the party's reputation in Britain.[6][16][17] The CPGB made mild criticisms of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, which they justified as a necessary intervention,[18] although a hardline faction supported it, including the Appeal Group who left the party in response.[19] These events then led to much of the subsequent internal politics of the CPGB to be viewed along the lines of "tankies versus Euros".[20][13]
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.[21][22] It was also used in the 1980s to describe the uncritical support the Morning Star gave to the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.[23][24][25] 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."[26]
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."[27] 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.[28][b]
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.[30]
Modern internet uses
By 2017, tankie had re-emerged as pejorative internet slang for supporters of authoritarian socialism,[31] and it became particularly popular among young democratic socialists.[32] Left-wing writer Carl Beijer argued that there were two distinct uses of the term tankie. The original one described someone who supports Stalinist foreign policy or more generally, "who tends to support militant opposition to capitalism". The more modern online use of it often means "something like 'a self-proclaimed communist who indulges in conspiracy theories and whose rhetoric is largely performative.'" He was critical of both uses.[33]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."[34]
While generally used pejoratively, some Marxist–Leninists have re-appropriated it and used the term as a badge of honour.[35] According to Brian Hioe of the left-wing New Bloom Magazine, some Anglophone members of the Chinese diaspora who seek radical responses to social ills such as xenophobia against Asians are drawn to tankie discourse. This form of tankie ideology has also been described by Hioe as "diasporic Chinese nationalism".[36] An instance of the modern usage is the description of those "who instinctively defend China based on the idea that it is an example of actually existing socialism resisting Western imperialism", in discussions around the persecution of Uyghurs in China and who justify the "anti-terrorism" operations of the Chinese government.[37]
In 2022, Sarah Jones of New York magazine reported that in the U.S. "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.[38][39] The term tankie has also been used in contemporary times to describe the defenders of anti-American leaders like former Syrian President 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 Jones.[38]
↑Mike Harman (8 March 2018). "Everything you ever wanted to know about tankies, but were afraid to ask". Libcom.org. With Iran, despite the religious nature of the regime and the fact that all communist parties are banned, when strikes and street protests broke out at the end of December 2017, there was an immediate reluctance to recognise the grassroots nature of the actions, due to the possibility that the US might use the protests as an excuse for 'regime change'. Some commentators went as far as to suggest the protests had been almost immediately hijacked by the CIA, Mossad, or Saudi Arabia.
↑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'.
↑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.
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