The term originates from controversy among UK Communist labor-unionists over support of the Soviet Union, in its violent occupation of dissenting Communist countries Hungary and Czechoslovakia — when Khrushchev sent tanks to suppress popular revolutions against Soviet control of their countries.
Notably, this was Communist-on-Communist violence: the revolutionary Hungarian and Czechoslovak regimes were still run by their Communist Parties. Thus “tankies” were, originally, Communist labor-unionists who endorse or tolerate violent suppression of other Communists to secure the power of the Soviet Union.
More recently it’s been used to refer to supporters of authoritarianism in China, which is associated with tanks by way of the 1989 Tienanmen Square massacre.
The term originates from controversy among UK Communist labor-unionists over support of the Soviet Union, in its violent occupation of dissenting Communist countries Hungary and Czechoslovakia — when Khrushchev sent tanks to suppress popular revolutions against Soviet control of their countries.
Notably, this was Communist-on-Communist violence: the revolutionary Hungarian and Czechoslovak regimes were still run by their Communist Parties. Thus “tankies” were, originally, Communist labor-unionists who endorse or tolerate violent suppression of other Communists to secure the power of the Soviet Union.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
More recently it’s been used to refer to supporters of authoritarianism in China, which is associated with tanks by way of the 1989 Tienanmen Square massacre.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man