
A common term used in online left-wing discourses is ‘tankie’. It has been used to describe those who are self-identified Marxist-Leninists and those who defend ‘actually existing socialism’ in its various guises (such as the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, the Eastern Bloc, Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea). As an extension of this, ‘tankie’ has also been used to describe people who defend regimes in alliance with Russia and China in the twenty-first century, primarily concerning the Assad government in Syria nowadays.
The connotation of the term alludes to the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979 (as well as martial law Poland in 1980), suggesting that those who supported the Soviet Union in these incursions were endorsing the use of tanks to crush their opposition (supposed counter-revolutionaries, the bourgeoisie, imperialists, etc). Although China opposed both the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968
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