Originally, a “tankie” was a Stalin apologist, but in more modern times, it’s come to mean just authoritarian communist. I don’t think it’s a self-applied term. More a derisive term used by anti-authoritarian leftists.
The anti-authoritarian communists tend to call themsleves anarchists, anarcho-communists, anarcho-syndicalists, left libertarians, etc. And they’d strongly tend not to have anything good to say about Stalin, Mao, or the CCP.
(There are right-wingers who call themselves “anarchists” or “anarcho-capitalists” or “voluntarists” or “minarchists” or “Libertarians” (note the capital “L”) or whatever, but they have pretty much nothing to do with the hard-left-wing anarchist movement that they appropriated the terms “anarchist” and “libertarian” from.)
Originally, a “tankie” was a Stalin apologist, but in more modern times, it’s come to mean just authoritarian communist. I don’t think it’s a self-applied term. More a derisive term used by anti-authoritarian leftists.
The anti-authoritarian communists tend to call themsleves anarchists, anarcho-communists, anarcho-syndicalists, left libertarians, etc. And they’d strongly tend not to have anything good to say about Stalin, Mao, or the CCP.
(There are right-wingers who call themselves “anarchists” or “anarcho-capitalists” or “voluntarists” or “minarchists” or “Libertarians” (note the capital “L”) or whatever, but they have pretty much nothing to do with the hard-left-wing anarchist movement that they appropriated the terms “anarchist” and “libertarian” from.)