The term seems to have originated within British communist groups in the post-war era, when “the tanks” were sent in to crush dissent in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Thus, the “communists” supporting the CCCP party line were called “tankies” by the communists who opposed it. From there, it came to evolve into calling out “authoritarian communists”, although that term alone is super vague and not always useful. As with any insult, review the context of where it is used and by whom against whom.
But yeah, the kind of self-proclaimed “communists” who haven’t read Marx beyond maybe the manifesto, wish they could just follow (or lead) a religious cult instead, but also want to look materialist and think communism is all about “anything that opposes the West is good”, that’s what usually falls under the “tankie” umbrella.
As for the lemmy devs/lemmy.ml admins, I can’t say what exactly their views are, there might be some pretty bad stuff with their stances on Chinese policies, didn’t look into it - but the server is from my experience a good general instance, userbase probably relatively left-leaning, but definitely not manipulated or with an agenda forced on them. And beyond that, they very clearly and authentically stated, that their commitment to making lemmy open source is set in stone, so if anyone disagrees, they can always create their own bubbles if they can’t live with them.
The term seems to have originated within British communist groups in the post-war era, when “the tanks” were sent in to crush dissent in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Thus, the “communists” supporting the CCCP party line were called “tankies” by the communists who opposed it. From there, it came to evolve into calling out “authoritarian communists”, although that term alone is super vague and not always useful. As with any insult, review the context of where it is used and by whom against whom.
But yeah, the kind of self-proclaimed “communists” who haven’t read Marx beyond maybe the manifesto, wish they could just follow (or lead) a religious cult instead, but also want to look materialist and think communism is all about “anything that opposes the West is good”, that’s what usually falls under the “tankie” umbrella.
As for the lemmy devs/lemmy.ml admins, I can’t say what exactly their views are, there might be some pretty bad stuff with their stances on Chinese policies, didn’t look into it - but the server is from my experience a good general instance, userbase probably relatively left-leaning, but definitely not manipulated or with an agenda forced on them. And beyond that, they very clearly and authentically stated, that their commitment to making lemmy open source is set in stone, so if anyone disagrees, they can always create their own bubbles if they can’t live with them.