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Is "Tankies" a new term? I've never heard it before a week or two ago.
It's decades old. Refers to people who support communist regimes regardless of what they do. Originally because the Soviet Union used tanks to quell rebellion and some people in the west still cheered for them.
I believe it was coined by the British left when the USSR quashed the Hungarian revolution by driving tanks through their streets. Anyone still in support of them is deemed a "tankie." Nowadays it was meant to criticize authoritarian communists.
when the USSR quashed the Hungarian revolution
quashed the Hungarian communist (democratic worker) revolution; lowercase.
Right, right, they were like "you're not doing it right!"
Was it from the Soviet Union? I always assumed it was a reference to justifying Tianamen Square.
I guess that more you know.
Yup, it even predates Tiananmen Square by a few decades IIRC
you being funny? It's 68 years old this autumn.
I apologize I'm only up to 's' in my quest to memoriz3 every fucking word ever used in the English language. 🙄 The fuckin word, "meme" is like a million years old. It doesn't mean it was as regularly used in conversation before social media. On a different note, for how many other languages use Lemy how would you know English is my primary language?
You shouldn't be getting downvoted for asking a question. Asking genuine questions are good
I've seen it a lot more often after joining lemmy
That is because you joined a social media platform made by socialists.
Yup, when I first joined I wanted to join lemmy.ml because "oh I like machine learning".
Those were the days...
Expecting ML to mean machine learning, when signing on to lemmy, must have lead to confusion, maybe shock.
I picked it because it had open signups and were high up in some random list, I promptly switched lol
Ah yes. Lemmy.ml, the instance about machine learning....
Havent heard that one.
It's members certainly talk like chatgpt
The current use of it to mean "people I disagree with" is.
I started to see the term around the time of the Russian invasion of ukraine