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The TL;DR is someone who supports authoritarian regimes that 'are trying to achieve communism' to the degree that they support, often uncritically, the oppression caused by (self-claimed) communist regimes. Some examples of such regimes would be : the USSR, the Chinese Communist Party, North Korea and Russia.
They will often deny or severely undermine events such as the Holodomor, Uyghur genocide or the Tiananmen Square massacre.
The extra weird thing is they generally support Putin and Russian government policies. It's not exactly about 'trying to achieve communism' for them I think, they seem to reflexively defend and support all kinds of right-wing BS depending on who is doing it. To me tankies don't seem to be motivated by a coherent political philosophy, I think they are almost like LaRouchites where they don't really have an actual ideology and are more like a cult.
I think it has to do with an anti-western point of view that mostly comes from the cold war.
Also, Russia essentially lives in the USSR's shadow (This can be seen with its aggression of its neighbour countries and the use of the USSR anthem for example) even if it is politically and economically pretty different so I think quite a few believe that the war in Ukraine for example would bring back the USSR or something. I don't really understand it personally. I think it is a strong general narrative pushed by the Russian government.
The wikipedia is a pretty good write up. but generally you see it in European or multicultural spaces more than American centered, though it has entered the discussions, most no one knows what it means when they are using it.
I've found most use it to just refer to any communists at this point
People who use it that way are dipsticks, but I'm not surprised.
Dubcek was a communist, and so were most of those oppressed by the Soviet forces from which Tankies get their name.
There is a wild world of difference between the person who's like "Karl Marx was correct, but the USSR did a lot of extremely horrible things," and the kind of creep who openly stans Xi Jinping and Stalin.
Makes sense tbh, these days far too many people don’t know the difference between communism and socialism. They just know there are negative connotations and use that to do the rest of the work
Authoritarian communists. So, yes, they are pro-military
No, it's basically a dig at authoritarian communists. if you didnt know that you really dont need to worry about it, it's pretty much irrelevant unless you're chronically online
A lot of good explanations here. Thanks everyone!