Agreed, they’re responding to the genuine possibility of a communist vanguard party carrying out a revolution in the heart of the empire and building a proper worker’s state.
It’s going to hurt them because a lot of people are sort of confused about what the distinction between a tankie and a communist is. When people are confronted with a communist face to face in real life who is a genuinely nice person they’re not going to be thinking “tankie” in their head.
Putting all of the anticommunist propaganda into the word tankie leaves a leaky hole through which support for communists will trickle even while those very same supporters still feel negativity to “tankies”.
Agreed, they’re responding to the genuine possibility of a communist vanguard party carrying out a revolution in the heart of the empire and building a proper worker’s state.
It’s going to hurt them because a lot of people are sort of confused about what the distinction between a tankie and a communist is. When people are confronted with a communist face to face in real life who is a genuinely nice person they’re not going to be thinking “tankie” in their head.
Putting all of the anticommunist propaganda into the word tankie leaves a leaky hole through which support for communists will trickle even while those very same supporters still feel negativity to “tankies”.