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”.