tanky

In 1956 Soviet Russia sent the tanks into Hungary and Czekoslavia to crush the armed resistance in those countries.  Many people who had up to that point sympathised with the communist ideals and objectives, found this unacceptable.  In Britain this caused a schism, with those who could not accept it leaving the Communist Party and those who remained supporting, even more vehemently, Soviet Russia in asserting its authority.  These people were then labelled by others as ’tankies’ because they supported sending in the tanks.

In Britain this is still the basic meaning of the term.  The Oxford English Dictionary defines tanky as   ‘A nickname for a member of the British Communist Party supporting hardline Soviet policies, spec. that of military intervention’.  But it did develop to mean the traditional left who wanted to pursue Marxist policies and engage in class warfare, and who chose to ignore the new identity politics entirely.

More broadly it can be used by the hard right to describe anyone that they view as having socialist leanings and an inclination towards ‘woke’ issues.  Jonathan Green in reporting on a meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) noted that the Federal Vice-President, Teena McQueen, celebrated the defeat of the Liberal ‘lefties’, a defeat which ‘had also put paid to unreconstructed tankies like Josh Frydenberg and Tim Wilson’.   Green is using tanky to reflect the view of the conservative Liberals.

The term doesn’t have much frequency in Australia.  A search produces a lot of Tanky Tanks but a dearth of political tankies. Still it is perhaps making its way into Aussie political jargon.