Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support acts of repression by such regimes or their allies. More specifically, the term has been applied to those who express support for one-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republics, whether contemporary or historical.
YSK: you will never see more pathetic whining than people on Lemmy constantly complaining about "tankies". Full disclosure: I have been called a tankie one time in two years on Lemmy. I commented on a post that was basically jerking off to the idea that Japan would repeat its atrocities against China in the event that there was a war over Taiwan. I expressed doubt that it would go very smoothly, for which I was banned and labeled a tankie.
Lemmy.world is like a Trump echo chamber. They keep screaming about their imaginary tankies on .ml but when you go on .ml there's less tankies than Zionists on .world
I've actually seen real tankie rhetoric on occasion, but tankie is becoming Lemmy.world's woke. It increasingly means something that certain people don't like.
The hysteria is mostly promulgated and perpetuated by a small number of people. It's just easy karma farming for some (PugJesus/Yeetpics) while others seem to actually have an issue with tankies and/or the bonkers censorship on lemmy.ml. If you block the former group and their alts, the amount of whining lessens significantly, mostly leaving people with honest issues with actual tankies.