Random observation but I find it kind of interesting how the talking points anti-tankies tend to bring up are things that, even if the worst allegations are accepted, are relatively minor compared to some other events you could bring up. I’ve heard so much about Tienanmen Square under Deng, but much less about the Cultural Revolution under Mao. And the Hungarian Revolution and the Prague Spring happened under Khrushchev and Brezhnev respectively, when there’s much worse stuff you could bring up about Stalin.
I can’t help but think that this conflicts with the supposed definition of tankie of just knee-jerk defending anything someone does if they wave a red flag. If that were actually true, wouldn’t you focus on the most extreme examples by the most extreme leaders? The fact that there’s so much focus on people like Khrushchev and Deng, who were both more moderate than their predecessors, seems more like the point of the word is specifically to attack people who might have a more favorable view of those more moderate figures, while being critical of their predecessors’ actions.
Which is to say, tankie isn’t actually meant to be directed towards someone who knee-jerk defends anyone with a red flag, but rather, it’s meant to be directed towards someone who defends anything at all about anyone at all with a red flag, by accusing them of being the former. In other words, it’s a word that demands the exact kind of knee-jerk response it’s supposedly criticizing, just in the other direction.
In fact, it’s particularly interesting that these accusations of ideological rigidity and blind loyalty are in reference to Khrushchev, who did nothing but criticize Stalin, and Deng who controversially said that Mao was “70% good, 30% bad.” I don’t think it’s even possible for someone to defend everything done by both Stalin and Khrushchev