I've never seen a Tankie claim that Russia, China, North Korea, etc. are good governments that are always ethical. It's almost always a comparison between the US and these other authoritarian countries that they get stuck on.
They have a critical logic mistake they always make:
US bad = not_US good
They're effectively obsessed with America in a negative way, where they have to hate anything the US likes and like anything the US hates. They find themselves defending oppressive regimes and, instead of having a realization, dig in further. All the news about NK being bad is just propaganda, and China isn't doing anything bad to the Uighurs even though they have official government statements on it.
It's just like nationalist patriotism in a way, just the negative of it. One's obsessed with what the US likes, the other is obsessed with what the US dislikes. The US can do no wrong to one, and everything it does is bad to the other. It's an incredibly childish logic.
Imagine calling China and the DPRK fascist. It was the free(tm) west that recently honored a former SS member and then ran defense for the fucking Waffen SS and Wehrmacht. Not them.
Your own comment above basically supports the definition of tankie. Specifically, this:
The term is also used to describe people who endorse, defend, or deny the crimes committed by communist leaders such as Vladimir Lenin,[9][10] Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Enver Hoxha, Pol Pot, and Kim il-Sung. In modern times, the term is used across the political spectrum to describe those who have a bias in favor of illiberal or authoritarian states with a socialist legacy or a nominally left-wing government, such as the Republic of Belarus, People's Republic of China, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the Republic of Nicaragua, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Serbia, the Syrian Arab Republic, and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Additionally, tankies have a tendency to support non-socialist states with no socialist legacy if they are opposed to the United States and the Western world in general, regardless of their ideology,[4][11] such as the Islamic Republic of Iran.
(emphasis mine)
I would take issue with the single word 'fascist' that @figaro@lemdro.id is using, as the government doesn't need to be full-on fascist to it qualify for tankies to defend it. It only needs to be illiberal with a socialist legacy or nominally left-leaning government. So the definition is more broad than what figaro defines. But all the elements of Figaro's defintion are literally there in your own linked Wikipedia article.
McCarthyism is in again, didn't you hear? Within 2 years, bet my left eye we have a House Unamerican Activities Committee, regardless of what color tie's sitting in the White House
Before the reddit exodus which brought many 'normal' people on board, lemmy instances were mostly used by people with more extreme reactionary views that aren't allowed on conventional social platforms. Similar to how bitchute and 4chan are a safe space for conspiracy theorist and supremacist to gather, lemmy instances was a safe space for communist and anarchist.