What's sad is that the same level of stupidity could be said about America with anything that someone is immature enough to get offended over. At least we don't disappear people all day every day constantly. If we keep getting offended by stupid shit then it becomes increasingly more possible though.
I ask purely out of laziness for something I'm sure I could find in a basic search far shorter than this post, but, what exactly is a tankie? I see it used here as a (I assume) derogatory term but the definition is never obvious based on context clues... I assume something, something pro-CCP / Tianemen massacre?
Tankie is or isn't derogatory depending on who's saying it and what context. They call themselves tankies, but when I use it it's always a slur.
Tankies are authoritarian facists who have a thin veil of liberalism (they'll consider this a slur, and that's fine) wrapped around them. They genuinely believe Stalin, Putin, and China can do no wrong. They deny the concentration camps in China and think Ukraine are the bad guys.
They claim to be communist, but are one hundred percent authoritarian in their beliefs.
Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to communists who express support for one-party communist regimes that are associated with Marxism–Leninism, whether contemporary or historical.
History:
The term "tankie" was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defense of the Soviet use of tanks to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring uprising, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions.
Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to communists who express support for one-party communist regimes that are associated with Marxism–Leninism, whether contemporary or historical
Not constantly... There were those badgeless, patch less guys throwing people into minivans a few of summers ago. Also people straight up getting murdered in the streets (or their own fucking beds) by "public safety" officers.
Not to defend China cause they have their own brand of fucking awful, just pointing out that there's a whole rainbow of ways to be terrible and these are but a few.
The problem with talking about China is how hard it is for any news to get out of that country that they don't want you to see. I dated for a long time and nearly married someone from the Chinese mainland, and the stories are so sickening of how easy it is to get 'disappeared' I mostly blocked them from my memory. Of course Winnie the Pooh (Xi Xinping) has made things considerably worse and worse so I try not to even think about what they pull now, particularly with their infinite number of cameras and AI face recognition to make it impossible for you to be free in any way.
People have tried to protest several times there, but of course the CCP is quick to act against and disappear anyone with that kind of behavior. So a few months ago they had a more covert protest (though obviously it's going to get found out about) where they simply held up blank pieces of paper as a sign of protest, since they knew they weren't allowed to say anything bad about the CCP without serious repercussions. Good luck trying to find anyone who did that, as the government went after them and also put some other ridiculous measure in place that I can't recall off the top of my head.
If you have legit friends in China though, then you can get the skinny on what really goes on over there. Assuming they're not too scared to even tell you in code since everything is constantly being monitored. They're disturbingly close to a richer North Korea at this point unfortunately. Definitely don't believe anyone saying that censorship and detainment isn't constantly happening though. Criticize the CCP while in China? Good luck ever escaping, and if you have any close friends/family they will absolutely be used as hostages. The CCP will do absolutely everything they can to look good in the public light though, so their extreme tight control over information prevents us from hearing about so many things, and any accident caused by their shoddy construction, if it does get reported, will be said to have a casualty count of 18, when in reality 300+ casualties would be the very minimum possible death toll by the most optimistic possible estimates (like awhile back when an underwater tunnel flooded and you could physically see and count at least five times as many dead bodies from stealth-footage taken than the reported death toll actually was).