A brief note on "tankies"

It's a slur, and it isn't just aimed at communists.

Pictured: actual tankie. Photo courtesy of Fortepan under Creative Commons CC-BY-SA-3.0 licence.

There’s been an uptick in talk about “tankies” in liberal media lately. Noah Smith has been banging the drum on them for some time now, but in just the past few days we’ve seen articles using the term in The Intercept and New York Magazine as well. Since none…