writer Carl Beijer argued that there are two distinct uses of the term tankie. The original, which was "exemplified in the sending of tanks into Hungary to crush resistance to Soviet communism. More generally, a tankie is someone who tends to support militant opposition to capitalism", and a more modern online variation, which means "something like 'a self-proclaimed communist who indulges in conspiracy theories and whose rhetoric is largely performative. He was critical of both uses. An instance of the modern usage is the description of those "who instinctively defend China based on the idea that it is an example of actually existing socialism resisting Western imperialism", in discussions around the Uyghur genocide, where in this defence they will use neoconservative analysis to justify the anti-terrorism operations of the Chinese government. The term "Tankie" has also been used in contemporary times to describe fringe networks of journalists and online activists who defend dictators like Bashar al-Assad or propagate pro-Russian narratives in the context of Putin's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In the United Kingdom Tankie originated as a term for British hardline members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). The tankie wing of the CPGB was also sometimes called "Stalinist" and was associated with the views of the strong CPGB presence in trade unions in the United Kingdom. Journalist Peter Paterson asked the Amalgamated Engineering Union official Reg Birch about his election to the CPGB Executive after the Hungarian invasion in 1956. He recalled: The support of the invasion of Hungary was disastrous for the party's reputation in Britain. The CPGB made mild criticisms of Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, which they called an intervention, although a hardline faction supported it, including the Appeal Group who left the party in response. The term continued to be used into the 1980s, especially in relation to the split between the reform-minded Eurocommunist wing of the CPGB and the traditionalist, pro-Soviet group, the latter continuing to be labelled tankies. In the 2006 play Rock 'n' Roll by the Anglo-Czech author Tom Stoppard, the character Max, based on Eric Hobsbawm, discusses with Stephen what to read to hear what is happening in the Communist party, after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Their options are Marxism Today and the daily newspaper, the Morning Star. The term is sometimes used within the Labour Party as slang for a politically old-fashioned leftist. Alastair Campbell