For me it has to be Malcom X, I’m not American, but I read his autobiography when I was young and it left a life long impression on me about justice and resiliency. He grew up in an extremely oppressive society, his dad was murdered and his mother was sent to the loony bin and he was clearly lost and traumatized. When he went to jail he was smart enough to be like what the hell, why am I here? Educating himself and channeling his energy into caring about others and justice transformed him into one of the most powerful and well respected leaders of his time.
He is often denigrated by Americans as violent and contrasted with King Jr. but by all accounts whenever he was in a position to project violence he chose de-escalation like during the Harlem riots and saved lives as there were people in the US in positions of military power who would have loved an excuse to do to them what they did to the indigenous across the entire country.
He was angry but principled and really set a template for me about how to be a leader and help me process my own anger and channel it into something more positive.
A tankie may be meant for weird communists, but the way I see it, it is not solely reserved for communism, although that is where it originated and that is where we see it happen a lot today.
I see a tankie as someone who agressively defends their viewpoint without being open to criticism or review. They cannot be reasoned with. They are single minded. It overlaps a lot with gatekeeping, but gatekeeping applies to communities, a Tankie is a single Individual but they do tend to flock together.
“Tankie” has a clear and specific meaning: it refers to kind of person who sees shit like this and thinks the CCP did nothing wrong. The name literally comes from being a fanboi of using tanks to mow down innocents in service of a Communist dictatorship. In other words, tankies are people for whom the allure of the Stalinists and Maoists and Khmer Rouge and whatnot wasn’t the theoretical egalitarianism, but the brutal state violence.