These days liberals say "tankie" to refer to β not the original definition of people who supported sending tanks to crush capitalist rallies in Hungary β but anyone who supports any successful socialist project or past or ongoing armed resistance.
This means they would absolutely call even widely-agreed-upon heroes like Mandela a tankie if he was alive now β because he worked with the USSR and Cuba, bombed railways, etc. If libs aren't calling you a tankie, you need to step up your game.
This has a distinct lack of saddam hussein