So "thankie" is now used in the US in the same sense as "commie" used to be used in the US: to imply that somebody is an authoritarian communist.

Which is what I wrote.

I never said or implied it the term was invented by neoliberals. I further never said it was used by neoliberals in the correct way, i.e. for actual authoritarian communists.

It's exactly the core of the problem that neoliberals use "tankie" in the same way that "commie" used to be used by old fashioned capitalist: to imply that anybody to the left of them aren't merelly center-right/center-left/left but actually the same as authoritarian communists.

It would be absolutelly fine if Liberals were using "tankie" to refer to actual authoritarian communists only, but that's not what's been happenning at least here in Lemmy: it's been progressivelly applied to those less and less to the left (authoriarian or otherwise) to the point that it's even used for people who disagree with Biden's support for Zionism (an ultra-nationalist etnic fascist ideology) and the Genocide they're committing, or in other words, against those who do not support an etnic cleansing by a fascist government (i.e- those to the left of a position extremelly far to the right of center).

This is similar to how in the old days "commie" was used for, say, people who were in favour of unions, though this present day usage of "tankie" is worse since back in WWII in American "commie" was not used to slander those that did not support the Nazis, though in Nazi Germany accusations of being a Communist were indeed used against anybody that disagreed with Nazism.