They’ve made being a “tankie” in some cases synonymous with being correct, seemingly only opposing it to be contrarian and even despite the broad agreement from many ideologies that the above statement is the exclusive domain of a subset of fascists.

Bingo. Using anarchism as an excuse to support the most fascist and reactionary takes and actions against the soviets (or any communist group) is anti-anarchist and pro-fascist. Truth doesn’t matter for these people, what matters is whatever narrative is a rhetorically effective club.

That’s not to say that there isn’t legitimate Marxist or anarchist critique against AES states, of course, my point is that it’s clear that a small but extremely vocal portion of users seem to proceed from the goal of discrediting Marxism and use whatever is effective in doing so regardless of validity, rather than a pursuit for correct analysis we can apply to build a better understanding of the past to inform our current practice.