I'm not sure about that; I think a lot of radicalizing discourse of late comes from the same place. Life under late stage capitalism is hard, and people are not sure why, nor can they articulate it. And they can tell it's getting worse. Its a rife breeding ground for fascists, but when you hit leftist spaces, the tankies have the biggest net. You'll be greeted by r/socialism, and find yourself in its web of subs. You might get pulled in by a Gravel Institute video (especially since you might be aware of Prager U and are interested in a video from the other end). It might be Chapo Trap House. And a lot of entry points into Tankie spaces are extremely compelling. For a lot of people, it will be the first anti Imperial talking points they will ever hear, with no liberal "but this is the greatest nation" filter.

I think this content is actually good and useful. The USA is guilty of myriad atrocities that its citizenry doesn't know about, or the full depth, or doesn't think about in order to get through their daily life.

But then after you get past that, the Tankie reveals himself to be "Anti Nato" without an cohesive political or moral position, in a very "politics as a team sport" kind of way. Russia is a moderately sized challenger to NATO, so they love it. It is also a successor state to a Red Empire. Ukraine is NATO making overtures to NATO, so they don't like it. Israel is an imperialist NATO outpost, and they are committing a genocide, so of course they don't like it, but so many tankies have shown their whole ass diving into Antisemitism, making fun of Jewish names, or Jewish influence on policy, that Ive exited most of the tankie spaces I was still in. Antizionism is not antisemitism, and they are antisemites.

But compare that to China, where they deny a genocide because it is being perpetrated by the largest challenger to NATO and still nominally communist state in the world, and you have your answer.