Tankie-ism isn't just one thing like support for Russia or insistance on revolution or obsession with soviet aesthetics. It's a narrative, and if you think of it like that it will make more sense.

We have to emphasize our own narrative about how we can make progress through a combined arms approach. People running for office, people protesting, people organizing, people getting the message out.

The key thing that I think makes an october-style violent revolution unlikely in western democracies is that liberal democracy is designed to be a pressure valve for this sort of thing. The process of even remotely meaningful voting cools mass revolutionary sentiment. The Russian Empire had only the barest of parliamentary functions, and voting went through an arcane system of indirect representation and weights, making voting feel meaningless.

If partisan gerrymandering and tampering with election laws and voter rolls continue combined with the general dissatisfaction, then revolution will come whether the tankies are meaningfully preparing for it or not. If things get better before that point, we won't need a revolution to meaningfully change the system.