That's being slightly pedantic, because everyone understands "the west" to refer to Europe and the anglophone world. Australia and New Zealand aren't in the western hemisphere, but they're still part of "the west."

Conversely, there's no unified "the east." That could mean very different things between China, Russia, India, SEA, or western-aligned Japan/Taiwan/South Korea. There's no unified concept called "the east," at least in terms of geopolitics.

Part of the reason for this difference is the history of the 16th-20th centuries, but we all know those details.

That doesn't make your criticism of tankies any less valid, but the focus should be a bit different to make it more bulletproof (not that a bulletproof argument ever stopped a tankie from digging their heels in).

You're right that the west isn't solely responsible for all the atrocities in the world. Some, yes. Many, even. Possibly even most if we're only counting from the colonial era forward. But tankies only focus on the atrocities the west committed, and sweep everyone else's atrocities under the rug. That's where they err.

That's why they lick russian and chinese boots when they're just as guilty or even more from the 20th century forward. But tankies will never acknowledge the authoritarianism, capitalistic exploitation, and ethnocentrism prevalent in those nations' governments, or others like Iran's. Anything that's "anti-west" to them gets put on this pedestal where they can do no wrong in the tankie worldview.

And yeah, they're impossible to argue with because they don't care about facts or logic. If you're not unquestioningly subservient to their particular flavor of ideology, you might as well be a fascist in their view. It discredits not only leftism as a whole, but also anyone who points out actual fascism, because the term has already been watered down by tankie's overuse of it.

They're authoritarian extremists and wannabe militants, plain and simple. I've told them they're no better than fascists and then they go into the difference between the political polarities, as if that makes a difference, and accuse me of not knowing what I'm talking about.

I had one try to tell me over and over that yellow-green is actually orange, in a metaphor where orange represented fascism and green represented leftism (presumably in all its shades).