After seeing a megathread praising Mao Zedong, an actual mass killer, and a post about a guy saying “99% of westerners are 100000000000% sure they know what happened in ‘Tiny Man Square’ […] the reasons for this are complex and involve propaganda […],” I am genuinely curious what leads people to this belief system. Even if propaganda is involved when it comes to Tiananmen Square, it doesn’t change the atrocities that were/are committed everywhere else in China.

I am all for letting people believe what they want but I am lost on why one would deliberately praise any authoritarian system this hard.

Can someone please help me understand why this is such a large and prominent community? How have these ideals garnered such a following outside of China?

EDIT: Thank you to everyone who has responded! This thread has been very insightful :)

  • Hyperrealism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    2·
    7 months ago

    I strongly disagree with the characterization of everything else as false propaganda, however.

    Because you’re a tankie and unlike actual communists, you people like to make excuses for horrible regimes.

    I’m inclined to side with people like Jeremy Corbyn, Aaron Maté, and academics like Stephen F. Cohen and David S. G. Goodman who all expressed skepticism over the Skripal poisoning.

    Stephen F. Cohen who is on the record as saying that Putin is not an autocrat, Russia’s invasion of a sovereign country was justified, and disputed evidence on MH17.

    Aaron Maté who regularly appears at events hosted and paid for by the Russian government.

    Corbyn is on record as saying the evidence points towards Russia, even if he urged caution at the time before the evidence became overwhelming.

    I don’t believe RT has ever claimed that Putin is a communist

    Bad faith argument. I didn’t say that. I said tankies make excuses for anti-communists, and authoritarian capitalists. People like Putin and his government, an argument you have just repeatedly proven to be true.

    Actual communists don’t make excuses for anti-communists, the far right, and corrupt oligarchs.

    Thus, opposition to Nazis and concern for the security threat they pose make sense from the perspective of both the left and right within Russia.

    Russian propaganda. Ukraine didn’t pose a serious security threat to Russia prior to Russia’s invasion.

    you’ve enumerated his ties to Russian nationalists to suggest that he and the Russian Federation could not possibly be genuinely opposed to Nazis. But even Russian nationalists …

    Meanwhile in Russia:

    I point out that Putin venerates an actual bonafide fascist, has and had ties with actual fascists, and you proceed to make excuses.

    Once again, this is not what actual communists do. It’s what cosplay communist tankies and bad faith actors do.

    Apologists for Ukraine and its endless proxy war on behalf of NATO

    Ukraine didn’t start the war. Certainly not on behalf of NATO. Blatant Russian propaganda.

    which is decimating Ukraine’s population and propelling the entire world towards WWIII and thermonuclear brinkmanship

    The war started by Russia is decimating Ukraine’s population, correct.

    Threats of nuclear war. Russian propaganda.

    useful idiots for the far-right and their genocidal ambitions in the Donbass.

    Russian propaganda from someone who has just repeatedly made excuses for far right nationalists and anti-communists, while claiming to be a communist.