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 :)
I believe that authoritarianism is the origin of class. All that it takes is for one person to draw a boundary, state “this is mine,” and then enforce that with violence. There is no end of history. Even if we do manage to create a classless society, there’s no guarantee that it will remain that way. To maintain such a society will require maintenance, and that means identifying and resisting authoritarianism when and where it inevitably emerges. It is therefore essential to have a word to describe the types of behaviour that can result in the reemergence of class society.