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 :)

  • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.todayEnglish
    2·
    22 days ago

    Omg someone who is named specifically!

    Can I ask you what you believe/want to happen?

    Real talk homie, I’m genuinely curious!

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
      71·
      22 days ago

      What do you mean by “named specifically?” Either way, I want the end of the era of imperialism, and the completion of the already begun global transition to socialism, and then the global transition to communism. I want a better world, one I believe we are in the long, queer, protracted, messy process of bringing about, and as such I support the movements that further this process.

              • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.todayEnglish
                2·
                22 days ago

                Last question homie, what dafuq is a tankie?

                I’ve gotten loads of answers that pretty much describe them as leftist authoritarians.

                I also read you might be one. So, in your own words. What that?

                • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  6·
                  22 days ago

                  I’m not cowbee but I’ll just say that “tankie” is pretty much a meaningless word. It’s like how conservatives call everything they don’t like “woke” even when it’s other conservatives. “Tankie” basically just means “someone on the left that I disagree with”

                  It used to refer to a group of communists in Britain who didn’t condemn Khrushchev for sending in tanks to suppress right wing protests in Hungary. Later it became a general term for anyone who had a positive opinion of the USSR. Later it just became a catch-all term for leftists (including anarchists) but nowadays it can even include liberals. It’s kinda meaningless.

                  • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.todayEnglish
                    3·
                    22 days ago

                    Hey! Another name I recognize(but from much earlier today)

                    I’m honestly(heart to sky) not trying to start an argument, as much as an honest conversation.

                    What are your feelings on the Tiananman square incident?

                • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
                  71·
                  22 days ago

                  It’s just a pejorative for those that recognize the legitimacy of socialist states as they exist in the real world, and support them.