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: The amount of conjecture and thought terminating cliches in this thread is through the fucking roof lmfao. Peak reddit.
My journey started here:
https://hexbear.net/comment/3763871How they piqued my interest:
https://hexbear.net/comment/5606499The reason I switched:
https://hexbear.net/comment/5355388It was a combination of them just not being horrible “redfash” monster everyone says they are, them being able to consistently back up their seemingly “obviously wrong” takes and me and seemingly no one else being able to come up with better answers.
In discussions tankies were the only ones who had good faith discussions, obviously they didn’t always, but if it wasn’t just an internet slapfight the tankies were the ones citing sources and having incredibly nuanced understandings while me and the other libs didn’t really. All I ever saw was a “nuh-uh” backed up by “obvious” claims that “everybody” knows like your “mao zedong was the worst mass murderer”.
There is a post I could make about this “black book of communism” statistic now, having read about these sorts of claims, but not on my phone.
A lot of people get fed up with slow or no progress, so they fall for supporting approaches that “get things done.” Even though they go very wrong, and by that point, some are too lost in the sauce to admit it’s wrong or severely off-base.
Being involved in anarchist and decentralized leftist orgs, it’s very discouraging how few people care and how little power we have.
Often times it takes weeks of planning and everybody’s collective effort and spare resources to provide meals to a few dozen people, or to host a single information booth or class at a larger leftist meet up.
After years of that, the temptations of centralized power to just dictate to the masses what will happen is very strong. The justification goes something like, “yeah there are a ton of problems with XYZ, but at least they are accomplishing ABC!”
I feel it too when I look around my country of the USA. Sure China is State-capitalist, authoritarian, pseudo-dystopian police state, and super politically repressive. But god damn it, they have some of the best public transport in the world, a kickass tech and manufacturing sector, solid public healthcare, and the actually imprison and even execute billionaire scumbags…
When I have to encounter the level of American idiocy on a weekly basis, listen to the most asinine politicians and talking heads, and endure capitalist bootlicking propaganda everywhere, I start to get really tempted to advocate for the China way…
Actually existing socialism actually exists: imperfect, flawed, with tragic excesses and rightist deviations. But it exists.
And I’m interested in the real world, not creating an ideal world in my head that can’t actually become reality.
First and foremost, I think people should consume media that is not from the West. You really can’t claim to be an internationalist if your media bubble (I’m including social media as well) is entirely situated within the West. To be an internationalist means recognizing that Western thought isn’t the end all of human civilization. What constitutes the West is actually pretty small. It’s only through imperialism that the West has a very oversized presence. But the West is only one of many viewpoints. At a bare minimum, you have to read what non-Westerners say.
But it’s not just a case of picking any random non-Western country since many of their news media has been captured by the West through NGOs. Personally, I find news from Anglophone non-Western countries (India, Nigeria, and so on) to be bad overall as far as echoing what has already been said on Reuters and the BBC. The easiest way is to get out of the bubble is to pick news media from countries that are hostile to the West. That’s one of the reasons why you see Russian/Chinese/Iranian/Venezuelan news media cited in ML circles. It’s an easy way to pierce through the Western bubble even if you must be cognizant of the geopolitics at play. It’s not the only way by any means. In many ways, social media by non-Westerners can be superior even when accounting for botting and censorship. There’s a reason why the US wanted to get rid of Tiktok and I strongly suspect they will move to do the same with XHS, which actually has authentic Chinese people (of a certain demographic) on social media.
When you step outside the Western bubble, it’s very obvious that the vast majority of criticism of China comes from a broader Cold War 2.0 strategy by the US to attack China. Whatever is not wholly made up is put an exorbitant emphasis on. There are numerous problems with Chinese society, of course. Many of them are actually pretty apparent if you consume Chinese social media made by Chinese people in China. However, you’re not going to find this in any article by the BBC unless it’s to push some ridiculous narrative about how Taiwan is going to be invaded or Tokyo is going to be nuked by China. You have to step outside the Western bubble.
Hello. I am baby! :D why are tankie evil?
Some people’s needs aren’t being met in the west or they’re rightfully upset of the mistreatment of the global south so they decide to become contrarian to oppose the western oligarchs and politicians.
So they become contrarian. I don’t think it’s a decision.
Too often these criticism’s of “tankies” involve calling questioning blatant cold war lies as tankie behavior and very often i get accused of being a tankie by both liberals and “anarchists” because i oppose the democrats its far past time to retire the word.
Yeah there’s really no room for nuance on some of these topics for some reason. You don’t accept the line, a line fed to us by a government we ostensibly don’t trust about a sanctioned enemy that it has every incentive to make you dislike, and somehow you are questioning objective reality to defend an authoritarian.
I think it’s the sheer volume of anti China consent-manufacturing material that does it. Westerners are just bathing in it constantly.
Yep was attacked by fellow anarchists ounce because they were sharing epoch media news about mass organ harvesting farms of falun gung members and I was like maybe don’t accept this uncritically which is an extreme example but still something your supposed to take uncritically with no sources outside of this literal fascist cult because to do otherwise you have to defend china even if only from the most nonsensical claims.
Many such cases, I stopped organizing with anarchists because some variation of this was happening in every different group I came across
The defining characteristic of tankies is authoritarianism just like with fascists.
I read marx/lenin, found them to be compelling.
I am very interested in the science of economic planning and ecosystem management.
Originally, I considered myself to be an anarchist, but other anarchists had a very strong tendency of supporting imperialists in their actions against non-western countries, and frankly, I’m not white enough to be tempted by the benefits I would not be gaining from installing rightist dictatorships in Venezuela or China or Cuba if the “anarcho-bidenist” types had their way.
Looking back at it I find the whole “fight” between anarchism and marxism-leninism to be very silly, but since I think that China and Hamas are actually doing useful work, this automatically makes me incompatible with many anarchists.
Looking back at it I find the whole “fight” between anarchism and marxism-leninism to be very silly, but since I think that China and Hamas are actually doing useful work, this automatically makes me incompatible with many anarchists.
Yeah thus should be the main crux of things. There haven’t been real conflicts between anarchists and ML organizations outside of internet posting for decades now. The closest thing I can thing is during the Burkina-Faso revolution, some of the trade unions that called themselves anarcho-syndicalists were also allying themselves with the French government.
There’s just no real conflict otherwise. I’ve done organizations in both anarchist and ML orgs and it’s 99% identical. Maybe ML groups are more willing to endorse someone in an electoral race, maybe an anarchist group will be more willing to do something like petty theft from a grocery store or squatting. That’s been the only real difference I’ve noticed in tactics is that an ML group will usually try to stay above board and anarchist groups will commit crimes if necessary.
Otherwise there was never any real conflict. The people who comprised these movements came from largely identical political interests.
China and Hamas are actually doing useful work
like?
Pretty standard radicalization pipeline stuff I think. Groupthink gets enforced by mockery and removing dissenting views, accessible memes to get new people interested, sense of community and belonging that is conditional on being uncritical about the dogma. Everything gets framed as being about which side you are on, and discourse is seen as a means to advance the cause and not a way to consider what is true. They are visibly criticizing the US empire, people recognize that as correct and unfortunately buy into the idea that the other side must be the good guys.
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.
yes it does you fucking moron, if you’re being lied to about one thing, you should absolutely question whether the same sources saying shit at you are lying as well, jesus fucking christ
how do people fall into the NATO “leftist” mindset
This is a bit, right?
Interesting response
Unfortunately you’re incapable of writing an interesting response yourself. Why do you refuse to engage with people who point out the flaws in your line of thinking?
I’m interested in understanding why people have this viewpoint, not arguing about it
Are they even that big in the west? It seems like anarchists are the largest and most acceptable form of “far-left” in these countries compared to ML’s.
I actually thought this post was about how so many self described leftists get so obsessed with bashing ML’s that they forget to challenge the actual powers at play.
My experience on Lemmy has been that most users have a generally negative view of MLs , but 90% of the rants, memes, etc bashing another (non-maga) political side are MLs bashing “leftists” as opposed to the other way around.
I suspect that this actually doesn’t have to do with political association at all, but rather that so many people in general would rather just pick another faction to bash rather than challenging the actual powers, since that’s much easier.
I can do both, thank you very much.
Mao Zedong, an actual mass killer
wow really, who did he kill, did he order drone strikes on a wedding or something
Mao’s policies resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people in China during his tenure, mainly due to starvation, but also through persecution, prison labour in laogai, and mass executions.
Li Rui, Mao’s personal secretary and CCP comrade, opined that “Mao’s way of thinking and governing was terrifying. He put no value on human life. The deaths of others meant nothing to him.”
Mao has been credited for boosting literacy, reducing poverty, a near doubling life expectancy, a near doubling of the population, rapidly developing China’s industry and infrastructure, and creating a self-sufficient and self-reliant economy, paving the way for its position as a world power.
Believe it or not, it is possible to recognize that someone did a lot of good things, while also accepting that they did a lot of bad too. Reducing Mao to a “mass killer” is disingenuous, but so is denying the deaths that occurred under his rule.
The construction of these false dichotomies between complete supporter and complete opposer is the exact same construction responsible for the constant infighting among the working class of the west. I really wish people would allow any nuance into these conversations…
Blaming a single guy for famines that had historically been happening in China for hundreds of years is pretty disingenuous too isn’t it?
Mao became leader of China after a period they call 100 years of humiliation. They lost over 22 million during WW2, had mostly illiterate peasant economy, and had been brutally colonized by Japanese, British and others, opium addiction, poisoned water…
Mao did not order the death of tens of millions of people and to equate such is actually an insane thing to do.
Hitler literally called for the death of people for being subhuman, that’s what makes fascists evil.
Mao was one part of a large leadership circle of an even larger communist party who inherited the ruins of a nation and laid the foundation for one of the poorest nations in the world to become the most powerful in one lifespan.
You are sourcing from Wikipedia which has long been proven to be heavily influenced by US and Israeli intelligence, but I would challenge you to follow their sources and see which ass they pulled these numbers out of to blame on Mao and look it right in the eye and give it a smooch.
Believe it or not, it is possible to recognize that someone did a lot of good things, while also accepting that they did a lot of bad too.
What’s so funny about this is that it is exactly what communists say. Deng Xiaoping famously said Mao was 70% right and 30% wrong. Every actual communist can talk in depth about the failures of communism, it just isn’t worth the time with liberals because they already live in a fantasy world
I agree that acting like Mao never had anyone killed is disingenuous and counterproductive. Jabril already explained some of the issues with the opposite side of trying to make him responsible for deaths due to famine when famine was just the reality before communism in China. I just wanted to add that rejecting the dichotomy and acknowledging that a figure like Mao, Stalin, or whoever else made huge mistakes (including selfish, cruel, and dogmatic decisions) doesn’t mean that you don’t get to celebrate them for their achievements either. They led a world antifascist and anti-colonial struggle that every person alive today should be grateful for.
Going back to the subject of the thread, there shouldn’t be anything weird with having a Mao Zedong megathread. There’s no part of having a Mao Zedong megathread that denies the complexity of the history of the PRC, simplifies it, whitewashes it, or whatever. As we stand, the only piece of information that points toward “tankies” being intellectually dishonest dogmatists that ignore any of their heroes’ wrongdoings (I take it that this is OP’s accusation even if it’s implicit) is the comment you’re replying to, which is itself a flippant reaction to OP’s premise.
I support your quest for nuance.
Mao was critical of his own policies which exacerbated the famine during the Great Leap Forward.
My understanding is that the executions were a form of justice doled out by the peasants (not Mao himself) against their former landlords and oppressors. As Mao said, “a revolution is not a dinner party”; it’s a class war. Violence is part of it. Given the scale, it’s plausible to me that some of the killings could have been unjust, but I would need to learn of the specifics in such cases before arriving at that condemnation.
And here we see it
Most people come to Marxism through being disaffected by the liberal systems we grow up in, work in, etc, and look to Marxist theory for answers. I actually came to anarchism first, found myself dissatisfied with it theoretically, then came to Marx. This leads us to organizing in real life, reading more theory, and gradually beginning to read western framing of socialist states and other designated “baddies” more critically, seeking a multi-sided and comprehensive view. There’s a lot to unpack in your comment regarding preconceptions you have about China, largely being western, Red Scare style framing, but what I answered is why I’m a Marxist-Leninist and uphold socialist states as legitimate.
For a look at theory, I made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list you can take a peak at.
How do you reconcile all the queer people and dissidents your dream states murder with the theory you read?
I don’t have “dream states.” No socialist country has ever or will ever be perfect. If we look at Cuba, they originally criminalized homosexuality. However, because Marxism-Leninism is an emancipatory ideology, socialist states generally were more progressive than the regimes they replaced, and continued to improve. Cuba now has one of the world’s most progressive and queer friendly family codes, and has apologized vehemontly for how they treated queer people in the mid-20th century. By placing the working class in control, social progress is expedited.
As for “dissidents,” the large majority were landlords, slavers, fascists, capitalists, murderers, terrorists, etc. I won’t cape for them, and instead state that it’s sheer brutal necessity that building up state power in socialist society is a necessary evil to protect the gains of socialism.
So state sanctioned murder is fine as long as you agree with who’s getting murdered? That tells me all I need to know about your values, thanks.
not a tankie, but how would you deal with fascists, parasites, slavers, murderers, terrorists, etc.?
I just don’t think giving the state license to mass murder its political enemies is a smart idea. I think steps need to be taken to prevent bad actors like that from harming people, but I’d favor an approach based more on education and rehabilitation than outright murder. Every innocent you wrongly deem an enemy of the state should be an unforgivable occurence, not the cost of doing business.
Ultimately I’d prefer no state apparatus exists that could wield that sort of power to mass murder members of the population. Even if constructed with the best of intentions it’s corruptible and fallible.
I concur with you completely, but again, how do you prevent fascist genocides, landlord hostile evictions, slavers, state murderers (cops), terrorists, etc.? Education and Rehabilitation hasn’t worked on them for 143 years, and science keeps proving why. RN, fascist are genociding in China, Gaza, US, Cambodia, etc… And educated folks are letting it happen.
Killing fascists, landlords, slavers, etc. is a good thing, yes.
The destruction of american hegemony is a material necessity and their rivals thus require critical support. Call it campist if you want, i don’t see western proletariat doing anything to put an end to the America’s genocides and ecocides.
Other capitalist hegemonies are, however, fine.
