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?

  • F_State@midwest.social
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    3 hours ago

    or even anyone who positions themselves against western imperialism.

    I’ve never met or spoke online to an anarchist online who wasn’t opposed to western imperialism. I’ve also never spoken to someone “with a bone to grind” with those against western imperialism unless they are rival imperialists in which case the “bone to grind” is with imperialism.

    They internalise western propaganda

    “Our glorious people’s Ministry of Truth has determined that their wretched Mistry of Truth is lying while assuring us that OUR Ministry of Truth would never lie”

    “I hate the government not the people”

    I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, encouraging racism instead of criticism of the state?

    • sodium_nitride [she/her, any]@hexbear.net
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      3 hours ago

      unless they are rival imperialists in which case the “bone to grind” is with imperialism.

      This is where the issue comes down to because many western leftists pretend, based on their own misunderstandings that many western rivals are imperialists, despite the fact that many of these western rivals have a net export of surplus labor/commodities, being exploited by international capital, therby having a class interest opposite of imperialism.

      Not to mention the military encirclement that these nations face, which their enemy nationalists take as some sort of natural God-given equilibrium. Deviating from this encirclement by forceful measures is then taken as a sign of evil/imperialist ambition, meanwhile leftists at home in the west fail to resolve military encirclement by pressuring their governments. I mean, for how many decades has Cuba been under a blockade? What horrific conditions gaza has been subjected to. Can any of these situations be resolved without force? And if these people use force, they get called imperialists.

      In the interests of fairness, the PRC during Mao and Deng’s time also famously considered the USSR to be “social imperialists”, helping cause the downfall of the USSR and setting back socialism by a century. So this isn’t exclusively a western leftist problem.

      “Our glorious people’s Ministry of Truth has determined that their wretched Mistry of Truth is lying while assuring us that OUR Ministry of Truth would never lie”

      My sibling in christ, do not insult my intelligence. The gaza genocide isn’t even over. At least wait for the bodies to become cold before you start defending western media institutions.

      I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, encouraging racism instead of criticism of the state?

      It is a common deflection that I have seen. Furthermore, it is quite stupid as well, since governments don’t fall from the heavens. They are made from the people. Modern states are not small warlord bands, but significant fractions of the entire populace and economy.