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 :)

    • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
      41·
      4 hours ago

      Unfortunately not, I have had conversations with them. And I know your next line is going to be "But they’re just trolling, no one really thinks that, and I call horseshit. That “trolling”, when do religiously adhered to, inspires weak-willed onlookers into sincere belief.

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
        2·
        2 hours ago

        Unfortunately not, I have had conversations with them.

        Any examples? As it stands, you’re not beating the “I use a strawman as a club to terminate discussions” allegations.

      • FlyingCircus@lemmy.world
        21·
        3 hours ago

        No, I don’t think they’re trolling. I think that you mistake any comment that is vaguely supportive of China or Russia or that contradicts the mainstream western narrative about those countries as wholesale support for anything those countries do.