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 :)

  • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
    63·
    3 hours ago

    the necessity of employing state power against literal fascists, landlords, capitalists, sabateurs, etc, then you’re implicitly making the point that we should let these groups run free for a sense of greater “freedom,”

    Firstly, fascists came much later as response to the growth of communist movements. Communism did not start to prevent fascists, it’s the other way around, not that I am condoning the latter but this is simply the historical truth.

    Second, Marxist Leninist communists killed even other different flavour of communists. A famous example were the Kronstadt sailors who simply wanted actual horizontal distribution of power like free and fair electione, and actual worker-run businesses. Instead, the Marxist-Leninist Bolsheviks killed them in the name of “vanguardism”, ie to maintain state power that you just invoked. The state power is merely the centralisation of power and authority for the few.

    In reality, communists become so because of disaffections with present capitalist systems, and seek answers from Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc. The fact that some party members are opportunists doesn’t make that a fact of communism.

    Yes, yes, theory, theory and all that; but that doesn’t ignore the fact that empirical realities negate the idealism that communism purport to espouse. Going back to Bertrand Russell’s quote: it quite literally is a veiled attempt to grab power. Actions and end results must comply with idealism but alas, that didn’t happen even in communism.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
      5·
      2 hours ago

      I’m aware that fascism became more of a thing towards the 20s and 30s, my point is that fascists existed in the form of fascist partisans in socialist systems and infiltrators.

      Secondly, you’re absolutely butchering what happened at Kronstadt. Stepan Petrichenko, the leader of the rebellion, tried to join the White Army before the Kronstadt Rebellion, and joined the White Army after it failed, under general Wrangel. The White Army was a tsarist, anti-communist group. We also know that Petrichenko attempted to instill paranoia among the sailors by lying about Bolsheviks executing strike leaders.

      Ignoring the will of the leaders and manipulators of the rebellion, lets look at who this supported. Capitalist media positively reported on the rebellion before it even came to a head, the Bourgeoisie supported the movement as it weakened the Communist movement, causing division. Ignoring who wanted it to succeed, was what the rebels wanted feasible at this point in time? Absolutely not. The rebels wanted to dissolve the bolshevik influence over the revolution, fracturing it during a bloody Civil War. This would have doomed the revolution, it could not come to pass and not result in Capitalist victory over Socialism.

      Was it possible for there to be a bloodless resolution? Perhaps, but it didn’t. The Bolsheviks did not have the strength to hold courts and answer said rebellion peacefully, nor could they grant the demands of the rebels. Ultimately, the rebels surrendered and turned on the leaders of the revolt.

      They didn’t want “free and fair elections,” they explicitly wanted the bolsheviks disqualified from being elected and dissolved as a party. They didn’t simply want “worker run businesses,” they wanted special privledges in wartime. To pretend that this was all “in the name of vanguardism” and not a crisis of wreckers sabotaging the revolution is pure Red Scare fearmongering. The soviet system dramatically expanded democracy and solidified power in the hands of the working classes.

      Yes, yes, theory, theory and all that; but that doesn’t ignore the fact that empirical realities negate the idealism that communism purport to espouse. Going back to Bertrand Russell’s quote: it quite literally is a veiled attempt to grab power. Actions and end results must comply with idealism but alas, that didn’t happen even in communism.

      Communists reject idealism and vulgar empiricism, instead supporting dialectical materialist analysis that acknowledges the ability for us to unify theory with practice. Having ideals is not the same thing as idealism, which puts ideas over matter. Communism is absolutely, in no way “a veiled attempt to grab power,” instead communists have managed to implement socialism in real life, warts and all, precisely to overthrow the oppressive systems of the past and implement socialism. This has resulted in the dramatic uplifting of billions of workers and peasants, fundamentally different from the results of capitalism.