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 :)

  • belated_frog_pants@beehaw.org
    34·
    4 hours ago

    I predict great things for this thread and a lot of “you just dont understand” coming through.

    $10 says we get “your country lies and the ones we like didnt ever do anything bad”.

    But the pretending that political structures do no wrong is why im not interested in anything the tankies have to say as much as im not interested in what the capitalists have to say.

    “Communist” and capitalist countries sit on piles upon piles of dead bodies of innocents and its comical to me to act like one is better than the other for people who don’t conform.

    Large political structures with single sources of power at the top that dont change for years, completely unchallenged by change, is a shitty dictatorship/oligarchy regardless of what you call it.

    • SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      2·
      4 hours ago

      I too am looking forward to 90% good info with 10% really questionable shit. Actual tankies (not the “leftist I don’t like” variety) remind me of the type of movies where the grandkids find their amazing, sweet grandparents are actually secret cannibals or clowns. Maybe both.

      I’m totally on board, then the authoritarian, murdery shit comes out.