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 :)

  • masquenox@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    20 hours ago

    Says the creepos who start speaking in animated gif as soon as anyone points out the gigantic holes in their stories.

        • Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml
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          13 hours ago

          “People who have similar political ideas say similar things to me and I think that’s problem” lol

          • masquenox@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            18 hours ago

            Well, this is just a wild guess… but perhaps it’s got something to do with the fact that I haven’t encountered one of you in the last decade that doesn’t sound just like every other tankie?

            • Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml
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              12 hours ago

              That’s called ideological consistency, the fact that a bunch of people who ostensibly agree on politics and society say similar things is in fact normal, if your cohort doesn’t do that it’s a fairly strong indication that you’re all fucking clueless

            • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              17 hours ago

              But you didn’t read the responses, so are you just skimming through them and responding based on vibes? It seems wrong to land at any concrete conclusions based on that level of investigation.

              • masquenox@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                17 hours ago

                It seems wrong to land at any concrete conclusions

                Any and all conclusions regarding tankie ideology’s political emptiness has already “landed.”

                • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  17 hours ago

                  A few comments before in this thread you criticized “tankies” for being creepos that speak using animated gifs once they’ve run out of arguments. Do you think that responding to someone asking you why you never read the stuff you reply to with crude generalizations to justify never reading is better than a gif reaction?