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 :)

  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
    61·
    21 days ago

    What do you mean by “named specifically?” Either way, I want the end of the era of imperialism, and the completion of the already begun global transition to socialism, and then the global transition to communism. I want a better world, one I believe we are in the long, queer, protracted, messy process of bringing about, and as such I support the movements that further this process.

            • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.todayEnglish
              2·
              21 days ago

              Last question homie, what dafuq is a tankie?

              I’ve gotten loads of answers that pretty much describe them as leftist authoritarians.

              I also read you might be one. So, in your own words. What that?

              • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
                6·
                21 days ago

                I’m not cowbee but I’ll just say that “tankie” is pretty much a meaningless word. It’s like how conservatives call everything they don’t like “woke” even when it’s other conservatives. “Tankie” basically just means “someone on the left that I disagree with”

                It used to refer to a group of communists in Britain who didn’t condemn Khrushchev for sending in tanks to suppress right wing protests in Hungary. Later it became a general term for anyone who had a positive opinion of the USSR. Later it just became a catch-all term for leftists (including anarchists) but nowadays it can even include liberals. It’s kinda meaningless.

                • YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.todayEnglish
                  2·
                  21 days ago

                  Hey! Another name I recognize(but from much earlier today)

                  I’m honestly(heart to sky) not trying to start an argument, as much as an honest conversation.

                  What are your feelings on the Tiananman square incident?

                  • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
                    41·
                    21 days ago

                    I think the government made a mistake allowing the student protests to reach the point that they reached and they probably should’ve cracked down sooner to avoid the number of deaths that ended up happening. JSYK in the Tiananmen square itself there was a peaceful evacuation in June 4 1989, so strictly speaking nothing too newsworthy happened. The actual fighting between protesters and the police/army happened in the streets surrounding the square and that’s where a lot of people were killed. There’s been some useful master-posts on Lemmy explaining the specifics of what went down using accounts from journalists who were in Beijing at that time, let me see if I find them.

                    Edit: https://hexbear.net/comment/5032963

              • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
                61·
                21 days ago

                It’s just a pejorative for those that recognize the legitimacy of socialist states as they exist in the real world, and support them.