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 :)

  • davel@lemmy.mlEnglish
    157·
    14 days ago

    These kinds of answers are just the silliest. If you don’t know why we think the things we do—which you obviously don’t—then don’t “contribute” to the conversation with the first thing that pops into your head. It’s okay to not know things.

    • FlyingCircus@lemmy.world
      72·
      14 days ago

      They’re not going to do that, because investigation of socialist positions would require them to confront the cognitive dissonance of their own beliefs. And once you go against mainstream liberal groupthink, you risk being ostracized by people calling you woke a tankie.