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 :)
Simple answer: The things you think you know aren’t the truth. They’re just propaganda.
Doesn’t this go both ways though?
Not axiomatically. It’s possible to get a clearer picture of material reality by engaging with it and keeping a critical eye towards sources, evidence, and more. The US empire in particular has a stranglehold on english-language propaganda and cultural hegemony, making separating fact from fiction far more complex.