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How do people actually fall into the "Tankie" mindset? (anarchist.nexus)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by stinky@anarchist.nexus to c/anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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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 :)

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[–] Gosplan14_the_Third@hexbear.net 19 points 1 week ago

A lot of Marxist-Leninists after like 2018 have a strong focus on anti-imperialism as the primary goal. You have strong support for geopolitical adversaries of the United States and if you observe what ML parties do, that is a huge % of their activities. Be it "AES" states, sometimes Russia or some Islamist nationalist movements. In the worst cases, outright a support for "their country" itself. Like Stalin wrote, even "the King of Afghanistan" should be supported against imperialism, and MLs do so consequently.

Memery aids to shape a lot of what comes with it. Be it staunch support of cults of personality past and present, supporting things without investigating at all or of course the moralism.

We'd all be better off if there was more familiarity with what the things that influence us actually say.