this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2025
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Anarchism

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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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[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 19 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I don't have "dream states." No socialist country has ever or will ever be perfect. If we look at Cuba, they originally criminalized homosexuality. However, because Marxism-Leninism is an emancipatory ideology, socialist states generally were more progressive than the regimes they replaced, and continued to improve. Cuba now has one of the world's most progressive and queer friendly family codes, and has apologized vehemontly for how they treated queer people in the mid-20th century. By placing the working class in control, social progress is expedited.

As for "dissidents," the large majority were landlords, slavers, fascists, capitalists, murderers, terrorists, etc. I won't cape for them, and instead state that it's sheer brutal necessity that building up state power in socialist society is a necessary evil to protect the gains of socialism.

[–] unfreeradical@slrpnk.net -2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

As for “dissidents,” the large majority were landlords, slavers, fascists, capitalists, murderers, terrorists, etc.

"Terrorists" seems general enough to include anarchists.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn't. Anarchists largely joined the red army and the bolsheviks, with a minority joining the whites or forming their own cells. There wasn't a blanket "kill anarchists for thought crime" order, nor did the soviets sit back when groups like Makhnovschina started their banditry against soviet villages and camps.

[–] unfreeradical@slrpnk.net 0 points 1 week ago

I admire the inclusivity.