this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2025
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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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[–] Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 27 points 1 week ago (2 children)

A lot of people get fed up with slow or no progress, so they fall for supporting approaches that "get things done." Even though they go very wrong, and by that point, some are too lost in the sauce to admit it's wrong or severely off-base.

Being involved in anarchist and decentralized leftist orgs, it's very discouraging how few people care and how little power we have.

Often times it takes weeks of planning and everybody's collective effort and spare resources to provide meals to a few dozen people, or to host a single information booth or class at a larger leftist meet up.

After years of that, the temptations of centralized power to just dictate to the masses what will happen is very strong. The justification goes something like, "yeah there are a ton of problems with XYZ, but at least they are accomplishing ABC!"

I feel it too when I look around my country of the USA. Sure China is State-capitalist, authoritarian, pseudo-dystopian police state, and super politically repressive. But god damn it, they have some of the best public transport in the world, a kickass tech and manufacturing sector, solid public healthcare, and the actually imprison and even execute billionaire scumbags...

When I have to encounter the level of American idiocy on a weekly basis, listen to the most asinine politicians and talking heads, and endure capitalist bootlicking propaganda everywhere, I start to get really tempted to advocate for the China way...

[–] FunkyStuff@hexbear.net 13 points 1 week ago

I think you're probably the only person in this thread that's actually tried to put yourself in our shoes and see things from our perspective. I still disagree with calling China a capitalist country and I think calling a nation-state terms like authoritarian, police-state, etc is redundant. But thanks for actually thinking it through and not making it a pure us vs them issue.

[–] F_State@midwest.social 0 points 1 week ago (4 children)

So it boils down to "at least the trains run on time"?

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 27 points 1 week ago

No it boils down to "we kicked the Japanese fascists out and have a pretty decent standard of living now compared to the rest of the world"

[–] eskimofry@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

Not OP but I think they are sold on the "consequences for billionaires" part

[–] worhui@lemmy.world -3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago)