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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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[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 26 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Standard of living is quite high and rapidly rising. For example, purchasing Power in 2022 was 25 times higher than 1978. The gap between rural and urban development has long been acknowledged and is already something worked on. The famous poverty eraducation campaign was focused on just that. Read The Metamorphosis of Yuangudui to see what that looks like in practice.

Another consistent metric is perceptions of democracy and support for the CPC. Over 90% of Chinese citizens support the central government, and ranks far higher than western countries on perceptions of democracy:

For more reading, The East is Still Red, Socialism in Power: On the Theory and History of Socialist Governance, and Socialism With Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners are all great for understanding how the PRC works. ProleWiki's page on the People's Republic of China is also good if you just want an in-depth summary.

[–] 87Six@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thanks! That's a lot to go through

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 week ago

No problem! The PRC is guided by Marxism-Leninism, so if you want a primer, you can check out the first few sections of my intro ML reading list.