Anarchism

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

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month 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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[–] FunkyStuff@hexbear.net 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You know, Lenin often talked about the necessity to learn from all sources of knowledge, even bourgeois sources. I think it's pretty likely that Anarchists have very decent analysis and critique of capitalism that could be useful for anyone.

But it appears that unfortunately there's no one actually reading it based on how many comments from different users there are in that thread after a couple of weeks. TBH I only participated in Hexbear's anti-imperialist reading group for like 5 weeks myself, I guess it would be a good New Year's Resolution to get back to it.

[–] Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think that's extremely unlikely

[–] FunkyStuff@hexbear.net 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Even if you read it to do exactly the opposite of everything they say, it still has value!