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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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[–] Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 16 points 1 month ago

prison labour in laogai

I hate this trend of using scary foreign words to refer to prisons in socialist countries. Soviets didn't have prisons, they had gulags. Chinese didn't have prisons, they had laogai.

I am yet to encounter this applied to fascists, Franco putting political prisoners in cárceles. I guess it's a tool reserved only for left-punching.

mass executions

Weren't most of the executions during Maoism carried out by decentralized grassroots councils of peasants and workers? Isn't this the wet dream of any anarchist?