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 :)

  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
    1·
    4 months ago

    Uh, I don’t think you understood their point. Tankies aren’t communists, they’re authoritarians with a red paint job. We’re not talking about nuanced Marxist thinkers, we’re taking about people who think “Just line everyone who doesn’t accept my exact interpretation of communism up against the wall” is rational praxis.

    This is the original comment I replied to, which is a strawman. The people that think “Just line everyone who doesn’t accept my exact interpretation of communism up against the wall” is rational praxis don’t exist in any significant numbers, yet the word “tankie” is thrown around willy nilly these days.

    There are plenty of ways to rationally arrive at Communism, but really the only way to get to Tankie is, as the top comment says, rejecting Western propaganda in favor of the propaganda of so-called “communists”.

    This argument is that existing socialist states aren’t to be trusted and are equally bad, but becoming a communist isn’t just about agreeing with a nice picture of it in our heads, but to also see what communists have done in real life.

    The original comment was itself a strawman, and you didn’t offer any compelling argument beyond “extremists exist,” which is true but not relevant. We aren’t talking about outliers, but a common phenomenon, that being communists on the fediverse that uphold existing socialist states and are called “tankies” for it.

    • AlexanderTheDead@lemmy.world
      01·
      4 months ago

      How do you think replying to someone else’s comment is, in any way/shape/form, relevant to the strawman arguments you propped up against me to deflect against my entire comment? Here, I’ll make you read it again. Maybe this time you can meaningfully respond to it.

      Because even if the statement was hyperbole when referring to the majority of the tankie population, it still rings true for some of them- an inconvenient truth that you outright denied initially and were forced to backpedal on/reframe.

      Most rational people are going to see this, see someone obviously using hyperbole, see someone obfuscating reality to serve their purposes, and dismiss you outright.

      Beyond that, while it IS hyperbole to say tankies as a monolith believe in executing political dissidents, it is NOT hyperbole to say tankies as a monolith continue to support several states which DO believe in executing political dissidents.

      I wouldn’t color myself an anarchist necessarily, but I do find myself increasingly believing that anarchists are, for the most part, some of the only internally consistent ideologues. Fuck all states seems to be the only reasonable position when all existing states fucking suck.

      Edit: here’s a hint in being consistent. You cannot literally interpret another person’s words when it benefits you and choose to respond with a wishy-washy non-literal deflection that requires reframing to fit the prompt.