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

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks 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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[–] starelfsc2@sh.itjust.works -1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Brother this took me 15 seconds to find, this is very low effort astroturfing https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/22-08-31-final-assesment.pdf

e: also all the interviews with matching details https://www.npr.org/2018/11/13/666287509/ex-detainee-describes-torture-in-chinas-xinjiang-re-education-camp But again the entire UN agrees this is happening, and the only one who says it's not is the country that benefits from saying it's not.

[–] mathemachristian@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Ok? I had already seen that report. My point was that these tankies don't just linkdrop some ad hoc google results but repeatedly provide deep insight with a lot of context. If the original commenter didn't even put in the effort of googling the primary source but davel has this sourced historical write up it is clear to me who has put in more time into researching this topic. If this keeps happening repeatedly and consistently one starts to question the default narrative and starts to look into it oneself. And from there it starts to unravel.

[–] mathemachristian@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 2 weeks ago

No, there is only a handful of countries that believe there is a genocide. I don't even know how many still use the word "genocide" and how many just silently dropped it.