this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2025
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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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[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 24 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

Actually existing socialism actually exists: imperfect, flawed, with tragic excesses and rightist deviations. But it exists.

And I'm interested in the real world, not creating an ideal world in my head that can't actually become reality.

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Nuance? In my hate thread? You get out of here with that nonsense!

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's more or less the same position the rest of us "tankies" have. We push back on bourgeois framing of the flaws of real socialism, be it fabrications, exaggerations, or minimizations, but we acknowledge that there are real flaws.

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Omg someone who is named specifically!

Can I ask you what you believe/want to happen?

Real talk homie, I'm genuinely curious!

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What do you mean by "named specifically?" Either way, I want the end of the era of imperialism, and the completion of the already begun global transition to socialism, and then the global transition to communism. I want a better world, one I believe we are in the long, queer, protracted, messy process of bringing about, and as such I support the movements that further this process.

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Someone said your name further up in the comments.

And that sounds dope as fuck from an objective pov.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

"Queer" as in complex and not easily defined, though communists are very often queer sexually.

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think I'm going to refer to myself as queer from now on.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Last question homie, what dafuq is a tankie?

I've gotten loads of answers that pretty much describe them as leftist authoritarians.

I also read you might be one. So, in your own words. What that?

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's just a pejorative for those that recognize the legitimacy of socialist states as they exist in the real world, and support them.

[–] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Can I ask you your feelings on authoritarianism?

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think it's good for the working classes to wield the state against capitalists, fascists, landlords, sabateurs, etc. and a bad thing for those groups to wield state power against the working classes.

[–] Loco_Mex@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

And whats your opinion on Russia invading Ukraine?

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 months ago

I think it's bad that the west installed a Banderite regime in 2014, and that said Banderite regime killed 13,000 civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk for seceding from the new far-right government. The whole war was avoidable, and the best way for it to end is for Kiev to cede the 4 oblasts that already voted to join the Russian Federation, that way Ukrainians don't have to die for wealthy US capitalists and Ukrainian compradors and the people of the Donbass can exist in peace in the country they voted to join.

[–] F_State@midwest.social 0 points 5 months ago (4 children)

How socialist is a system that crushes the working class beneath it's boot heel, though? Is that really the working class seizing the means of production because that just seems like someone else beating us to the punch and becoming our new overlords.

[–] Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 10 points 5 months ago

By the time it achieved industrialization, USSR had universal healthcare, free education to the highest level, had abolished unemployment and homelessness, had the lowest income inequality rates seen in the history of the region, and materially supported emancipatory anticolonial movements all over Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Was it imperfect? Yes. Was it the most emancipatory project humanity has ever seen? Absolutely.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (18 children)

You're judging them while they have the boot heel of Western imperialism on their necks.

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[–] Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 months ago

Simple, that shit is fictional

[–] LemmeAtEm@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The working class in China are not being crushed under anyone's bootheel, though. They really do enjoy a dictatorship over the bourgeoisie, which has been used to great effect to improve working class lives. Yes, a dictatorship of the proletariat as mediated by the party, but vast swathes of the working class people are the party. And those who are not, well, there is a reason the party has an over 90% approval rating and it's not some disgusting racist trope about Asians being sheep. It is because they've watched their quality of life rise by leaps and bounds, repeatedly.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Yes I'm sure the suppressed LGBT really enjoy the weight of that boot as much as you enjoy its taste

[–] Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 8 points 5 months ago (11 children)

Yes, a country that 70 years ago was feudal has some backwards social policy. Is that an own?

The difference betweent China and the west in this regard, is that social justice victories in China are not constantly threatened by right wing parties and far-right Nazis.

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[–] Gorillazrule@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 5 months ago

I'm nowhere near well versed enough on the topic to chime in. But isn't this the same excuse people try to throw against supporters of Palestine? "Oh yeah you support ending the genocide in Palestine? Did you know they throw LGBT people off the rooftops".

Regardless of the truth/inaccuracy of the statement. It seems like it's not really that relevant to the conversation and just thrown out there as a cheap gotcha. Does the suppression of LGBT individuals mean that their overall quality of life hasn't improved? Does a country have to be perfect and not have other social changes that need to be worked towards in order to acknowledge progress? This is not an endorsement of China, again I'm not knowledgeable enough on the topic. But just a criticism of this rebuttal.

[–] Loco_Mex@sh.itjust.works -1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

And it’s actually dystopian and murderous. because it exists does not make it good . the irony of your name and how hostile they are to lgbt is priceless

[–] Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml -1 points 5 months ago

Anything's possible when you make shit up kiddo