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

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months 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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[–] mathemachristian@lemmy.blahaj.zone 23 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (21 children)

Edit: The amount of conjecture and thought terminating cliches in this thread is through the fucking roof lmfao. Peak reddit.

A lot of tankies are actually posting how and why they believe what they believe. If anyone's seriously interested in an answer look at this thread from https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/60633370?scrollToComments=true

There are 206 comments in total at this time.

My journey started here:
https://hexbear.net/comment/3763871

How they piqued my interest:
https://hexbear.net/comment/5606499

The reason I switched:
https://hexbear.net/comment/5355388

It was a combination of them just not being horrible "redfash" monster everyone says they are, them being able to consistently back up their seemingly "obviously wrong" takes and me and seemingly no one else being able to come up with better answers.

In discussions tankies were the only ones who had good faith discussions, obviously they didn't always, but if it wasn't just an internet slapfight the tankies were the ones citing sources and having incredibly nuanced understandings while me and the other libs didn't really. All I ever saw was a "nuh-uh" backed up by "obvious" claims that "everybody" knows like your "mao zedong was the worst mass murderer".

There is a post I could make about this "black book of communism" statistic now, having read about these sorts of claims, but not on my phone.

[–] Loco_Mex@sh.itjust.works -1 points 3 months ago (2 children)

So you support Russia invading Ukraine, China doing a genocide?

Because that’s literally what Tankies believe in

[–] mathemachristian@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 3 months ago

I didn't support Russia until I learned the history of the region going back to 2013. Now I critically support it like most other marxists.

I used to condemn China for committing genocide until I learned that it actually isn't. Even installed xiaohongshu and could see for myself.

That's what I meant by

tankies were the ones citing sources and having incredibly nuanced understandings while me and the other libs didn’t really.

See this comment for an example of a typical debate between a tankie and a lib.

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