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 :)
It happens with other things. If you hear a new Linux user, a reborn Christian, a new WH4K player, … you’ll hear them say that the “new” thing they like is the best thing in the world and has no flaws. Then you find the flaws and can happen two things: either you grow up and admit it has flaws or you stay a child and ditch that thing for another “new” thing.