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 :)
Simple answer: The things you think you know aren’t the truth. They’re just propaganda.
Doesn’t this go both ways though?
Everyone uses propaganda, so yes, always be critical of every source. But once you know what a sources biases are, there can still valuable information to be learned from them.
When sources contradict each other, as in the case of tankies vs. Lemmy, deciding which sources to trust can be complex and nuanced. Generally though, it comes down to sources who usually have a vested interest in the continuation of capitalism and often are outright fascists, versus sources who are communists and believe in equality and the betterment of all humanity.
In other words, qui bono?
cool ad hominem & appeal to unreliable authority fallacies. truth doesn’t ultimately rely on authority, but their arguments, so it comes down to evaluating their arguments directly.
if so, then their conclusions are true.
if you’re only going by authority when an argument is provided & facts can be verified, then you’re vibe-thinking.
Apologies, I assumed it would be obvious that each source should be evaluated for the facts and arguments on their own merits.
I was talking about the times when documentary evidence is conflicting or doesn’t exist, which is when gauging the reliability of the source and their material interests and motivations becomes the most useful way of parsing fact from fiction.
it does lol, the fact tankies are downvoting people in this thread kinda proves it.
The “tankies” are getting downvoted too, though. The fact that people are downvoted doesn’t really mean there’s a direct connection to the truth of their statements, but how the reader responds to those statements.
Not axiomatically. It’s possible to get a clearer picture of material reality by engaging with it and keeping a critical eye towards sources, evidence, and more. The US empire in particular has a stranglehold on english-language propaganda and cultural hegemony, making separating fact from fiction far more complex.