Anarchism

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

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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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[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Pretty standard radicalization pipeline stuff I think. Groupthink gets enforced by mockery and removing dissenting views, accessible memes to get new people interested, sense of community and belonging that is conditional on being uncritical about the dogma. Everything gets framed as being about which side you are on, and discourse is seen as a means to advance the cause and not a way to consider what is true. They are visibly criticizing the US empire, people recognize that as correct and unfortunately buy into the idea that the other side must be the good guys.

[–] F_State@midwest.social 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I find myself endless reminding people that there isn't always a "good guy". Sometimes it's bad guys vs bad guys or bad guys vs worse guys.

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

telling people they are bad people usually doesn't go over well with those people.

most everybody wants to be the hero and be on the side of good. very few people actively seek to be evil, but a lot of them are totally ok doing evil if they think it's for a greater good. mass murder and human suffering is totally justifiable if the goal of it is to advance your utopian beliefs, it's not so justifiable for its own sake.

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Yeah, this is spot on.

It's all about playing into the bias of psychology and controlling the narrative. Truth is to be ignored, and everything/everyone is to be subordinated to the 'cause', which is usually a form of idealism wherein the ends justify the means, no matter how awful the consequences of the means would be.

Hence the 'killing a few million folks is necessary for the 'freedom' of 100 million' types of rationalizations.