this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2025
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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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[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

[–] Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com -3 points 1 week ago (3 children)

epistemic style that treats ideology as a filter that outranks evidence

cultivate the ability to withhold belief when the evidence is thin or messy

flips the direction of inference so that evidence is recruited to serve the framework rather than constrain it

competes with open inquiry

status ritual in which fluency in canonical texts substitutes for empiricism

Imagine unironically typing like that, lmfao

[–] AlexanderTheDead@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

do you often make a habit of mocking people for how they talk or communicate? Not very proletariat of you, elitist scum.

[–] Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com -2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Surely the proletarian way of writing is overly pompous using obscure latinisms?

And no, I don't make a habit of mocking people for how they type, my original response was detailed and serious, but when the commenter above decided to become a smug shit, I lost any reason to respect them.

[–] AlexanderTheDead@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I mean, yes, actually, the pseudo-intellectualism that people like me demonstrate, (which maybe includes a pompous vocabulary to you "actually educated" folk), is the proletarian way of writing. Surely you're not implying that someone privileged enough to get a college education AND spend their time online demeaning people is the proletarian speaker in this conversation?

You lost any reason to respect them? Crazy low barrier. You sure are a person of the people.

See, I'm guilty of that kinda stuff, too. And I'm annoying and preachy like you, too.

[–] mathemachristian@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

CS undergrad I bet, they all talked like that when I had to share lectures with them. It's just funny that this particular specimen is waxing on about data and evidence based thinking and not just doesn't present any but actively ignores it since it's in this very thread 🤣