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 :)
Actually existing socialism actually exists: imperfect, flawed, with tragic excesses and rightist deviations. But it exists.
And I’m interested in the real world, not creating an ideal world in my head that can’t actually become reality.
Nuance? In my hate thread? You get out of here with that nonsense!
It’s more or less the same position the rest of us “tankies” have. We push back on bourgeois framing of the flaws of real socialism, be it fabrications, exaggerations, or minimizations, but we acknowledge that there are real flaws.
Omg someone who is named specifically!
Can I ask you what you believe/want to happen?
Real talk homie, I’m genuinely curious!
What do you mean by “named specifically?” Either way, I want the end of the era of imperialism, and the completion of the already begun global transition to socialism, and then the global transition to communism. I want a better world, one I believe we are in the long, queer, protracted, messy process of bringing about, and as such I support the movements that further this process.
Someone said your name further up in the comments.
And that sounds dope as fuck from an objective pov.
“Queer” as in complex and not easily defined, though communists are very often queer sexually.
I think I’m going to refer to myself as queer from now on.
Go for it.
And it’s actually dystopian and murderous. because it exists does not make it good . the irony of your name and how hostile they are to lgbt is priceless
Anything’s possible when you make shit up kiddo
How socialist is a system that crushes the working class beneath it’s boot heel, though? Is that really the working class seizing the means of production because that just seems like someone else beating us to the punch and becoming our new overlords.
The working class in China are not being crushed under anyone’s bootheel, though. They really do enjoy a dictatorship over the bourgeoisie, which has been used to great effect to improve working class lives. Yes, a dictatorship of the proletariat as mediated by the party, but vast swathes of the working class people are the party. And those who are not, well, there is a reason the party has an over 90% approval rating and it’s not some disgusting racist trope about Asians being sheep. It is because they’ve watched their quality of life rise by leaps and bounds, repeatedly.
Yes I’m sure the suppressed LGBT really enjoy the weight of that boot as much as you enjoy its taste
Yes, a country that 70 years ago was feudal has some backwards social policy. Is that an own?
The difference betweent China and the west in this regard, is that social justice victories in China are not constantly threatened by right wing parties and far-right Nazis.
Cope harder buddy, nobody buys that shite except you lot.
You should check out hexbear, plenty of pro China queer people there!
Which is naturally a disgusting phenomenon to see queer people support oppression of people like them. But I guess needing to fit in is indeed a strong counter to cognitive dissonance.
Is queer support for Palestinian liberation “a disgusting phenomenon” as well, due to socially reactionary views from Hamas? Nobody supports China’s lacking queer rights, but instead the fact that they are continuously improving, both in general and with respect to queer rights. The major obstacle in China with respect to queer rights are the social conservativism of older generations, it isn’t a fixed, static aspect of China but a phenomenon caused by the new society still needing to overcome lingering elements of the old. It’s the same for Palestine, social progress is something that unfolds over time and is expedited by progressive movements, such as national liberation from genocidal settler colonialism.
Or, maybe, you’re the propagandized person programmed to look for reasons to hate China?
Removed by mod
If nobody believes that China is rapidly improving living conditions for the working class why do Chinese people love their country so much?
The existence of patriots is evidence of improving working conditions now? Daym, USA must be the best country in the world.
It’s not that people who love China exist at all, it’s the fact that they’re 90% of the population.
Removed by mod
I’m nowhere near well versed enough on the topic to chime in. But isn’t this the same excuse people try to throw against supporters of Palestine? “Oh yeah you support ending the genocide in Palestine? Did you know they throw LGBT people off the rooftops”.
Regardless of the truth/inaccuracy of the statement. It seems like it’s not really that relevant to the conversation and just thrown out there as a cheap gotcha. Does the suppression of LGBT individuals mean that their overall quality of life hasn’t improved? Does a country have to be perfect and not have other social changes that need to be worked towards in order to acknowledge progress? This is not an endorsement of China, again I’m not knowledgeable enough on the topic. But just a criticism of this rebuttal.
They didn’t respond but I think the main reason they’re using that specific rebuttal is because the more orthodox argument which goes, “It’s bad to like China because China is even more authoritarian than Western countries” has already been deployed elsewhere in the thread and received a solid enough response. Actually taking that conversation further would require analyzing information from several sources that have conflicting biases, and a lot of effort in general, so the conversation dies there. Other arguments they could’ve used include accusing China of being imperialist, more capitalist than the West, faking their statistics, censorship, not a legitimate government, or something along those lines.
By the time it achieved industrialization, USSR had universal healthcare, free education to the highest level, had abolished unemployment and homelessness, had the lowest income inequality rates seen in the history of the region, and materially supported emancipatory anticolonial movements all over Latin America, Africa and Asia.
Was it imperfect? Yes. Was it the most emancipatory project humanity has ever seen? Absolutely.
Simple, that shit is fictional
You’re judging them while they have the boot heel of Western imperialism on their necks.
There it is! The goalposts just got kicked into another galaxy.
The goalpost is “actually existing socialism actually exists”
That’s it. The fact that it exists under siege simply means that our goal should be to lift the boot off their necks, instead of wasting time criticizing them. Are they imperfect, flawed, with tragic excesses and rightist deviations? Yes. That’s beyond the scope of anything we can possibly do. Our project, if you actually believe in anything other than capitalism, is to use our privileged position within the core to fight for the defeat of the empire: lift the blockades, end the espionage, stop regime change.
Right now it’s Venezuela on the chopping block. You will help them far more by fighting the US than by criticizing Maduro.
Defenses of “AES” always equivocate on whether it is actually socialism.
At best, the term is a deliberate lie, but the situation is much worse.
As soon as the characterization of socialism is challenged, it is walked backed, and the challenger is gaslighted for saying that what was said moments earlier was ever said.
“AES” is a nonsense concept defended by nonsense arguments.
It’s the only socialism that actually exists, hence, actually existing socialism.
So, choose. Do you want capitalism, or the only existing alternative? In Venezuela you can support Maduro, or you can support Trump’s regime change. Those are the only options that exist. Pick one.
You insist it is socialism.
When someone correctly objects that socialism not yet exists, you deflect and make excuses.
Socialism is worker control of production. Chinese workers being employed by companies in China is not socialism.
“AES” is obscurantist nonsense.
China commanded the economy to shut down to implement the zero COVID policies, it likely saved the lives of millions of workers. That’s not something any other continental capitalist country could even attempt, because in capitalist countries the market is in command. There were a few islands (or semi-islands like South Korea) which could boast similar successes, but they were clear outliers that benefited from not having land borders. The rest of us live at the whim of the market and we were all marched to our deaths.
That convinced me that actually existing socialism actually exists. It’s not perfect, with many capitalist compromises and internal flaws, but politics are in command.
When I point out that you have to pick a side, you vacillate. You insist that there aren’t any sides worth choosing so you can avoid dirtying your hands in the real world. You just retreat into the perfect socialism that does not exist and will only ever exist in your head. You have removed yourself from the struggle entirely. You might as well not even exist.
In what way is AES “nonsense?” Countries where public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy and the workint class in control of the state factually exist. It isn’t a “deliberate lie” because you either disagree with that or with the understood definition of socialism.
No, you’re just desperate for an excuse to dismiss valid criticisms
Thanks for the feedback.
You’re welcome!
Removed by mod