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 :)
Personally, I kept reading and that’s where it lead me. You can be part of the team too, comrade
wishing i had the mao hexbear copypasta bot right now though
Same reason I’m an anarchist 🙂
I’m curious (in a genuine, friendly way) what you read that led you to anarchism over Marxism-Leninism. Was it a theoretical text that reverberated particularly well with you, historical texts that you felt made anarchism a more justifiable position than MLism, something else entirely?
Because for me, like others have answered, it was reading more that led me from identifying as an anarchist to (to me, personally) recognizing MLism as far more theoretically sound and realistic. And to answer my own question, it was mostly reading Lenin that did this for me, but plenty of others helped, from more contemporary advocates like Michael Parenti and Vijay Prashad to actually reading and contemplating the works of the big bad Stalin and Mao themselves.
I still am strongly tied to an anarchist mindset, despite seeing MLism as simply the factually correct position. For example, as someone else (u/axont) in this thread mentioned one difference in irl organizing she’s noticed with both MLs and anarchists is that the latter tends to be more willing to do illegal stuff - let’s just say I am far more likely to side with anarchists in situations where that more immediate tactical question might come up. I’m also a bit more sympathetic to so-called adventurism, given the current political climate and lack of organized left in the west, than most of my ML comrades are.
Still, when it comes to a broader understanding of history, theory, long term tactics, and the support of international AES projects, I can’t come to any other conclusion than that Marxism-Leninism is simply a more accurate lens to see the world through than anarchism is, more theoretically robust as well as being proven a more successful methodology for revolution. And given the phrasing OP used, I also don’t hold the frankly naive and simplistic (not to mention convenient for our bourgeois enemies) view of AES = bad and “authoritarian.”
Two things:
I am autistic with severe trust issues. Not to imply that autistic ==> anarchist, but IMO I “inherited” a great deal of skepticism and distrust from growing up autistic in AmeriKKKa, where basically every interaction is lies all day every day, and systems are optimally designed to maximize capitalist oppression. And frankly, I am not looking for new masters since I already hate the masters I have. So it’s going to be very difficult to rationally convince me that any state is worth supporting, even one that labels itself a dictatorship of the proletariat, or even (especially!) groups that claim to agree with me.
Statistically speaking, anarchism has helped me navigate the world and predict to sufficient accuracy how things are gonna go down in the fields where it applies. If you told me that MLism has statistically helped you like anarchism has helped you, I’d believe you because we all have different experiences, and I guess that’s just how the dice rolled.
nonsense, we all know anarchists can’t read!
/s
i love my anarchist comrades, i promise