I have been a lurker here on lemmy for a while and I have hesitantly made an account because I wanted to create a post on politics.
I want to preface this by saying, I lived a childhood being indoctrinated on politics. I was constantly being told that free markets are the pinnacle of human intellect and that free markets (in literally an absolutist way on every aspect of life) is the only way that leads to progress. It honestly took me a while to challenge these beliefs with I attribute to Shaun and Hbomberguy on youtube, and eventually embrace leftist ideas in my personality.
When the recent drama regarding the Uighur muslims occured recently I was a bit let down. I have looked around and saw posts that I understand to be supportive of the CCP in China and other communist states.
So here is my question. Why? Even if we forget about the Uighur, what about the Tianamen square massacre? Is that also false information? China’s tightening grip on hong kong despite being met with resistance from people of Hong Kong, is that also false information? The repercussions of Mao’s leadership? The complete absence of gay and trans rights in modern day China? China being a police state? Is that all false propaganda?
If your answer might be that western states have also failed to protect the interests of common people, I agree. I think western states do see a resurgence of far right movements exactly for this reason. But this is not a comparison of who is the worst.
Why exactly do people here (at least that is what I perceive) turn a blind eye to the brutalities of an authoritarian government such as the CCP?
How do you define support? Have you looked into dialectical materialism? One can support *an entity and still see the contradictions, and still strive for the resolution of these contradictions. This is said a lot - communism is not a religion. It is not a static set of rules and principles. It is a science, and it aims to resolve the contradictions of capitalism through materialist means. We should not succumb to the black and white dichotomy that monotheism has been instilling into us.
When I say support, I want to describe the “western propaganda” argument. That my perspective is skewed because I have only been influenced by media in European countries (where I live) and the US.
I mean, ok, I can make an attempt to reconsider. But then I see the same pattern. “Incident A” was not as bad as portrayed by media, “Incident B” the same, and so on. It ends up demanding that I change my perspective of history, which I am not willing to do, because it really is too much to ask for.
I am sure that upon examination of history, people here will unequivocally condemn the massacre that happened in Nanking during WW2 by the then japanese imperial army. But when discussing the tianamen square massacre, it was suddenly not that bad?
This gives me exactly the same feeling as nationalist apologia. We were the good guys when we inhabited this land (completely neglecting possible harm to others), and other nations were bad when they attacked our beautiful country.