Many people on lemmy.ml deeply respect and admire authoritarian governments and organizations.
Iran, China, North Korea, Soviet Union…
The West has many flaws. But our flaws are nothing compared to these guys.
Iran hangs homosexuals. Iran shot 30,000 people in less than than 2 weeks. The Soviet Union had to build a fucking Iron wall to prevent people from escaping. The Soviets lied about the Chernobyl nuclear explosion. China censors the internet. China wants to eliminate Islam. North Korea is a totalitarian hellscape. Watching anime is a crime.
Why is lemmy.ml so fascinated with authoritarians?
please read my whole comment before downvoting
Lots of terrible stuff was done by the west/USA, or because of it. These countries you listed are in some ways much worse for their own people than the US is for americans, but mostly don’t terrorize other countries. I think you grossly underestimate the amount of people murdered by US and its allies’ bombs compared to those murdered by their own authoritarian governments.
When you learn about all the horrendous monstrosities some of the goverments do, it’s easy to just dismiss any critique of the West, because at least they are not this evil.
Well, I think the tankies have it just like that, just reversed. When they learned about all the tens of thousands (probably more? idk) innocent people and little kids murdered by the USA in all those countries all in the recent history, and none of our “civilized” countries doing anything about it, they just support any regime that opposes the US, because at least it’s not this evil.
If you have the world mostly divided into two camps, it’s very depressing to acknowledge how evil both are. If you see one’s atrocities first, it’s easy to dismiss the other’s due to it.
Now, some tankies are more fanatical than others, but many of them are similar to liberals supporting the US. They don’t deny some of the flaws of china for example, but they still support it over the US, for obvious reasons. The US supporters also don’t deny some of the war crimes and atrocities, especially after a few years since they happened, but they never see the big picture. They see individual mistakes excusable by the perceived evilness of the enemy.
Tl; dr:
When you said:
you basically answered your question. Just reverse the sides.