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?
The problem is that “critical support” effectively boils down to affirmative defense for being a hypocrite, and the entire framework has literally nothing to do with any particular economic system or theory of statecraft. It’s literally just being mad about the cold war in a very weird way which insulates them from self reflection. It’s the exact baggage which keeps leftist ideas marginalized in most of the world.
It’s no accident that .ml is banned in China. Even the world’s most ostensibly successful socialist state understands that this tankie extremism is not helpful.