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This is the most insidious yet obvious expression of US propaganda for a hot second
(files.catbox.moe)
this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2025
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(Apologies, that was poorly worded on my part - I just meant that this is the view you hold, and people don't (okay, rarely) hold opinions that they don't think are the correct opinions to hold.)
It's sadly all too easy to present someone being excluded because of said odious opinions as the exclude-er only being comfortable in a friendly echo chamber. And unfortunately I don't know that I have a solution to that! But to further further the discussion: I so intensely do not understand how a person who can look past the tens of millions of deaths that Mao is directly responsible for, that I don't actually know why there are any people that can forgive him. I suppose claiming they just believe the propaganda would be the easy answer, or maybe it's that they were on the winning side so the innate human tendency towards tribalism is to blame. Anyone who can look past the atrocities he was responsible for isn't someone I want to understand better.
I think I understand where you're coming from, and we're beginning to circle back around to what caused me to engage here in the first place. Someone that breaks with western orthodoxy surrounding Mao's leadership, and discusses any good things that may have come from his reign, is at risk of being labeled a "tankie", which then serves as the justification for dismissal. They have pushed back against a "nonfalsifiable orthodoxy" (to borrow a phrase from Parenti) in an effort to engage with the nuance of history and perhaps expose another's internalized propagandization.
A historian would necessarily want to look at the complete spectrum of Mao's deeds and legacy, without the need to create a dualistic value judgement in the process. Wholly good? Wholly evil? We tread toward the realm of the propagandist in this desire to oversimplify. No lessons are learned in refusing to engage with opposing opinions, we simply affirm of our own self-righteousness and entrench ourselves deeper into nonfalsifiable orthodoxies.
There are people who celebrate ~~Adolph~~ Adolf Hitler. This is absurdity to anyone who values human life. Only through the exchange of ideas, however, will I have any hope of understanding why an individual might believe such a thing; Only through that understanding can I engage with them using the dialectical method. Often it turns out that these people are edge-lords arguing in bad-faith for a laugh, just kids trolling out of boredom. If, however, the person seems willing to engage genuinely, and if I've the time and inclination for such engagement, then perhaps we both might come away with a better understanding of the world and people around us. I do want to understand neo-nazis, because only in that understanding can I formulate persuasive arguments against their specific positions, perhaps in time leading to an attenuation of such beliefs in society.
Perhaps these Mao apologists you've met believe that, as Julie Burchill put it:
As for what I believe... I'm still in the process of pinning that down.