Political Memes

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:

Communists may have killed more people than fascists, but we're still not as bad. Communism commits evil when it goes wrong; fascism commits evil when all goes to plan. No one, not even Stalin, ever became a communist in order to do evil, whereas that's the whole point in becoming a fascist.

As for what I believe... I'm still in the process of pinning that down.