Serious post warning, sleep-deprived wall of text ahead.
Someone who I dare say I respect publicly discouraged joining or supporting Lemmy on the basis of being The Tankie Place, linking this raddle post, a collection of horrifyingly flimsy evidence that Dessalines (lemmy.ml admin, maintainer of the wonderful dessalines.github.io/essays/) is a freedom hating redfash tankie who likes it when the evil CCP genocides uyghurs and bans femboys.
Naturally it all sucks but now i’m investing too many brain cells into thinking: how do you even refute this garbage?
I’m not proud of it, but I was an “anti-authoritarian leftist” too. I unironically said “tankie” once. And if i were told there is no Uyghur genocide, i would react exactly as if they had told me there was no holocaust. To the westerner, China really is as bad as nazi germany and straightforwardly saying otherwise, in their mind, is no different than if you replace Uyghurs with jews and China with germany. When this narrative is so deeply ingrained, how do you fight it? How the hell did I get here?
i really have no idea how to address it when, to them as it once was to me, it is so obviously true that anyone suggesting otherwise is not even worth listening to. these are fundamental beliefs and challenging them is grounds for instant block and report. its not open for discussion. all i can do is hope they find the truth on their own.
i’ll stop rambling now and sleep instead. so i wont respond for a while. sorry if theres a better community to post this in i just needed to get this out before i spontaneously combust. good night comrades.
Hello fellow sleep-deprived human! I am not proud of it, but for a brief moment I also thought that way.
What convinced me to reevaluate my views was discovering how brutal the US actions around the world actually are. I already agreed with basic idea of Communism and I thought that whatever Stalin was doing, it could not be much worse than what the US empire did and keeps doing everywhere, so I was curious what other arguments do Marxist-Leninists have.
Understanding that capitalism inevitably leads to imperialism and breeds fascism was another blow that convinced me that whatever happens in China cannot be worse than total society collapse and so on.
I had to peel layers of my prejudice, one at a time, starting from what I considered most believable to least believable. At some point I found myself agreeing with most of the ML talking points and I decided to let my guard down and start reading about provided sources with open mind.
I’m not sure that you can convince someone that there is no Uyghur genocide if they are emotionally invested in this narrative, because, like you pointed out, on emotional level for them it is like Holocaust denial or something similar. Besides, people tend to stick with others who already share their views and bias, so they reinforce their paranoia among each other (just like we reinforce our bias here).
Maybe changing material conditions will make people look for alternatives more seriously and reconsider their views. Maybe some need to actually feel some more effects of capitalism before they engage with a good faith discussion.
Sorry that I have nothing better for you, but I felt like rambling a little.