People will believe some preposterous things to keep their beliefs intact. Capitalists somehow still believe that markets efficiently allocate resources, and any evidence they don’t is chalked up to government interference or whatever. Christians believe that saying “God works in mysterious ways” and/or “that’s the price of free will” accounts for how fucked up the world is. And communists believe that, when a communist does it, it’s not an atrocity.

Dude most leftist I meet in real life can’t even agree on how to eat hotdogs. I love em in my mouth

I dont have an answer on how this happens but it is also frustrating to me. Russian government is straight up fascist and yet you see people coping hard justifying their actions.

Maybe they are unaware that Mao and Lennin are dead and their current leaders are a whole galaxy away from continuing their legacy. (I dont even justify Mao since he was a cruel strongman who killed way too many innocent people once in power).

I believe, all socialist movements are flawed to some extent. But history can teach us to be better. What we need is a new and improved version of socialism, that isn’t anchored around authoritarianism or simply collapses when opposition is strong. After all the previous socialism experiments did have some flaws that would not be an issue with current technology and social awerness. Like management and planning for example. Or supressing of freedom to believe. We don’t need to fall into the same trap as china or russia.

Nostalgia in part and desperation for some form of win. In 1991, the Soviet experiment dismantled itself, no thanks to the tireless efforts of its enemies, but what was once the world’s second superpower became little more than another colony of the West. Its wealth and gains for its peoples sold off to the highest bidder. Liberal academics called it the end of history for a reason.

But there is more to the issue. The Cold War proved there was no lie too great for the West to peddle to destroy its enemy. No boundary it would not cross. I’ve even read Gorbachev once cried in his car because Reagan would not shut up about the Star Wars project at a nuclear disarmament conference. A project we now know was little more than science fiction. Nazis in Ukraine? Read about Operation Bloodstone. They were present in the country way before 2014 and anyone with geopolitical knowledge knew it.

So with Russia it is because Russia, while not the Soviet Union, still occasionally stands up to the United States like the good ole days. This is amusingly a poor reading of Lenin, who made it very clear what his stance was on inter-capitalist conflict. There is nothing wrong with rooting for NATO lose though. Putin himself despises the Soviet legacy. He pulled pensions from the half a million red army women who served, describes Bolshevism as a stab in the back (not-so-subtle dog-whistle there) and only pays it lip services when he remembers most of his country wants it back.

China, on the other hand, is a harder one to explain. Much of what we learn about China in the West is just straight made up. And I mean it. The great firewall isn’t just a pejorative. It protects the sensitive ears of the West from China as much as it protects them from the West. This has been exacerbated by the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia,” which has the express goal of containing China.

Let me ask what wrongdoings of China are being defended? How far back you want to rewind decades of propaganda with the explicit goal of demonizing the country? Or are we speaking of more recent claims like Uyghurs? However, your question was why defend it. I’ll answer that one. Because China still considers itself on the path to Socialism. This isn’t a Russia situation. China still keeps its private sector locked in special economic zones and monitors them heavily. It still prioritizes common prosperity and has provided many third world countries an alternative to the IMF.

China’s road to socialism was always going to be different since it was … on the other side of the world, from where the theories of socialism were written. But Lenin himself described socialism as ascending a high mountain. It might take many tries. Even restarts to get it right but is better China handles its path its way than trying to conform to some stringent imagined idea of what socialism should be. Therefore it is worthy of defense.

“America bad.”

I really don’t know as I can only speculate. While China and Russia are authoritarian society, this criticism could be leveled at Amurica as well. Look at policing in the US and how it is paramilitary. Look at the way we very arbitrarily define what free speech is; largely depending on the amount of money you have. The more money you have, the freer you are. I don’t have praise for China and Russia because their proletariat are suffering too. China is really communist in ideals only. It’s really single-party plutocracy. China could nominally be considered economically capitalist.

Isn’t the idea behind communism and socialist that everyone leads a better quality of life and that we all participate to help each other? My impression is that it should be a very egalitarian and horizontal society versus an authoritative hierarchy. Let’s face it, there’s no such thing as benevolent dictator.

Firstly, because some leftists are authoritarians (or, to be more precise, authoritarian followers). Authoritarian followers like strong leaders and strict rules and have absolutely no problem with the violent enforcement of those rules. As with all authoritarians, freedom is for people like them.

There’s also what I think of as liberals stumbling left. They might work it out eventually but liberals have no analysis of power, so they end up doing politics by keyword. Mainstream centrists do exactly the same (Putin’s communist oligarchy and all that).