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?
It’s not lemmy.ml as a source, but rather a symptom.
I see two things going on:
There aren’t many that that think that Iran’s goverment is good for Iranian people, but they do see that they are defending their civilization. This umderstanding requires that the observer is able to maintain two observations at the same time, instead of requoring complete black & white intepretations.
When have they ever? When black people were slaves? When women couldn’t vote? When marrying a Chinese man removed your US citizenship? When Leopold collected hands? They have NEVER represented the people. They have only ever represented the war mongering mass murdering extractionists and they have created a safe space for white men and those who do their bidding.
There are literally millions of people that think Iran’s government is good for Iranian people. And the reason is because the LAST time the Iranian people organized a liberal democracy, it was infiltrated by the West, dismantled, and replaced by an extractivist depotism that did the West’s bidding against the will of the people. This current Iranian government has suffered the worst possible assaults at all levels political, economic, and military from the west for over 40 years and still hasn’t been infiltrated or replaced with Western puppets. This is the choice the Iranian people have - this current form of government or Western domination. The West has demonstrated that nothing else will be allowed.
Seems like maybe they’re not actually democratic at all