I honestly think it's an important skill to develop, being able to defend your ideology from attacks that are based on "vibes" and answering with actually sourced information. It's mostly an exercise to myself that forces me to refresh my knowledge in some contended areas (see the part on "imperialism in central Asia" e.g.). Subjecting oneself to attacks and, also importantly, showing in alternative spaces (like Lemmy) that there's another view of history than the predominant western narrative.

Sadly, the state of affairs is such that communists, when arguing about things, have the burden of evidence because it goes against the status-quo. Collecting said evidence and dismantling the predominant narrative is a good thing IMO. I understand that the format isn't to everyone's liking, but I don't see how it's a bad thing when I'm doing so from a position of historical evidence.