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this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2026
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I can corroborate her, I've met tons of people who defend Cuba because they see it as an underdog basically while calling the PRC and USSR evil empires.
I can't put my finger on this, but I bet there's some psychology behind rooting for the "underdog" and being repulsed by the "powerful"
There's a fair bit of writing on this topic, for example this article
~~There is also this one that more explicitly links this mindset to Christian culture~~
Those are the same essay just published in two different places. It is a banger though
I'm very silly sometimes. I read the first version but not the second. Thank you for the correction.
No worries. It doesn't help that the redsails version changed the title
I have to imagine it has to do with identification. Unless you're at the top of the social order, you're going to identify with the "underdog" to some extent, but few will identify with the powerful. Even at the higher echelons, there's still plenty of people with more power, which can lead one to the false assumption of one's own downtrodden status: hence the difficulty of many white-presenting people to recognize their own privilege, even when it becomes increasingly obvious when bolstered by wealth.
I'll admit that used to be me when I was a radlib but even then I supported Venezuela and Chavez because of how much I hate bush
There's a weird current on the left where you sympathize with Latin American socialists and are willing to consider the material constraints they have to contend with, but you have nothing but disdain for Asian and Russian communists because they didn't just snap their fingers and out of thin air create productive forces and a classless society. I guess it's unexamined Cold War racism?
There's nothing weird about it, it's just good old orientalism.
Huh. Well now I have to do what I always do when confused by confounding situations: Go do some reading. It's hard for me to conceptualize what goes into someone's head to produce such a dissonant view, but it takes all types I guess. Maybe it's incomplete propagandization? Like genetic co-dominance but applied to a worldview.
Yeah, that's my experience too.
I think this also explains why Vietnam is mostly just ignored by these people. It's doing well enough that the "underdog" thing doesn't really work, and it's also not powerful enough to have all that much influence outside its own borders. Doesn't fit any sort of preconceived narrative? Just don't talk about it.