just dismiss it without rebuttal and take the Western media’s word at face value

The former is true, the latter very much not so. There’s only so much historical revisionism and selective reading one can take before, indeed, categorising a source as untrustworthy and not worth the bother. Tankies cross that threshold quickly if you know anything about actual USSR history… just as the other side does with their black book.

This “listen to and engage with all sides no matter how dishonest their engagement is” sounds rather lib-pilled to me, TBH.

I don’t think the FUD spread over their beliefs helps any of us, and while they may be ML instead of anarchist or liberal, this culture also helps ensure that anti-racism, anti-transphobia, anti-capitalism,

You cannot be anti-capitalist and simultaneously stan the CCP, or state capitalism in general, doesn’t compute. Those devs are also deleting threads about things like homophobic laws in Russia – while they’re themselves pro queer rights they also can’t countenance any kind of critique of Russia.

That’s two-faced and intellectually dishonest.

Manufacturing Consent

OMG Noam Chomsky. You know he’s a persona non grata in Europe for his genocide denial? He’s also guilty of that “USA bad therefore anti-USA good” type of thinking, the hard-left kind of American exceptionalism. He should’ve stuck to formal linguistics.

If you want to read American Anarchists may I recommend Bookchin.