I was talking to a colleague of mine, granted, he's an economics guy, but he seems really progressive and thoughtful. However, something about communism, and he went full on dummy brain.
Like, talking about the communist party of China, was uncritically saying the violence and body count speak for themselves, and how awful and repressive the authoritarian government is. I didn't push him on it, but I am sure he would uncritically recite us propaganda - after fully agreeing with me that the US media is the most successful propaganda machine in history.
Anyway, I shouldn't be surprised, but it is still insane to me.
My older brother had a phase where he wore an SS officers hat around the house as a "joke" for a few months. It still makes me sad that I'm probably going to have to kill the guy I buttboarded down the stairs as a kid with, even if he turned out to be an asshole.
I feel that way about war a lot, and those images of Nazis in WW2 joking around in their bunkers after or before battle always makes me sad because most of those guys were probably relatively normal and decent (as in, they were probably inclined to Nazism but they weren't ready to genocide you) before everything went to mondoshit and the conditions for the rise of Nazism came about