What you said is all true. And most of the tankies I’ve come across seem to hold their beliefs mostly due to learning about and needing to confront the hypocrisy that you’ve outlined.

But in my opinion, they come to some strange conclusions. For example, it seems to me that many hold Russia and especially China up as some kind of shining beacon of hope, and miss that they are just as bad as the US, if not worse, just in different ways.