It’s fascinating to me how the same people who like to do purity tests for China or Vietnam claiming they’re not actually communist are also the ones who’ll defend places like US or Canada saying yeah it’s not perfect, but it’s the ideal of the system that matters.
It’s such an incredible example of cognitive dissonance. These people able to recognize that their own system doesn’t live up to the ideal they have in their heads, but still treat it as a valid interpretation of the idea, but when it comes to a system they dislike then the same logic doesn’t apply all of a sudden.
It is always very strange. They attribute an almost lib-like mentality to these reforms. Treating them like evil Deng or Le Duan took over the country and forced them to stop being socialist, and everyone just…went along with it. Denying these nations agency or looking at their actions in the context of the time. They just act like Deng woke up one morning, rubbed his hands together cackled evilly about how he “must destroy that gang of four, and their dumb dog too!”