Like, I've seen many smart people that are even, in theory, supporting of socialism and against imperialism who are well aware that there is a propaganda machine in the US and the west, who when it comes to anything about AES/past socialist states, they will just regurgitate state department propaganda without question.
Like, even if you bring up, for example, Xinjiang, and how virtually all evidence comes from some really bad research by a guy who clearly has an agenda, they will say something along the lines of "maybe that's true, but that doesn't disprove there's a genocide there". Which... is not how burden of proof works. Mind you, these are also people who clearly know about shifting of the burden of proof when it comes to climate change or evolution, but here? Then it's every logical fallacy, no critical thinking.
So what is it about these things that remove critical thinking from otherwise smart people?
yeah every individual person feels the need to have an exactly "correct" moral position on every issue even those they know barely anything about. part of that is for posting, you don't want to post cringe now do you? But it turns into people hearing on the TV "China bad and immoral" and then they think "oh shit, I need to remember that China bad or else I will be cringe"
I don't think anyone in the US really cares about China with everything going on, besides the ghouls at the top. Few people know enough about other countries to seriously analyze the so called evidence they see, so don't even worry about that if you are trying to deprogram. Honestly I think a simple anti-government message that talks about how the United States has an incentive to make up stuff about China because we are in competition works pretty well (for the lib at least, the crazy racist ones idk what to do)