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?
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That was pretty much my journey over the last 5 years or so. I grew up around some actual communists so I never fully internalized the commie bad narrative, but at the same time I didn't think much of it or just thought of it as utopian idealism.
Being disillusioned by Obama and all the revelations regarding our continued war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and then the rise of Trump, the (bad kind of) radicalization of my friend, and the ratfucking of Bernie sent me down the road of educating myself.
For me it started with studying fascism and white supremacy, and the people that fought against those things, the Black Panthers, the early 20th century militant labor movement, and like you I started to realize that the only people that actually fought for good things were communists, socialists, and anarchists.