the fact that many liberals care more about whether a state is "authoritarian" than whether it lifted massive swathes of its population out of poverty says a lot about their politics. they say China is bad because it's authoritarian and brush aside the 800 million people it's lifted out of abject poverty. they complain that Cuba is "authoritarian", while ignoring that it brought healthcare and education to the masses, who were left to suffer under the Batista regime. at some point you have to realize that you're condemning a country that's run in the interests of the working masses of its population
the kicker is that the marxist-leninist countries being criticised are more democratic than the liberal democracies the critics are comparing them too
Example from today:
