No, he was a competent leader. Why on earth wouldn't he have counterintelligence operations against the CIA and others? Do you remember what they did to their own citizens during the war "just in case we need to do it to the Soviets and not just black people 😉". Are you advocating defenselessness against the torture regime of the USA?

Who said that

Well you see, I watched half of the yellow lecture and now good thing bad and bad thing good! Its Dialectical Materialism!

Neo-Stalinism is a meme ideology that produces radical liberal bureaucrats, not revolutionaries.

But principled MLs and Maoists are much better at decolonial struggles and centralization than most of the left. And they tend to be much better educated on history and theory than the based Stalinists, and certainly most ambient liberals.

The trick is to learn to tell the difference between aspirational leftists and real ones. The real movement, you can disagree but you have to prove yourself in action because in political struggle the stakes are real. And to be effective we have to work together in evaluating and acting on what is objectively real. But in the real movement, people come from all different backgrounds, and live in all different environments that affects the way they look at social problems.

The people you're arguing with don't understand that the most loyal supporters that Stalin enabled in those early days after the revolution, were later executed/purged on trumped (heh) up charges of anarchism and Trotskyism. They have memorized a few apologetics for why its good actually, or never really happened. Its because they want to be actual practical organizers, but they're still idealists who think repeating certain phrases legitimizes them. The older ML and Maoist organizers know this too, and try to educate where they can but any movement can become sectarian and self referential.

Don't take the bait, the history is deeply contradictory no one really understands how easily it breaks people's brains. Its better not to worry and focus on doing something real