cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25378355

“No bro you see no one was turned into gore paste IN the square itself, it was the SIDE streets, and besides, they should have Just Complied anyway, so it’s all Western lies”

  • audrbox@beehaw.org
    2·
    28 minutes ago

    Is it so hard to believe simultaneously (a) that a powerful, authoritarian state entity did a violent, fucked up thing that it doesn’t want people to know about and (b) that western media has a vested interest in making Chinese communism look bad so probably significantly exaggerated parts of their reporting of it? I don’t understand why this causes a whole fight every time. I’d argue most states have done something as terrible, if not more so, so why does this particular event need to be both attacked and defended so heavily?

    • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
      1·
      6 minutes ago

      Honestly, this.

      Speaking as a “tankie,” people go too far if they deny that anything happened at all. It was a significant and controversial event, enough that Deng Xiaoping himself resigned over it. But what I don’t get is why people are so obsessed with it, when the shit that happened under Mao was way worse, and this happened so long ago. I think people are just uneducated and disinterested in Chinese history, so they’re vaguely aware of like to three events from it that they name-drop endlessly to own the tankies. It’s such a tiresome and repetitive subject, and the obsession shuts down more intelligent, nuanced discussion about China and global politics.

    • volodya_ilich@lemm.ee
      7·
      6 hours ago

      “In general, state media from the west reliable portrays its geopolitical adversaries” is one hell of a take regardless of your opinion on this topic

  • Prandom_returns@lemm.ee
    2·
    6 hours ago

    Hmm, so many tagged accounts in the comments… It’s like the same handful of dudes under each Tiananmen mention… Hmm, what could that mean? I wonder.

    • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
      10·
      7 hours ago

      I guarantee you nobody who believes Tank Man was run over, and then the military boxed everyone in and machinegun’d tens of thousands of protesters is going to watch this. Why would they? They already know exactly what happened.

      • kuato@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        5 hours ago

        Your satire is going to go over most of these people’s heads.

        They also think it is the Chinese who are “brainwashed” NPCs, whilst they swim in propaganda and question nothing.

        People not only don’t know what’s happening to them, they don’t even know that they don’t know. — Noam Chomsky

  • Carrolade@lemmy.worldEnglish
    41·
    14 hours ago

    It is kinda weird. We don’t have any problems talking about our historical atrocities, unless your community is really, really conservative. I first learned about the Trail of Tears in elementary school, we even took a field trip to a historical location on it. That’s some heavy shit for a little kid. We didn’t go into all the gory details, but the wide scale of the suffering and betrayal we committed was covered.

    Even into current events, American bombs falling on Gaza was a big deal.

    • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
      15·
      11 hours ago

      We don’t? Aren’t conservatives fighting hard to whitewash history, and aren’t they winning? Teaching the truth about historical racism is “Critical Race Theory.”

    • NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone
      1·
      6 hours ago

      History in British schools is often the civil war, often corn laws and the agricultural revolution, often Romans, but never Empire.

      • Carrolade@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        5 hours ago

        … really? Even we learn a fair bit about the British Empire, though I suppose Anglo-American history is somewhat intertwined, so it makes sense. We covered Magna Carta, 100 Years War, Henry VIII, then some British Empire. And the World Wars of course.

        We don’t really go over the Commonwealth nations that much, but we definitely touch on Britain quite a lot. Though we did cover Indian Independence a little bit, Gandhi and all that, if memory serves.

        Glazing over the largest empire ever created on our planet seems a little odd to me though, especially when its your own. That’d be like Greek kids not covering Alexander.

    • FundMECFSOP
      18·
      14 hours ago

      Really? The censorship is nowhere near as bad as China. But there are so many things that just aren’t commonly taught that are atrocious. From the forced sterilisations of disabled people upto the 70s, to US war crimes against civilians, to things like COINTEL PRO.

      Sure comparatively (US wise) far left communities seem to be aware of them, like on lemmy, but it’s nowhere in the mainstream US discourse.

      • ShareMySims@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        17·
        13 hours ago

        From the forced sterilisations of disabled people upto the 70s,

        Still happening, both in US and EU (couldn’t find a good source on the UK, though I don’t doubt it happens, instead have this horrible statistic Disabled people’s Covid-19 death rate as much as 11 times higher than non-disabled people because we’re not seen as worth saving), and certainly in most other countries too.

        And this is just disabled people, Indigenous people (in Canada too, of course), immigrants in detention are still being forced/coerced sterilised, as well as several other marginalised groups targeted in different ways (like systemic racism that leads to higher mortality rates of Black birthing parent and babies during and after pregnancy, UK US Canada).

        And to go back to what the op of the thread said, the Trail of Tears, is like the tiniest tip of a monstrous iceberg of ongoing genocide, and that monstrous iceberg is just one of many floating in the American ocean of white supremacist atrocity (and before the Americans get defensive, Yes, other countries do atrocities too, yes citizens there/here are also taught a whitewashed version of history that serves to maintain the state, you may not be alone, but you’re absolutely no better than anyone else).

        • FundMECFSOP
          4·
          8 hours ago

          Fucking hell what a saddening rabbit hole. Thanks for sending.

          Proves the point of how erased this shit is!

          • ShareMySims@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            6·
            12 hours ago

            Yeah, unfortunately I’ve been down it before, and the more you look, the worse it gets (I could have included so many more countries and atrocities, but it was too depressing to keep reading through these statistics)…

            And you’re exactly right, it’s a reflection of just how much shit gets swept under the rug either by the establishment and its authorities because it reflects badly on them (and tor they don’t want to stop doing whatever horrible thing it is they’ve been getting away with), or by bigots in society who are either happy to remain ignorant, or worse, actively deny anything is happening because the existing structure gives them some level of comfort and privilege (which is of course one of the many ways those in power keep us divided to maintain said power).

            The saying goes “those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”, which is precisely why we aren’t taught it properly (and some of it gets deliberately omitted or even erased).

      • Carrolade@lemmy.worldEnglish
        8·
        14 hours ago

        We also had discussions on war crimes, though that wasn’t until high school.

        This was before 9/11, so the War on Terror had not happened yet. It was mainly focused on Vietnam. We did learn about some of the covert stuff, but most of it was not covered.

        I agree none of it is part of mainstream US discourse, but neither is the vast majority of the things covered in history class. This reflects American anti-intellectualism overall imo.

        • spencerwi@lemm.ee
          6·
          14 hours ago

          Yeah, there’s a difference between “information that is not discussed because you’ll get a visit from the cops” and “information that is not discussed because, though it’s freely available, people don’t care enough to learn it.”

          • kuato@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            6 hours ago

            And where did you learn that in China you’ll be visited by the cops?

            You learned if from the very same Western cold war propaganda machine we’re talking about. And you accepted it as fact without a thought.

      • Draces@lemmy.world
        4·
        14 hours ago

        Its a long list of atrocities and only so much that can fit into a curriculum. Also wildly different standards school to school. My public school in the North East was pretty good about it

        • Clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          3·
          12 hours ago

          The bigger point in the context of this thread, I think, is that none of that is suppressed information. It’s all on Wikipedia! It would be good for your country’s misdeeds to be at least briefly run over in high school, but to say the american government reacts to this kind of thing the same way that the Chinese gov’t does is whackadoodle.

          • Draces@lemmy.world
            3·
            11 hours ago

            I would say the South’s reactions to critical race theory and it’s own history is verging on information suppression. Still not as bad as explicit as the eula from a Chinese based company though.

  • liyunxiao@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    14·
    12 hours ago

    It’s taught in every single school, information about it is online. It’s just not the western lie invented in the 2000s that it was unarmed peaceful kids versus tanks that were called in for no reason… They literally stole military weapons and massacred civilians then took over and barricaded themselves in a local school more than dozen cops died.

    The famous tank man photo? That guy wanted the tanks to stay to make sure the area was safe. He was protesting them leaving. There’s video of him that I guarantee people like you haven’t seen despite it being on YouTube.