Date of 4 June remains one of China’s strictest taboos, with government using increasingly sophisticated tools to censor its discussion
There is no official death toll but activists believe hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed by China’s People’s Liberation Army in the streets around Tiananmen Square, Beijing’s central plaza, on 4 June 1989.
The date of 4 June remains one of China’s strictest taboos, and the Chinese government employs extensive and increasingly sophisticated resources to censor any discussion or acknowledgment of it inside China. Internet censors scrub even the most obscure references to the date from online spaces, and activists in China are often put under increased surveillance or sent on enforced “holidays” away from Beijing.
New research from human rights workers has found that the sensitive date also sees heightened transnational repression of Chinese government critics overseas by the government and its proxies.
This is just my personal experience:
~I was talking to a few young Chinese. They were after born after the massacre happened.~
“Why are Hong Kong people are so full of themselves and rebellious? They think they are better? (Derogatory comments…”, cheating among themselves, happily.
I couldn’t help and interrupted, “Some young promising Hong Kong students were murdered, beaten and kidnapped under the mainland China. You can’t blame them for not being defensive.”
Immediately they resorted to their memorised response, “Do you have any resources to back up what you said? The official death count was zero.”
Of course there was no “official” news resources. China suppresses the news media.
"It is the same as Tiananmen massacre. You won’t find any “official resources " but everyone knows people were killed.”
Another one retorted, “The official number is zero. What official resources you have to backup your claim?”
It was useless to talk anymore at that moment. I left. My encounter probably would be on their “report.”
I find it pretty rare to meet Chinese people like that. Most of the ones I meet know that stuff happened isn’t that the government covered it up but they don’t think that the government covering things up is all that unusual or newsworthy.
As an American I think it’s helpful to put this into some sort of perspective.
Things the US won’t forget:
- Tiananmen Square (thousands dead)
Things the US will forget:
-
Korean War (3mil civilian dead)
-
Vietnam War (2mil civilian dead)
-
Iraqi War (1mil civilian dead)
-
Violent overthrow of East Timor (widely considered a genocide)
-
Violent overthrow of Afghanistan (twice, over 1 mil dead)
-
Violent overthrow of Nicaragua
-
Violent overthrow of Grenada
-
Violent overthrow of Panama
-
Violent overthrow of Libya
-
Coup d’etat of Guatemala
-
Coup d’etat of Iran
-
Failed Coup d’etat of Syria
-
Failed Coup d’etat of Indonesia
-
Many failed Coup d’etat attempts on Cuba
-
Coup d’etat of Congo
-
Coup d’etat of Laos
-
Coup d’etat of the Dominican Republic
-
Coup d’etat of Iraq
-
Coup d’etat of Brazil
-
Successful Coup d’etat of Indonesia (1 mil dead)
-
Coup d’etat of Chile
-
Multiple Coup d’etat of Bolivia
-
Coup d’etat of Haiti
-
Multiple Coup d’etat attempts on Venezuela
-
Coup d’etat of Palestine
-
Mass civilian casualties, destabilization of many governments, people subject to a lifetime of torture without a trial, all under the War on Terror
This list could be so much longer, but I gotta get to work.
That shit gets brought up all the fucking time, in their own threads. Notice how people don’t bring up Tiananmen Square, Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong, the Uyghurs, or the many other atrocities the CCP has committed whenever an American atrocity gets mentioned.
Your comment ignores the context that the US is doing anti-Chinese propaganda here, and there is no parity.
Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot, and China was releasing PR statements on every anniversary of every US atrocity. They would still be issuing multiple statements every day.
China is also doing anti-American/anti-West propaganda. It’s just favored differently because of different cultural values of the target audience. Still stinks the same.
How is the US doing “anti-Chinese propaganda”?
Every time the US president says “CHAYYYNNA”, I consider that anti-Chinese propaganda.
What? What that fuck are you talking about and how is it relevant to the tiananmen square massacre?
It isn’t relevant. I’m just making fun of your president.
I don’t have a president.
All the fucking time? Really? When was the last time the Coup d’état against Aristide was discussed around here?
Post about it on it’s anniversary then. Don’t bring it up as a whataboutism in unrelated threads.
I didn’t bring up anything, the comment you responded to did. My comment was my first intervention in this thread and I was responding to you specifically. You said that things like that get brought up all the time. I am asking you for the receipts. When was the Haitian coup d’état brought up before today?
WHATABOUT.
Name a more iconic duo than tankies and misinformation.
Add to the list the US support of the Israeli war crimes currently going on in Gaza. Just yesterday they vetoed a ceasefire and delivery of aid proposition in the UN.
This makes perfect sense, it’s one thing for Taiwanese and Chinese people to remember it but its absolute hypocrisy for the west to comment. Especially as they fund the genocide in Gaza and Western Liberals make excuses for it.
No, it doesn’t. Only people who are full shit use and defend this fallacy. People who have principles call out shitty behaviors and actions whenever they see them, that’s because principles are universal. If you selectively choose when to apply them, then you don’t believe in them.
If you acturally call out genocide and shitty practices wherever you see it than its being principled. If you only call it out when a “bad” country does its hypocrisy, and tbh I have seen people do the later far more often while claiming the former.
Tell me, when Western Europe plunders the global south to subsidize their social programs do you complain? Or when the Zionist Occupation slowly takes more land away from the natives? What about the western funded dictators committing genocide across the third world and selling their nations for scraps?
Do you acturally call for freedom, an end to the exploitation, or do you demand a compromise? Do you demand native Palestinians give up half their land to the occupation? Africans half their resources to Europeans? And dictators to kill half as many minorities?
When somebody supports said “bad” countries, they’ll view any instance of these countries being called out for any shitty actions as hypocrisy. What this actually shows is that these people are in fact hypocrites themselves. If they were principled, then they would’ve acknowledged the shitty actions of whatever country is pointed out and moved on. Instead, they go on they go on the brainless rants that are filled with fallacies to distract from the original issue and dismiss criticism, misinformation, and endless crying about how the country being called out is a victim for the atrocity they committed. These rants don’t change the reality of the issue being raised originally.
This entire post is about western governments who are currently engaging in genocide calling out an event in China that if you look at the proper context is bad but not an atrocity
the Tiananmen Square Massacre,
“not an atrocity”
yep, tankies gonna tank.
No the post is about the Chinese massacre.
By all mean call out genocide but it’s not relevant in post.
Don’t try to dismiss criticism of one massacre and its continuous censorship by bringing up another massacre.
Least braindead Marxist
I can critize and dislike the US involvement in Korea, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, AND the Tiananmen Square massacre.
I can rank which ones killed more people, but no one should be committing any crimes against humanity like these regardless of scale
It’d be a bit like if China and it’s entire sphere once a year went crazy commemorating the Kent State or Haymarket Massacre. They wouldn’t be wrong to say these are bad things, but it’d clearly be in service of some ulterior motive.
Honestly, even with an ulterior motive, I see no reason they shouldn’t.
The thing is, only the US and West do this shit of constantly complaining about other countries and celebrating their historical tragedies every year. And it’s not a coincidence that they’re also the countries to invade and constantly engage in imperialism all around the world the most, and have the capacity to, with hundreds of military bases around the world.
It’s such obvious propaganda against foreign enemies, especially ones we want to fight. You think it would make it super obvious how propagandized Americans are, but they don’t see the hypocrisy at all because of that very propaganda.
What would be the point in China bringing up the Haymarket massacre or Kent state every year? And for that matter, what’s the point in the US bringing up the Tiannamen Square every year?
Glass houses indeed.
The US brings up its own horrible events all the time.
I learned about The Trail of Tears, the era of segregation, and of the KKK in my history class in America. We make conscious efforts to be aware of and criticize our own faults - as well as those of other nations.
There is currently LOTS of criticism of the US government for its participation in the massacre in Palestine. Claiming otherwise is lying. China is relatively unique in that it has committed atrocities, and refuses to allow anyone in its own country to acknowledge them. Both countries have done bad things. One country recognizes those facts and attempts to learn from them.
The US is not allowing criticism of Palestine. Not sure if you’ve seen the stuff happening in college campuses, job applications, the DNC where they didn’t allow a speaker, even local elections where foreign policy shouldn’t matter, etc. And it’s only going to get worse according to the 2025 plan, where it details additional attempts to shut it down. It’s also been downplaying other stuff in schools, such as the negative parts of slavery, Jim Crow, basically everything bad the US has ever done. The problem with our education system is that it depends a lot on which state, city, and even school you are from (private or public, charter or not, etc.).
The whole conflict about critical race theory and the Moms for Liberty stuff is all about them trying to roll these things back.
I agree their censorship is too high in China, though, but I think it’s a result of siege theory. Essentially they’ve seen the US do a million coup attempts and color revolutions in other countries, often successful, and so you if you’re a third world country you basically need a tight control of your press and elections if you want to resist US control. And I doubt seeing us fall to propaganda in the US from billionaire backed media organizations and foreign countries is going to encourage them to not censor though. Unfortunately, if anything, it will do the opposite.
I know your question is rhetorical, but hypothetically China could do that with the aim of whipping up their population into hating the American government more, making them more willing to swallow local authoritarianism and foreign imperialism framed as national defense. That’s basically what the US is doing in the current arrangement, only reversed.
Agreed, dont throw stones from glass houses
The implied issue with that phrase is you risk your own glass house being pelted, correct? The glass house, in this case, being atrocities each government is implicated in?
I’m fine with all the atrocities being called out. Otherwise, how do we learn not to do them anymore?
I want to belive that people here genuenly call out atrocities everywhere but they dont, if you personally call out evil in every place it resides then I respect you.
Some commentators have defended the usage of whataboutism and tu quoque in certain contexts. Whataboutism can provide necessary context into whether or not a particular line of critique is relevant or fair, and behavior that may be imperfect by international standards may be appropriate in a given geopolitical neighborhood. Accusing an interlocutor of whataboutism can also in itself be manipulative and serve the motive of discrediting, as critical talking points can be used selectively and purposefully even as the starting point of the conversation (cf. agenda setting, framing, framing effect, priming, cherry picking). The deviation from them can then be branded as whataboutism
Wow. Fascinating. Thanks for the link.
“Whataboutism” can occasionally be an honest critique of a spurious argument.
When it’s just a link on it’s own, it’s almost always cover for hypocrisy.
Yep that’s exactly my point, the US is doing Whataboutism when it issues these PR stunts to condemn Chinese atrocities.
Hey, hey, hey…
- Korean War (3mil civilian dead)
- Vietnam War (2mil civilian dead)
They at least got hit movies and TV shows! ;)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAS*H_(film)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAS*H_(TV_series)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platoon_(film)
If I had a nickle for everyone who either stopped watching Full Metal Jacket after Lee Emery gets shot or watched the husks of men, who just got massacred by a child defending her home, marching through the burning town while singing children’s songs, and thanked the next veteran they met for fighting for freedom.
Allowing the government to be taken over by fascists makes any “remembering” of horrific events pretty meaningless anyway. In the context of government, not individuals.
Most of that looks right, but
Violent overthrow of East Timor (widely considered a genocide)
Ok, this was Indonesia, with murican quiet assent, but still, don’t give other countries a pass on these things to make them look clean.
Many of these also involved the local elites going to the US for help. e.g. The draft UN resolution for the no-fly zone in Lybia was produced by the Arab League and backed by the African Union, which pressured russia and China not to veto it.
It is not my intention to give other countries a pass. Indonesia is guilty of genocide in the case of East Timor; the US is guilty as well.
The genocide in East Timor is analogous to the ongoing genocide in Palestine.
Both genocides are not conducted by US personnel, but the majority of arms are supplied by the US. The US gives international legitimacy to the genocidal party, while running defense for it’s atrocities. The genocide in East Timor was ended by a phone call from the US president, and I am of the firm belief that the genocide in Gaza could be ended by a similar call. Previous Israeli atrocities were ended by calls from Reagan and Bush Sr.
People like you are evidence that Marxism is failed ideology that cannot be defended by it’s own merits. You know it’s a failure, which is why you resort to fallacies and misinformation.
Hey, the difference is, you can post this list here, and nothing will happen to you.
Become a Chinese citizen, and then post that single bullet item about the TS incident in China, on a Chinese social media. Then see what happens.
That may be true, but it doesn’t excuse the list at all.
My country is responsible for the majority of international violence since WWII. I find that morally unacceptable.
I make posts like this because I want my country to do better. But the sad reality is we have yet to learn our lesson. We have been aiding and abetting an ongoing Holocaust for almost two years now.
Was genuinely thinking of walking in front of Trump’s military parade.
US currently working on ways to top it.
That’s exactly what I was thinking. I feel like we’re months away at most
Timing will be important. They’ll want the big violence to break out next summer, so he can declare Martial Law, and suspend the 2026 Midterm election.
America has never missed an election, even during the Civil War. Suspending an election is a big, bright red, flashing line. They do that, and it’s on for real.
It’s already on for real. Hypernormalization is a bitch. That might shock us all for an afternoon but we’d be back to the same discourse a week later.
The death toll of Tiannenmen riots is around 300. You would think it was 300.000 from the amound of posts we see about it.
Current casualty count in Gaza is about 200 times higher than Tiannenmen.
I just mean to say I don’t see any sort of barrier preventing the US government from sending the military in to massacre its own civilians
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“Never forget” is great and all but from a German perspective it seems to not be enough. It is much more important to make sure the same or very similar things do not happen again, not by China and not by any other nation. Otherwise you end up like we did here in Germany where decades of “never forget” lead to very similar sentiments being expressed by a new major party but since things are slightly different (e.g. the “never forget” was always phrased to be about Jews, this is more about foreigners in general) people seem to allow themselves to ignore them.
“Never again”:
- ❌ “We must never do what we did to the Jews in WW2 again”.
- ✅ “We can never allow what we did to the Jews in WW2 to happen again to anyone”.
downvotes are from tankies
Meanwhile Oklahoma telling kids the 2020 election was rigged under state law.
Tankies and whataboutism, name a more iconic duo (pro tip: you can’t)
You say whataboutism, I say hypocrisy.
Whataboutism is literally the appeal to hypocrisy fallacy. It’s a fallacy because the appeal is done in place of a proper argument that addresses the original issue. The very purpose of this fallacy is to distract from the original issue and to dismiss criticism without ever addressing it by bringing up something irrelevant to the topic at hand and accusing others of hypocrisy.
The point isn’t to distract, it’s to provide context so the accuser can’t create an inaccurate framing. The atomic unit of propaganda isn’t lies, it’s emphesis.
If every week, a right-wing German posted about how many gays Britain murdered, imprisoned, or castrated during the 40s, it would be borderline deceitful for other lemmy users not to provide the full context of what Germany was doing to gays at that time (and what West Germany continued to do until the 1970s).
Same deal when we get the occasional zionist talking about the plight of gay Palestinians. Yes, they have their own struggle, but there is a very specific and obvious purpose behind a zionist bringing it up.
You’re being dishonest. You didn’t provide any context or made any remark regarding framing or context. In fact, you made no argument at all. You just brought up an entirely irrelevant subject for the sole purpose to distract from the original issues and dismiss the criticism being brought up by appealing to hypocrisy. It’s literally the textbook definition of the fallacy.
Same deal when we get the occasional zionist talking about the plight of gay Palestinians.
This is a good example, you’re exactly like them in this case.
The subject is “whataboutism”, or when people bring up similar, but far worse things done by liberal institutions in response to supporters of liberal institutions accusing communists of doing bad things to show that the supporter of the liberal institution doesn’t actually give a shit about the event they’re crying about and is simply using it as a pretext to justify hostility against that communist state, victims included.
That’s a wild assumption you just made up based on literally nothing. But the fact that you need to make up such assumptions is ironic, because it shows that yourself are a hypocrite. You support these atrocities and the regimes who committed them and so you perceive people calling out these acts as unjustified “hostility” rather warranted criticism. Since you’re admitting that you don’t actually care about the atrocities being committed, that means the only purpose you would bring up anything to do with “liberal institutions” is to be fallacious, which is exactly the case here.
The entire purpose of bringing up entirely irrelevant subjects is to distract from the original issue and dismiss criticism. There’s no context, there’s no argument, there’s no point. You’re simply mad that the regime you support is being criticized and as a desperate attempt to divert attention away from the criticism, you bring up irrelevant topics and accuse people of being hypocrites for their criticism of the original topic… even that doesn’t negate the validity of their criticism whatsoever.
When people call you out on your fallacious argumentation, they’re telling that the logic you’re using is inconsistent. If you’re actually ignorant enough to not understand what the fallacies are or why they’re bad then that’s a different issue, but if you’re aware what they are and why they’re bad and still choose to be annoyed then that means you’re disingenuous. It means you’re arguing in bad faith from the get go, which is an indication that the beliefs you are trying to defend are flawed to the point where you can’t defend them on their own merits.
I say, why not both?
whataboutism
How to spot a shill for state propaganda.
Ah yes, the state is paying me to call out idiots on Lemmy for using fallicious argumentation and inconsistent logic. Which state is paying me? Who knows, but that’s the fun of making up random baseless accusations when you have nothing of value to provide.
Love the propaganda around this. Its very dramatic and all. But here in the west its held up as some big thing. The rest of the video never gets played.
You should(n’t) see the gruesome pictures. China is likely very happy that the tank man picture became famous when there were LOADS of other horrible images .
Especially this video where the ‘students’ hijacked a tank and fired it.
That video is really low res. Do you have any sources that prove that the moving object is a tank and that the people are students?
But honestly it doesn’t really matter because running over people because they are protesting a dictatorship is fucking gruesome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre
Demonstrators attacked troops with poles, rocks, and molotov cocktails; Jeff Widener reported witnessing rioters setting fire to military vehicles and beating the soldiers inside them to death.[178] On one avenue in western Beijing, anti-government protestors torched a military convoy of more than 100 trucks and armored vehicles.[179] They also hijacked an armored personnel carrier, taking it on a joy ride. These scenes were captured on camera and broadcast by Chinese state television.[180]
Good old peaceful demonstration strikes again. Luckily those students were not doing anything violent such as holding up a Palestine flag. Then the US media would tell us how violence against them is fully justified
So because the US media justifies the killing of Palestinians, China is justified in killing student protesters, is that what you want to say?
Also, you seem to be arguing that since some demonstrators are acting violent, shooting at, running over and oppressing student protesters are also justified? That sounds like the same logic Zionists use to justify killing Palestinians because some of them might be Hamas. You seem to agree with Zionists quite a lot.
Armed rioters burning cops alive are not “student protesters”.
The US media somehow manages to switch the two around for their propaganda purposes.
You apparently cannot tell the difference either.
And yet the student protesters are being run over despite your claim that only armed rioters are burning cops alive. The exact same reasoning Zionists use to justify killing Palestinians. Like I said, you think exactly like a Zionist, which is funny.
Nice use of selective quoting, the situation had already escalated at that point. From your source, one paragraph before yours:
The advance of the army was again halted by another blockade at Muxidi, about 5 km west of the square. After protesters repelled an attempt by an anti-riot brigade to storm the bridge, regular troops advanced on the crowd and turned their weapons on them. Soldiers alternated between shooting into the air and firing directly at protesters. Soldiers raked apartment buildings with gunfire, and some people inside or on their balconies were shot.
And, from the beginning of the section:
At 9:30 p.m, this army encountered a blockade set up by protesters at Gongzhufen in Haidian District, and made an attempt to break through. Troops armed with anti-riot gear clashed with the protesters and began firing rubber bullets and tear gas, while the protesters in return threw rocks and soda bottles at them. Other troops fired warning shots into the air, which was ineffective.
Who could’ve guessed that people turn violent when you start shooting them 😱
My argument was related to the APC. Which is factually true.
Your quote however is very selective.
On the evening of 2 June, an accident occurred in which a PAP jeep ran onto a sidewalk, killing three civilian pedestrians and injuring a fourth. This incident sparked fear that the army and the police were trying to advance into Tiananmen Square.[159] Student leaders issued emergency orders to set up roadblocks at major intersections to prevent the entry of troops into the centre of the city.[160]
On the morning of 3 June, students and citizens intercepted and questioned a busload of plainclothed soldiers at Xinjiekou. Isolated pockets of soldiers were similarly surrounded and interrogated.[161][56]
The soldiers were beaten by the crowd, as were Beijing security personnel who attempted to aid the soldiers. Some of the soldiers were kidnapped when they attempted to head for the hospital.[160] Several other buses carrying weapons, gear, and supplies were intercepted and boarded around Tiananmen.[160]
At 1 pm, a crowd intercepted one of these buses at Liubukou, and several men raised military helmets on bayonets to show the rest of the crowd.[162] At 2:30 pm, a clash broke out between protesters and police.[163][160] The police attempted to disperse the crowd with tear gas, but demonstrators counterattacked and threw rocks, forcing them to retreat inside the Zhongnanhai compound through the west gate.
Has anyone claimed that the protests were entirely peaceful? Of course some turn violent when you roll in with your army and riot police gun blazing.
And thanks for confirming that it wasn’t a tank.
There really are no excuses for the killing of dozens if not hundreds of civilians and protestors.
And the protests were entirely peaceful to begin with but of course China couldn’t let that continue.
The censorship of the event also speaks a great deal about who’s fault it is.
The protesters on the square did not get shot. The Western media confirms nobody of the peaceful protesters on the square got killed.
Violent rioters who stoned and burnt police did get killed. On day4. There weer already multiple police killed on day3. Even Western media acknowledges all of what I am saying happened.
The censorship of the event also speaks a great deal about who’s fault it is.
The amazing amount of misinformation being spread here says a lot more about how insane the Western brainwashing machine is.
Which western media?
in china they censor it on internet searches. thats why alot of thier netizens use proxies and anti-detect browsers.
Everyone should read this
https://archive.ph/2020.07.12-074312/https://imgur.com/a/AIIbbPs
Reading this whole thing never gets easier
Maybe I’ll take Taiwan’s word on this one…
Whatever the US says, you just know it’s posturing hypocritical bullshit
Never forget when the CIA organised an armed color revolution which resulted into people shooting at the Chinese military. The clashes outsider of the square, not on it as the name suggests, resulted in a total of around 300 deaths.
Tiananmen has to be the dumbest propaganda pount because it is so incredibly easy to debunk for anyone who has basic access to a search machine. The CIA literally admitted they backed the riots.
The sheer hypocrisy of posting this while the American government is arming a live streamed genocide with over 60.000, likely more than 200.00p killed.
Yeah, everything bad is the CIA’s fault! A one-party dictatorship would never violently suppress dissent, and anyone saying otherwise is a paid shill!
“Students” hahaha. Nice of you to leave out that the rioters started attacking the police first and literally burned police officiers alive. The peaceful protesters at the square were not attacked.
There are actual events you can point to in which China represses their population. This is probably the dumbest one because extreme restraint was shown from the Chinese authorities.
If it was America the guy blocking the tank from leaving the square would have been run over. And you would probably be screaming fafo.
Yeah! They had it coming! The police acted with the utmost restraint when they brought tanks to a protest, and America totally would have done worse than bringing tanks to a protest and totally would have ran protestors over with said tanks!!!
Oh no he pulls out the image implying that the tank ran over a protester on the square!
But he forgets that there is a video
Of a man who blocks tanks driving away from the square… and… climbing on top of a military vehicle!!!
What do you think would happen in America to someone who climbed on top of a tank and opened the hatch? And even still, he did not get shot but simply escorted away. Amazing.
He got carried away and never saw again you fucking brainlet
Do you know who it is?
he got carried away and was never seen again
Of course we don’t know his name, he got disappeared by a dictatorship. In a free country, we would know his name and he would be a powerful symbol of dissent against the government. Instead, he was erased as a human.
Another brain washed CCP admirer from Xi’s $0.50 Army. The CCP murdered over 70 million people, who disagreed, since 1920 and the number continues to rise.
Oh is this the terrible bad country we shipped our entire industrial base to?
Kent State says what?
No no no. This anniversary is about how communism is bad.
The capitalism capital of the world probably shouldn’t be preaching about human rights.
Boy, you sure did get 'em. No pointing out bad behavior unless your history is unblemished, I guess.
US history is a little more than unblemished, though. Hell, not even history. They are literally arming a genocidal state as we speak.
So is China.
Don’t forget that they are literally being lead by a political movement named after the history denying idea that they were “great” at some point and want to get back to that (never mind the other lie that the leaders of the movement don’t actually want to get back to any particular point in history despite the name)
Tankie bot says what now? Get lost.
Every now and then I follow up and ask tankies what their actionable alternative is. They just never have one. Just making perfect the enemies of good. Tankies are deeply un-serious.
Best resource distribution (economic) model according to tankies: “Trust me bro”
I’d still rather have a more socialist society. Distribution based on markets means depriving those in need. Unfortunately tankies would rather leave vulnerable people to suffer the brutality of capitalism.
Shocking idea (this will blow your mind), but what if we dont fund a genocidal apartheid state? I mean not cut military aid by 30% or delay it three weeks, what if we just dont? What if we dont compromise with fascism?
If you abstain then you won’t have influence to stop funding genocide.
If you are serious please comment a real and actionable alternative.
The fact that voting inherently requires accepting fascism does not make fascism ok, it inherently makes liberal democracy fascist. As for a real and actionable alternative, building dual power through unions. Build communities from the bottom up to resist fascism and arm workers to prepare for eventual revolution.
The fact that voting inherently requires accepting fascism does not make fascism ok, it inherently makes liberal democracy fascist
I don’t see how that follows
Build communities from the bottom up to resist fascism and arm workers to prepare for eventual revolution.
I agree, but don’t you want to see some incremental progress for it in the mean time? We need political influence and tankies are just not good allies for it. Genocide is happening today. People are hungry and without medicine today. We can’t wait for a perfect revolution (those who wait are really just showing their privilege). Waiting for that also means leaving those you intended to help to die in the trenches. That in short is why I consider tankies un-serious.
I support the community building from the bottom up, but tankies are not doing that either. They are no shows on all fronts, and demoralizing our movements when we do try to do other things.
Agreed people are dying today, thats why we cant make these compromises. Compromising the lives of milliones of people based on what makes a bunch of privileged white liberals feel comfortable. Because right now only liberals are trying to equate the Palestinian Genocide with Palestinian resistance, thats what actural both sideism looks like.
Whataboutism.
Taiwan?
Lol you’re the type of imbecile who would cry about Palestine and American imperialism, but then turn around and say shit like this. Marxists are a joke.
You’re not making much sense.
I’m saying you have no moral consistency. Think about it, what purpose does your comment serve besides defending this massacre? You’re simply mad that are people are recognizing it as such, and you want to shut down the criticism by screaming hypocrisy, but that in of itself is hypocritical because if China came out and recognized the trail of tears for example, you would be ecstatic with joy. You wouldn’t be crying about how China shouldn’t preach about human rights due to their extensive record of human rights abuses.
My favorite thing to do is to watch liberals read the (very western biased) Wikipedia article on this event. The moment when they realize how many soldiers were killed before the crackdown is always radicalizing for those with even a modicum of intellectual curiosity.
This sounds like how conservatives rationalize the Kent State massacre by claiming that the protesters were throwing feces.
You’re not radicalized. You just switched which authoritarian you swear fealty to.
It would be different if the protesters had lynched a dozen soldiers before they responded.
Of course given the context of the Vietnam war, the soldiers wouldn’t have been justified even if the protesters killed some of them first; you don’t get to claim self-defense when you yourself are only there to put down a protest against imperialism.
I guess the Chinese soldiers were minding their own business at home with their families, and not there to just put down protests against authoritarianism.
See the big difference is the US was murdering countless Vietnamese to keep them under the boot of capitalism. The protesters in Tienanmen aren’t as black and white. If the protesters were protesting China poisoning the food supply and massacring countless villages of country on the other side of the planet to keep a country’s resources easy to exploit and their people’s blood ready to be spent keeping other countries under the boot of capitalism, it would be that simple, but they weren’t.
Also “against authoritarianism” lmao you are a literal child.
Most rational people oppose authoritarianism.
Here, it’ll take two minutes to read this. I’m not even going to get into the contexts “authoritarianism” is and isn’t used today (hint: liberals use it and see no hypocrisy).
do you think this is convincing, compelling? it is not.
it totally equates the democratic delegation of agency to elected delegates for a specific term and purpose with permanent subservience.
it’s an attack on strawmen, and you’re a born bootlicker if you’re this easily swayed into cheerleading for authoritarians.
Yeah Engels take on authoritarianism is dated and not really valid given that his ideologies do not result in anything other than authoritarian states IRL.
I’m always curious to compare how Americans view the Tianemen Square incident with Waco.
Like, if you ask an American to explain what happened at Waco, you’ll get a bunch of blank stares. A few people with anti-government views will explain how a religious community was ruthlessly butchered by the Gestapo-like FBI. A few people with anti-religious views will insist this was a child sex cult that committed suicide while the FBI tried to help.
But for the most part, those Americans who remember it just see it as another normal police action against people who were probably committing all sorts of crimes.
You could also talk about the BLM protests from '14 to '18, and how the broad American view was that this was police acting to protect private property. And maybe some of the protesters didn’t deserve such rough treatment, but hey they knew what they signed up for when they blocked traffic.
But the views on Tianemen are uniform. Chinese killed that nice man with their tank and then killed everyone else in the city and then covered it up in a way only people in China are unaware it happened.
“Chinese government killed their own people, it’s fine! They are basically property”
Reminds me of Hillsborough and “some fans”.
I only see wiki reference 10 soldiers having died - is this the number you’re referring to?
Do you think that’s alot? In my head that’s disproportionately few compared to the [disputed] 100s of civilians that the Chinese government declared dead
According to the linked page with PLA/PAP casualties, there were 15 verifiable deaths (PRC official number is 23). Half of them weren’t directly caused by the protesters, and the other half occurred after troops first opened fire. Truly, I feel quite radicalized.
Consider yourself both radicalised and owned liberal! /s
Can you share that link? I’m curious how the 7 “non directly caused by protesters” died. They just had a random accident? Lovers quarrel? Food poisoning?
Summary is a truck flipped over, supposed friendly fire incident with a non-uniformed soldier, and a heart attack.
According to the official numbers there were ten civilians killed for every state agent of oppression.
Liberals are hardly better than the conservatives in the US. They all seem to be naive right wingers.
Killing the villainous authoritarian ork creature CCP is always virtuous and good and needs to be celebrated.
Stopping a tank in front of an unarmed bicyclist until police pull him out of the way is unforgivable genocide.
I had to do it, these people don’t even read their own fake sources.
