Don’t ever let anyone forget or brush under the rug the horrible acts that occurred in Tiananmen Square on June 4th, 1989.
https://www.history.com/topics/asian-history/tiananmen-square
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I think that tankies, arguably, are hardly leftists at all.
Looking at the community, all I see is Red-Draped Reactionaries.
Nah, eventually they will be outnumbered an dislike to go beyond lemmygrad because they get endlessly shit on
No thanks. I don’t give a fuck about getting ratio’d. Let the people decide. Assuming this platform ever gets more traction, which it seems to be doing, the vast majority of the people that come here won’t be tankies so… no, no I don’t think I will go somewhere else.
These people really want their echo chamber, not a good look for Lemmy imo
One of the main reasons I’ve switched over to feddit.de. Hope more instances have the sense to block servers that are openly pro-imperialism and pro-totalitarianism.
@gzrrt @xTechDeath Is it not better to have open dialogues with people who disagree with you, rather than blocking them?
If they’re interested in having good-faith discussions, sure.
Is good faith = drinking neoliberal/neocon Anglo koolaid, in your case?
You can’t have good faith arguments with cult members, fascists, or tankies.
@CrimsonOnoscopy Why not?
Indeed, the “they’re all a bunch of tankies over there” narrative is one of the more common objections I see to Lemmy when I mention it as a valid Reddit alternative over on Reddit. Bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, mind you - we need non-tankies to balance things out. Here’s hoping that there’s enough new blood coming in anyway to manage that.
echo chamber? youre the one echoing western corporate media narrative.
I have done no such thing lol. I’ve made two comments one making fun of the guy that said china isn’t part of world news and this one. Your comment trying to paint me in this light just reeks of desperation or the inability to read
I’m sorry let me clarify. By ‘you’ I mean the influx of users with a predominantly western liberal mindset.
So posting one article about china bad is an influx of new users with a predominantly western liberal mindset echoing the corporate media narrative. Seems like a bit of a reach.
If someone posted some bad shit about USA nobody would give af and would mostly agree, you just seem like you don’t want anything critical of china
Why make/go to another political echo chamber over potentially getting “ratio’d” (which is meaningless and doesnt say anything about one’s argument). Anyone has the right to post something no matter what people around think. Posting all this on an instance that would be INSTANTLY defederated by instances like lemmygrad is pointless and we’d just end up with less debate and more polarization.
Hey, I just wanted to clarify something because I wasn’t sure from reading your comment, but Lemmygrad federates with everyone by default, except instances that have caused us troll waves in the past. We federate with e.g. lemmy.one and beehaw.org, but they instantly blocked us on day one.
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Hey, tankies, decent countries don’t have to violently suppress their populations and then lie about it. Oh, and socialism is worker ownership of the means of production, not whatever the fuck they’re doing in China.
(inb4 people assuming I must support the US since I hate China)
All states are fundamentally violent, what are you imagining to be a “decent” country where there is no violence by the state?
There’s a difference between a country that has a monopoly on violence and can use that for enforcement, compared to a state that responds to people just making their voices heard with cannons and guns. A cat nipping my fingers is annoying. A lion gnawing my head off is deadly.
The crackdown wasn’t against the peaceful protestors who they let just kind of do their thing under supervision for somewhere around 6 weeks despite it basically being the equivalent of the section of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House. The CPC became less friendly as it became aware of NED bullshit and, critically, unarmed soldiers being immolated and lynched by militants who were using naive protestors as cover. The CPC nonetheless gave everyone some time to clear out (I forget the time table but I think it was 24 - 72 hours) and even once it was over the deadline they didn’t just start blasting.
The problem with this is that we don’t really know if it’s true. It’s the CPC’s official story, but they’ve created an atmosphere so hostile to truth or transparency that it’s not trustworthy.
See, this is a sort of epistemic nihilism that is used for question-begging the western narrative. I give you a counterproposition and you say “Well the CPC is so untrustworthy that we just can’t know that that’s true!”
Which part do you doubt? That the protest had been going on for many weeks? We have contemporaneous reports. That the CPC wasn’t very hostile to the protestors for most of that period? We have footage of the protestors and unarmed soldiers coexisting – sometimes even having something of a fun time together, each group singing songs!
We have photographs of the lynched corpses, with the protestors idly looking on (because what else could they do?). We have contemporaneous reporting on the CPC setting a deadline for the square to be fled. We have footage of one of the more radical student leaders, Chai Ling, saying that she will deliberately direct her clique to stay (even as she flees) so that they will shed blood.
We have a smaller amount of footage of the night itself, but that tells us many things. For example, there was a protestor (not a student) who was on a high-profile hunger strike. He negotiated the peaceful evacuation of a group of students who didn’t quite realize what they were signing up for by staying. We also have some distant footage of the fighting in the surrounding area (because the square itself didn’t see violence, as even western journalists confirmed).
The 1984 narrative Reddit spoonfeeds people is incredibly flimsy, even if all you do is look at reporting from Brits, Americans, and Germans.
Speaking of, have you ever watched the full Tank Man video? You can find it on Youtube quite easily. If you haven’t seen it, please do me a favor and predict what happens and write it down for yourself – no need to show anyone else, myself included. Then, watch what happens and compare that to your guess. I think you will find it to be an interesting exercise.
Disgusting Anglo supremacists, I can count on you 11/10 times.
Decent countries. What a slippery slope for supremacist thoughts.
Ah yes.
Being against China’s racist genocide is racist.
China, the imperialist ethno-state, is clearly innocent.
Lol. Thinking some countries have better governments than others is supremacist? Whatever, dude.
By the way. If there are any countries with decent governments, I don’t know of them. But like. If there were decent countries, they wouldn’t behave like China.
Saying “decent countries” clearly has a perverse slip within the thought, the idea of a collective I in the our countries and an objectifying negation of the I in the other group. Basically good ol’ civilisation and barbarians. The same rhetoric you and your people have been using to oppress me and my third world brothers and sisters all around the world. You really think you need to do the missionary work of educating the beasts, don’t you?
Meanwhile in Taiwan, the island’s equivalent of the Tiananmen massacre from the KMT dictatorship (the 228 incident) has its own memorial park and museum.
No need for a self-inflicted legitimacy crisis when you respect your citizens’ basic rights.
When USA can have a China puppet government, just like US puppet DPP exists in Taiwan (part of China BTW), we can talk about legitimacy crisis. I wonder if Confederate States once again united to divide USA, how would Americans talk to outsiders having nuanced conversations, considering, losing to China in all kinds of fields already makes their citizens wish for nukes.
If you’re not Taiwanese yourself (i.e., one of the people who’s actually affected by what happens there), I definitely don’t care about your opinion on this topic.
I did not know other people could not shut down BS that gets spouted by ignoramuses or malicious state propagandists.
Wow. There’s a lot of CCP folks working the federated space.
One of the big instances, Lemmygrad, is basically dedicated to that crowd. If the influx of Reddit refugees doesn’t counterbalance them then at some point I’ll probably move to an instance that doesn’t federate with them.
I’ve already done the same, can recommend it
Could just block it, that way you don’t have to see it, and don’t have to start a new account.
Sure, though I like the idea of more explicitly supporting instances with better quality control.
Seems like there’s also no way around blocking individual users who openly support fascists.
Can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen?
Wow a post on lemmy denouncing the CCPs actions instead of denying them or even trying to justify them? Thats rare
I plan on actively posting to counter the constant barrage of tankie propaganda that is very clearly an issue here. Misinformation is a very real issue that we face in our society and unless we actually do something about it, it will only continue to get worse.
@Senokir @Solaris1789 I hope they don’t ban you
If this community doesn’t welcome people who actively fight against misinformation then I am more than happy to be banned.
@Senokir @realcaseyrollins Yeah we should nuke Beijing.
?
Did anyone here suggest that we do such a thing?
It is a very real issue so it’d be nice if you’d stopped doing it yourself. Also this is not world news, this is a China news, world news is not whatever the US and its European eunuchs oppose to.
I gave reputable sources for my information. Please enlighten me as to how spreading this news and reminding everyone of the very real Tiananmen Square massacre that occurred on June 4th, 1989 is misinformation.
Here you have a list of different types of media that talk about what happened, in short it was a counter revolution backed by the bourgeoisie where they tried to basically bring back the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and overthrown the dictatorship of the proletariat. I don’t think we’re going to get to any conclusion because you already seem to have the neoliberal capitalist ideology too ingrained in your mind, which is okay I guess. I really don’t care about what you believe, but what I do think is reasonable is that this is not world news. It’s always what about, what about with you liberals. What about China, what about North Korea, what about Cuba, but why don’t you try and look a little bit under your own rug? Because there seems to be quite a bit of hidden corpses in your back lawn, they smell disgusting and you try to hide it with other countries inner struggles. If the world were to mass shit post like you people do every time an anniversary of a massacre, repression, illegal occupation or invasion, pillaging and destruction of a country, slavery and what not you have committed, every day would be memorial day of the countless atrocities you have committed. Let’s be a little less hypocrites, no country is perfect, but the US and Wester Europe are at the top list of the worst, so don’t come pretending like you are beacons of democracy and hope. In the Global South, where I live, you are considered butchers and beasts.
https://www.liberationnews.org/tiananmen-the-massacre-that-wasnt/ https://leohezhao.medium.com/notes-for-30th-anniversary-of-tiananmen-incident-f098ef6efbc2 https://peds-ansichten.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/1989-07-12_Lilley_Gallo_Tiananmen_WikiLeaks.pdf https://vimeo.com/448970787 http://www.fightbacknews.org/2019/6/4/reflections-tiananmen-square-and-attempt-end-chinese-socialism https://frso.org/main-documents/looking-back-at-tiananmen-square-the-defeat-of-counter-revolution-in-china/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu3zmbFGwQA https://old.reddit.com/r/AskAChinese/comments/grdaqv/thoughts_on_tiananmen_square_massacre/g45hnv0/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6RT_s1T050 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqPI8xlnrwg
Okay, let’s go through this slowly and rationally.
First of all, this community is self described as being “News from around the world!” China is a part of the world and this is news from China. This is news from around the world. If you are trying to insinuate that any post involving news from China does not belong in this community then why did you not seem to take issue with this post that was also about China and was posted in this community?
Clearly you take issue with the fact that this news paints China in a bad light, not with the fact that it is about China to begin with. So your claim of “I really don’t care about what you believe, but what I do think is reasonable is that this is not world news.” VERY CLEARLY does not hold water.
Let’s move onto the next issue that I have with your thought process. You just spent quite some time defending the Tiananmen Square massacre and didn’t even respond in any way to the actual news article that I posted which is about restricting access to the physical location and detaining 32 people. This isn’t just a post saying “it’s the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre” which you seem to be defending.
You also state “It’s always what about, what about with you liberals. What about China, what about North Korea, what about Cuba, but why don’t you try and look a little bit under your own rug?”
I never said “what about” a single time. In fact, this post is not a response to anyone telling me anything so it wouldn’t make any sense for me to say “what about, what about”. Furthermore, I never claimed in this post or anywhere else for that matter that America is perfect. I even take issue with many of the things going on in America too. However, that is in NO WAY relevant to the news that I posted or the Tiananmen Square massacre.
So lets review, your claim that this post doesn’t belong in this community is absolutely ridiculous. You refuse to address the actual article that I posted about and instead just tried to justify the Tiananmen Square massacre instead. And finally, your last point was “well what about under YOUR rug” while claiming that I was the one saying “what about, what about”.
Why not post about the atrocities committed by the USA and their allies on their anniversaries then?
Might get exhausting posting every day.
Having been a life long socialist myself, it’s a bit mystifying to me how anyone can believe that the atrocities commited by the US somehow makes the PRC or Russia in any way deserving of praise.
For sure I’d like more people to call out the American genocide of its natives, or honor the heroes that fought for their emancipation during the time of chattel slavery.
But I’ll be damned if any of those atrocities will make me defend the human suffering caused by the Chinese or Russian regimes. To me, being a socialist means standing up for the little guy, judging a society by how we care for those who have the least. The only us vs them struggle there is, is the one between the working and the ruling class - not the one between east and west. Idolising Zedong only puts another Emperor on a pedestal. I say fuck them all, western or eastern rulers and billionaires, they’re the real enemies of a social and equal world.
There’s a propaganda push in the west to demonize China, with the obvious goal of creating consent for a potential war. Even the Trotskyists of wsws.org (which have no favorable view of China) usually defend China from fake or misleading shit. Repeating US propaganda uncritically, or even criticizing China for good reason without proper context, is helping the US propaganda machine bring us to the brink of annihilation.
It’s important to be truthful and fair, and not encourage sinophobia and war propaganda, so be careful when criticizing China.
Whether it’s China or really anything, I’d agree to being critical of any claims made without proper context, yet the context here is the massacre and subsequent cover-up perpetrated by the Chinese government following peaceful protests on the Tiananmen square.
Meeting that with whataboutisms and vague excuses is disrespectful towards the victims full stop.
Being a socialist should be easy, because truth is on our side. It should be easy to point to Tiananmen square and say “this is what happens when the ruling class feels threatened”, just like you can say the same thing when the US government busts their unions or murders their black citizens. Being an unquestioning supporter of either of these regimes is not what socialism is to me, and it never was. I just don’t understand how anyone can reconcile these opposing views in their heads.
Why, also, do you conflate violence against workers or minorities with violence against liberals (and people mislead and cynically used by said liberals). These are not the same thing, and no socialist I know is opposed to political violence in principle. And neither, by the way, are liberals. One of these things is clearly always wrong, the other is or is not, depending on the circumstances.
Most I know are generally opposed to violence, with some exceptions allowed for any revolution or class struggle.
When it comes to countries like the US or China, using violence in the form of the military or police against your own population is such a big difference in power that any violence ought to be as minimal as possible.
Using tanks and rifles against a group of civilians is so far beyond that, that it’s not within what I think any of the IRL socialists I know would deem appropriate or acceptable.
Imagine there’s this guy at your work, who every day brings up some crime or another, but somehow the perpetrator is always black. So you tell him “Can you talk about something else?”, to which they get defensive and say “Why don’t you want to talk about this? Can’t we all agree that this is bad?”. If you let this situation go on for too long, you’ll soon find your workplace taken over by open racism, and everybody who’s uncomfortable with this is going to quit, reinforcing this trend.
This is what’s happening on almost all western social media, and society in general, regarding China. Open sinophobia, hate speech, and calls for violence.
Also, maybe read this thread on Twitter and also follow the sources there, as you seem to be under the false impression that the protests were entirely peaceful.
Threads on Twitter are usually not a very compelling source, I am not against changing my opinion if the evidence is compelling, but that was not it.
See for example how the question is answered over on r/askhistorians:
Well sourced with actual recent publications and honest as to what the uncertainties are.
Not sure I’ve seen many reports of the USA jailing or disappearing its own citizens when they dare speak up about said atrocities.
Yeah, like Julian Assange? Who’s that guy? No idea. Oh, maybe you meant Chelsea Manning, ah, no, also don’t know who’s that one.
So clearly- if I go to Washington DC and start protesting in the street on behalf of these people (who I’d agree are being persecuted unjustly, despite one of them being Australian), I’ll be taken away and jailed within minutes, right?
I’m not sure I understand China’s reactions here… if nothing happened, then why not just let them congregate and “remember” something that supposedly didn’t happen? What’s the harm? If they were blocking traffic or riots were involved, it would understandable to want to stop it, but if it’s peaceful, where’s the harm? Unless of course, something did happen that they want people to forget…
China doesn’t say nothing happened, what they say is that counter revolution happened, and it was effectively suppressed. Why would you let someone celebrate the equivalent of an extremist movement?
an unknown number of deaths… yet calls it a massacre
It’s a large number, but it’s hard to tell how large because the CPC keeps that information tightly under wraps. The official statement claimed just 200, but recently declassified diplomatic cables from the UK give an estimate of 10,000 dead (source). The original source was inside China’s State Council. It’s important to remember that the actions taken that day were far from universally supported even inside the party. There was a massive purge afterward of officials that were deemed to be sympathetic to the protestors.
Edit: This estimate likely has fog of war issues itself, though, since it was sent so shortly after the massacre. Other estimates are far lower, but still much higher than the official figures. The CPC does not want to admit the extent that it screwed up and killed its own citizens.
