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this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2023
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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.
Don’t get ahead of yourself. Most people ‘vastly’ overestimate their ability to spot propaganda.
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
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.
Yes, understandable. But a bunch of lib students who think they deserve better careers and want to do full on shock therapy probably shouldn't be put in the same category as marginalized groups that do not want to eat shit constantly.
This has two interesting issues right in the first sentence.
The idea of violence being a categorical bad with "exceptions" where it is permissible due to some carveout is deontological reasoning that has no place in a materialist assessment. Violence has severe downsides that mean that it should be minimized, but the degree to which it can be minimized without some greater downside (particularly violence from another party) coming about or continuing is something that varies situation to situation. Sometimes violence isn't useful, so its introduction only has downsides. Sometimes it is one of several options that are all reasonably arguable. Sometimes it is clearly the only option to prevent a much greater violence.
[Setting aside the word "any" there] What do you think these words, "revolution" and "class struggle," mean?
Do you think a revolution -- or whatever makes it worthwhile, since that surely is not revolution for its own sake -- is something that is achieved eternally after fighting for a few years, or something that must be continuously protected from forces trying to sabotage you from all angles?
Do you think that "class struggle" is something where you hang a few capitalists, wash your hands of the blood, and then kick back and relax? Or is it a continuous process of trying to resolve the contradictions in society on a basis that follows the broad democratic consensus of the working class? There are going to be workers who are bought off by capital, or radicalized by cults it supports, or any number of other things, and these workers will then seek to destroy your socialist state while Trotskyists in the North Atlantic cheer them on. Do you let this small group -- typically representing foreign powers or the most monstrous of infections you have let fester in your own society -- dictate the destruction of the socialist state even as the majority wishes for it to be preserved?
I am reminded of a quote from Michael Parenti in one of his lectures:
(It's worth noting that "secret police," as far as I can tell, is what you call the "intelligence agency" of a country hostile to the US)
This is all glossing over the fact that the violence by the CPC was not directed at the civilian students -- who it gave plenty of warning to evacuate -- but to the militants who had already immolated and lynched unarmed soldiers who were supervising the protests.
Unfortunately for the CPC, there was also a group of students (a tiny subset of the larger movement) being lead by people who were either religious zealots (Christians, in this case) or bought off and were consciously making the group stand its ground in hopes that they would be caught in the crossfire, which happened in some cases. We know this in part because one of those leaders very helpfully told us as much in an interview. She did escape and had a fruitful career in the US working with various Republican think tanks and the like. I assume that the recruitment vector was her being Christian, but I don't know.
Anyway, that's just a very basic overview because I thought I shouldn't leave your actual claims uncontested, but I mostly wrote this comment for the first couple of paragraphs.
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:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/140daad/how_many_people_died_during_the_tiananmen_square/jmw0ns0/
Well sourced with actual recent publications and honest as to what the uncertainties are.
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.
That does explain the issue in a much more understandable way to me, and I thank you for not assuming I'm here just to argue.
I guess my slice of the social media "bubble" has always been more left leaning so I tend to see much more criticism of NATO and the US and haven't really thought much about criticism of China since to me at least it has seemed fairly balanced or at least not too imbalanced.
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?
Only if you're not white.
Do you mean like this?
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/20/politics/blm-protesters-analysis/index.html https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/02/22/fact-check-thousands-black-lives-matter-protesters-arrested-2020/6816074001/ https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/08/us/dc-police-arrests-blm-capitol-insurrection-invs/index.html https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/08/george-floyd-killing-police-arrest-non-violent-protesters
@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 In general they are, at the very least, hostile to folks who do so. It's a main reason I use #Lotide (via narwhal.city) rather than #Lemmy (although there are newer #Lemmy instances out there now that I'm considering joining eventually)