Silly anarkiddies could never understand how important it is to enforce enlighten the proletariat into not criticizing the beautiful state! Natural communism by 2050!!1!
Most of people getting upset at Tiananmen stuff is just due to people feeding into an anti-communist propagandized framing of the events.
Most people wouldn’t dispute that civilians died at Tiananmen and that the whole incident was… bad, actually.
But, there is a lot of misinfo surrounding it. Like “Thousands died on the square”. Probably not true. Probaby 200 - 500 civilians died, and several dozen soldiers - with many more student protesters negotiating a peaceful exit on June 4. Similarly “the protests were peaceful and the army massacred civilians for no reason” - the protests WERE mostly peaceful for a long while, but in the hours leading up to the state cranking up the violence, protesters attacked and killed several peacekeeping soldiers which is what caused the military reaction (leading to overreaction).
So, in short, Tiananmen was a tragedy where many people died needlessly and the Chinese government/military reacted to protester violence in a disproportionate and deadly way. The Western media, US state dept/radio free asia, and others have distorted the historical accounts since 1989. In response, the Chinese gov’t has distorted the historical accounts.
It should just be treated with the nuance afforded to any historical tragedy. Not unlike the many examples of similar killings of protesters by the US gov’t.
But, there is a lot of misinfo surrounding it. Like “Thousands died on the square”. Probably not true. Probaby 200 - 500 civilians died, and several dozen soldiers
I presume it is no coincidence that this death toll is almost exactly in line with the CCP’s official estimates.
The lower end of that range is, yeah. But the Chinese Red Cross estimate of 2,600 was retracted and was the highest estimate. It’s possible, but unlikely, that it was as many as 1,000 based on the number of university students who left June 4. Which leaves me with the lower end estimates. I’m not going to disregard the original PLA estimate, from people who were actually there, just because it is a Chinese estimate.
The exact number of dead doesn’t really matter except to paint the government and army as barbaric. Killing protestors is objectively bad and wrong no matter the number. I think the handling of the protesters was inept, overly violent, and just overall a clusterfuck that cause many civilians and military personnel to die. I think that was caused largely by the perception by the government that the protesters were co-opted in some way by the West (US intelligence) and the government’s desire to use a strong hand to quell dissent.
The number of dead doesn’t change any of that. But it’s also unfair to say the government just rushed in there and massacred people. Military personnel there as cops, basically (understandable since Tianmen is directly outside the forbidden city palace complex, like if protesters were right outside the White House or Lincoln Memorial - there are going to be military police there), were killed before the army rolled in. Peaceful protesters negotiated safe exit from the square. The government tried to disperse the crowd peacefully first. The government didn’t immediately try to quash dissent violently.
None of that gets the party and army off the hook, but it paints it in a different light than the typical propagandized Western or Chinese portrayal of events.
But the Chinese Red Cross estimate of 2,600 was retracted and was the highest estimate.
Modern scholars estimate 700 to 2,600 dead in or around the square during the massacre. Do you have a source showing that the Chinese Red Cross estimate was the highest one?
I mean, they did say that the military responded in a disproportionate way. We’re all in agreement that tanks against protesters is bad.
The “thousands or hundreds” isn’t a defence of the massacre, but an indictment of the reports that somehow felt the need to inflate numbers, as if the original ones weren’t bad enough. That’s disingenuous and calls the general credibility into question.
Multiple things can be true at once:
Applying military force against protesters is bad.
Misrepresenting facts is bad.
Attempting to counter one misrepresentation with another misrepresentation is bad.
The point of the comment you replied to is that we should treat the atrocity with the serious honesty it warrants.
Definitely. It was still an atrocity. No two ways about it. It’s just also an atrocity that the West has grabbed onto to push a broader propagandized anti-communist narrative.
Both of those things are true. I am a socialist and I have zero problem saying that Tiananmen, based on my understanding of the historical accounts I’ve read, was an atrocity and a very bad mishandling of events by the army/government.
I personally count the Banana’s massacre, which resulted in an estimated 2000 protesters dead. While the shooting was made by Colombian soldiers instead of US soldiers, it was a direct result of the US Goverment’s threat of invading Colombia if the protest done by United Fruit Company workers was not inmediately put to a stop.
EDIT: I think the above comment is a misleading. A better description of the massacre is that it was done to serve US economical interests, aided by US’s military pressure (like US officials asking US army forces to send a warship into the zone) and a possible risk of invasion from US into Colombia’s mainland. I also think a possibly more accurate number of protestors dead is ~1500. I do stand on the opinion that the massacre was a direct consequence of US Government, simply perpetrated by Colombian soldiers.
U.S. officials in Colombia and United Fruit representatives portrayed the workers’ strike as “communist” with a “subversive tendency” in telegrams to Frank B. Kellogg, the United States Secretary of State.[3] The Colombian government was also compelled to work for the interests of the company, considering they could cut off trade of Colombian bananas with significant markets such as the United States and Europe.[4]
General Carlos Cortés Vargas, who commanded the troops during the massacre, took responsibility for 47 casualties. In reality, the exact number of casualties has never been confirmed. Herrera Soto, co-author of a comprehensive and detailed study of the 1928 strike, has put together various estimates given by contemporaries and historians, ranging from 47 to as high as 2,000. According to Congressman Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, the killed strikers were thrown into the sea.[1] Other sources claim that the bodies were buried in mass graves.[2]
Two thousand was the extreme high estimate for the dead by the Colombian government but do you have a source for the ‘it was a direct result of the US Goverment’s threat of invading Colombia if the protest done by United Fruit Company workers was not inmediately put to a stop’ because all I can find is that Colombia’s bananas could no longer be exported?
Note that some estimates also put the number on 5000. This letter to the US Goverment from the Colombian embassy puts the number, sourced from the United Fruit Company, in the 1000+ range. Jorge Eliécer Gaitán also puts the number in the thousands. I think ~1500 sounds like a reasonable estimate. (unrelated trivia fact: Gaitán is an incredibly important character in Colombia history, as he was murdered when running for president, which turned Bogotá into a complete chaos/warzone in 1948, in something called the Bogotazo).
do you have a source for the ‘it was a direct result of the US Goverment’s threat of invading Colombia if the protest done by United Fruit Company workers was not inmediately put to a stop’ because all I can find is that Colombia’s bananas could no longer be exported?
[…] The clashes between the United Fruit Company and the army on one side and the workers on the other, over the breaking of the strike on December 3 and 4, gave General Carlos Cortés Vargas yet another justification for repression. In his memoirs of the strike, he states that he became convinced that if public order was not restored immediately, the U.S. government would send Marines. Rumors of U.S. warships were rife.[…]
This letter from an US counsul in Santa Marta also asks the US Goverment for warship support, which support Cortés Vargas story. I also found the following letters, which show US offered “unofficial support” to the Company. This article says that Carlos Cortés got reinforcements from the center of the country, as to minimize the sympathy that the protestors would receive from the soldiers; IMO, this indicates the hard tackle down was not simply an irresponsible act from Cortés who wrongly guessed US had intentions to land marine soldiers, but it shows it was a clear coordinated effort from the Colombian Goverment.
I do regret the use of the word “inmediately” and 2000 number from my comment. Will edit my previous comment to amend that.
Yeah, plenty of massacres abroad where the US is at least partially responsible for, but basically none at home. Makes me wonder why?
I suspect generally the US doesn’t do massacres because they don’t need to be afraid of regime change. Their internal propaganda is incredibly strong. We’ve recently seen how foreign agitation propaganda (Russian online trolls, but also Bin-laden’s destabilization strategy) completely changed the political landscape. And even in today’s times of extreme crisis we still see not an inkling of any kind of revolution or regime change on the horizon. Since there is no real threat, there is no overreaction to a threat response, unlike in countries that are actively and publicly being targeted for regime change.
Maybe this will change after the 2026 midterms, but I doubt it.
The US is also very proactive and skilled when it comes to infiltrating and dispersing any groups that could become threats to their state power.
And the mainstream media can spin protests however the government wants to - but only as long as there is no massacre.
Basically there are no massacres because protests are harmless and it would be counter productive, unlike protests in other countries.
Internally, on your own soil, you do have few famous ones I can name from memory like Tulsa and Orangeburg, and I am too disgusted to even try to google it and find more.
To be fair (so I don’t shit on USA only in this message), I can name 1 French massacre from the 60s against Algerian protesters and it was over 200 dead.
I don’t think we had any more in the EU, but I’m willing to be schooled.
Not a lot of domestic mass casualty events in modern times, especially with death tolls above 200. That’s true. But there are some truly horrific ones in more turbulent times in US history, particularly when the US was a younger country and cops didn’thave riot dispersal gear/less-lethal ammo. You have to remember that China as it exists today didn’t really exist until 1949 at the end of the civil war.
In the US there’s lots of historic ones. Many of which happened closer to our civil war (in the following decades) - wounded knee, atlanta race riots, tulsa massacre, etc. Hundreds died in all those and were extremely fucked up.
Then there’s more modern ones like the LA race riots in 1992 which killed like 60+ people minimum. Detroit race riots in the 1960s with a death toll of ~50 iirc. Like 40 people died in the BLM protests just a few years ago. Fatalities are largely lower due to cops using less-lethal weaponry.
It’s a different historical and tech context. I’d say they aren’t directly comparable. But yeah the US gov’t hasn’t killed 200-500 protesters in a single event within the last 100 years afaik.
There were like military cops there first. Just to make sure things didn’t get out of hand. There are actually historic photos of civilians fighting with them - I posted one here from the new yorker that just shows protesters surrounding and pulling on cops, but there were some other more violent ones I had seen previously. They aren’t super well-armed soldiers, just dudes in military dress outfits.
It’s sort of reminiscent of the attacks on cops in the Jan 6 insurrection, but more cops died and they were not armed with riot gear and crowd control weaponry.
Things were well out of hand before the army rolled in. This does not excuse them from killing hundreds of civilians, but as I’ve said elsewhere in this thread, it paints a different picture of events.
.ml is in shambles right now.
Why? Clearly, those are all reactionary CIAnarchists attempting a Color Revolution, and besides, whatabout America???
Amerikkka*
Silly anarkiddies could never understand how important it is to
enforceenlighten the proletariat into not criticizing the beautiful state! Natural communism by 2050!!1!/s
Its an Israhell psyop, do you not see the clear and obvious JewStar RIGHT THERE in the center left? WAKE UP CAPITALISTS
Don’t forget about the Zionists, they must’ve had something to do with it as well
Most of people getting upset at Tiananmen stuff is just due to people feeding into an anti-communist propagandized framing of the events.
Most people wouldn’t dispute that civilians died at Tiananmen and that the whole incident was… bad, actually.
But, there is a lot of misinfo surrounding it. Like “Thousands died on the square”. Probably not true. Probaby 200 - 500 civilians died, and several dozen soldiers - with many more student protesters negotiating a peaceful exit on June 4. Similarly “the protests were peaceful and the army massacred civilians for no reason” - the protests WERE mostly peaceful for a long while, but in the hours leading up to the state cranking up the violence, protesters attacked and killed several peacekeeping soldiers which is what caused the military reaction (leading to overreaction).
So, in short, Tiananmen was a tragedy where many people died needlessly and the Chinese government/military reacted to protester violence in a disproportionate and deadly way. The Western media, US state dept/radio free asia, and others have distorted the historical accounts since 1989. In response, the Chinese gov’t has distorted the historical accounts.
It should just be treated with the nuance afforded to any historical tragedy. Not unlike the many examples of similar killings of protesters by the US gov’t.
I presume it is no coincidence that this death toll is almost exactly in line with the CCP’s official estimates.
I mean, even if it is, 200 people is a bloody massacre. If that’s the charitable figure, it’s still fucking awful.
The lower end of that range is, yeah. But the Chinese Red Cross estimate of 2,600 was retracted and was the highest estimate. It’s possible, but unlikely, that it was as many as 1,000 based on the number of university students who left June 4. Which leaves me with the lower end estimates. I’m not going to disregard the original PLA estimate, from people who were actually there, just because it is a Chinese estimate.
The exact number of dead doesn’t really matter except to paint the government and army as barbaric. Killing protestors is objectively bad and wrong no matter the number. I think the handling of the protesters was inept, overly violent, and just overall a clusterfuck that cause many civilians and military personnel to die. I think that was caused largely by the perception by the government that the protesters were co-opted in some way by the West (US intelligence) and the government’s desire to use a strong hand to quell dissent.
The number of dead doesn’t change any of that. But it’s also unfair to say the government just rushed in there and massacred people. Military personnel there as cops, basically (understandable since Tianmen is directly outside the forbidden city palace complex, like if protesters were right outside the White House or Lincoln Memorial - there are going to be military police there), were killed before the army rolled in. Peaceful protesters negotiated safe exit from the square. The government tried to disperse the crowd peacefully first. The government didn’t immediately try to quash dissent violently.
None of that gets the party and army off the hook, but it paints it in a different light than the typical propagandized Western or Chinese portrayal of events.
Modern scholars estimate 700 to 2,600 dead in or around the square during the massacre. Do you have a source showing that the Chinese Red Cross estimate was the highest one?
Stop moving the goalpost. Find the source that says more and evaluate its validity, then if you find one come back and add it to the discussion.
Where did I move the goal post?
lol
The issue is not did 2.000 people die or 200 but the CCP rolling in tanks and shooting protesters
I mean, they did say that the military responded in a disproportionate way. We’re all in agreement that tanks against protesters is bad.
The “thousands or hundreds” isn’t a defence of the massacre, but an indictment of the reports that somehow felt the need to inflate numbers, as if the original ones weren’t bad enough. That’s disingenuous and calls the general credibility into question.
Multiple things can be true at once:
The point of the comment you replied to is that we should treat the atrocity with the serious honesty it warrants.
Yeah 200 people is a massacre, even if we take the official Chinese account at face value
Definitely. It was still an atrocity. No two ways about it. It’s just also an atrocity that the West has grabbed onto to push a broader propagandized anti-communist narrative.
Both of those things are true. I am a socialist and I have zero problem saying that Tiananmen, based on my understanding of the historical accounts I’ve read, was an atrocity and a very bad mishandling of events by the army/government.
Refresh my memory when was the last time the us government killed two hundred to five hundred protesters?
Tulsa?
I personally count the Banana’s massacre, which resulted in an estimated 2000 protesters dead. While the shooting was made by Colombian soldiers instead of US soldiers, it was a direct result of the US Goverment’s threat of invading Colombia if the protest done by United Fruit Company workers was not inmediately put to a stop.
EDIT: I think the above comment is a misleading. A better description of the massacre is that it was done to serve US economical interests, aided by US’s military pressure (like US officials asking US army forces to send a warship into the zone) and a possible risk of invasion from US into Colombia’s mainland. I also think a possibly more accurate number of protestors dead is ~1500. I do stand on the opinion that the massacre was a direct consequence of US Government, simply perpetrated by Colombian soldiers.
Banana Massacre
Two thousand was the extreme high estimate for the dead by the Colombian government but do you have a source for the ‘it was a direct result of the US Goverment’s threat of invading Colombia if the protest done by United Fruit Company workers was not inmediately put to a stop’ because all I can find is that Colombia’s bananas could no longer be exported?
Note that some estimates also put the number on 5000. This letter to the US Goverment from the Colombian embassy puts the number, sourced from the United Fruit Company, in the 1000+ range. Jorge Eliécer Gaitán also puts the number in the thousands. I think ~1500 sounds like a reasonable estimate. (unrelated trivia fact: Gaitán is an incredibly important character in Colombia history, as he was murdered when running for president, which turned Bogotá into a complete chaos/warzone in 1948, in something called the Bogotazo).
Wikipedia in Spanish has the following (translated):
This letter from an US counsul in Santa Marta also asks the US Goverment for warship support, which support Cortés Vargas story. I also found the following letters, which show US offered “unofficial support” to the Company. This article says that Carlos Cortés got reinforcements from the center of the country, as to minimize the sympathy that the protestors would receive from the soldiers; IMO, this indicates the hard tackle down was not simply an irresponsible act from Cortés who wrongly guessed US had intentions to land marine soldiers, but it shows it was a clear coordinated effort from the Colombian Goverment.
I do regret the use of the word “inmediately” and 2000 number from my comment. Will edit my previous comment to amend that.
Yeah, plenty of massacres abroad where the US is at least partially responsible for, but basically none at home. Makes me wonder why?
I suspect generally the US doesn’t do massacres because they don’t need to be afraid of regime change. Their internal propaganda is incredibly strong. We’ve recently seen how foreign agitation propaganda (Russian online trolls, but also Bin-laden’s destabilization strategy) completely changed the political landscape. And even in today’s times of extreme crisis we still see not an inkling of any kind of revolution or regime change on the horizon. Since there is no real threat, there is no overreaction to a threat response, unlike in countries that are actively and publicly being targeted for regime change.
Maybe this will change after the 2026 midterms, but I doubt it.
The US is also very proactive and skilled when it comes to infiltrating and dispersing any groups that could become threats to their state power.
And the mainstream media can spin protests however the government wants to - but only as long as there is no massacre.
Basically there are no massacres because protests are harmless and it would be counter productive, unlike protests in other countries.
You fuckers do that mostly overseas and call it “that school was definitely an evil lair full of satan and aids”
Here you have a full wikipedia page of them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Massacres_committed_by_the_United_States
It is by no means full.
Internally, on your own soil, you do have few famous ones I can name from memory like Tulsa and Orangeburg, and I am too disgusted to even try to google it and find more.
To be fair (so I don’t shit on USA only in this message), I can name 1 French massacre from the 60s against Algerian protesters and it was over 200 dead.
I don’t think we had any more in the EU, but I’m willing to be schooled.
Two things can be bad at the same time.
Which last time?
Last time typically means the previous time it happened.
Not a lot of domestic mass casualty events in modern times, especially with death tolls above 200. That’s true. But there are some truly horrific ones in more turbulent times in US history, particularly when the US was a younger country and cops didn’thave riot dispersal gear/less-lethal ammo. You have to remember that China as it exists today didn’t really exist until 1949 at the end of the civil war.
In the US there’s lots of historic ones. Many of which happened closer to our civil war (in the following decades) - wounded knee, atlanta race riots, tulsa massacre, etc. Hundreds died in all those and were extremely fucked up.
Then there’s more modern ones like the LA race riots in 1992 which killed like 60+ people minimum. Detroit race riots in the 1960s with a death toll of ~50 iirc. Like 40 people died in the BLM protests just a few years ago. Fatalities are largely lower due to cops using less-lethal weaponry.
It’s a different historical and tech context. I’d say they aren’t directly comparable. But yeah the US gov’t hasn’t killed 200-500 protesters in a single event within the last 100 years afaik.
Yet.
How on Earth would they kill soldiers? Suspicious.
Do you think soldiers have some sort of immortality? Don’t underestimate the power of the masses.
There were like military cops there first. Just to make sure things didn’t get out of hand. There are actually historic photos of civilians fighting with them - I posted one here from the new yorker that just shows protesters surrounding and pulling on cops, but there were some other more violent ones I had seen previously. They aren’t super well-armed soldiers, just dudes in military dress outfits.
It’s sort of reminiscent of the attacks on cops in the Jan 6 insurrection, but more cops died and they were not armed with riot gear and crowd control weaponry.
Things were well out of hand before the army rolled in. This does not excuse them from killing hundreds of civilians, but as I’ve said elsewhere in this thread, it paints a different picture of events.
How many people died, or bodies recovered from the square that day?
Modern scholars estimate 700 to 2,600 dead in or around the square during the massacre.
That’s just, like, a lifetime of western propaganda maaan
That one dude and all his bots…
deleted by creator
Sounds like you probably got banned for being racist
If they had been transphobic they’d probably have gotten an invitation into the development team.
MUSLIM IMMIGRANTS