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The dismissal of tankies really bothers me.
Remember Iraq's WMDs? Remember how the intelligence reports were actually based on a Nicholas Cage movie called The Rock? Remember how this goofy story was nevertheless widely reported and believed, and America still invaded Iraq, and 2.4 million Iraqis still died? Remember how 4 in 10 Americans still think America found WMDs in Iraq to this day?
the Iraq WMDs story inundated western media. It was everywhere. And everyone believed it. And millions died as a result. Tankies and other leftists disagree mainly on what is western distortion and what is true. That is an important question to think about, not one to be dismissed out of hand. America does lie about its enemies, and it does have enormous resources for selling those lies to the public. And people die when those lies are believed.
Yeah, tankies are not the only people who realize George Bush lied about WMDs lmao. Basically all leftists know that. However, most other leftists don't make excuses for people like Stalin, Mao, and Castro. We can advance our cause without supporting mass murderers. Fuck tankies
So you're willing to condemn Zelenskyy right?
Why don't you say what you mean, punk
Why would there be only one lie?
Western audiences care when a lie costs a lot of tax money and soldier's lives. Under those circumstances the lie eventually hits the headlines. Otherwise people tend not to look into it and the bullshit goes unchallenged, especially when questioning it means denying an atrocity. That's the whole point of atrocity propaganda. It works especially well on leftists because leftists are goodhearted people who care about atrocities.
For example, saying "Although people died in violent clashes on Chang'an Avenue and elsewhere in Beijing, no one died in Tiananmen Square" is a bad look. Your reaction to it isn't curiosity, your reaction is "how dare you erase the lives of those thousands of brave students who were crushed into a paste under the treads of tanks in Tiananmen Square!" And I fucking commend that reaction, it proves you have a heart.
and yet
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Wikileaks published diplomatic cables acknowledging that no one died in the square [1].
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Multiple established western journalists who were present at Tiananmen have said that no one died in the square [2][3][4][5][6]. These journalists are all otherwise critics of the Chinese government.
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Multiple organizers of the protests have said that no one died in the square [7]. Hou Dejian, who was there all night, called out the false narrative in an interview: "Are we going to use lies against an enemy who lies?"[8]
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A Spanish film crew was in in the square all night and filmed students leaving peacefully at dawn, singing the Internationale. Here it is on Youtube: [9]. This aired on Hong Kong news but never in the west — I wonder why?
But even if these sources managed to convince you, you're not gonna go around telling other people, because "The Tiananmen Square massacre never happened" sounds absurd and makes you look like some kind of holocaust denier — except the holocaust is supported by overwhelming evidence and the Tiananmen Square massacre is not.
So now you're aware of two lies.
Turns out there's a third lie, and a fourth lie, and...
You could write a post like this on North Korea, and people have [10].
You could write a post like this on Xinjiang, and people have [11].
I'm running out of bookmarks now — I don't make a habit of writing posts like this — but I hope I have at least gotten the point across that tankies have their reasons, and in a media landscape as distorted as the one we live in I think it is absurd to write them off as easily as people do.
Why would there only be one lie?
There aren't and I never said there were. I was responding specifically to a comment about WMDs in Iraq
Although people died in violent clashes on Chang’an Avenue and elsewhere in Beijing, no one died in Tiananmen Square
This, however, is directly a lie. While it is true that nearly all confirmed deaths were at Muxidi and Chang'an Avenue, there were definitely deaths within the square itself. The only reason there weren't more is because the students were committed to nonviolent protest, even as a full military force with weapons banned by the Geneva Conventions pulled up on them. (Guess what, the Geneva Conventions don't apply if you don't declare war! The US and CCP both love that tidbit).
Wikileaks published diplomatic cables acknowledging that no one died in the square
The first source you linked states clearly that gunfire was heard in the Square, as do almost every other source I could find. And no, it's not just referring to the gunfire that was used to destroy the loudspeakers. Your second source tries to pretend like Muxidi was just a few people killed under very different circumstances, and also pretends as though everyone thinks Tiananmen was simply a massacre of students and nothing more. Maybe I'm in the minority, but the fact that the protestors in the square were university students was never more than a footnote of the story. It doesn't really change it, and I was also aware that students were not the only participants in the protest.
Your third source is from someone who heard the gunfire but could not see the square, and was driven through the square forty minutes later. He says he didn't see any evidence of mass shootings there, but that doesn't mean there weren't any. Forty minutes is a long time to clean things up, especially when some reported that they ran over the dead in order to hose them down the drains in the square for efficient cleaning. 1 2 Most likely what happened in the square itself is that some protestors were killed by gunfire, whether randomly or intentionally, and from being crushed by tanks (which your fourth source confirms by the way) while most were escorted out later. This of course does not change the fact that an unknown number likely in the thousands were killed trying to keep the army from getting to the square, and killed trying to enter the square after the army already arrived there.
Hou Dejian, who was there all night, called out the false narrative in an interview: “Are we going to use lies against an enemy who lies?”
Hou Dejian also made an unknown agreement with CCP officials after secretly meeting with them. He later admitted that this meeting occurred, but we still don't know what it was about or why. Using him as a source for anything is suspect at best.
A Spanish film crew was in in the square all night and filmed students leaving peacefully at dawn, singing the Internationale. Here it is on Youtube: [9]. This aired on Hong Kong news but never in the west — I wonder why?
I can't speak to if this ever appeared on the news, but nearly every source I read about this, as well as the Wikipedia page for the massacre, mentions this. Anyone who wants to learn about this event knows that some of the students were able to leave the square peacefully.
Tiananmen Square massacre is not.
This is at best misleading semantics, but in reality a boldfaced lie. Enough people died in the square for it to be called a massacre. Even some of the articles you sourced said that in no uncertain terms. But even if that wasn't the case, more than enough people died across Beijing and across a half-dozen other cities in China who also held protests in solidarity with the protestors at Tiananmen. To say there is no evidence of a massacre at Tiananmen is to say there is no evidence that I shit in a toilet.
I have things to do tonight, so I'll have to come back to your posts about NK and Xinjiang later. What comes after this is a mix of personal anecdotes, interviews with current and former Chinese citizens, and my own conclusions. It will all be unsourced but if anyone's curious I can clarify where things came from later.
China still says Tiananmen was a student riot that was quieted mostly without casualties by the military police, and that those who died were killed in self-defense. This is an outright falsehood. They switched from rubber bullets to live rounds before they even reached the square, hence the confirmed deaths at Muxidi, Chang'an, and other places in the city. The people were shocked at the usage of live rounds. The event is still something that Chinese people do not talk about. In the modern day, everyone knows about it thanks mostly to Wikipedia. It's somehow not blocked by the Great Firewall and a lot of data about the event is written on there. But even back when it happened, most people knew what really happened even though the government suppressed news and lied in their official releases. Some people still bought the lies that it was a necessary evil, even though they knew that the government had lied about how bad the event really was.
Beyond any of that, I notice you don't have anything to say about the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution, despite those being arguably much more harmful events in the history the CCP. But even more importantly, the fact that you feel the need to defend the CCP at all makes zero sense, since it has never resembled communism. If your goal truly is to advance communism, you should want to distance yourself from China as much as possible, because they are not and have never been communist. Since the days of Deng Xiaoping China has been an authoritarian oligarchy pretending to be capitalist, and before that it was an authoritarian oligarchy pretending to be communist. The party has never sought to work for the people.
And please stop taking pages from the fascist's playbook by saying a bunch of dumb bullshit and forcing people like me to break down, step-by-step, why you couldn't possibly be more wrong. This comment did not need to be a 5 minute read. The last paragraph is really the only one that says anything new at all, but some people might read your shit-flinging comment and actually agree with you if they didn't know any better. It's ironic that you are spreading misinformation while pleading for people to stop spreading misinformation.
and at the end of the day, you’re arguing with someone supporting the massacre at Tienanmen Square. THAT is why we need to kick the tankies out. Defederate the Lemmy.ml instances and Lemmy and the fediverse will be better for it
We shouldn't debate with tankies, just like we shouldn't debate with nazis. Banning them on sight is the right thing to do.
Hear hear!
I do feel the need to clarify a little bit
What I was doing wasn't arguing, although it may have looked like that. I was correcting. His comment, although it's now deleted, was quite convincing to the untrained eye. He used several tools from the fascist's playbook (Innuendo Studios calls it alt-right but I think fascist is more accurate), unknowingly or not, which made it very easy to sway susceptible minds with less knowledge on the topic. Correcting these people when they pop up is important, even though it's ridiculously tedious and you will never sway the mind of the person who wrote the comment. Because that correction will stay there for the people who are still uneducated on why they're so wrong.
Nah, not everyone on lemmy.ml knows it's run by tankies
All the more reason to defederate
I just wanted to say I really appreciate the time and effort you put into this comment. Very interesting read
Thanks! For some sick twisted reason I actually enjoy doing stuff like this, maybe because my teachers always hated my essays in school and I need validation that my writing style isn't complete garbage. I'm glad to know some people are getting value out of the work I put into it.
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"The dismissal of tankies really bothers me"
I am gonna make it easy.
If you are a holocaust denier, Stalin/Mao/Hitler/lenin fetishist or "defend" how they ruled their people then you are purposely keeping your eyes shut.
There is so so much literature to read and material to watch about these people that you actually have to actively dodge it to not know what they have done and some of the regimes that came from them are still doing.
Just because you are right about 1 thing doesn't mean that it validates every single believe that you have.
There are also enough people who are not the above who were against the invasion of Iraq and already foresaw why the US went there.
But this is the thing; It is your choice to believe the above. It literally is a choice, the truth is different. It is literally a choice to close your eyes towards history and the crimes authoritarian rulers and regimes are still commiting towards their citizens.
The western world is not perfect but there is a reason people are fleeing towards western nations and not the other way around.
Defending the genocidal western world in some contrarian bs over tankies is nothing but discussing. But please rationalize a million dead Iraqis, with this snobbish tone, you're probably correct.
You accuse me of defending the "genocidal" western world?
Which country started WW2 and the holocaust? I am gonna give you a hint it is 1 of the people I named in my post.
If you actually think I am defending anyone than you are not reading my post.
In which countries/campaigns most nazis died? Might shed some light over individual parties contribution to the fall of Germany in ww2.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_casualties_of_World_War_II
Doesn't change the fact the USSR allied with the Nazis and divided up Poland with them, and then came crying to the West for Lend-Lease aid when trusting Hitler backfired on them.
Engaging in historical revisionism to own the tankies.
Nothing I'm saying is untrue. Sources or GTFO.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was negotiated while Thalmann was rotting in a concentration camp. Stalin was actively censoring Soviet solidarity with Thalmann for a half decade because he believed the Nazis could be compromised with and didn't want to send the message that they supported a German political prisoner, even a Communist one. After years in the camp Thalmann was eventually shot in the back of the head on Hitler's personal order.
Seriously what point are you trying to make?
You are saying that Europe "rolled" over and effectively died when the Nazis were strolling in and most of the western nations were just apathically watching?
I agree with you. Good point to make. If the western nations were to make a stand earlier in Hitlers crusade than alot of hurt could be spared.
Even in my country there used to be enough people who were collaborating with the Nazis. We actually had a party who were actively promoting it.
My country also had the most jewish victims that were murdered by the Nazis. Three quarters of the total that lived in my country were brutally slaughtered.
It is the highest of all western nations.
I have read the literature and seen the documentaries.
So again what is the point that you are trying to make that I don't know about?
My point is that, by the single metric of crushing nazis, no warring nation topped the soviets.
Can't deny that the strongest opposition to nazis, by count of absolute death of nazis, was the socialists, not the democrats.
You agree western nations were lenient in the beginning, just like the soviets did what was diplomatically available to delay being attacked, until some industrial setup was available.
But by the end of ww2, counting the bodies, soviets get less credit than they deserve by western historiography.
Source: Wikipedia.
Doesn’t change the fact the USSR allied with the Nazis and divided up Poland with them, and then came crying to the West for Lend-Lease aid when trusting Hitler backfired on them.
"But by the end of ww2, counting the bodies, soviets get less credit than they deserve by western historiography."
Sounds more like a thing that you should pick up with your history teacher then.
WW2 in my country is a part of history that get's the most attention during history classes. Never has it underestimated the role of the Soviets in the WW2 in defeat of the Nazi's.
That doesn't mean that it validates the regime that it had during those years. Don't you have the ability to see the incidents in isolation or is your whole reasoning about this fact that because they killed the most Nazi's that the regime and whatever they did in Eastern Europe and their own borders are OK?
It is the same reasoning people make that Hitler is also quite a good guy because he designed the Autobahn (which is Nazi propaganda) that "improved" the lives of the people of Germany.
Just because a governing body of a country did good things for their country or had tendencies to make a right choice doesn't change the fact that they are and still can be pieces of shit.
I'm originally from a colonised country. I have reasons to be skeptical of dominant western speech and historiography.
I'm not validating every action of socialists, the same way I have to suppose you don't validate every action of the western nations. All governments are probably doing stupid shit, I support none.
I'm impressed by your statement that a governing body that had tendencies to make the right choice is/was a piece of shit, in contrast of generally defending governing bodies that apparently doesn't have tendencies of making the right choices in the economy realm, for most people. Evident by recent banks bailouts.
Adding to my point, we only know about stuff that happens outside western countries through the lenses of western media. Which is generally alright, where there's no state interest in the topics. And this specific topic, of socialism, alternative means of organising production and making politics is very sensitive to western countries, so they have to filter news, just like you'd expect China to do.
Also, thank you for a generally civilised conversation in a very heated sublemmit, I appreciate it. :)
My point is that, by the single metric of getting crushed by nazis, no warring nation topped the soviets.
Fixed that for you. That's what happens when you cozy up with Hitler trying to be his ally like a moron before realizing you fucked up. A long and proud history of shit decision making and then whining about it after.
Your useage of 'buts' is awfully similar.
I can't help that I like big butts and I cannot lie.
The reason people are fleeing towards western nations is that the west extracts 25% of its GDP from the impoverished colony states these people are fleeing from.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802200005X
Unequal exchange theory posits that economic growth in the “advanced economies” of the global North relies on a large net appropriation of resources and labour from the global South, extracted through price differentials in international trade. Past attempts to estimate the scale and value of this drain have faced a number of conceptual and empirical limitations, and have been unable to capture the upstream resources and labour embodied in traded goods. Here we use environmental input-output data and footprint analysis to quantify the physical scale of net appropriation from the South in terms of embodied resources and labour over the period 1990 to 2015. We then represent the value of appropriated resources in terms of prevailing market prices. Our results show that in 2015 the North net appropriated from the South 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labour, worth $10.8 trillion in Northern prices – enough to end extreme poverty 70 times over. Over the whole period, drain from the South totalled $242 trillion (constant 2010 USD). This drain represents a significant windfall for the global North, equivalent to a quarter of Northern GDP. For comparison, we also report drain in global average prices. Using this method, we find that the South’s losses due to unequal exchange outstrip their total aid receipts over the period by a factor of 30. Our analysis confirms that unequal exchange is a significant driver of global inequality, uneven development, and ecological breakdown.
As for the rest of what you said, see my other comment
I love the fact that you all have a notepad somewhere with written statements for these subject. Don't make it to obvious.
What is the point you are trying to make with that article? That western nations are not perfect? That because western nations are taking advantage of others that it is okay for countries to commit mass murder? That authoritarian regimes are born from western actions? That inequality all around the world is born from the actions of western nations?Tell me what is your angle and what do you want me to do with the info you provide which is information that I already knew.
In regards to your other posts;
Criticizing journalism is okay. Not taking everything at face value is a good practice to have.
But willfully ignoring history and everything that has been said and written about it is just still and again people purposely closing their eyes.
I still do not understand why someone would not take the time to actually read the literature and watch the footage of how hurtful these regimes have been through the years.
You don't like tankies??? Well what about _______
EVERY time