Don't ask

The 1% how much taxes they pay

You're too generous for not making it a yes/no question

You can tell the poster is American because they blame the government involved for all of these except the US, where they blamed the CIA.

You're right, as an American I knew the specific government agency that overthrew foreign governments. But I don't mean to imply that the U.S. government is blameless.
- I agree with the sentiment, I was just amused that your bias was showing.
I mean the CIA is the us government
No you see it was just a few bad apples.
The CIA is part of the US government.

"Was there a massacre in Tiananmen Square?"

—"No."

"Were people killed elsewhere in Beijing?"

—"...Ermh..."

"Ahem. I am asking you if people were killed in the area immediately surrounding Tiananmen Square, even if nobody was killed in the square itself."

—"The protesters in Tiananmen Square left after negotiations with the PLA. There was no bloodshed in Tiananmen Square."

"I understand that, but were people killed elsewhere in Beijing?"

—"Nowhere in Beijing were student protestors specifically targeted."

"Well, were non-students targeted, and were any students injured or killed without being targeted?"

—"Hey did you know that the Three Gorges Dam is the world's largest—"

"Gongchandang, my friend, I am begging you."

—"...Force may have been used when provoked by attacks."

"May force have also been used unprovoked? Could it have been that the protesters felt like they were provoked first, because you were sending tanks past the barricades that they'd put up?"

—"I mean... you know... uhh..."

"Gongchandang. Were you scared that the occupation of Beijing and the potential of a workers' revolt would threaten the survival of socialism in China, by presenting a still-socialist alternative to your rule, because societal division particularly among the less politically literate could be (and was) exploited by outside forces?"

—"OUR YOUTH ARE VULNERABLE TO IMPERIALIST PROPAGANDA, OK‽ ALSO, TANK MAN DIDN'T GET RUN OVER. SEE. HE WAS PULLED AWAY BY A PASSERBY. NOT RUN OVER."

Don't ask OP about the use of prepositions

The Australian's about their treatment of ~~aborigines~~ first nation Australians

The Irish about mother and baby homes.

China about Uyghurs

Didn't a bunch of Muslim countries actually ask China about Uyghurs (and even visit Xinjiang) and they left unanimously content with the response?
- should be easy enough for you to provide a legitimate source to this claim.
  please note the word "legitimate"
- I bet they did according to Xi and the CCP, but not in reality.
  Even if they did, they're probably faking it because trade with China is more important to them than human rights, just like the US and Saudi Arabia or the other Western countries and the US..
Russians about Crimea and Donbass
"aborigines" is not a great word to use these days. It's generally seen as pretty offensive to Indigenous Australians as it's a bit dehumanising and comes from colinisers who treated people like animals.
Better to go with "First Nations people", "Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people" or "Indigenous Australians."
But yes, they've been treated (and in many cases continue to be treated) pretty horribly.
- Thanks. I kinda knew it wasn't great, but didn't know the correct term.
- Yeah that used to be used as a racist way to refer to them
The one that confuses me, is the statement about the Irish.
- I guess you could say ask the Catholic church about Irish mother and baby homes. But the meme was doing nations.
- Ask them about their tax avoidance schemes for big tech
australia has much more shit going.... like storing asylumseekers in some far away islands

I don't know if I would have used Tiananmen Square.

The Uighur re-education cities seems far more fitting.

Yeah tiananmen is such a meme at this point. You can tell when people base their entire politics on memes and don't bother reading and searching on their own. Tiananmen is an issue they won't step mentioning.
- I knew this was going to be the only one people tried to deny in this thread, but I didn't figure it would be OP

Never ask a Lemmy user where they've hidden the good posts.

The US about indigenous Americans.

Oh wait, they made hundreds of movies about killing them.

What do you mean don't ask the UK about African interment camps?

Our lovely Tory government spent most of last year proud of trying to deport asylum seekers to fucking Rwanda. Like it was some sort of vote winner.

I think it's unfair to suggest that the UK Government doesn't like you asking about African internment camps.
They also don't like you asking about:
the conditions under which refugees are currently housed, give you a clue it kind of rhymes historically with internment camps
Various Indian famines that were caused or exacerbated by colonial rule
role in slave trade. Yes they ended the slave trade... by compensating slave owners. Also started the fucking thing.
That time we basically stole an entire island from its people to put an airbase there.
linked to the internment camps, pretty much anything Churchill did prior to the Second World War and after it also.
the undercover activities of the police investigating environmental groups e.g. having children by the people they were surveilling.
There's probably several pages of this but I've only just woken up.
- The British Empire once covered over a quarter of the Earth's land area. Even the Mongols never managed that.
  And by "once", it's not ancient history. It was 1920.
  It's horrifying, and we're almost certainly responsible for more suffering than any other country on Earth, but also kind of impressive. There are just 22 countries we never invaded.
What about the boers?
- And the Kenyans. The English developed concentration camps in South African and used them in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion.
- I mean they were great as footballers but honestly both don't cut it as managers

Don't ask the UK anything about their troubling history with black people or slavery unless it's to mention that they were one of the first countries to stop making black people property. They get really mad if you mention anything but that.

FTFY: Don't ask the UK anything about their troubling history ~~with black people~~
UK history with anyone else is better not to be talked about
- UK(and friends) drew a lot of very questionable lines on a lot of maps.
Do we fuck

Never forget about the vicious emu war in Australia either, our shameful defeat https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War

Wales added another shameful australian defeat about 5 hours ago

How a person reacts to being asked about the version of these things most close to them is telling. If they get defensive and deny the event happened, I would hesitate to trust their opinion on other things. Clearly that person bases their opinions on what they want to be true rather than reality. That's the kind of person whose ideology would likely lead to another event to be ashamed of. If, on the other hand, they admit it was a horrible thing and agree that people should be educated on it and that steps should be taken to prevent it from ever happening again, then I'm more likely to take their opinion seriously and believe that they can be part of the conversations we need to happen to create a better world.

The Russians about Central Asian colonialism.

And siberian
- And Alaskan

Don't forget Unit 731 for the imperial Japanese as well.

Cursed be my curiosity! I found the Wikipedia article about Unit 731. Not fun at all. 😕

In Thailand:

6 October
Bloody May
The K--g Never Smiles
The Devil's Discus
"Unfortunately Some People Died"

Was about to comment "the germans about ww2" but then remembered that we are quite open about that time. Wouldn't have made much sense either as there would be no use in evem trying to hide it

"Germany about colonialism" would be a better fit.
Also the german sentiment about WW2 is something that survivors for ever, students in the 60s/70s and antifascists right now fought for / are fighting for. Considering we have parts of the country that vote 30%+ for members of a nazi party the sentiment could shift really fast and atleast from my perspective considerably shifted already
- "Denazification" would be another solid choice. For example, the post-war career of Hans Martin Schleyer
- i think you are wrong here. had colonialism in school...you can talk to ppl about it.
- Colonialism is not a controversial topic and covered in school books
That's why it's so abhorrent that voices from the right but not only from the right get louder, that demand an end to the relatively good remembrance culture here in Germany. I hate the: "it was so long ago, it wasn't us" talking points. It's the first step towards forgetting, historic revisionism and possibly repeating the things that were done.
Well, we can add French and Brits about Munich agreement.

The Australians: About the indigenous Tasmanians

The Australians: About First Nations.
- we are going to be a fucking embarrassment next month...

The creator of this meme: proper contrast

Not to be pedantic about a meme but I would consider the US repeatedly detonating nuclear weapons on the Marshall Islands and then doing jack shit to clean up the mess to be worse than any coup.

67 of them to be exact. 70 years later, the Marshallese are still the ones paying the price of that incredibly bad decision.

It’s just weird that nuclear bombs came to your mind, but somehow the nuclear annihilation of two civilian cities was less salient to you than uninhabited islands.
- The two uses of nuclear weapons in Japan were horrible. It's been long debated whether or not that choice vs. the invasion planned was the better of two. I won't get into that.
  What is more horrible is that instead of staying shocked at the potential of nuclear war, humans in every nation that could tried to make more and bigger ones...for defense, of course. And the islands weren't originally uninhabited, that's a nice story of forced relocation for the humans. The wildlife, not so much. That was the point of the post, the history of nuclear arms post-Japan is far worse than the first two bombs used.
- Fair that the cities were worse, but the islands were not uninhabited. The people there were evacuated (they were told temporarily) and the place they were evacuated to was still within the fallout zone. A lot of people died pretty much immediately and they're still dealing with increased cancer and birth defects today.
  This was when these weapons were fairly new, and what little information we had about them was not given to the people of these people before they were pressured into allowing their islands to be testing grounds.
- "MEN OTEMJEJ REJ ILO BEIN ANIJ" — "ALL IS IN THE HANDS OF GOD" — were the words uttered by Juda, leader of the Bikinians, to Commodore Wyatt when asked to exile his own people for the "good of mankind". It is said that Juda's words were intended to imply, "It would literally take divine intervention for me to agree to this.". Nevertheless, the Bikinians would be taken from their homes, and as the ships sailed away, the Bikinians got to watch their many-generations' houses and boats get burned down by the American soldiers. Many of the Bikinians wouldn't eat after witnessing that, and they would live in poverty in their new homes.
  It's no wonder, then, that the Bikinian flag looks like a desecrated American flag.
  This isn't to say that Bikini was a more inhumane act than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hearing any recollection by survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or seeing any of the artwork that they created to process their experiences, makes that much obvious. But you hear about Hiroshima and Nagasaki: it has a place in the popular imagination, even if it is a heavily sanitized version that portrays the annihilation as "necessary".
  In contrast, when's the last time you met someone who knew of "Bikini" as anything other than swimwear?

Don't ask the French (Police) what happened in 17 October 1961

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961

TIL !

Man, women really don't like to be asked about their age don't they?

Russia about Balkars, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush, Karachays, Kalmyks, Koreans or Meskhetian Turks

We should make this list longer

At first I thought you meant perform events that would add to the list.

Okay, my next meme will be non-political just for you

The US Walk of Shame was much worse than the Coups

Feel free to ask. Switzerland answered: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergiercommission

I wasn't aware of the creation of this organization. Thank you for educating me.

6 out of 7 ain’t bad.

- Honestly, I read the above article a few months ago, and I think it is a genuinely good article that I would recommend others read. It was written nine years after Tiananmen by Jay Mathews of the Washington Post, who was in Beijing during the protests; and the Columbia Journalism Review is a respected publication written by and for professional journalists. So the article is basically just trying to disspell the dumbing down and memeifying and misremembering and making-into-propaganda that happened with Tiananmen, and which honestly tends to happen with any major loss of life. No conspiracy theories, no denialism or claiming that "they had it coming", just dispelling misconceptions. It's good stuff.
  I can't speak for Davel's other comment citing Prolewiki, though — I'm pretty skeptical to any website that tries to be Wikipedia but for X ideology.
  In any case, this "butthurt report" feels pretty unfair, although I honestly did kinda roll my eyes at how Davel's comment said "6 out of 7 ain't bad", that was kinda cringe... But basically, what I'm trying to say is that I wouldn't fault someone for commenting under a "9/11 NEVER FORGET" post about the extent to which mismanagement and confusion contributed to the death toll of that, and likewise I wouldn't fault someone for commenting under a Tiananmen Square post with more nuance about that event.
- My fellow American, no u.
1989 Tian'anmen Square riots
The 1989 Tian'anmen Square riots (天安门事件) were a CIA-backed attempt at a color revolution against the People's Republic of China in 1989. Reservations over Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening up policies sparked peaceful protests, which the CPC negotiated with, but soon a foreign-funded faction of students joined the protests and, due to their promotion by Western media, took over the protests and took them in an entirely different direction than what was originally envisioned.
[…]
As the protests were winding down and many protestors went home, the Chinese government sent unarmed PLA troops the clear the square of remaining protestors as the Beijing police was overwhelmed due to their sheer numbers throughout the city. On June 2, rioters burned and lynched unarmed soldiers trying to enter the square. The troops were initially unarmed, but were given weapons on June 3 after the students took some soldiers hostage. They were blocked from entering the square by crowds armed with petrol bombs, iron clubs, and Molotov cocktails. The rioters destroyed over 400 vehicles and destroyed a convoy of over 100 vehicles in western Beijing.
[…]
The riots in Beijing resulted in approximately 300 total deaths, including 36 students, 10 PLA soldiers, and 13 police officers. All of the deaths occurred outside of the square itself.

And never ask a belgian about congo

We did horrible things there for sure.
This post is about denialism/minimalisation. Most Belgians admit how fucked up the treatment of the Congolese people was.

The Canadian Government about Residential Schools

That escalated quickly.

Canada, about residential schools, WW2 Japanese internment camps and missing and murdered indigenous women and children

Most of us are nice, but our government has gotta get it together to address a lot of stuff still.

Every one of those countries has an endless list of atrocities, many of which are worse than the ones listed and many of which are going on today.

it was like this when I got here. thanks a lot ancestors

The Wako Siege is a good one about the US too..

Literally not even top 100 of US government massacres.
I mean, it was an egregious show of force but I'd hardly put it anywhere near the top.
You mean the ones where a bunch of crazy people used children as human shields and then let them burn to death over their paranoid bullshit?

Sri lankan government about -how they won civil war -black July -jvp riots -easter attacks

IAmA Swiss person AMA

Nazi gold??
- Argentina took the nazi soldier, US took the nazi scientists, of course we took the nazi gold ! After all, Switzerland is a dwarf confederation.
- Yes. About 200 million USD worth. Trading with the fascists is a stain that will remain on our history for a long time.
- No no no.... They just decided to restrike all their Swiss francs for no good reason whatsoever... Just for fun. Totally normal... Despite the expense.
  How many tooth filings and wedding rings does it take to make 20 francs?

OP, your better off selecting one of Chinas south east asia conquests over Square.

I read Nazi gold as Nazi god and was so damn confused

Best not ask about that either.

Look at their elbows

good way to ruin a dinner party. with all those people.

Idk how to tell you this, but the Dai Nippon Teikoku is no longer the government of Japan. In fact, it isn't in charge of Korea or Nanjing, either. See what happened is they lost their two major cities. And every living creature within 1.3 Kilometers and soon after a lot of things adjacent to those areas. In seconds. They then surrendered and were occupied and restructured by the USA.

Pretty shocking for you to hear all of this for the first time, I'm sure.