the thing to know about Tiannanmen is that there was several things going on at once

1: a riot where people were lynching PLA soldiers and setting them on fire outside of the square

CW: unspeakably horrific photos of, and I cannot stress this enough, unarmed, PLA soldiers getting lynched

2: a protest that had a broad coalition of issues inside the square

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unarmed PLA soldiers with the protesters

3: #1 is where most of the violence happened, #2 is where most of the media attention was focused

4: one of the leaders of #2 specifically wanted to provoke a massacre in order to make the govt. look as bad as possible and was disappointed when that didn't happen

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5: western media was not only allowed into the country to film the protests, that is how we have the tank man "photo" that people know about more than the video. Jeff Widener, an american photographer and pulitzer prize winner, took the "photo" of tank man "about to be run over" that everyone in the west thinks is "censored" in china. Why was jeff widener and others allowed in to film this "massacre" that the chinese covered up