British ambassador to China Sir Alan Donald wrote a secret diplomatic cable around 24 hours after the massacre, which was only declassified in 2017. Some excerpts:
"The 27 Army APCs (armored personnel carriers) opened fire on the crowd before running over them. APCs ran over troops and civilians at 65kph (40 miles per hour). Students understood they were given one hour to leave square, but after five minutes APCs attacked.
Students linked arms but were mown down. APCs then ran over the bodies time and time again to make, quote ‘pie’ unquote, and remains collected by bulldozer. Remains incinerated and then hosed down drains.
27 Army ordered to spare no one. Wounded girl students begged for their lives but were bayoneted. A three-year-old girl was injured, but her mother was shot as she went to her aid, as were six others.
1,000 survivors were told they could escape but were then mown down by specially prepared MG (machine gun) positions. Army ambulances who attempted to give aid were shot up, as was a Sino-Japanese hospital ambulance.
The first picture is mostly bikes and the few people lying on the ground are still clearly alive as you can see them lifting their heads to see whats going on. I can't spot any dead people in the second pic either. Also lol at believing a 'British ambassador'
Can you circle the dead bodies in red? Because there literally are none. There are a lot of bikes and a couple of alive people on the ground. What more do you want? Are my eyes just lying to me, so I need to trust Western media instead?
Edit: To be clear, yeah, something clearly happened that caused these people to panic. A couple dozen people dropped their bikes and fled. A couple other people were presumably knocked off their bikes in the confusion. But where is the killing?
But ... you're the one claiming that abandoned bikes are dead bodies. How does that work?
Congratulations though, you finally linked a couple of pictures of what could potentially be dead bodies. Or they could be unconscious / injured in the panic which led everyone to drop their bikes and run away. It's pretty difficult to tell.
Or they could be unconscious / injured in the panic which led everyone to drop their bikes and run away. It’s pretty difficult to tell.
Tipping over on your bicycle wouldn't tear apart your clothes like that. I've had plenty of bike accidents, none of them have ever reduced my shirt into a bloody strip of fabric. We can call into question Western narratives without disbelieving our own eyes and trying to convince ourselves that people who have been maimed are just taking naps. You can support something without pretending it's never had any flaws.
Man, I'm just pointing out that I have no idea what is going on in these grainy, black & white, questionable contextless pictures and neither does any random anti-communist who links them.
It's really fascinating how you're always on the attack, and never actually address valid criticisms that are made of your arguments. It's almost like you're here specifically to stir shit and not actually to discuss anything. Very :amogus:
Prove you're not a wrecker and address this: Why did you link a picture of a few dozen abandoned bikes claiming they are dead bodies?
I count maybe one body, on the crossing. The rest are lying on a stomach (which implies orders), not death though. Like I would say they were commanded to immediately abandon bikes and wait for arrest under arms threat :shrug-outta-hecks:
Yeah, you're right. The more I look into it, the less of a crazy incident it seems to be. However, it was still shitty, and it still played right into the hands of the anti-communist propagandists. It was a fucking stupid thing to do.
The leaders weren't "deliberately trying to get students killed"... what she said was that she feared that that may be the only way for them to get the attention they needed and to get the general population to turn against the government, and for the government to change.
curious how you focused on that particular instance though, maybe you value some lives less (see conflicts on the African continent and near east) or you're huffing a hefty dose of propaganda or you're yourself a nato orb, which is it?
I can't even do a list of the extent of comparable events, it's that long, plus you've been misinformed, evidence suggests the deaths happened in other parts of Beijing and not among students
that is too large as i said, even with just recent protests you have all the countries of the arab spring, sudan, mali, myanmar, israel, the philippinnes, India (not sure on that one), afghanistan, nigeria, the ivory coast, south africa, papua new guinea, indonesia... that’s not even talking much larger scale events (second african war, yemen civil war, timor leste struggle for independance...)
You're right. The more I look into it, the less crazy of an event that it seems. It was still shitty though. And definitely played right into the hands of the anti-communist propagandists.
People are literally looking up or taking cover you dumb motherfucker, do you have eyes or is there just cables piping hot shit into your braincells? Jesus christ.
Im looking at the goddamn photo and every person I see is either crouched, on a bike or flat on their stomach, supporting their head with their arms, meaning they are taking cover and not dead.
Yea, it's called having eyes that aren't blinded by western propaganda. I see mostly bikes and a few people holding their heads up, clearly not dead, meanwhile you seem to somehow see countless dead corpses... I wonder why.
:cringe: unironically using the political compass is probably the only thing more cringe then unironically using tankie, I award you no points, may god have mercy on your soul
BODIES AND WOUNDED, HOWEVER, BEGAN TO
ARRIVE AT THE RED CROSS STATION INDICATING THE EXTENT
OF THE FIGHTING AND THE FACT THAT REAL BULLETS WERE
BEING USED. AS THE MILITARY BEGAN TO REACH THE
OUTSKIRTS OF THE SQUARE AND SHOTS WERE FIRED IN THE
VICINITY OF THE RED CROSS STATION, MRS. GALLO DECIDED
SHE WANTED TO LEAVE.
Where is 10000 or indiscriminate firing or tank rolling over? I don’t deny people died, nobody does, the scale is the question. There is very proud tradition to inflate victim numbers of regime’s enemies, so that your fucks up wouldn’t look too bad/make them look bad
Of course, any death is not cool and good. I just feel massacre of even 1000 people been that famous is obviously work of propaganda, each year massacres of this scale happen. Only in imperial core they don’t happen, cause they have fancy security apparatus to get them beforehand/nice crowd dispersal weapons
I softly deny scale, but a) i wasn’t there b) it’s not particularly interesting.
Tplf has massacred 200 people recently, do people talk about amhara massacre? Would they remember them? Us troops recently gunned down prolly 40 people after explosion in kabul, will you remember it 20 years from now?
I’m not even talking mass violence of the 60s, that happened this month. God knows what myanmar is doing, yemen still suffers, colombia completely blacked out in news, india is beating up farmers, I try to remember them instead of some small scale shit in china.
I didn't know that the TPLF was even a thing. And wow, that sounds really shitty. I wish people would just stop killing each other, instead of looking at everything as "relative".
Yeah, I also wish. I think there in lies a faultline for tankies, they see the terror of counter revolution and make napkin calculation what would be acceptable loss of life to prevent it. If there were no shadow outfits salivating over thoughts of balkanizing china, I would be much more critical as well but I feel ambivalent, what would have happened. Maybe they would sit down, maoist wing would beat up lib nerds, and they’ll get sweet concessions from revisionist government. Or maybe they would attract more and more people, until conflict becomes unviable, and China would have become russia 1.0, with some millions of death from exposure, alcoholism and heroin. Kinda hard trolley problem with so many questions, isn’t it?
Official CCP announcements shortly after the event put the number who died at around 300. At the State Council press conference on June 6, spokesman Yuan Mu said that "preliminary tallies" by the government showed that about 300 civilians and soldiers died, including 23 students from universities in Beijing, along with some people he described as "ruffians".[190][199] Yuan also said some 5,000 soldiers and police were wounded, along with 2,000 civilians. On June 19, Beijing Party Secretary Li Ximing reported to the Politburo that the government's confirmed death toll was 241, including 218 civilians (of which 36 were students), 10 PLA soldiers, and 13 People's Armed Police, along with 7,000 wounded.[152][200] Mayor Chen Xitong said on June 30 that the number of injured was around 6,000.[199]
So, at LEAST 300 people died. That's a shitload of people for one plaza. I would still classify that as a "massacre".
I'm a tankie and I agree with you. It was a massacre, and an excessive one at that. I disagree that it makes me "just as bad as the holocaust deniers" though. You have to understand the context here.
Hungary fell earlier that year, and there was massive unrest in Poland, East Germany, and many other countries across eastern Europe. 1989-1991 saw the complete collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. There was a real threat to communism in China. By May of 1989, a student-led hunger strike galvanized support around the country for the demonstrators, and the protests spread to some 400 cities. This was not a single city protest. This was a huge movement that threatened to overthrow the government. This all led up to the incident at Tiananmen Square. Was it brutal? Sure. Was it as bad as the western media says? Probably not.
In the next decade, the eastern bloc would suffer massively, and China not as much. Today the former communist bloc states are still suffering, while China continues to improve living standards. If comrades like @emizeko could back me up with a couple charts of the fall of living standards in the former USSR and the rising living standards in China I would be much obliged.
Seems like there's a few people here are debating that there are dead people in the images. I think there are some dead people in these images. CW: Corpses. I partially agree with Guy Dudeman's Photoshop job here. I think the incident is a use of state power that definitely took out some innocent people. I also believe that it helped stop China from falling like the Soviet Union did. In any case, it's no worse than an average year for America. China is clearly the lesser evil here.
Plenty of Western and international sources claim that nothing happened in Tianamen Square that night.
Those sources do often claim that violence did occur elsewhere and I honestly wouldn't put it past any military or police group to use violence if they can get away with it but it's certainly not as set in stone as you might think.
It's also important to note that governments can often be so segmented in control that soldiers firing on a group won't always be representative of command. For all the deaths and murders that are accountable to the US government in the Middle East, there's also no doubt plenty of murders that were done by more rogue soldiers and squads all promising each other not to tell the higher ups.
So we would want internal documents and communications between higher-ups of the military and the Chinese government at the time to determine intents.
There's certainly a lot of evidence suggesting that there was some pretty violent military action going down, but the details aren't really set in stone at all.
Generally? Cops can be less bastards but they're going to default to being shit the large large majority of the time just due to the position and the offen unchecked (sometimes impossible to check) positions of power they can be in.
Like sadist types are always going to be attracted to that sort of role and they're always going to have situations where they beat up and abuse people while their buddies look the other way.
The idea of a communist state as being perfection free from human evils is just absurdity.
This assumes that we can and eventually will go full communism which is a nice assumption to make but never guaranteed.
Also hopefully we can make other structural changes that better accounts for these issues, how things like the economy functions is only one part of overall life.
Like let's say Life is 50 different pieces, making one or two pieces good doesn't mean that all pieces will just fall into place.
If one believes the PRC is trying to act towards the benefit of humanity, people who work under the direction of the state will be working towards the state’s causes. On this basis, it makes sense to say Chinese cops are not all bastards.
So, on the other hand, if one believes that the US Government (state/local, in the case of the Police) are working towards the benefit of humanity, then are they justified in saying that not all American cops are bastards?
A State is State is State, and all states believe they're working toward the good of humanity.
“Does being a cop in China give one the ability to exercise cruel control over local civilians with a degree of impunity?” In some places, maybe so. In others, probably not, on the basis that cops have way less leeway to behave abusively [at least in some parts of China] than cops do just about anywhere in America.
I would say that cops in San Francisco have a different level of leeway to behave abusively than cops in Florida or the rest of the South do.
you’re one of those liberals that will readily denounce the US while parroting its propaganda
First of all, I resent you calling me a liberal. I am a leftist. One can be a leftist without being a tankie.
Secondly, there is a kernel of truth in almost every bit of propaganda. That's how you get good propaganda.
state officials often lie
Like when China says they had zero covid deaths yesterday?
I think most politicians, being paid to vote and legislate the way they do, are probably not terribly concerned with the morality of their actions, otherwise they probably would not be auctioning their loyalty.
I agree with that.
My argument had to do with the reader’s own evaluation of a state, not the state’s evaluation of itself.
My point is that the purpose of the formation of any state/government is always to "work toward the good of the people of the state". No matter if the policies of that state are objectively moral or immoral, the intention is always benevolent, and often genuinely so.
generally cops in the imperial core/western/capitalist country protect the wealth and wealthy, in communist/leftist countries the cops are there to protect the people.
The people in that pic seem pretty clearly alive. Some abandoned bikes and a few folks wearing white shirts taking cover with no signs of blood.
edit: take the L my guy. As an american I find it hard to care about this when my government nakedly does much worse than this on the regular, with malicious intent
You would choose to allow the capitalist to murder?
No. I wouldn't.
So you actually believe China's capitalist government line that "zero" people died in China from Covid? Why are you allowing yourself to be so gullible?
How can you agree that inaction is unconscionable, and then claim that there is no acceptable amount of bloodshed to protect a socialist project? Capitalists have and will continue to engage in tremendous bloodshed to destroy socialist projects, the only way to respond is with bloodshed, you cant peacefully protest an invasion or color revolution. You are saying that inaction is unconscionable but that no action that will inevitably need to be taken can be acceptable, it doesn't make sense.
I'm not trolling. I'm just telling you how I see it. I don't think we'll get anywhere with this conversation.
Is it that difficult for you to understand that there are people out there who disagree with your assertion that violence is the only way to solve this issue?
Explain to me in detail how the Vietnamese government should have responded to french occupation and U.S invasion without violence, explain to me how the Batista regime could be overthrown without violence, and how the bay of pigs invasion could be repelled without violence. Explain to me how the USSR should have responded to nazi genocide without violence.
I never said that all violence is never justified. There are obviously times when it is. You and I happen to disagree about a few specific instances.
I think you and I would both agree that the populous of Vietnam should have probably fought back against the French when they came to colonize Vietnam. If they had, the future of the entirety of Asia and the rest of the colonized world and colonialism itself may have been changed forever, and you and I might not even need to be having this conversation right now.
Obviously I'm not an expert on southeast asian history, but from what I understand, Vietnam was a monarchy/empire before the french arrived, and a relatively weak one, apparently. The people should have been able to rise up before the French even got there, to take power from the monarchs themselves. But that very idea was foreign to them, and it seems they were relatively satisfied with the status-quo before the French got there.
So, I guess the best course of action for everyone is to just leave everyone alone? I don't know. There's a lot I don't know.
You literally said there is no acceptable amount of deaths to protect a socialist project. I asked you how a response to capitalist aggression is possible without violence, and you don't seem to have a response. You can disagree with the actions taken by a socialist state, but you better actually research the circumstances before you voice your criticism, instead of basely citing to western propaganda and doubling down when called out. To insist an action is wrong when you haven't even done enough research to formulate an alternative, let alone the bare minimum research to understand why the action was taken in the first place, just reeks of pure western chauvinism.
Acceptance and justification are two very different things.
how a response to capitalist aggression is possible without violence
Mahatma Gandhi had some very effective techniques.
To insist an action is wrong when you haven’t even done enough research to formulate an alternative, let alone the bare minimum research to understand why the action was taken in the first place, just reeks of pure western chauvinism.
Mahatma Gandhi had some very effective techniques.
God damn it, I let you bait me again. You are a fucking amazing troll, you know that? If you are serious, though I find that very unlikely, then do some research on Subhas Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army if you think Indian independence was solely the product of non violence.
Like seriously though, amazing trolling, you even call me inexperienced and then just point to Gandhi like that even remotely covered my question, top shelf . :bait:
Ok, lets accept your thesis for a moment that the decolonization of India was entirely possible through nonviolent means, how do those lessons apply in the context of a socialist state maintaining sovereignty in the face of capitalist aggression? You cannot non violently resist an invading army, peacefully resisting a coup wont stop you from getting shot.
how do those lessons apply in the context of a socialist state maintaining sovereignty in the face of capitalist aggression? You cannot non violently resist an invading army, peacefully resisting a coup wont stop you from getting shot.
Again, I turn to you to the words of Gandhi:
We will not strike a blow – but we will receive them. And through our pain we will make them see their injustice. And it will hurt, as all fighting hurts! But we cannot lose. We cannot. Because they may torture my body, may break my bones, even kill me . . . They will then have my dead body – not my obedience.
Ok, lets pretend I'm Castro, the Americans have gathered an army of Gusanos that want to restore a brutal regime of mafiosos and fascists, I do not attack them when they land because that would be wrong I guess. I don't attack them when the storm my compound either. I look real smug when they shoot me too, cause I know I'm morally superior. Cuba is restored as a client state of America, and 30 years after I'm dead in the ground and America is tiered of raping my country and it is no longer economically or politically viable to directly control Cuba my people are able to regain sovereignty again through peaceful protest. Then they elect a slightly left of center president and he is immediately assassinated, because even if America isn't directly controlling things in my country they still have the finally say, but at least we were morally correct. Does that sound about right to you? Or do you imagine somehow things would magically work out in this scenario.
It's all a numbers and marketing game, honestly. If you're able to get enough people to follow you, then the Gusanos wouldn't even try to land. Gandhi had the marketing absolutely nailed for his audience, and his people outnumbered the british by at least 1000:1 or something.
Do you not know what the Bay of Pigs invasion was? They did try to land despite the overwhelming support for Castro and the revolution. They were then soundly crushed, why do you think it would be better if they Cuban's never fought back? And remember in the following decades these gusanos would engage in random acts of terrorism on civilians, if you let them in there is no appealing to their humanity, they wanted blood. There is no realistic scenario where allowing them to inflict violence without push back will change their minds and get them to leave. So again, why sacrifice the lives of countless Cuban revolutionaries and peasants to protect some mafiosos and fascists, why is that the better strategy? Why is that even the more moral strategy? I 100% guarantee less lives were lost from resisting the Bay of Pigs, would you insist on Gandhi's strategy even if it is going to result in far more death?
The Bay of Pigs was a) a farce and b) completely different from Gandhi's India situation.
Every situation is different. But I firmly believe that Gandhi's method of getting the people on your side, and resisting occupying forces with nonviolence is the best strategy.
Then fucking explain how it would have worked in Cuba, Jesus fucking Christ. It was a farce because the Cuban government was militarily prepared and destroyed them, it would have been a lot less farcical if they met them with "nonviolence", how do you not understand this? You truly must be trolling, there is no other explanation.
Well, SOMETHING killed all these people. What do you think it was ?
British ambassador to China Sir Alan Donald wrote a secret diplomatic cable around 24 hours after the massacre, which was only declassified in 2017. Some excerpts:
The first picture is mostly bikes and the few people lying on the ground are still clearly alive as you can see them lifting their heads to see whats going on. I can't spot any dead people in the second pic either. Also lol at believing a 'British ambassador'
Really, really predictable answer. "All I see are bikes!" Jesus.
Can you circle the dead bodies in red? Because there literally are none. There are a lot of bikes and a couple of alive people on the ground. What more do you want? Are my eyes just lying to me, so I need to trust Western media instead?
Edit: To be clear, yeah, something clearly happened that caused these people to panic. A couple dozen people dropped their bikes and fled. A couple other people were presumably knocked off their bikes in the confusion. But where is the killing?
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It's not unreasonable for people to point out that the evidence you provided doesn't prove what you're claiming it does.
It's not unusual to be loved by anyone either.
Don't take tom jones in vain
Awww! What's new, pussycat?
someone pushing state department propaganda on my leftist shitposting site
LOL. Shit. Ya got me! Guess I've gotta delete my account now.
:sicko-yes:
:yes:
But ... you're the one claiming that abandoned bikes are dead bodies. How does that work?
Congratulations though, you finally linked a couple of pictures of what could potentially be dead bodies. Or they could be unconscious / injured in the panic which led everyone to drop their bikes and run away. It's pretty difficult to tell.
Tipping over on your bicycle wouldn't tear apart your clothes like that. I've had plenty of bike accidents, none of them have ever reduced my shirt into a bloody strip of fabric. We can call into question Western narratives without disbelieving our own eyes and trying to convince ourselves that people who have been maimed are just taking naps. You can support something without pretending it's never had any flaws.
Man, I'm just pointing out that I have no idea what is going on in these grainy, black & white, questionable contextless pictures and neither does any random anti-communist who links them.
Yeah on these photos it’s obviously dead people, but not on the big one. shit sucks eh
Wow. Just... wow.
It's really fascinating how you're always on the attack, and never actually address valid criticisms that are made of your arguments. It's almost like you're here specifically to stir shit and not actually to discuss anything. Very :amogus:
Prove you're not a wrecker and address this: Why did you link a picture of a few dozen abandoned bikes claiming they are dead bodies?
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Real radlib baby brain hours here
:fedposting: :amogus: :ursus-hexagonia:
WTF does that mean?
Lmao grow up kid
Ok boomer.
I count maybe one body, on the crossing. The rest are lying on a stomach (which implies orders), not death though. Like I would say they were commanded to immediately abandon bikes and wait for arrest under arms threat :shrug-outta-hecks:
Wow, guys. Just... wow.
:cia:
Fuck those guys.
ooooh someones making their handler mad, dont risk your pay, would be really embarrassing to do this for free
What are you talking about, dude?
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and yet you refuse to point out where you see dead bodies, as I asked 2 hours ago
:sus-torment:
Wow, you're persistent. Ok, let me boot up photoshop real quick... ok, here you go: https://i.imgur.com/sbTCZrw.jpg
ok you're a funny troll at least, I'll give you that
You label two things as dead that are not even clearly organic. They're blurry blobs of pixels.
In the bottom left you label people as dead who are literally sitting up
we're done here, thanks for the laughs
LOL. I'm not trolling. Just trying to lighten the mood.
So you're admitting that you DO see bodies that are clearly dead though? Or the fact that I included a joke invalidates their existence?
In the first picture, no. Nothing you labeled as "clearly dead" is clearly dead. I can do this too.
You're clearly never going to be reasonable about this, so I think we're done.
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Yeah, you're right. The more I look into it, the less of a crazy incident it seems to be. However, it was still shitty, and it still played right into the hands of the anti-communist propagandists. It was a fucking stupid thing to do.
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The leaders weren't "deliberately trying to get students killed"... what she said was that she feared that that may be the only way for them to get the attention they needed and to get the general population to turn against the government, and for the government to change.
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I watched the video. That is not what she is actually saying.
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She is saying that that's most likely the outcome.
Open sectarianism on a theoretically left unity message board, very very cool.
I know, right? Super cool.
Fuck off troll
:PIGPOOPBALLS:
I'm not a troll.
:PIGPOOPBALLS:
I can't get enough of that pic! More please!
Not a troll. Just an anarchist.
You're not an anarchist, you're at best an anticommunist radlib who desperately needs to stop spouting CIA propaganda.
It was removed for this sentence:
You're new, so please be aware that we take sectarianism seriously.
Thanks for the explanation.
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I'm going to express my disgust with it, and not endorse any government that does it.
Than you must really hate USA and its govt?
Yup. I do.
curious how you focused on that particular instance though, maybe you value some lives less (see conflicts on the African continent and near east) or you're huffing a hefty dose of propaganda or you're yourself a nato orb, which is it? I can't even do a list of the extent of comparable events, it's that long, plus you've been misinformed, evidence suggests the deaths happened in other parts of Beijing and not among students
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that is too large as i said, even with just recent protests you have all the countries of the arab spring, sudan, mali, myanmar, israel, the philippinnes, India (not sure on that one), afghanistan, nigeria, the ivory coast, south africa, papua new guinea, indonesia... that’s not even talking much larger scale events (second african war, yemen civil war, timor leste struggle for independance...)
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You're right. The more I look into it, the less crazy of an event that it seems. It was still shitty though. And definitely played right into the hands of the anti-communist propagandists.
How the fuck is this garbage being upbeared
Because there are still some reasonable people in this world.
Adorable.
I'm sorry if I've not become a nihilist.
Way to miss the point.
People are literally looking up or taking cover you dumb motherfucker, do you have eyes or is there just cables piping hot shit into your braincells? Jesus christ.
I'm looking at the same photo you are. Maybe I need new glasses, or maybe you need them?
Im looking at the goddamn photo and every person I see is either crouched, on a bike or flat on their stomach, supporting their head with their arms, meaning they are taking cover and not dead.
Then maybe you're blind.
:PIGPOOPBALLS:
I love that photo.
Yea, it's called having eyes that aren't blinded by western propaganda. I see mostly bikes and a few people holding their heads up, clearly not dead, meanwhile you seem to somehow see countless dead corpses... I wonder why.
Yeah, I guess I'm just blinded by western propaganda. You're probably right.
You are likely a chud so its not shocking.
Why does anyone who hates tankies have to be a "chud"? Would you call Bookchin a "chud"?
give me an actual definition for tankie, chud.
Auth-Left.
:cringe: unironically using the political compass is probably the only thing more cringe then unironically using tankie, I award you no points, may god have mercy on your soul
Sorry about that. I'll try to be better.
please do
:yes-sicko:
You can hate tankies all you want but that doesn't preclude you from being a chud.
What would?
Also, does this mean you think Marx was a tankie?
No, Marx was not a tankie.
Those streets are awfully clean for people who got ran over by tanks…
Not sure which picture you're looking at.
First one
They're literally bikes. Jesus.
Is british cable inherently more trustworthy than a Chilean one?
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Where is 10000 or indiscriminate firing or tank rolling over? I don’t deny people died, nobody does, the scale is the question. There is very proud tradition to inflate victim numbers of regime’s enemies, so that your fucks up wouldn’t look too bad/make them look bad
I'm with you on that. I'm sure it wasn't 10k, but it was a lot of people, and it wasn't cool or good.
Of course, any death is not cool and good. I just feel massacre of even 1000 people been that famous is obviously work of propaganda, each year massacres of this scale happen. Only in imperial core they don’t happen, cause they have fancy security apparatus to get them beforehand/nice crowd dispersal weapons
I don't know. I feel like all the vehement denial surrounding this massacre makes me believe that it actually did happen.
I softly deny scale, but a) i wasn’t there b) it’s not particularly interesting.
Tplf has massacred 200 people recently, do people talk about amhara massacre? Would they remember them? Us troops recently gunned down prolly 40 people after explosion in kabul, will you remember it 20 years from now?
I’m not even talking mass violence of the 60s, that happened this month. God knows what myanmar is doing, yemen still suffers, colombia completely blacked out in news, india is beating up farmers, I try to remember them instead of some small scale shit in china.
I didn't know that the TPLF was even a thing. And wow, that sounds really shitty. I wish people would just stop killing each other, instead of looking at everything as "relative".
Yeah, I also wish. I think there in lies a faultline for tankies, they see the terror of counter revolution and make napkin calculation what would be acceptable loss of life to prevent it. If there were no shadow outfits salivating over thoughts of balkanizing china, I would be much more critical as well but I feel ambivalent, what would have happened. Maybe they would sit down, maoist wing would beat up lib nerds, and they’ll get sweet concessions from revisionist government. Or maybe they would attract more and more people, until conflict becomes unviable, and China would have become russia 1.0, with some millions of death from exposure, alcoholism and heroin. Kinda hard trolley problem with so many questions, isn’t it?
Yep. It sucks.
:meow-hug:
Thanks. I needed that, after the "'warm" welcome I received here.
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Denial from tankies. Here's Wikipedia's take:
So, at LEAST 300 people died. That's a shitload of people for one plaza. I would still classify that as a "massacre".
I'm a tankie and I agree with you. It was a massacre, and an excessive one at that. I disagree that it makes me "just as bad as the holocaust deniers" though. You have to understand the context here.
Hungary fell earlier that year, and there was massive unrest in Poland, East Germany, and many other countries across eastern Europe. 1989-1991 saw the complete collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. There was a real threat to communism in China. By May of 1989, a student-led hunger strike galvanized support around the country for the demonstrators, and the protests spread to some 400 cities. This was not a single city protest. This was a huge movement that threatened to overthrow the government. This all led up to the incident at Tiananmen Square. Was it brutal? Sure. Was it as bad as the western media says? Probably not.
In the next decade, the eastern bloc would suffer massively, and China not as much. Today the former communist bloc states are still suffering, while China continues to improve living standards. If comrades like @emizeko could back me up with a couple charts of the fall of living standards in the former USSR and the rising living standards in China I would be much obliged.
Thanks for being reasonable and civil. You're the first reasonable tankie I've come across. Really appreciate it.
You'll find a lot more of that here. Welcome to left unity my friend.
Also, check out Michael Parenti. :party-parenti:
Parenti on so-called "poor" countries
Why are ML countries so authoritarian?
Legendary Yellow Parenti video (warning:long)
Thanks very much!
Final reminder to not use tankie as an insult. Next mod action will be a ban. Thanks.
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True
But its not all in one plaza, its for the events in the whole city.
Seems like there's a few people here are debating that there are dead people in the images. I think there are some dead people in these images. CW: Corpses. I partially agree with Guy Dudeman's Photoshop job here. I think the incident is a use of state power that definitely took out some innocent people. I also believe that it helped stop China from falling like the Soviet Union did. In any case, it's no worse than an average year for America. China is clearly the lesser evil here.
Plenty of Western and international sources claim that nothing happened in Tianamen Square that night.
Those sources do often claim that violence did occur elsewhere and I honestly wouldn't put it past any military or police group to use violence if they can get away with it but it's certainly not as set in stone as you might think.
It's also important to note that governments can often be so segmented in control that soldiers firing on a group won't always be representative of command. For all the deaths and murders that are accountable to the US government in the Middle East, there's also no doubt plenty of murders that were done by more rogue soldiers and squads all promising each other not to tell the higher ups.
So we would want internal documents and communications between higher-ups of the military and the Chinese government at the time to determine intents.
There's certainly a lot of evidence suggesting that there was some pretty violent military action going down, but the details aren't really set in stone at all.
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Makes sense. So - here's a question for you... are all cops bastards even when they're communist cops?
Generally? Cops can be less bastards but they're going to default to being shit the large large majority of the time just due to the position and the offen unchecked (sometimes impossible to check) positions of power they can be in.
Like sadist types are always going to be attracted to that sort of role and they're always going to have situations where they beat up and abuse people while their buddies look the other way.
The idea of a communist state as being perfection free from human evils is just absurdity.
Makes sense. So when we eventually DO go full-communism, it's still going to be ok to say ACAB? Right?
This assumes that we can and eventually will go full communism which is a nice assumption to make but never guaranteed.
Also hopefully we can make other structural changes that better accounts for these issues, how things like the economy functions is only one part of overall life.
Like let's say Life is 50 different pieces, making one or two pieces good doesn't mean that all pieces will just fall into place.
Kinda like allowing child labor to flourish and billionaires to exist, and to empower western billionaires... but somehow they're "on a leash"?
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That's a good start. They've got at least 400 more to go .
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So, on the other hand, if one believes that the US Government (state/local, in the case of the Police) are working towards the benefit of humanity, then are they justified in saying that not all American cops are bastards?
A State is State is State, and all states believe they're working toward the good of humanity.
I would say that cops in San Francisco have a different level of leeway to behave abusively than cops in Florida or the rest of the South do.
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First of all, I resent you calling me a liberal. I am a leftist. One can be a leftist without being a tankie.
Secondly, there is a kernel of truth in almost every bit of propaganda. That's how you get good propaganda.
Like when China says they had zero covid deaths yesterday?
I agree with that.
My point is that the purpose of the formation of any state/government is always to "work toward the good of the people of the state". No matter if the policies of that state are objectively moral or immoral, the intention is always benevolent, and often genuinely so.
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generally cops in the imperial core/western/capitalist country protect the wealth and wealthy, in communist/leftist countries the cops are there to protect the people.
Oh, like this?
The type of person that becomes a cop is always gonna be a bastard
I agree with you there.
Yeah. All means all.
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The people in that pic seem pretty clearly alive. Some abandoned bikes and a few folks wearing white shirts taking cover with no signs of blood.
edit: take the L my guy. As an american I find it hard to care about this when my government nakedly does much worse than this on the regular, with malicious intent
I don't subscribe to whataboutism, and I don't deny that the US is the worst country.
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300 people dead is still pretty shitty.
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No, there is no acceptable number.
LOL. If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you. And a vacation home in florida.
I completely agree with you on this.
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No. I wouldn't.
So you actually believe China's capitalist government line that "zero" people died in China from Covid? Why are you allowing yourself to be so gullible?
He said yesterday, not over the entire pandemic. If you're gonna start a spat at least read what they type.
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How can you agree that inaction is unconscionable, and then claim that there is no acceptable amount of bloodshed to protect a socialist project? Capitalists have and will continue to engage in tremendous bloodshed to destroy socialist projects, the only way to respond is with bloodshed, you cant peacefully protest an invasion or color revolution. You are saying that inaction is unconscionable but that no action that will inevitably need to be taken can be acceptable, it doesn't make sense.
I disagree.
Ok, so you are now 100% confirmed a troll, you have :bait: me expertly
I'm not trolling. I'm just telling you how I see it. I don't think we'll get anywhere with this conversation.
Is it that difficult for you to understand that there are people out there who disagree with your assertion that violence is the only way to solve this issue?
Explain to me in detail how the Vietnamese government should have responded to french occupation and U.S invasion without violence, explain to me how the Batista regime could be overthrown without violence, and how the bay of pigs invasion could be repelled without violence. Explain to me how the USSR should have responded to nazi genocide without violence.
I never said that all violence is never justified. There are obviously times when it is. You and I happen to disagree about a few specific instances.
I think you and I would both agree that the populous of Vietnam should have probably fought back against the French when they came to colonize Vietnam. If they had, the future of the entirety of Asia and the rest of the colonized world and colonialism itself may have been changed forever, and you and I might not even need to be having this conversation right now.
Obviously I'm not an expert on southeast asian history, but from what I understand, Vietnam was a monarchy/empire before the french arrived, and a relatively weak one, apparently. The people should have been able to rise up before the French even got there, to take power from the monarchs themselves. But that very idea was foreign to them, and it seems they were relatively satisfied with the status-quo before the French got there.
So, I guess the best course of action for everyone is to just leave everyone alone? I don't know. There's a lot I don't know.
You literally said there is no acceptable amount of deaths to protect a socialist project. I asked you how a response to capitalist aggression is possible without violence, and you don't seem to have a response. You can disagree with the actions taken by a socialist state, but you better actually research the circumstances before you voice your criticism, instead of basely citing to western propaganda and doubling down when called out. To insist an action is wrong when you haven't even done enough research to formulate an alternative, let alone the bare minimum research to understand why the action was taken in the first place, just reeks of pure western chauvinism.
Acceptance and justification are two very different things.
Mahatma Gandhi had some very effective techniques.
And to assume this reeks of inexperience.
God damn it, I let you bait me again. You are a fucking amazing troll, you know that? If you are serious, though I find that very unlikely, then do some research on Subhas Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army if you think Indian independence was solely the product of non violence.
Like seriously though, amazing trolling, you even call me inexperienced and then just point to Gandhi like that even remotely covered my question, top shelf . :bait:
I'm not trolling dude. And I pay no heed to nazi collaborators.
I'm not saying he's a good dude, I'm saying that he had a direct impact on Indian independence, that's inarguable
It's... arguable, maybe. But the British were never really threatened by him, whereas they WERE threatened by the power of Gandhi.
Ok, lets accept your thesis for a moment that the decolonization of India was entirely possible through nonviolent means, how do those lessons apply in the context of a socialist state maintaining sovereignty in the face of capitalist aggression? You cannot non violently resist an invading army, peacefully resisting a coup wont stop you from getting shot.
Again, I turn to you to the words of Gandhi:
Ok, lets pretend I'm Castro, the Americans have gathered an army of Gusanos that want to restore a brutal regime of mafiosos and fascists, I do not attack them when they land because that would be wrong I guess. I don't attack them when the storm my compound either. I look real smug when they shoot me too, cause I know I'm morally superior. Cuba is restored as a client state of America, and 30 years after I'm dead in the ground and America is tiered of raping my country and it is no longer economically or politically viable to directly control Cuba my people are able to regain sovereignty again through peaceful protest. Then they elect a slightly left of center president and he is immediately assassinated, because even if America isn't directly controlling things in my country they still have the finally say, but at least we were morally correct. Does that sound about right to you? Or do you imagine somehow things would magically work out in this scenario.
I don't know why you're bothering with this but I salute you lol
i don't know either, too much reddit brain poisoning probably
Just sit back and patiently await the ban :grillman:
It's all a numbers and marketing game, honestly. If you're able to get enough people to follow you, then the Gusanos wouldn't even try to land. Gandhi had the marketing absolutely nailed for his audience, and his people outnumbered the british by at least 1000:1 or something.
Do you not know what the Bay of Pigs invasion was? They did try to land despite the overwhelming support for Castro and the revolution. They were then soundly crushed, why do you think it would be better if they Cuban's never fought back? And remember in the following decades these gusanos would engage in random acts of terrorism on civilians, if you let them in there is no appealing to their humanity, they wanted blood. There is no realistic scenario where allowing them to inflict violence without push back will change their minds and get them to leave. So again, why sacrifice the lives of countless Cuban revolutionaries and peasants to protect some mafiosos and fascists, why is that the better strategy? Why is that even the more moral strategy? I 100% guarantee less lives were lost from resisting the Bay of Pigs, would you insist on Gandhi's strategy even if it is going to result in far more death?
The Bay of Pigs was a) a farce and b) completely different from Gandhi's India situation.
Every situation is different. But I firmly believe that Gandhi's method of getting the people on your side, and resisting occupying forces with nonviolence is the best strategy.
Then fucking explain how it would have worked in Cuba, Jesus fucking Christ. It was a farce because the Cuban government was militarily prepared and destroyed them, it would have been a lot less farcical if they met them with "nonviolence", how do you not understand this? You truly must be trolling, there is no other explanation.
:LIB:
Libertarian Anarchist, yes. Anarcho-Communist, yes.
When are you going to admit that your hatred of china stems from the fact that you're a racist bitch?
:fedposting: Let's see that piggy
Not sure what that means.
It means show us your hog
Oh! Now I get it. Ok, here it is!
:PIGPOOPBALLS:
I love that pic so much.
How do you get it to show up inline like that? I don't see it in the emoticons menu.
I'll tell you if you show me your dick
Oooh, a feisty one! Here you go, big boy!
Very disappointing
Hey, don't body shame me!
Hey, post hog
Here you go!
Show me that picture all you want, I alone know the secrets for posting it as an emote. You know what you have to do for me to teach you.
:PIGPOOPBALLS:
I'm smarter than I thought.
It's in the custom emote tab at the end. You can also pull up emotes by typing in a
:Example:
:wow:will create :wow:Thanks!
I think you wanna zoom in on that first pic mate lol
Honestly, what does it mean?
From where I am sitting it seems like some weird armchair history nerd shit about what is elemtally an unimportant historical event.
Is there anything useful we can extrapolste from this for future consideration? I kinda don't think there is
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