Because I lived there and talked to college students there. All of them told me they had never heard about it. Two of them went looking for information after we talked about it and told me they couldn't find anything at all. So I'm not sure what the reality is but that's where I got my info.
Could just be a phrasing thing, the west calls it the tiananmen square massacre and I think they call it the June 4th protest? Kinda like asking a random American if they remember the Fatherland Liberation War and them not being able to come up with anything after a cursory search because we just call it "the Korean war" here.
It's definitely a bigger part of American curriculum, mainly because on America it's taught as a massacre by a heartless communist government and the tank man hero that stood up to authoritarian socialism.
The actual history is a lot more boring, there's tons of leadup, lots of different players, a slow burn, and a brief explosion of violence that subsides pretty rapidly. It's much more memorable when stripped of context and presented in easily digestible scenes (a poster of tankman is literally on every history teacher's wall).
If you want a good example of negative censorship, look on YouTube for the full uncut video of tankman. It's impossible to find through search and all the results are western talking heads giving commentary on cropped/cut footage.
If you watch the whole thing, you see that the tanks were actually leaving the square when he stopped them and not entering it. It's also kinda crazy how the whole narrative around the event is that they used tanks to run over protestors until they were pulp, but they refuse to run over this guy.
I'm convinced the reason this example is pushed so hard as "resistance to power" in America is that it creates a bunch of people with a death drive. Like fuck no, standing in front of an armored vehicle is dumb as hell! If you want to make a point, flank it and throw something in the hatch. Convincing a bunch of people that standing in front of military hardware is resistance is how you get Kent State. Or the dozens of instances of cops mowing down protestors during the BLM protests.
Because I lived there and talked to college students there. All of them told me they had never heard about it. Two of them went looking for information after we talked about it and told me they couldn't find anything at all. So I'm not sure what the reality is but that's where I got my info.
Could just be a phrasing thing, the west calls it the tiananmen square massacre and I think they call it the June 4th protest? Kinda like asking a random American if they remember the Fatherland Liberation War and them not being able to come up with anything after a cursory search because we just call it "the Korean war" here.
If that's the reason I'm gonna feel like such a dumb ass.
It's definitely a bigger part of American curriculum, mainly because on America it's taught as a massacre by a heartless communist government and the tank man hero that stood up to authoritarian socialism.
The actual history is a lot more boring, there's tons of leadup, lots of different players, a slow burn, and a brief explosion of violence that subsides pretty rapidly. It's much more memorable when stripped of context and presented in easily digestible scenes (a poster of tankman is literally on every history teacher's wall).
If you want a good example of negative censorship, look on YouTube for the full uncut video of tankman. It's impossible to find through search and all the results are western talking heads giving commentary on cropped/cut footage.
If you watch the whole thing, you see that the tanks were actually leaving the square when he stopped them and not entering it. It's also kinda crazy how the whole narrative around the event is that they used tanks to run over protestors until they were pulp, but they refuse to run over this guy.
I'm convinced the reason this example is pushed so hard as "resistance to power" in America is that it creates a bunch of people with a death drive. Like fuck no, standing in front of an armored vehicle is dumb as hell! If you want to make a point, flank it and throw something in the hatch. Convincing a bunch of people that standing in front of military hardware is resistance is how you get Kent State. Or the dozens of instances of cops mowing down protestors during the BLM protests.
damn.. do you know anything about their history curriculum?
I took a couple classes (in english) on China's ancient history and that was cool as fuck but I know nothing about how modern history is taught.