So from what I understand ~200-300 people died in Tiananmen Square in 1989, right? Like, that's not ideal, but also not 3000 people. Still, I generally subscribe to the "murder is bad" school of thought.
The death toll is a mix of civilians and cops/soldiers, since many cops were sent in unarmed or with like a stick to try and control the situation, so theres some very graphic photos of lynched corpses burned to a crisp, plus some protestors/rioters managed to get a hold of firearms or even an APC with a machinegun in one case, which theres footage somewhere of it firing wildly into the air and driving erratically.
And of course its all over Beijing as well, the "Tiananmen Square" portion of the protests were mostly controlled and not violent, but in other places it was chaos and violence, people throwing molotov cocktails onto trucks.
241 people dead - the official toll - is tragic, but to simply call it the CPC murdering 218 of their citizens (28 dead were cops and soldiers) as if in cold blood is naïve as hell. This was an attempted colour revolution.
Wasn't the primary complaint being issued an objection to municipal farmland being broken up and privatized? This was a leftist reaction to Dengism and a rejection of the "modernization" efforts that were sweeping the continent in the waning days of the Cold War.
Yes, a lot of the western media campaign and agitprop was fueled by anti-coms hoping to topple the CCP. But the revolt was fundamentally Maoist, as I understand it.
Glib observations like yours deny the reality
Tienanmen signified a real failure of the Chinese state to implement the Mass Line. The fact that it came to killing illustrated the degree of social breakdown. The goal of a socialist state should ultimately be to rule by broad popular consensus, not to hold dissidents at gunpoint - particularly if they're capital city university students and factionalized party loyalists, people over whom the party is supposed to have the most direct influence.
Recognizing the incident as overblown and wildly mischaracterized outside China's borders is very different from huffing "Uh, this was good aktuly, because the dissidents were crushed!" copium.
So from what I understand ~200-300 people died in Tiananmen Square in 1989, right? Like, that's not ideal, but also not 3000 people. Still, I generally subscribe to the "murder is bad" school of thought.
The death toll is a mix of civilians and cops/soldiers, since many cops were sent in unarmed or with like a stick to try and control the situation, so theres some very graphic photos of lynched corpses burned to a crisp, plus some protestors/rioters managed to get a hold of firearms or even an APC with a machinegun in one case, which theres footage somewhere of it firing wildly into the air and driving erratically.
And of course its all over Beijing as well, the "Tiananmen Square" portion of the protests were mostly controlled and not violent, but in other places it was chaos and violence, people throwing molotov cocktails onto trucks.
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Wasn't the primary complaint being issued an objection to municipal farmland being broken up and privatized? This was a leftist reaction to Dengism and a rejection of the "modernization" efforts that were sweeping the continent in the waning days of the Cold War.
Yes, a lot of the western media campaign and agitprop was fueled by anti-coms hoping to topple the CCP. But the revolt was fundamentally Maoist, as I understand it.
Tienanmen signified a real failure of the Chinese state to implement the Mass Line. The fact that it came to killing illustrated the degree of social breakdown. The goal of a socialist state should ultimately be to rule by broad popular consensus, not to hold dissidents at gunpoint - particularly if they're capital city university students and factionalized party loyalists, people over whom the party is supposed to have the most direct influence.
Recognizing the incident as overblown and wildly mischaracterized outside China's borders is very different from huffing "Uh, this was good aktuly, because the dissidents were crushed!" copium.
In my eyes, it prevented a collapse of Socialist China much like the USSR. So imo, it sucks that it had to happen but was good overall
https://youtu.be/7bl_cyYHwNQ save before it gets removed from youtube. the other vid i had was removed already.