The narrative in the west is those brave Hungarians just wanted their freedom, and they only lynched a few Jewish people, as a treat.
The tankie / historically accurate account is that Hungary was one of the more enthusiastic Nazi allys in WW2 and it was mostly the fascist element, mostly ethno-nationalists, mostly the same people who fought in WW2 in most cases, running riot murdering socialists and having another pogrom. Yes they wanted independence from the Soviets but they wanted to restore the far right ethnonationalist government of the 40s so it’s good they were crushed. The “freedom” they were after was the “freedom” to reimpose fascism.
Another fun fact re Tiananmen Square is that those tanks were actually leaving the city center when tank man stood in front of them.
The cia internally estimated 150-500 casualties, which coincides with the Chinese account which states 300 were killed in over 200 locations. Which stands in contrast to what the BBC still reports to this day of 10,000 being killed in the square, descriptions of piles of bodies of which for some reason there is not a single photo or eye witness account, and this claim is all sourced to a British diplomat who says “a friend told me” and that’s what the public account rests on. A trust me bro.
Edit: fuck i can go on too. It’s the Tiananmen Square protests were actually mostly a protest against market liberalization because it sent food prices high which makes people angry. Some student movement which was simply one element of the protests were neoliberals wanting “western style democracy” but nationwide the movement was actually mostly inspired by people pissed off that price controls were being removed from food which affected their cost of living. It wasn’t exactly an anti-capitalist protest since it was really more specific to the price of food and anger about corruption but the way it is portrayed as “please we just want western style capitalism” followed by authoritarian mass murder is a near total fabrication.
Also the British story is literally that the square is so clean because the tanks just ran over people so many times that they turned into goop and were hosed down into the sewers, and presumably then they just hosed down the tanks also without any trace left.
Edit: Also theres no sign of water on the tanks or square the very morning after because the Chinese CCP are just that tricky and sneaky.
The more I deal with liberals, the more I think this essay is right:
Let us look at a specific example. A claim like “There’s cultural genocide of Uyghurs in Xinjiang” is simply unreal to most Westerners, close to pure gibberish. The words really refer to existing entities and geographies, but Westerners aren’t familiar with them. The actual content of the utterance as it spills out is no more complex or nuanced than “China Bad,” and the elementary mistakes people make when they write out statements of “solidarity” make that much clear. This is not a complaint that these people have not studied China enough — there’s no reason to expect them to study China, and retrospectively I think to some extent it was a mistake to personally have spent so much time trying to teach them. It’s instead an acknowledgment that they are eagerly wielding the accusation like a club, that they are in reality unconcerned with its truth-content, because it serves a social purpose.
What is this social purpose? Westerners want to believe that other places are worse off, exactly how Americans and Canadians perennially flatter themselves by attacking each others’ decaying health-care systems, or how a divorcee might fantasize that their ex-lover’s blooming love-life is secretly miserable. This kind of “crab mentality” is actually a sophisticated coping mechanism suitable for an environment in which no other course of action seems viable. Cognitive dissonance, the kind that eventually spurs one into becoming intolerant of the status quo and into action, is initially unpleasant and scary for everybody. In this way, we can begin to understand the benefit that “victims” of propaganda derive from carelessly “spreading awareness.” Their efforts feed an ambient propaganda haze of controversy and scandal and wariness that suffocates any painful optimism (or jealousy) and ensuing sense of duty one might otherwise feel from a casual glance at the amazing things happening elsewhere. People aren’t “falling” for atrocity propaganda; they’re eagerly seeking it out, like a soothing balm.
It doesn't help at all that the definition of "Genocide" has become so muddied as to be almost a liability rather than a useful term. China detaining Uighurs (often spuriously) suspected of extremism and making them sing patriotic songs is genocide. Russia invading Ukraine is genocide... somehow. I honestly don't know what Libs think Russia is doing that is genocide because I got sick of listening to them ages ago. The 1932 famine is genocide, and even if you finally get them to admit that it wasn't intentional and there were many factors that combined to lead to the deaths, and that the Soviets did, eventually, badly, try to provide relief, they'll still say it was genocide because the word is just vibes now.
And most of them here "Genocide" once and assume that China is feeding Uighurs in to a giant wood-chipper. Like, don't get me worng, China's treatment of Uighurs a few years ago when their counter-terror operation was going was unfair and clearly in violation of western concepts of civil rights, but what provably happened is that people were arrested, held in detention for a few months (and made to sing dumb patriotic songs for reasons i can't fathom), and then released. I'm sure that caused a lot of hardship and upset, but it's so far from genocide that the accusation is farcical. And the actual goal of the government; Quashing Salafist infiltration and terrorism in the region, is never mentioned or considered because that would require evaluating it against the west's "Kill em all and let god sort them out" approach to counter terrorism.
Same with Ukraine. People act like Russia is rounding up Ukrainian's and feeding them in to wood chippers. There was all that totally fabricated BS about mobile crematoriums early in the war, reporting that Putin was going to destroy Ukrainian people and culture. They presented the massacre of civilians at Bucha as part of a systematic program of extermination, even after it turned out that most of those people were probably killed unintentionally by shrapnel from air bursting artillery (not excusing this, it just wasn't part of any official or unofficial program of mass killing). When in reality the RF was shockingly restrained in it's attacks on infrastructure and places with a high likelihood of civilian casualties for months and months in to the war. The US's approarch to shock and awe warfare is to flatten everything and destroy as much infrastructure as possible on day one, while the RF spent months carefully avoiding damage to the infrastructure that Ukrainians relied on. And forgive me for being an optimist and believing in humanity, but the only reason I can see for that restraint is that they didn't want to cause unneccesary suffering and hardship for Ukrainian civilians. That might have been hard headed pragmatism; Don't antagonize people who might form an insurgency against you, but it also might just be, you know... Russia and Ukraine are deeply interconnected nations and cultures that had a friendly relationship with borders that were basically a formality for nearly a century, and this ultra-nationalist Nazi turn only really took power in 2014.
I can't remember the name of the BBC reporter right now who was there, but he maintained for years that he did not see a massacre in the square but a massive, occassionally rowdy and physical, protest. He only started changing his story to the accepted Western narrative of a massacre many years later when he became very much part of the BBC and British establishment.
(My tired insomnia-ridden brain wants to say it was an Attonbrough or Dimbleby, but I'm not sure that's right and you can't google anything mentioning TS without just getting fifty pages of recent propaganda articles from the Atlantic or whatever)
IMPORTANT EDIT: Yeah, I muddled some of the details (I really need a good night's sleep, this week's been awful for it) but I remembered and doubled checked online and with a friend who used to be a journo so here it is...
John Simpson is the veteran BBC journalist who was there with a camera and film crew. They shot a good deal of what went on to be in the BBC report edit that you see whenever it comes up (some is from AP and CBS I believe). And while he never denied there were deaths his reporting at the time was very different from the accepted story he tacitly supports or at least doesn't feel the need to correct now (10k killed, driven over by tanks etc).
The crowd was a very rough lot, not nice students, and they wanted blood. They smashed the head of one of the soldiers in, and then they started to smash another one in and I thought, ‘I can’t stand by and just let this happen,’ and so I waded in.
The numbers he gives have varied a bit over the years but even as recent as a couple of years ago on Twitter he said he estimated about 40 deaths that he saw or could tell from the aftermath. Even now he doesn't paint the picture that's constantly pushed by the West of an indiscriminate massacre of peaceful protestors and massive casualties, although definitely has a 'go along to get along' attitude towards not refuting or calling it out when he's been asked to talk about it, unlike when he was a younger man.
Interestingly, his original assessment seems to also be supported to this day by Jeff Widener, the photo journalist who took the Tank Man picture. He talks about the violence of the mob and barely escaping alive from them himself (to some quietly shocked CBS News anchors) in this modern interview piece. And as good sense and the latter part of the segment shows, he's not exactly pro-China back then or today.
What's striking to me is just the straightforward, uncontroversial relaying of the facts at the time, by the Western journalists there, compared to the absurd propaganda fantasies presented even by journalists now.
These two men aren't even particularly determined to correct the record, push back against the narrative, or give broader context. They're just defending the work they did and what they saw amongst the swirl of disinfo for the sake of their own reputations.
Just clicked "save" for this comment, top notch stuff. Would you happen to know where that fact that the CIA briefed the president and congress came from? I'm sure it's true but I've been arguing China-stuff with friends over the last couple days and a good chance Tiananmen comes up today.
I was going from memory and so I need to correct myself, they estimate those casualties in the square. My memory was this was in the associated protests across the country but they estimate those in the square.
My understanding is that none of the contemporary western journalists reporting from the square saw anyone killed in the square itself. It was all in street fighting several blocks away between insurgents armed with molotovs and stolen guns and PLA troops who were, at least initially, unarmed. And, like, from what it sounds like the PLA wasn't attacking, they were totally unprepared and were ambushed sitting in trucks and APCs with the hatches open. Like the PLA being there was a show of force, but the vast majority of them had no weapons. It doesn't seem like anyone, students or government, seriously thought fighting or violence would break out.
Also, afaik, everyone in China knows Tiananmen happened, but since it was just one protest with a relatively small amount of violence compared to the size of the movement, it's not viewed as being nearly as significant as western propaganda makes it out to be.
Also notable that all western sources reporting from the square at that time reported at most a few hundred casualties and none of them were students in the square. The students all left peacefully at the request of the PLA. By that point the protests had been hijacked by literal CIA agents trying to incite a massacre, a far cry from the original Student demands of a more permissive social atmosphere (things like couples being able to show affection in public without judgement, not even necessarily government.) There was also a large communist faction who wanted the government to move it's policies back towards communism instead of liberal reforms. And again, they weren't asking for anything drastic, nor were they trying to overthrow the government. The whole mood in the square, for the most part, was pretty chill. The Students were singing songs together with the PLA troops, getting them food, talking with them. The PLA troops were totally unarmed. No batons, no riot gear. Just hanging out in their uniforms.
Afaik what finally drove the PLA to clear out the square was that anti-communist paramilitaries were attacking PLA troops with fire bombs and stolen guns. A lot of PLA soldiers burned to death when their trucks or APCs got firebombed, and it lead to street fighting while the PLA tried to get soldiers with weapons in to the area to fight the insurgents. But even then, it was only a few hundred, maybe a thousand insurgents. All the fighting happened blocks away from the square.
And while my details may be incorrect there isn't really any disagreement about what happened outside of the absurdly sensationalized propaganda story. All the western journalists who were present at the time reported - No one was killed in the square, fighting outside the square, a few hundred dead at most. The western contemporary accounts line up almost exactly with the official Chinese accounts. And afaik there was no crack down or anything afterwards. The protestors, for the most part, conducted themselves well and had a legitimate grievance, and left peacefully when asked, so the government didn't really feel threatened by the movement and felt it was better to let things settle down than escalate.
Edit: Believe it or not, the last time I checked the Wiki on Tiennemen square it pretty straightforwardly reported the real, non-sensationalized version, complete with sources. idk how good the details are, but the version on wikipedia right now (or at least last year, when I read it) is not the 10,000 run over by tanks BS.
I thought it was about sending in the tanks at Tiananmen Square
No it was an uprising in Hungary in the 1950s.
The narrative in the west is those brave Hungarians just wanted their freedom, and they only lynched a few Jewish people, as a treat.
The tankie / historically accurate account is that Hungary was one of the more enthusiastic Nazi allys in WW2 and it was mostly the fascist element, mostly ethno-nationalists, mostly the same people who fought in WW2 in most cases, running riot murdering socialists and having another pogrom. Yes they wanted independence from the Soviets but they wanted to restore the far right ethnonationalist government of the 40s so it’s good they were crushed. The “freedom” they were after was the “freedom” to reimpose fascism.
Another fun fact re Tiananmen Square is that those tanks were actually leaving the city center when tank man stood in front of them.
The cia internally estimated 150-500 casualties, which coincides with the Chinese account which states 300 were killed in over 200 locations. Which stands in contrast to what the BBC still reports to this day of 10,000 being killed in the square, descriptions of piles of bodies of which for some reason there is not a single photo or eye witness account, and this claim is all sourced to a British diplomat who says “a friend told me” and that’s what the public account rests on. A trust me bro.
Edit: fuck i can go on too. It’s the Tiananmen Square protests were actually mostly a protest against market liberalization because it sent food prices high which makes people angry. Some student movement which was simply one element of the protests were neoliberals wanting “western style democracy” but nationwide the movement was actually mostly inspired by people pissed off that price controls were being removed from food which affected their cost of living. It wasn’t exactly an anti-capitalist protest since it was really more specific to the price of food and anger about corruption but the way it is portrayed as “please we just want western style capitalism” followed by authoritarian mass murder is a near total fabrication.
Also the British story is literally that the square is so clean because the tanks just ran over people so many times that they turned into goop and were hosed down into the sewers, and presumably then they just hosed down the tanks also without any trace left.
Edit: Also theres no sign of water on the tanks or square the very morning after because the Chinese CCP are just that tricky and sneaky.
That's such a shaky lie and yet so many repeat it without thinking twice
The more I deal with liberals, the more I think this essay is right:
It doesn't help at all that the definition of "Genocide" has become so muddied as to be almost a liability rather than a useful term. China detaining Uighurs (often spuriously) suspected of extremism and making them sing patriotic songs is genocide. Russia invading Ukraine is genocide... somehow. I honestly don't know what Libs think Russia is doing that is genocide because I got sick of listening to them ages ago. The 1932 famine is genocide, and even if you finally get them to admit that it wasn't intentional and there were many factors that combined to lead to the deaths, and that the Soviets did, eventually, badly, try to provide relief, they'll still say it was genocide because the word is just vibes now.
And most of them here "Genocide" once and assume that China is feeding Uighurs in to a giant wood-chipper. Like, don't get me worng, China's treatment of Uighurs a few years ago when their counter-terror operation was going was unfair and clearly in violation of western concepts of civil rights, but what provably happened is that people were arrested, held in detention for a few months (and made to sing dumb patriotic songs for reasons i can't fathom), and then released. I'm sure that caused a lot of hardship and upset, but it's so far from genocide that the accusation is farcical. And the actual goal of the government; Quashing Salafist infiltration and terrorism in the region, is never mentioned or considered because that would require evaluating it against the west's "Kill em all and let god sort them out" approach to counter terrorism.
Same with Ukraine. People act like Russia is rounding up Ukrainian's and feeding them in to wood chippers. There was all that totally fabricated BS about mobile crematoriums early in the war, reporting that Putin was going to destroy Ukrainian people and culture. They presented the massacre of civilians at Bucha as part of a systematic program of extermination, even after it turned out that most of those people were probably killed unintentionally by shrapnel from air bursting artillery (not excusing this, it just wasn't part of any official or unofficial program of mass killing). When in reality the RF was shockingly restrained in it's attacks on infrastructure and places with a high likelihood of civilian casualties for months and months in to the war. The US's approarch to shock and awe warfare is to flatten everything and destroy as much infrastructure as possible on day one, while the RF spent months carefully avoiding damage to the infrastructure that Ukrainians relied on. And forgive me for being an optimist and believing in humanity, but the only reason I can see for that restraint is that they didn't want to cause unneccesary suffering and hardship for Ukrainian civilians. That might have been hard headed pragmatism; Don't antagonize people who might form an insurgency against you, but it also might just be, you know... Russia and Ukraine are deeply interconnected nations and cultures that had a friendly relationship with borders that were basically a formality for nearly a century, and this ultra-nationalist Nazi turn only really took power in 2014.
And ignoring the fact of active genocides going on within their own societies, and in many cases with their enthusiastic support.
They've mostly never seen any counter-narratives.
I can't remember the name of the BBC reporter right now who was there, but he maintained for years that he did not see a massacre in the square but a massive, occassionally rowdy and physical, protest. He only started changing his story to the accepted Western narrative of a massacre many years later when he became very much part of the BBC and British establishment.
(My tired insomnia-ridden brain wants to say it was an Attonbrough or Dimbleby, but I'm not sure that's right and you can't google anything mentioning TS without just getting fifty pages of recent propaganda articles from the Atlantic or whatever)
IMPORTANT EDIT: Yeah, I muddled some of the details (I really need a good night's sleep, this week's been awful for it) but I remembered and doubled checked online and with a friend who used to be a journo so here it is...
John Simpson is the veteran BBC journalist who was there with a camera and film crew. They shot a good deal of what went on to be in the BBC report edit that you see whenever it comes up (some is from AP and CBS I believe). And while he never denied there were deaths his reporting at the time was very different from the accepted story he tacitly supports or at least doesn't feel the need to correct now (10k killed, driven over by tanks etc).
In earlier talks and writing on it his focus used to be on a large protest that turned very ugly and violent due to a small number of student protestors attacking soldiers, using indiscriminate beatings, and throwing firebombs until finally Chinese soldiers responded and opened fire. As recently as 2013 he's talked about stepping in to try and stop the violent student protestors killing the injured soldiers they dragged from the famous burning armoured car.
The numbers he gives have varied a bit over the years but even as recent as a couple of years ago on Twitter he said he estimated about 40 deaths that he saw or could tell from the aftermath. Even now he doesn't paint the picture that's constantly pushed by the West of an indiscriminate massacre of peaceful protestors and massive casualties, although definitely has a 'go along to get along' attitude towards not refuting or calling it out when he's been asked to talk about it, unlike when he was a younger man.
Interestingly, his original assessment seems to also be supported to this day by Jeff Widener, the photo journalist who took the Tank Man picture. He talks about the violence of the mob and barely escaping alive from them himself (to some quietly shocked CBS News anchors) in this modern interview piece. And as good sense and the latter part of the segment shows, he's not exactly pro-China back then or today.
What's striking to me is just the straightforward, uncontroversial relaying of the facts at the time, by the Western journalists there, compared to the absurd propaganda fantasies presented even by journalists now.
These two men aren't even particularly determined to correct the record, push back against the narrative, or give broader context. They're just defending the work they did and what they saw amongst the swirl of disinfo for the sake of their own reputations.
go off comrade :lenin-da:
Just clicked "save" for this comment, top notch stuff. Would you happen to know where that fact that the CIA briefed the president and congress came from? I'm sure it's true but I've been arguing China-stuff with friends over the last couple days and a good chance Tiananmen comes up today.
It’s from the Secretary of states intel briefing
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB16/docs/doc13.pdf
I was going from memory and so I need to correct myself, they estimate those casualties in the square. My memory was this was in the associated protests across the country but they estimate those in the square.
Thanks! Even with the additional context, the point still stands.
My understanding is that none of the contemporary western journalists reporting from the square saw anyone killed in the square itself. It was all in street fighting several blocks away between insurgents armed with molotovs and stolen guns and PLA troops who were, at least initially, unarmed. And, like, from what it sounds like the PLA wasn't attacking, they were totally unprepared and were ambushed sitting in trucks and APCs with the hatches open. Like the PLA being there was a show of force, but the vast majority of them had no weapons. It doesn't seem like anyone, students or government, seriously thought fighting or violence would break out.
Also, afaik, everyone in China knows Tiananmen happened, but since it was just one protest with a relatively small amount of violence compared to the size of the movement, it's not viewed as being nearly as significant as western propaganda makes it out to be.
You should copy it to a Word doc since the comment probably will get archived
Also notable that all western sources reporting from the square at that time reported at most a few hundred casualties and none of them were students in the square. The students all left peacefully at the request of the PLA. By that point the protests had been hijacked by literal CIA agents trying to incite a massacre, a far cry from the original Student demands of a more permissive social atmosphere (things like couples being able to show affection in public without judgement, not even necessarily government.) There was also a large communist faction who wanted the government to move it's policies back towards communism instead of liberal reforms. And again, they weren't asking for anything drastic, nor were they trying to overthrow the government. The whole mood in the square, for the most part, was pretty chill. The Students were singing songs together with the PLA troops, getting them food, talking with them. The PLA troops were totally unarmed. No batons, no riot gear. Just hanging out in their uniforms.
Afaik what finally drove the PLA to clear out the square was that anti-communist paramilitaries were attacking PLA troops with fire bombs and stolen guns. A lot of PLA soldiers burned to death when their trucks or APCs got firebombed, and it lead to street fighting while the PLA tried to get soldiers with weapons in to the area to fight the insurgents. But even then, it was only a few hundred, maybe a thousand insurgents. All the fighting happened blocks away from the square.
And while my details may be incorrect there isn't really any disagreement about what happened outside of the absurdly sensationalized propaganda story. All the western journalists who were present at the time reported - No one was killed in the square, fighting outside the square, a few hundred dead at most. The western contemporary accounts line up almost exactly with the official Chinese accounts. And afaik there was no crack down or anything afterwards. The protestors, for the most part, conducted themselves well and had a legitimate grievance, and left peacefully when asked, so the government didn't really feel threatened by the movement and felt it was better to let things settle down than escalate.
Edit: Believe it or not, the last time I checked the Wiki on Tiennemen square it pretty straightforwardly reported the real, non-sensationalized version, complete with sources. idk how good the details are, but the version on wikipedia right now (or at least last year, when I read it) is not the 10,000 run over by tanks BS.
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